Bell reached for his crutches. He got one under his good shoulder and used it to help lever himself upright. Then he put the other one under his bad arm. That shoulder still hurt despite the laudanum. Making it bear some small part of his weight only made it hurt worse, too. If he hadn’t been a man who could stand pain, he would long since have cut his own throat or fallen on a sword.

Moving like an inchworm, one hitching step at a time, he made his way out of his pavilion. His sentries, surprised to see him outside, stiffened to attention. He ignored them. He wanted to look at the encampment. It didn’t look much different from others he’d seen: a place full of tents and soldiers and lines of tethered unicorns. The woods of southern Dothan blazed with autumn colors around the campground. The day was bright and clear and crisp, without a cloud in the sky.

But he could see the differences when he looked for them. As he’d told Patrick the Cleaver, too many of his men wore gray pantaloons and sometimes even tunics captured from the southrons. That didn’t just mean they couldn’t get enough uniforms of the proper color, though they couldn’t. It also meant that, in battle, the rest of his soldiers might start shooting at the wrong men.

That was why he’d issued an order that captured pantaloons and especially tunics had to be dyed King Geoffrey’s indigo blue. A couple of kettles boiled and bubbled in the camps, with men taking out their newly dyed garments with sticks. Bell nodded in somber, leonine approval.

Here came some of Ned of the Forest’s unicorn-riders. Bell eyed them.

Unicorn-riders in the Army of Southern Parthenia were aristocrats one and all, their mounts the finest they could provide. They took pride in grooming the beasts, not just to keep them clean and healthy but to make them look as smart as possible before going into battle.