Elise swam slowly up to consciousness, and it was scent that first cleared the murky waters of her dreams. She smelled sweat, and blood, and pungent herbs. Feeling came next--her left shoulder still throbbed dully, as it had since she'd taken the musket ball. Sight followed. Elise had never before noticed the length of Luciene's nose. It loomed down over her like the beak of a yellow crane, bobbing as he spoke.

"You're awake!"

Elise groaned. Why was Luciene so loud? "Someone was shaking me." Elise's voice rasped like rusting iron. She looked past her adjutant. A brown cloth tent ceiling stretched overhead, supported by a central pole. Sunlight leaked weakly through the open entry flap, showing her Marcel sitting on a three-legged stool at the foot of her bed. The old sorcerer returned the scrutiny with his gap-toothed smile.

She frowned at him. The king had insisted the army bring a sorcerer, and so he was here, though she despised mages. "Luciene," she said, her voice a harsh whisper, "what's our status?"

Luciene beamed at her. "Thank the Gods, Colonel! And Marcel here--he did the--"

Elise spat to express her opinion of magery, then barked: "Status!"

Luciene frowned. "Not so good, Colonel."

"I asked for..." she paused to catch her breath, "a report, not an assessment."

Luciene straightened. "Major Gerard ordered us east, and we rode into a high-walled valley. Before we reached the other side, the Rakourans closed off either end with their army. We've some two-thousand able-bodied men." Luciene rushed on. "I had Marcel give you a..." He hesitated.

"A stimulant," the sorcerer added.

"Yes--to wake you up. Colonel, we need you. The Major's called a staff meeting and he plans to charge the Rakouran position this night."

Typical. Gerard was a brave soldier, but his connections and charisma had seen him promoted past his level of competency. Unfortunately, Elise's second had been killed last month. Gerard was then the ranking officer under her, and had naturally--rather quickly, it seemed--taken charge once the fever claimed her. "My orders were to force our way south." Elise waved Luciene's hand away and propped herself up on her elbows. The tent spun suddenly and she clung tightly to the cot, forcing speech. "Why didn't he obey me?"

"Our scouts declared our only out was to the east."

The tent settled properly and Elise sat up. "That's because that fox Rinaldi wanted us to go east." Rinaldi was by far the wiliest Rakouran commander. He had pursued them for two weeks, never giving battle, waiting, instead, for them to make a mistake. It seemed his patience had been rewarded. "You haven't answered my question," Elise continued. "My orders were to go south, regardless. Why was I disobeyed?"

"Gerard said that you were feverish and not speaking sense."

Elise scowled. She knew well enough why Gerard had gone east-he craved a victory. It did not matter to Gerard that they were deep within Rakouran land far from supply lines, that they had no siege engines, and that their numbers were few. He meant to win a city, and marble-paved Malcara was only a day's march to the east.

The fool did not seem to realize that the war was over. It had been over two months ago when the greater part of the army of Archatain had been crushed at the battle of Nellondi. Elise had gathered the survivors and set them back toward home. She'd won three skirmishes along the way, but was not deluded by the victories. The campaign had been ill conceived, and now it was hopeless--there were simply too many Rakourans and too few of them. Her one ambition had been to lead her survivors home. Gerard's zeal might well have finished them.

"I'll give him sense," Elise said. "Where's my toilet?"

Luciene handed her the battered leather case and she pulled forth the tiny square looking glass. Even in the spare light, she looked wan. Her high cheekbones stood out prominently, as did the hollows of her eyes. All men judged women by appearances, even the clever ones, and so she neatened her own by tying back her dark tresses. A sharp pinch to each cheek produced a temporary burst of color.

"I am ready, Luciene." She stood, ignoring another wave of dizziness. She did not notice the look of concern passed swiftly from Luciene to Marcel. "Prime my brace of pistols and bring them swiftly."

Luciene blinked, but did not question. "Yes, Colonel."

Elise thrust on her boots and stalked outside, pretending vigor she did not feel.

The sun so blinded Elise that she first mistook the time for noon. She halted and shielded her eyes.

"Praise the ancients!"

Elise immediately recognized the gruff voice as that of Ettiene, her chief sentry and self-appointed protector.

"Are you all right, colonel?" The big man asked from beside her tent entrance.

"As you were," she barked.

"Yes Colonel."

Ettiene actually sounded pleased to be reprimanded and Elise fought back a grin.

As her eyes adjusted, she realized it was late morning. The green slopes of the narrow valley rose steeply toward rocky heights. Like much of southern Granel, the thick emerald grass was deceptive, for the topsoil had limited depth. One might dig only a foot before encountering rock.

The valley stretched away to east and west, curving like a crescent moon so that neither end was visible from the middle, and the tents of her men followed its contour. Somewhere an ox lowed. They'd captured four hundred of the beasts from Rakouran farms shortly before her injury.

She heard the boom of Gerard's voice six paces from the staff tent. As she approached, the sentries saluted stiffly and pulled open the flap.

All five officers within fell silent at sight of her. Elise noted that decorum had lapsed in her absence. All but Captain de Grandin had unbuttoned the top brass buttons of their green uniform coats. Handsome young Dupris' coat hung wide open, showing the sweat-stained gray shirt beneath.

Elise stood tall at the tent entrance, her shoulders thrown back despite her weakness. She hoped no one would notice how tightly she gripped the canvas.

There came a confused mass of voices asking her health and thanking various gods, and then all five rose, tall, bearded Gerard included. He watched her carefully, and Elise was certain his eyes tracked to her hand.

"Please," she said, "sit. All of you." She desperately needed to sit herself before she fainted.

Reluctantly they returned to the table, though Captain Dupris lingered at her shoulder as if to offer assistance. She ignored him and sat at the head of the table; where Gerard had been sitting only moments before. Dupris, the most junior officer, had to relinquish his chair and drag over a chest.

"We're all glad you're feeling better, Colonel," Gerard said in his loud, genial way. "I assume you're briefed on our situation."

"Yes." Elise's voice was quiet, cold.

"I was just introducing my plan. As we are regrettably trapped, we will launch an offensive against the Rakourans on the heights tonight after dusk."

"We will do nothing of the kind." Elise's voice was a curt whisper.

Gerard opened his mouth, closed it.

Elise turned to Captain de Grandin, a balding man with thick dark eyebrows and a close-trimmed graying mustache. "Our oxen." She cleared her throat and managed to raise the volume of her voice above a whisper. "How many have we left?"

"Three hundred and fifty," de Grandin reported, his thick eyebrows rising in puzzlement.

The tent flap parted; footsteps whispered through the grass beneath the tent and the others glanced to see who had entered. Elise did not--her vision was flooded with spiraling black spots and she sat very still, hoping they would subside. She felt Luciene take his place at her shoulder.

"We need wood," she said, conscious that her voice was soft, that her head was drooping. With an effort of supreme will, she held it upright. "Many fagots," she said. The dots cleared at last, and she glanced over the officers.

Silence tumbled and fell across the table, and none of the officers knew quite what to do with it, as though a relative had suddenly fallen drunk across the casket at a funeral. Each of the officers glanced at his companions, hoping another would speak instead.

Gerard cleared his throat. "I am glad, Colonel, to see you regaining your health, but it seems clear to me, to all of us, that you are not yet well."

Elise narrowed her eyes, and sickly though she was, the predatory gleam in them gave Gerard pause.

He cleared his throat again. "We have a Rakouran army at either end of our valley, yet you offer no plan. Instead, you mumble of oxen and fagots, and can scarcely sit, let alone stand. I'm not sure that you are in your... eh... a proper state of mind, to make decisions. Clearly, food and fuel are not our primary concern at this moment! Dupris, Luciene, I suggest you help the Colonel back to her tent."

Dupris looked at Elise, then Gerard, then at the others.

"Captain-Major Gerard," Elise said, her voice low, but each word enunciated with cold distinction, "I command here."

Gerard smiled with regret. "Your courage is admirable, Colonel, especially in one of your sex. But it is obvious that you are in no shape to command at this time."

"You will stand down, Major." There was only a ghost of Elise's usual bite in her tone. "You are relieved of duties."

"As acting commander, I am afraid, Colonel, that I must relieve you of duties. Dupris, Luciene, obey me, and guide the Colonel from the tent." Gerard stared fiercely at Dupris.

"Very well, Gerard." Elise put out one limp hand toward Luciene.

The adjutant placed a pistol in her hand. Elise raised it to Gerard's head and fired.

The hands Gerard threw up at the last moment were no shield--blood and brains sprayed across the table and he toppled backwards in a twitching heap.

Elise flicked a bit of brain from her cheek, handed back the pistol, and extended her hand for the other. The remaining officers looked back and forth between her and the body, and not a one failed to glance at the primed pistol lying beneath her hands.

The sentries raced in, brandishing muskets, and broad Ettiene was a moment behind them.

"Take this away," Elise said quietly, pointing a single finger at Gerard's corpse.

Bewildered but compliant, the sentries did as she asked, righting the chair before they departed.

"Now," Elise managed, "I am weak. I am tired. The tent is spinning. But I command here. And this is what we shall do. Do we have a source of wood?"

The four remaining officers talked over themselves in their haste to answer affirmatively.

"I need seven hundred fagots of wood, and I need them gathered by late afternoon. We've little time."

Armano Carino Rinaldi peered down from the valley entrance as the sun stretched long his shadow before him. Three sharp-eyed young men with muskets stood sentry nearby. Only a week ago Rinaldi had overheard these same boys mocking his uncle, calling him "old warty" and "the dodderer." Like so many others they had clamored for battle and did not understand why Armano's uncle refused each time the witch offered it. No one had called him coward, exactly, but even his staff officers had accused him of over caution.

Now to a man they all sang his uncle's praises, and so Armano looked somewhat sourly on the Lieutenant as he waved Armano over.

"Evening, Captain!"

Armano joined them. Sunlight gleamed brilliantly off the dark rifle muzzles and the shiny brass buttons of the Lieutenant's blue coat. The young officer smiled hopefully. "Do you think we'll see action this night, Captain?"

"The witch will try something soon, if she lives," Armano mused. "What have you seen this evening?"

"Well, sir," the Lieutenant began, sounding moderately more formal, "not a great deal of activity. We can only see a portion of their tents, of course, thanks to the curve of the valley. It looked like they sent out some foragers for firewood earlier, but they didn't come close enough for a good shot."

Armano nodded.

Another of the sentries, a gawky corporal, seemed emboldened by the exchange between the officers, and dared a question. "Do you really think they'll try something, sir?"

Armano guessed that the corporal was no more than seventeen or eighteen, and smiled at the younger man's zeal. Surely, if he was a corporal, he must have seen battle before. Perhaps it had always gone well with him, or he and his friends had always been shielded from harm.

"I hope so," Armano answered.

"Do you think they'll try to charge our position, sir?" The corporal continued.

"There's no other way out. The valley sides are too steep." Armano pointed to where the valley slanted up to the high gray heights---heights that some who must never have seen the northern peaks called mountains--"And they can't maneuver over the 'mountains.'"

The corporal opened his mouth as if to ask more, but his eyes widened suddenly and he snapped to attention. So too did the Lieutenant and the other sentry. Armano turned, came to attention himself.

Armano's uncle, Geraldo Orlando Rinaldi, general of the southern armies, walked closer. Stoop shouldered, his head thrust forward from his epauletted blue uniform coat, Rinaldi looked always as if he strode into a rainstorm and with his bald pate and beaked nose resembled a vulture. Three warts dotted his cheeks, and these along with a long purple scar wrinkled from chin to left ear rendered his countenance grotesque and memorable.

"At ease." Rinaldi's voice was high and clipped. "I would prefer to see more watching and less talking, gentlemen. Armano, a word."

"Yes, sir."

The Lieutenant frowned at his underlings and barked orders at them to get busy even as Armano and his uncle stepped away.

"Our 'wizard'"--Rinaldi pronounced the word with some distaste--"informs me that Elise is recovering."

"Can't he weave another spell upon the witch, sir?"

Rinaldi frowned, then spat to express his opinion of magery. "Elise, not the 'witch,' Armano. Labels lead to fixed ways of thinking, and with her one needs stay sharp."

But if the scabbard fits, Armano thought, then the sword should slide home. He knew the witch must hold some power over her men, else how could a lone woman command so many soldiers to such effect? Certain ribalds explained that she'd tupped every man in her army to keep them loyal, but Armano thought the explanation rested instead with sorcery.

"Wizards can't work those sorts of spells long distance, so our little toad claims. A spell has to touch its target, as that musket ball touched Elise." Rinaldi snorted and drew up short.

Armano halted beside his uncle. They stood twenty paces outside the long rows of umber tents, and several yards beyond the sentries. A group of privates groomed and fed the horses corralled nearby.

"It may just have been a fever brought on by the wound, for all I know," Rinaldi continued. "Now. Elise is recovering, which means something will be done soon. She never waits, and she knows that her predicament is dire. She can likely guess that reinforcements will arrive and her position will become thoroughly hopeless."

"It is now," Armano said.

"Do not interrupt your General, Armano."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

"As I was saying, she is certain to do something this night. I am placing you in command at the western entrance."

Armano started to thank his uncle, then decided not to speak out of turn. He felt a grin rise on his face, and squelched it.

"You must hold your post, no matter what. Do you understand? Under no account should you abandon this position, no matter what she does."

Armano saluted. "Yes, sir."

"Very good. Now. I am riding around to the eastern entrance. Our reinforcements should reach us by tomorrow evening. Oh, and Armano, no matter what, don't let her entice you into going down to face her. I don't care what she does. Our position on the heights at the valley mouths is stronger."

"Yes sir." Armano wondered what the witch could possibly do to get him to depart the exit on the heights, and imagined nothing. He would not succumb to her trickery.

With nightfall, Armano dutifully tripled the number of sentries. He fed his men well so that they would not battle on empty stomachs, then bade them rest.

For several hours he kept company with the sentries, discouraging their conversations, but nothing could be seen below, for clouds hid the moon and stars. Nor could anything be heard aside from the chirp of insects and hoot of night birds. Armano wondered if the witch contemplated surrender, or if she were moving against his uncle at the other end of the valley.

Armano threw a blanket down near the sentries and so was near at hand when they shook him frantically awake some hours later.

"Sir," the corporal shouted into his ear, "they're escaping!"

"What?" Armano sat upright, sleep falling from him as quickly as his cover.

He could just make out the corporal's arm thrusting the darkness, and Armano followed it, staring in wonder.

The army of Archaitan fled up the south flank of the valley, row after row of torches borne with them. The sound of their galloping cavalry, even the lowing of the oxen they'd stolen, filled the night.

Armano pulled on his boots, delaying a decision. His uncle had specifically instructed him not to abandon his post. And yet--and yet Elise might just get her army over that mountain. Armano didn't see how it could be done, but apparently the witch did, because her army was on the hoof. Might there be a pass he did not know?

"Gather the men, sound the bugle!" Armano commanded breathlessly. "To battle!"

"Yes, sir!" The private saluted and dashed away.

Armano himself led the charge. It was a tricky thing, spurring his horse across the steep slope, and he had to lead the cavalry into more of a swift walk than a gallop or even a canter. A number of his men lost their saddle, and dozens of horses and men slid down the slope in tangles of limbs.

Still they rode, shouting their battle cries, and Armano did not see his foes until he was nearly a quarter hour from his post and could observe them close-at-hand.

He had hoped to grapple with the witch himself, to try her blade and capture or behead her. But there was no witch--there were no horsemen, or musket men, nor any men or horses whatsoever. There were only a few hundred oxen with flaming wood fagots tied about their horns, scared witless by the fire and running out their fear up the hillside.

Armano's breath left him and panic clutched his breast, for he realized the witch had worked her sorceries again. He realized further he had no one to blame but himself, for his uncle had warned him not to leave the pass. He fought the quaver in his voice and shouted for his men to wheel back to the valley exit. But he turned too fast, slid out of control and down, and cracked his head on a rock, and it was hours before any of his men were able to bring him around.

The sickness had left Elise completely by the dawn, but she was still weary. She had ordered the protesting sorcerer to administer more stimulant to her mid-way through the night. Now its brief fire had died and she was troubled to sit straight in her saddle.

But she did so, and not far from the gray blanket left by Armano the night before. The sun redly lit the sky, but could not yet be seen above the worn gray mountains shielding the crescent valley that had imprisoned them.

To her side and slightly behind her the old sorcerer, Marcel, waited like a watchdog or nursemaid, occasionally prompting her to rest in one of the wagons. Now, though, he was silent, for young Dupris had ridden up, grinning, to offer his report. His jacket now was buttoned to the neck, and his cap sat snugly, if jauntily, on his auburn hair. He'd suggested an early morning sortie back into the valley, and Elise had permitted it. Elise already knew it had been successful, but she allowed Dupris to elaborate the details.

"The idiots must have shot a few of them dead in confusion, or out of spite," Dupris was saying, "but most of the oxen had wandered back to the valley after the fires burned out. They were easy enough to round back up."

This part Elise had deduced from the oxen in the van of her army, already starting out to the southwest, but she wanted Dupris to savor the success. "Any challenge from the Rakourans?"

"They were still trying to regroup," Dupris said. "I don't imagine they expected us to come back. A few tried shots at us." He grinned. "None of them hit."

Elise nodded once. "Well done."

"Thank you, Colonel." A smile brightened his features again. "And may I again congratulate you on your tactics last night--"

"Thank you, Dupris. That will be all."

Dupris saluted, looking somewhat disappointed, then led his horse away.

Elise looked again into the valley, then turned her reins, Marcel at her side, her guard Ettiene following with a final look over his huge shoulders. The rear guard formed up and trotted their mounts some ten horse-lengths to the rear.

The army marched ahead of them, horses, wagons, and all, for there'd been only a few Rakouran stragglers to overcome once Armano had led his soldiers from the pass last night. Now Elise's men burst into song, and while the tune was familiar to Elise, the words were not. She thought she heard her own name amidst the stanzas.

Luciene came galloping back to her, one hand on his feathered crimson hat to keep it from blowing away. He grinned.

"The colonel should rest now," the sorcerer told him.

Elise had been thinking the same thing, but set her chin. She would rest when she chose the time. "What's that song, Luciene?"

"It's called 'The Army of Oxen,' Colonel. Someone wrote it last night, and it's on everyone's lips."

Elise grunted, faintly pleased.

Luciene added softly: "The men are ready to march on Marcala if you want, Colonel."

Elise laughed. "I mean only to get us the rest of the way home, Luciene. And we've far to go yet."

"You need rest, "the sorcerer said again, "Or you'll not reach Archatain alive."

Elise said nothing, but kicked her mount into a gallop after her singing army. Ettiene followed on his own mount.

"Stubbornness will be the death of her," the sorcerer told Luciene wearily.

Luciene smiled. "Perhaps. But never swords nor bullets, nor even magics. Come, we've miles to go before we see the spires of home."