rush of men had nearly trampled him. Dave had been fortunate to escape with nothing more than a few large bruises.
Lord Fulstrom had ordered their force to remain in camp for two days while the aftermath of the battle was taken care of. The wounded were sent back to Branscombe, and the dead were buried. The Darrowan force of some four hundred had been slaughtered nearly to a man, and the result was a mound of dead that was difficult to deal with.
In the end, the Terabinian army piled up the enemy corpses within the ravine and burned them, after stripping them of armor, weapons, and valuables. A few of the Terabinian soldiers were lucky enough to scavenge mail from the bodies that would fit them, though not many, because such armor was just as rare amongst the common soldiers of Darrow as it was amongst the Terabinians.
Sven was the first to return to the tent after the first day’s hard labor disposing of bodies. He glanced at Will and Dave sourly. “Enjoying your holiday?”
Dave grinned. “Absolutely.”
Will’s expression was considerably less enthusiastic, and he looked in Dave’s direction before meeting Sven’s eyes. “Not so much,” he answered. “How was your day?”
“Just the drab life of a grave digger,” said Sven. “Things would have been a lot better if Lord Fulstrom hadn’t been so bloodthirsty.”
“What do you mean?” asked Will.
“I heard the sergeants talking about it,” said Sven. “According to them, it was poor judgment not to allow the enemy to surrender, or even run if that wasn’t practical.”
Dave scowled. “It served them right. They should learn that death is the only payment for invading us.”
Sven shook his head in disgust. “We lost more than a hundred men, most of them after the Darrowans started to rout.”
“A hundred dead?” asked Will.
“No, maybe forty dead, but another sixty or so had injuries so severe they had to be sent back. For those of us here that’s just as bad.”
“What does that have to do with not letting them surrender?” asked Dave angrily.
“If you don’t let the enemy flee, they keep fighting,” said the older man. “Even the injured ones that can’t run are still dangerous. They’ll stab you from the ground, and the ones still on their feet will fight like the damned if they know they’re about to be slaughtered.”
The ex-thief still wasn’t sympathetic. “It isn’t as if we can afford to take that many prisoners.”
“You still don’t get it. We lost a hundred men, and three-fourths of those were hurt after we could have stopped fighting. Even if we had captured the entire Darrowan contingent, we could have escorted them back to Branscombe with only forty or fifty men to guard them, and there were far less of them by that point anyway. It’s simple math. Let’s say we had captured the last two hundred. Disarmed and put in a line, we could send twenty men to escort them back. If we had lost twenty-five of our own and then sent twenty with them, we’d only be down forty-five.”
“And we’re already short. They outnumber us,” put in Will.
“Who says?” asked Dave.
“I do,” said Will, feeling irritable. “There’s twice as many waiting for us in the pass, and a lot more about to march up from Barrowden.”
Sven stared at him intently. “How do you know that?”
Realizing he had said more than he should, Will looked away. “I don’t know it. It’s just a feeling.”
“The same sort of feeling you had when you claimed to see helmets in the brush the other day, or lights at night, when no one else saw them?” asked the old soldier.
“Something like that,” said Will.
Tiny ducked through the door of the tent, saving him from answering any more awkward questions. “Sergeant Nash said to get you.”
Will got to his feet. Other than feeling slightly fatigued, he was none the worse for the previous day’s injury. “What does he want?”
“Lord Fulstrom wants to talk to you,” said Tiny.
Uh oh, thought Will, but he kept his concern to himself. Exiting the tent, he found two mailed armsmen waiting to escort him. They were obviously men from the baron’s personal guard. Will didn’t bother asking them questions while they walked. He recognized the one on his left; it was the same man who had bloodied his lip during his first meeting with the baron. That’s not a bad sign, he told himself sarcastically.
Baron Fulstrom’s personal tent was less impressive than the one he had occupied in Branscombe, but it