There are times when it is wise to speak. There are times when it is wiser to wait and listen to see what someone else has to say, even if you are bursting with questions. I identified this as one of the latter; then picked my mug back up and sipped.

Katya didn’t want to wait; her hand dropped down into my lap. For a moment, I misread her motives, recalling the mood she had woken up in; and then I felt her grasp the unloaded pistol I had attached to my officer’s belt to balance my sword. She pulled it out of its holster and deposited it in her own lap, keeping it low and underneath the table; then began the difficult task of loading it one-handed.

Fyodor gave a small bow.

“This is Captain Helen Winslow,” he announced, then continued. “Her men are waiting outside of the camp. She has questions which I have told her are best answered by you.”

I took the name, the features, and the attire into consideration, and immediately concluded I was dealing with a Loegrian officer. In particular, by the boots and cloak, a Loegrian officer in charge of a reconnaissance company. I wondered if she was an exile or a loyal subject of Leon I, but I didn’t know enough about the politics of the far western realms to guess.

Regardless, by the keen-eyed looks she was casting about, she was a sharp-witted woman whose suspicions had been aroused. There were two possible reasons why her company would be waiting outside of our camp: First, she was suspicious of us and unwilling to let her guard down. Second, my officers had decided not to let a large body of armed enemies into our camp, which similarly would lead to the arousal of her suspicions.

Her presence here by herself suggested several additional possible facts. She was not the commanding officer; she was confident in her force’s ability to extract her or wreak revenge in the event of trouble; or she was reckless. None of these possibilities were particularly comforting. She probably had a partner or bodyguard waiting outside; with that thought, I glimpsed the shadow of a figure outside the mess tent. A large shadow, with several irregular protrusions marking weapons. Bodyguard, then.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” I said, standing up from the table. It occurred to me that the woman may not have been told my name, so I continued by introducing myself, taking a moment first to recall the correct name and title to give her. I decided to try addressing her in French. “I am Colonel Marcus Raven. How may I be of service to you, Captain?”

“You run a very tight operation here, Colonel,” she said. Her French was fluent, though the accent was different from Quentin’s. “Your men wouldn’t tell me more than the time of day. Most unusual in a mercenary company. As far as service goes, it is more important you are at the margrave’s service than my own.” She frowned.

I said nothing, waiting patiently.

She continued. “I’ve never heard of you before, I’ve no idea who your company is working for, and I’ve no idea what you’re doing marching west into these borderlands. Explain.”

It was not good news that she already knew the direction of our travel, though good news that we were near enough to the edge of the great forest that one of the Gothic Empire’s margraves would have soldiers patrolling it. I asked her to take a seat across the table from me, signaled for Vitold to go fetch Captain Rimehammer and some paperwork, and started laying out our cover story.

We were a free company formed from the remains of several that had been all but destroyed in the recent fighting, I explained, gesturing in the general direction of the distant Sarmatian mountains. I had folded the remnants of several other mercenary companies into my own after recent fighting against the encroaching forces of the Golden Empire. My former employer had refused to reimburse the destroyed companies for their lost equipment or pay death benefits, and we had decided to seek new employment.

We were in need of rest, recuperation, and reorganization, and had chosen this route through the forest on the theory that it was a shortcut and that the dark rumors surrounding this particular bit of geography were overrated.

I felt like a very unconvincing liar. My gut churned the whole time, even though much of what I said touched on the truth.

“I see,” she said, not appearing to. “I noticed you have more recent injuries,” she added. “Your surgeon was sharpening his tools and complaining of the fresh wear on them when we passed by your infirmary on the way here.”

I revised my estimate of her intelligence upwards again and felt my gut try to creep lower another inch. “The deep forest has some fairly savage inhabitants, as you must understand, having patrolled it for some time yourself,” I said. “It turned out to be harder to pass through unmolested than I had originally anticipated.”

She gave me a hard look, clearly thinking carefully. Under the table, I could feel Katya adjusting her aim.

“We only defended ourselves, I assure you,” I said. “As I said, we need some rest and recuperation before we take up a new contract.” I gently pushed downward on Katya’s hand, trying to discourage her from pointing the gun at the captain under the table. “We had an encounter with some ogres, as well as some men led by white-cloaked wizards.”

“I see,” she said, curiosity glinting in her eyes. She may have wanted to ask more questions about our travels, but Captain Rimehammer walked into the tent just then, necessitating another round of introductions.

The Swedish captain followed up aggressively on the introduction with a barrage of paperwork. Out came charters, contracts, letters of credit, and expense records; some partly or mostly genuine, some entirely fabricated. The table was soon mostly covered with documentary evidence supporting my account.

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“Colonel Raven, you are remarkably well organized. I’m all the more surprised I haven’t heard of you,” she said. She seemed slightly intimidated by the volume of paperwork backing up my account of our history. “Not many mercenaries would see fit to keep their file clerks this busy while evacuating through a war zone.”

“It would be difficult to negotiate for expense reimbursements without good documentation,” I told her. “We hoped to be thoroughly compensated for the work we’ve done.”

“Not that you weren’t already being paid generously,” she said sourly, looking at a contract. “Any chance we could convince you to sign on at a reasonable rate? The margrave is hiring.”

I could think of three very different reasons she would ask that. Any of the three would mean I was treading on very dangerous ground in this conversation. I needed to answer this very carefully and very deliberately.

“Ordinarily,” I lied, “I would be quite happy to take you up on the offer.” I shifted back to technically true statements. “We are battered right now, though, and we need rest and repairs before we take on any commitments. I like to take my commitments seriously.”

I paused, then added another lie as I tried to sound greedy and short-sighted. “I suppose it depends on what you could offer us.” I would not be a convincing mercenary if I simply dismissed the possibility of a paycheck without looking first at how large it was, I thought to myself. More difficult circumstances usually simply meant holding out for a higher price. “We could discuss the matter further over dinner and drinks, perhaps share the campsite for the night and swap some stories.”

Making that offer was risky; allowing her to stay in camp longer increased the probability that she would spot some crack in my cover as a mercenary, but I didn’t see any alternative other than trying to act my role as best as possible. I hoped that she would decline the offer. I waved Vitold back over and told him to fetch a bottle of brandy.

The Loegrian woman, for her part, whistled loudly. A large and extraordinarily solid-looking man that I suspected of being at least part ogre ducked into the mess tent. The captain gave a series of hand signals; the giant man saluted and then ducked back out of the tent, jogging off.

“I suppose I may as well take advantage of your hospitality,” she said. “The other officers will be joining me shortly.”

Katya bristled wordlessly next to me, reminding me of a sheepdog staring at a wolf through a fence. I squeezed her knee in what I hoped was a calming manner (hoping to communicate my intention that she not shoot the Loegrian). Then I excused myself from the table. If my camp was going to be full of wandering Loegrian soldiers in the service of a Gothic margrave, I wanted to go check on a few things to make sure our cover was solidly in place.

----------------------------------------

This was going to be a serious test of my army’s ability to act like mercenaries. True, a significant fraction of them were mercenaries, and I had been trying to integrate the mercenaries into my force on their terms, rather than on the terms of standard imperial military protocol. I had also taken measures to try to disguise our most distinctive equipment. Nevertheless, I felt nervous.

There were a few people I had specific concerns about. After I mentioned the white-cloaked wizards, it occurred to me that I should check on the acolyte and ask her to keep out of the way. I didn’t want the Loegrian officer suspecting me of having a friendly connection with the weather-wizards. They were almost certainly enemies of the margrave.

I was pretending, after all, to be the sort of mercenary that had been working for Avaria and would be perfectly willing to take a job with a margrave of the Gothic Empire. While I was not actually associated with the white-cloaks, it would be easy enough for Captain Winslow to arrive at that misunderstanding, rather than the misunderstandings that I wanted her to arrive at. The acolyte was a loose cannon rolling across the decks of our disguised vessel.

Further, if the acolyte had loyalty to her former masters, she could cause serious trouble for us by saying the wrong thing to Captain Winslow. My half-baked plan to win her loyalty by waving handsome young men in front of her nose seemed to have worked, but it paid to be paranoid. And thinking of that plan... if Fyodor paid too much polite attention to the Loegrian captain, the acolyte might act disruptively out of jealousy. He had been very gallant and formal in escorting Captain Winslow into the mess tent.

Since I had assigned Ehrhart and Fyodor the task of keeping an eye on the weather-witch, and I didn’t spot the weather-witch, I settled for finding Ehrhart, who turned out (conveniently enough) to be fiddling with something on his cart. He jumped and spun around to face me when I greeted him. Very excitable fellow. His voice cracked an octave higher than I thought it could, and his startled jump brought him up to eye level with me for a brief moment.

Ehrhart told me that the young weather-witch wasn’t around anymore and had snuck off somewhere. When I pressed for details, I learned that the last person she had talked to at any length was Vitold. She had wandered her way to where Vitold was working on some project, picked up a rock that was sitting around nearby, spent a little while looking at it, and then Vitold had waved a pistol at her and had some variety of angry conversation with her.

After she put the rock down and backed up with her hands in the air, Ehrhart told me, Vitold calmed down a bit and stopped threatening her with the pistol. Then the acolyte had thrown a bit of a theatrical temper tantrum (Ehrhart thought she was acting) and then stormed off to Fyodor’s tent (Fyodor wasn’t in it at the time). Then she snuck out the back with a small bag slung over her shoulder and left. A sentry stopped her at the edge of camp but decided to let her pass.

Later, I located the sentry. The sentry pointed out quite reasonably that I had said quite publicly after unchaining her that she was free to leave. I could hardly object to that, and for all I knew, she was doing exactly what I wanted her to do: Lay low while we had visitors in our camp. I just wasn’t sure, suspecting she might be up to some variety of mischief instead.

Ehrhart pointed out that she didn’t have to be present to cause mischief, and continued his account. After she left, Fyodor had gone looking for her; eventually, he did talk to the sentry and then went over to Vitold to vent his upset. Vitold seemed to be surprised but pleased. Fyodor seemed not to have any idea why the weather-witch might have left, so went over to the infirmary tent to talk with Quentin about it.

Ehrhart, who confessed he had found the unfolding drama of the love triangle fascinating, followed Fyodor to the infirmary tent. From just outside the tent, he listened to the artillery lieutenant question the cavalry lieutenant vigorously (and more than a little threateningly) and then apologize profusely after learning that Quentin hadn’t known of the girl’s departure until Fyodor had showed up to ask questions about it. The two of them then shared a longer and much quieter conversation as they passed a bottle back and forth; unable to overhear more without being obvious about his eavesdropping, Ehrhart had reluctantly left them to it.

Later, I would deeply regret my failure to question Fyodor and Quentin about their conversation.