By contrast, Ned’s men looked like so many teamsters. Their uniforms were even shabbier than those of Bell’s crossbowmen and pikemen. Slouch hats held the sun and rain out of their eyes. Their unicorns were in good enough condition, but nothing special. They didn’t look like men who’d been able to keep all of eastern Franklin and Cloviston in an uproar behind southron lines, or like men who’d routed a southron army three times the size of their own in Great River Province. But they had. No matter what they looked like, they could fight. Bell had to respect that.

Overhead, a hawk flew south. Bell took it for a good omen, hoping it meant the Army of Franklin would succeed when it did move south. He would have been more nearly certain had the beast been a dragon. The dragon was Detina’s emblematic animal, the kingdom flying on its banners a gold dragon on red. To difference his men from those of Avram, Geoffrey had chosen a red dragon on gold.

But dragons had been rare in western Detina even when the colonists from across the Western Ocean used iron and unicorns and sorcery to seize the land from the blonds then inhabiting it. A few of the great beasts were still said to survive west of the Great River, but Bell had never seen one. In the lands far to the east, in the Stony Mountains beyond the steppes, dragons not only survived but flourished. That did Bell no good with the omens, though.

He shrugged a one-shouldered shrug. Even that hurt. But then, what didn’t? Omens or no, he-and the Army of Franklin-would march south.

Corporal Rollant liked garrison duty. He’d spent a lot of time putting himself in positions where strangers could kill him: at the battle by the River of Death, storming up Proselytizers’ Rise, and all through the campaign from the southern border of Peachtree Province up to Marthasville. No, he didn’t mind being back here in Ramblerton, well away from the fighting, at all.