The maps were spread across a saddlebag — rough but adequate. Evan studied the terrain around Nabi Keep for a while without speaking. The others waited.
"West of the Keep," he said finally, "there's a patch of woodland. Three or four miles from the walls."
"That's on the far side," Rein said. "To reach it we'd have to swing all the way around behind Beale's position. Why not approach from the east?"
"Because our goal isn't to fight them. It's to make them leave." Evan traced the route with his finger. "If we come at them from behind the woodland, Beale can't see how many people are in the trees. He can only see the edge of us. And if we give him the impression that what he can see is only the front of something much larger—" He paused. "We have horses. Tie tree branches to their tails. Ride behind the tree line. The dust cloud from a hundred horses dragging branches reads as cavalry — a lot of cavalry."
The tent went quiet.
"That's our whole force made to look like a vanguard," Aymon said slowly.
"Exactly. Beale is jumpy and he doesn't know we're coming. We hit him from a direction he wasn't watching, with what looks like a larger force behind us, and we fire whatever we have at his leading edge. He makes a decision in about thirty seconds. If we've done it correctly, he decides to pull back."
Aymon was still working through it when the column's advance scouts came back with a different report entirely: a small enemy supply party ahead, twenty-odd men, transporting something under canvas. Two knights with them.
The decision was fast. Aymon split the force into three converging lines, put himself at the center, and charged.
The engagement was brief. The regular knight in the group called to the other — a Low-rank Knight on the edge of full Knight threshold, his blade carrying the faint pre-aura shimmer of someone about to break through — to ride clear and warn Beale. The Low-rank Knight drove at the line with the confidence of someone relying on his rank to open a path.
Rein went out to meet him and took the exchange badly — a mouthful of blood, slumped forward over his horse's neck, still in the saddle but not intact. His opponent wasn't done; he wheeled toward Felix, adjusting his angle. Bess had her wand up and sent an ice lance at him that he pulled sideways to avoid, and in the new line of approach he found Evan between him and his exit.
The sword came out of the cane. One motion, unremarkable in its speed from the outside and very final in its result. The Low-rank Knight's sword was still describing its arc when he folded from the saddle.
Rein watched this from where he was still recovering and said nothing.
Aymon himself handled the other knight — a proper Knight, fire-red sword-aura blazing from his blade at full extension, the Aymon blue answering from the Baron's lance. They collided at full gallop and Aymon's lance shattered, but the other man went airborne and didn't return to the fight.
Under the canvas: a mortar.
Evan walked around it. Short barrel, high-angle trajectory, designed for plunging fire against fortifications. This was someone in Beale's chain of command thinking ahead about what it took to crack a properly built military Keep. The ammunition was on the second cart.
Aymon looked at the twenty-odd foot soldiers standing in a loose group, color gone from their faces. He opened his mouth.
"Wait," Evan said. "Leave them."
Aymon's expression: complicated. "What use are they?"
"They can operate the mortar. And the mortar needs people to move it." He turned to the men. "Can any of you work this gun?"
"Yes, my lord." A bearded man at the front, immediately. "All of us trained on it."
"Then you're coming with us. Do your jobs without causing trouble and Felix Aymon will see you treated well. Felix?"
Felix picked up the cue without hesitation. "Correct. There's a bonus if you perform."
Aymon said nothing further, gave the march order, and the column moved. With the mortar crew added, they were close to a hundred people. Enough, with the right approach, to read as considerably more.
Felix dropped back alongside Evan as the soldiers sorted themselves out. "Why save them? They're the enemy's men."
"They're not the enemy's men anymore — they were running a supply line and they lost. More importantly, you're a knight who currently commands twenty people. If you get your barony, those twenty become the core of something larger. Every skilled person you can bring in now is the foundation you build on later." Evan kept his voice low. "Don't dismiss any source of strength when you're still building."
Felix was quiet for a moment. Then: "You've been thinking about my situation longer than I have."
"I've had practice thinking about similar problems," Evan said, which was partially true.