I took a deep breath. "Inclito, our mercenaries have been with us almost half a month. You have them in back with the reserve, the ones who are still alive?"

He nodded. "A hundred and thirty-seven. That's the number I remember, anyhow. Could be a few less."

"I want to pay them. Half a month's pay before the battle starts. May I do that?"

"You've got the money?"

"Four times enough. May I?"

"Sure, go ahead. You think it'll make them fight better? They've been fighting real good already."

"It will make me fight better," I said, "because I won't dislike myself quite so much for fighting."

"Good man," Oreb assured Inclito.

"I try. I want to promise those who are attempting to earn enough to buy land that we'll try to provide farms for them after the war. The rich in

Soldo own a great deal of land-that's the impression I get, at least."

"Sure." Inclito stroked his jaw. "That way they'd stay right there in Soldo. I see. And if the Soldese – all right, go ahead and tell them, Incanto. I'll make it happen if we win."

We were going to, I knew, although I did not say so then. I found Sfido, and the two of us brought out the chest that we had hidden when we arrived. I gave every mercenary thirty silver bits, half of the sixty that we had paid every four weeks in Gaon, and told them about the farms Inclito had promised them.

Captain Kupus took me aside. "You're giving every man one? Enough land for a man to feed a family?"

"That's correct," I told him. "The Duko's chief supporters seem to own a great deal of good land around Soldo. It will be taken from them, of course, and Inclito has decided to give it-some of it at least-to your mercenaries, who have fought so valiantly for Blanko and suffered so much."

Atteno interrupted us to report that all his pigs were tied and positioned at last. When he had gone, Kupus asked, "Four for me? Four farms?"

I shook my head. "This is a bonus, not the promised pay. I'll try to see to it that you get first choice, however."

He is not a man who smiles often, but he smiled then. "I didn't think so, but I hadn't thought about first choice. They can't be exactly equal, after all, can they?"

I admitted that I did not see how it could be done.

"But we've got to beat them first. What was that little fellow saying about pigs?"

"Boars in pairs. A mature boar is a dangerous animal, nearly as dangerous as a hus."

He nodded.

"With a long rope stretched between them-" Just then, I sighted the first cavalry, tiny figures in wine-red jackets sifting down through the dry brown hills behind them. Sunlight winked on what I took to be silver cap badges but later found were plumed helmets of polished steel, on the blades of the officers' swords, and on the black well-oiled barrels of their slug guns.

Kupus snorted. "Not as dangerous as they look, if a man will just stand up to them and shoot." When I did not reply, he added, "What about these women of yours? You think they will?"

I fingered my beard, recalling the telescope I had on my boat, two lenses united by sliding tubes of brass and wood. I had accepted it reluctantly in trade for paper, and had never valued it as I should have; but I would have given a good deal of our chest for it at that moment.

"Well," Kupus muttered half humorously, "they haven't run yet, so the war goddess be thanked."

I nodded, trying to push aside the thought that I might take our lookout's little boat and follow the river to the sea. "I had not considered that Sphigx was our goddess of war under the Long Sun-thank you for reminding me of that. To answer your question, the General wrote me a letter a few days ago in which he said that Blanko's women and over-age men might fight from behind its walls but would not if I marched them out of the city. I'd seen enough by then to know that the men would fight very stubbornly to hold a position, though they would be slow and even hesitant in attacking an enemy position.

"And it occurred to me that Inclito was probably correct about the women, but that Blanko's walls were not the only walls in the whorl, that walls might be built almost anywhere."

"No fight," Oreb muttered nervously.

"You need not," I told him. "No one will accuse you of cowardice if you fly to a place of safety."

"So you came out here and built these."

"Yes. My first thought-I'm sorry I didn't have you to advise me then, Captain-was to build a sort of fortress, a square of temporary walls with ditches before them, but Rimando pointed out that our enemies would simply bypass it and go on to the town, and I saw at once that he was right."

I shaded my eyes with my hand. "The horses are slipping a little in the snow, I believe."

"They always do. They'll slip more if those fellows charge our flank."

"They will. I said that Rimando had said they would bypass our fort and ravage the farms on their way to Blanko, but flank was the word he actually employed. It reminded me that in open farming country such as this we would have to be prepared for flanking movements. I once had General Mint say in a book that one could always outflank the enemy in a desert. General Mint was a woman, and I believe she was the bravest person I have ever known."

"I wish we had her here."

"So do I, but that was an aside, and one I shouldn't have made. What I should have said is that farms and fields of grain make almost as good a battlefield for cavalry as a desert. The Trivigauntis had a great deal of cavalry. I think I've mentioned them to you before."

Kupus nodded, and pointed to the sky.

"Yes, back home. Their Generalissimo was a cavalrywoman too, and it was a long time before I understood that they had specialized in cavalry and cavalry tactics because so much of their territory was desert or semi-desert, and that they had succeeded as well as they had because their women troopers were lighter than men."

Rimando reported that our gunners were in position and ready to go into action, and asked permission to open fire on the cavalry massing on the slopes to the north.

I shook my head. "We would only scatter them. Don't fire, don't let even a single gun fire, until I give the order."

Oreb reinforced it: "No shoot!"

Kupus cleared his throat. "I hate to say it, Master Incanto, but that cavalry of theirs is the worst risk we face right now."

"We face many worse things than a few hundred men on horses, Captain. Our own fears may be the worst. You asked me about the women. Men can be panicked as well."

"I try never to forget it."

"The women will stand and fight as long as they are behind their walls, and some would stand and fight without them, for which we should be exceedingly grateful. A few – Sphigx is the god of war, as you pointed out, Captain. We say 'the goddess' to be polite, but the principal war god we have. I wonder why she chose that, chose war as her domain."

Kupus pointed. "Here they come!"

He might rather have said, "There they go," for it appeared at first that the horsemen were riding away from us, trotting eastward in long, thin columns of crimson and brown.

He touched his cap. "If you'll excuse me, Master."

I nodded, and he trotted back toward the troops who made up our reserve, waving his arms and shouting instructions. In a moment more, the boys who had formed our original reserve were moving into position to resist the cavalry, guided and stiffened by his own mercenaries and the troopers who had retreated under Inclito's command.

"Men fight," Oreb muttered unhappily.

"Boys, too," I told him, "and women. Horses and even pigs-or so we hope. You have been fighting too, Oreb, and you've been of considerable help to us."

"Bird fight?"

I nodded solemnly. "Now I'd like you to help a little bit more. Lieutenant Atteno – the man in whose house we stayed in town-is in charge of the fireworks." With my free hand, I pointed to the straggling hedge well to our right rear behind which Atteno, his fireworks, and the boys who had volunteered to set them off were hidden. "I want you to remind him that he is not to light the first fuse-"