barracks. A solitary man on horseback sat back in the tree line, with something on his arm. He threw his arm forward with a sharp cry—and a large falcon leaped into the air, its wings beating with power and grace as it arrowed up toward the homunculus. There was a confused tumble of sky and ground, flashing talons … Rhovann snatched back his hand, unwilling to share in his small servant’s mortal agony. It was just as well—the broken thing expired an instant after he severed their connection.
“A falcon,” he murmured, pursing his lips in thought. Kara Hulmaster’s doing, no doubt. Evidently she’d decided to guard her camp against airborne spies; she was damnably clever about such things. If she was cautious enough to post falconers, she might very well be cautious enough to anticipate his spying and make a point of showing him things she wanted him to see … in which case, he could not be confident of any report his minions brought back from the Hulmaster camp. Well, he would just have to find another way to keep an eye on the so-called Hulmaster army.
He closed his eyes, thinking hard about what the homunculus had seen … and not seen. There was no glimpse of Geran Hulmaster anywhere. Of course, the odds of his homunculus spotting one specific person in a manor crowded with many hundreds were low, but Rhovann had instructed his small spies to seek out Geran, and for tendays now, they’d found nothing. For that matter, the human spies he employed in Thentia couldn’t confirm Geran’s location, either.
The mage scowled as he realized that some of his calm confidence about the coming conflict had eroded away. Still weighing the homunculus’s last vision, he closed his journal and secured the laboratory with the customary wardings. Then he went in search of Edelmark.
He found the Council Guard captain in the castle’s rain-splattered courtyard, observing the drill of one of his companies. “Come, Edelmark,” he said. “I want a word with you.”
“Of course, my lord mage,” the captain replied. He nodded to a subordinate to take over, and fell in a half step behind Rhovann as the elf mage led him into the dry interior of a turret overlooking the castle gate. A murmured spell and a simple gesture guaranteed their privacy.
“I have just received a report from Thentia,” Rhovann said to his captain. “The Hulmasters are drilling and maneuvering their army every day. And it seems that our initial reports were correct, and the Icehammers are marching under the Hulmaster banner.”
Edelmark nodded. “Do you know when they plan to march, my lord?” he asked.
“I haven’t been able to discover that with my observations,” Rhovann admitted. “If you were in command of the Hulmaster forces, what would you do?”
Edelmark frowned and considered his answer. “A winter campaign would be difficult. There’s no shelter to be had in the Highfells. Given my choice, I’d wait for the weather to turn … but time doesn’t favor them. If they wait for the spring thaw, the reopening of our port would give us the opportunity to bring more mercenaries into the city any time we liked.”
“It would also give me the opportunity to manufacture more runehelms,” Rhovann observed. He hoped that the number and strength of the constructs he’d created would come as a very ugly surprise to any Hulmaster loyalists marching on Hulburg. Geran and his cousin might understand that, or they might not. On the other hand, they probably wouldn’t overlook the significance of Hulburg’s port reopening. “If the Hulmaster army comes before the thaw, could your Council Guard defeat them?”
“With the Icehammers, they’ve got about eight hundred armsmen. That is close to matching the strength of the Council Guard and the allied merchant companies.” Edelmark shrugged. “Of course, many of the Hulmaster troops are ill-equipped militia and wouldn’t stand up well to our professional armsmen. But we have to assume that any loyalists remaining in Hulburg would rise in support of a Hulmaster army, possibly shifting the odds against us.”
Rhovann thought that his captain was a little too quick to dismiss the quality of the Hulmaster troops, but he didn’t want the man starting at phantoms. “My runehelms are nearly a hundred strong now. They would make our victory certain, would they not?”
The mercenary captain twisted his mouth into a small smile. “Nothing is certain in war, my lord mage. But I have a hard time imagining how the Hulmasters could beat that many of your gray