Ned’s eyes gleamed ferally as he thought about that. “You’re right. And wouldn’t Avram look pretty with egg all over his ugly mug? Thinks we’re licked, does he? Thinks we’re flat? Well, he’d better think again.”

“That’s right. That’s exactly right. I think we’re going to get along just fine together, Ned,” Bell said.

“You tell me what to do. If I can, I will. If I can’t, you’ll hear all about the reasons why, I promise you,” Ned said.

Bell was his superior. Bell was also, or had also been, a ferocious fighting man in his own right. He’d never been one to encourage insubordination. Even so, he didn’t demand immediate, unquestioning obedience of Ned of the Forest, as he would have from anyone else. He just nodded and said, “Yes, we’ll get on fine.”

“Good.” Ned gave him a sloppy salute he found himself gladder to have than many neat ones from lesser officers. The commander of unicorn-riders ducked his way out of General Bell’s pavilion. Bell wasn’t sorry to see him go. The commander of the Army of Franklin looked like a suffering god because he suffered-on account of both the ruined arm he still had and the ruined leg he no longer owned. The leg might be gone, but its ghost of sensation lingered, and that ghost was in constant, unending torment.

Working awkwardly with his one good hand, Bell opened the leather pouch he wore on the belt that held up his dark blue pantaloons (one leg, of course, pinned up short). He pulled out a little bottle of laudanum and yanked the cork with his teeth. Then, tilting his head back, he took a long pull from the bottle.

Odd-tasting fire ran down his throat. Laudanum was a mixture of brandy and poppy juice. If it wouldn’t kill pain, nothing would. Only two things were wrong with that. One was, sometimes even laudanum wouldn’t kill the pain Bell knew. The other was, he’d been taking the stuff ever since his arm was ruined at Essoville. After close to a year and a half, he needed much bigger doses to quell his agony than he had at first. By now, the amount of laudanum he took every day would have been plenty to kill two or three men who hadn’t become habituated to the drug, or to leave six or eight such men woozy.