Ser Hartmut nodded. “Then we can march on Ticondaga. It is only a matter of time before the earl’s patrols find us.”
Thorn did not move a pebble. “He will not find you.”
Ser Hartmut looked around. He motioned for De La Marche to join them. He took wine from his squire, and waved the boy away. “Find Ser Kevin,” he said.
Thorn might once have chuckled. “Ser Kevin.”
Ser Hartmut did smile. “I took the liberty of knighting him,” he said. “And providing him with some of the items of harness you had neglected to provide.”
Thorn considered a variety of responses, and Ser Hartmut’s desire to manipulate the Orley heir was transparent. But as he was finding more and more often, he didn’t care enough to make a response.
Ser Hartmut didn’t pretend to have a command council any more than Thorn himself. Having summoned the leaders, he now shrugged. “When do we march?” he asked.
“When I say,” Thorn answered.
“I have reconnoitered Ticondaga twice,” Ser Hartmut said. “Even with trebuchets and all the power of your ops, it will be a hard nut to crack. It will take all summer, unless I miss my guess.” His outthrust jaw suggested an uneasiness that Ser Hartmut seldom displayed.
He fears the reports he hears from Galle, Thorn thought. Well he might. But his power and his soldiers and his talent will all be here, serving me. Irony piled on irony. Thorn had begun to see deeply into Ash’s intricate plotting, and he had begun to be able to detect the malice-the deadly humour-of his vast mind.
Thorn thought that malice and humour might be his master’s very weakness, too. But he tried never to let such a thought lie outermost in the many layers of his own thoughts, and when he could not help but think such, he whirled it away into a labyrinth of deceptive analysis.
“No,” Thorn said over the multi-voiced conflict of his own divided mind. “No. The siege will not be that long.”
Ser Hartmut bowed cordially to Kevin Orley, who bent his knee in return like a Galle. Thorn frowned inwardly to see his creature subservient to a mere man.
Ser Hartmut shook his head very slightly. He was in full harness, the rich black of his armour shining with oil and careful maintenance. Kevin Orley was his complement, in a plain harness of unmatched, very plain steel which had been carefully oiled.
Orley stood differently. Thorn watched him carefully. Time passed differently for a hermetical master than for a mere ephemeral, yet Thorn thought perhaps Kevin Orley had experienced more than he.
“You have learned something new,” he said.
Orley met his eye. “I am beginning to learn discipline,” he said.
Ser Hartmut permitted himself a smile.
“As a captain?” Thorn asked.
“I can only discipline others if I have discipline myself,” Orley said.
“And you are a knight now,” Thorn said.
“I have that honour,” Kevin Orley said, his voice even.
“I was not asked,” Thorn said.
Ser Hartmut frowned. “It is traditional, when launching a great endeavour, to make knights.” He didn’t move or touch his face or wriggle or blink like lesser men. Thorn found him fascinating-a man who had voluntarily expunged so much of his humanity, yet had no access to Power. An enigma. With a magical sword of incredible power.
Thorn turned his body, the stones protesting as his unconscious hermetical working powered the stone into shape after shape, a smooth transition in many dimensions. “And you, De La Marche?” he asked. “Are you now a knight?”
De La Marche had begun life as a sailor, and risen to command. He was a merchant, a ship-owner, and a trusted servant of his king. But not a knight.
The merchant-adventurer looked away.
“De La Marche has declined the honour of knighthood at my hand. He holds himself unworthy,” Ser Hartmut said. Ser Hartmut’s feelings were naked for a second, and Thorn could see the man’s rage.
Even Thorn, at the apogee of his power and very close indeed to his goal, felt something closely akin to relief to see that Ser Hartmut was human enough to be enraged. And that De La Marche’s refusal had hurt him.
Thorn would have expected De La Marche’s refusal to cost the man everything-his life, reputation, honour, family. Ser Hartmut did not seem like the type to take a small revenge. But this sort of petty interaction was beneath Thorn now. He understood the great Powers better every day. As they evolved and developed, they lacked the time-or the potentia-to delve into petty matters. Great power required intense absorption. It left little time for revenge.
Petty revenge, anyway.
“Tell me when we will march,” Ser Hartmut said again.
“In two days, we will have the whole of our strength,” Thorn said. “Perhaps the Sossag will send their hundreds, or perhaps they will not. Either way, two days or perhaps three will see the last of our human soldiers. But I have other allies and other slaves-aye, and other avenues of attack.”
“And other enemies,” Ser Hartmut said.
Thorn swivelled back to face the Black Knight. “Other enemies?” he asked.
“The bears,” Ser Hartmut said. “I am told by Ser Kevin that the bears will stand against you.”
Thorn would have shrugged. “We will have twenty thousand boglins,” he said. “And ten thousand men. And hundreds of other creatures.” His black stone eyes swept over them. “We will crush the bears if they are foolish enough to fall under our claws. Otherwise, we will ignore them and take their vassalage later.”
“You avoid the question,” Ser Hartmut said.
Eventually, I will have to dispose of you. You, and Orley and the rest. All so greedy. Perhaps I should make De La Marche my ally.
“In two days, we will march. We will collect our allies from the north as we move-they will catch us up.” Thorn nodded. “I will cover us in a cloud of unknowing, and we will move as close to Ticondaga as my powers will allow.”
“And when will we strike?” Ser Hartmut insisted. “We’re one day from Easter.”
De La Marche spoke for the first time. “The ice isn’t off the lakes yet, and the woods are still full of snow.” He did not look fully at Thorn. “None of our men wish to march in this.” His voice all but begged. “Let the men celebrate Easter in peace.”
Ser Hartmut laughed. “I did not learn to win wars by doing what is easy.”
“Men will die in those woods,” De La Marche said.
Ser Hartmut shrugged. “None of them are any consequence to you or me or Master Thorn,” he said.
“We don’t have enough raquettes for all the sailors and the men-at-arms,” De La Marche said.
Ser Hartmut nodded. “Only the scouts will need them,” he said.
De La Marche looked at Thorn for a fraction of a heartbeat. “Our wizard will melt us a road?”
Ser Hartmut shook his head. “No,” he said. “Our Huran captives-those ones who will not submit-will walk ahead of us.” He waved one iron-clad hand. “They will tramp the snow flat. And cut the trees and make a road, all the way down the western shore of the lake.”
De La Marche took in a great breath. “And where will they camp?” he asked. “With our men?”
Ser Hartmut shook his head. “Camp? They will work until they die. And then we will send more ahead of us.” He waved his hand. “They are not Christians. Not subjects of my King. They’re not even really people. Let them die.”
De La Marche sighed. “You will walk three thousand women and children to death to build a road for your army?” he asked.
Ser Hartmut nodded. “They defied me,” he said. “Now they will pay. This is absolutely within the Rule of War.”
De La Marche looked back and forth between Ser Hartmut and Thorn. “Of the two of you, I doubt that I can tell which is the worse,” he said. “I will go and walk the snow with the poor savages you send to their deaths. I cannot live and watch you do this to them.”