That decided Lieutenant General George. He hurried over to the scryers, who had their headquarters next door to his own. When the gray-robed mages looked up from their crystal balls, he said, “Send word to all garrisons of company size and above: they’re to move at once, to concentrate here at Ramblerton.”

“Yes, sir,” the wizards chorused. Unlike Major Alva, they knew how to obey orders. Also unlike him, they were utterly ordinary when it came to sorcery. Doubting George usually thought Alva’s talents outweighed his shortcomings. Sometimes, though, he wondered.

Lieutenant General Bell looked down at himself. The northern officer was a big, strong man, with a bushy beard and a face that for years had put men in mind of the Lion God. These days, he looked like a suffering god. His left arm hung limp and lifeless at his side. He’d been with Duke Edward of Arlington and the Army of Southern Parthenia down at Essoville when he’d taken the crippling wound. And later that same summer, here in the east at the River of Death, a stone flung from a catapult had smashed his right leg, which now ended a few inches below the hip.

He was not a man much given to whimsy, Lieutenant General Bell. Nevertheless, surveying the ruins of what had been a redoubtable body, he nodded to Ned of the Forest with something approaching geniality and said, “Do you know what I am?”

“What’s that, sir?” the commander of unicorn-riders asked.

“I am the abridged edition,” Bell declared.

That brought a smile-a cold, fierce smile-to Lieutenant General Ned’s face. “I reckon we ought to see what we can do about abridging us some o’ those stinking southrons,” he said, a northeastern twang in his voice. Unlike most high-ranking northern officers, he held not a drop of noble blood in his veins. He’d been a serfcatcher before the war, and enlisted as a common soldier when fighting between the two halves of Detina broke out. He’d risen to his present rank for one reason and one reason only: he was overwhelmingly good at what he did.