Calis looked at Erik. ‘We have several plans in place. You need worry only about the disposition of soldiers under your command. You’ll be told where to take them and what your options are. Once you are in the mountains with your soldiers, you’ll have to make the decisions, Erik. You’ll have to judge what is best for both your men and the overall campaign. A great deal will ride on your judgment.
‘But until the Prince and Knight-Marshal are ready to brief you on the overall operation, I will not give you details you might blurt out to the wrong person.’
‘The infiltrators?’
‘That, or if you’re abducted and some agent of the Pantathians doses you with some potion to make you speak, or if they have mind readers like the Lady Gamina in their employ. We have no idea what might happen. That’s why whatever you hear you share with no man, and you’re only to be told what you need to know.’
Erik nodded. ‘I’m worried …’
‘About the girl?’
Erik was surprised. ‘You know about that?’
Calis motioned they should start walking after the departing soldiers, and said, ‘What sort of Captain would I be if I didn’t know about my Sergeant Major’s life outside the barracks?’
Erik had no answer for that. He said, ‘Of course I’m worried about Kitty. I’m worried about Roo and his family, too. I’m worried about everybody.’
‘Now you’re starting to sound like Bobby, though he would never have voiced it that way.’ Calis smiled. ‘He’d have said, “We’ve got too damn much work to do and half the time needed, and a bunch of incompetent fools doing it.”’
Erik laughed. ‘That sounds like him.’
‘I miss him, Erik. I know you do, as well, but Bobby was one of the first I picked. The first of my “desperate men.”’
Erik said, ‘I thought you fetched him from the Border Barons to work for you.’
Calis laughed. ‘Bobby would have put it that way. He failed to mention he was going to be hanged for having killed another soldier in a brawl. I had to beat him a half-dozen times to get him to control his temper.’
‘Beat him?’ asked Erik, negotiating his way over a large rock, as they followed the gully downward.
‘I told him each time he lost his temper I’d strip to the waist and we’d have at it. If he was standing and I was not, he was a free man. It took that fool six beatings before he finally realized I was a great deal stronger than I look.’
Erik knew that was the truth. The Captain’s father was a man called Tomas, some sort of lord or another up in the north. By all rumors, his mother was the Elf Queen. But whatever the truth of his parentage, Calis’s strength was unmatched by that of any man Erik had run across. The former smith from Ravensburg had been the strongest man in his village, and of all those soldiers who had served with him on his first voyage to Novindus, only the huge man named Biggo was his equal. But Calis had done things that Erik could only judge impossible. He had once seen the Captain easily pick up a wagon so Erik could replace the wheel, when Erik knew from experience he would have needed the help of at least two other men to duplicate the feat.
Considering Bobby de Loungville’s nature, Erik said, ‘I’m surprised you didn’t have to kill him.’
Calis laughed. ‘I came close, twice. Bobby wasn’t a man to take defeat easily. When I came back from that first trip to Novindus, and we came limping into Krondor harbor like whipped hounds, Prince Arutha called me the “Eagle” because of the banner on our ship.’ Erik nodded. He knew as well as any man that in that distant land Calis played the part of a mercenary captain, and his company was called the Crimson Eagles. ‘Bobby elected to call himself the Dog of Krondor. Prince Arutha seemed less than pleased, but said nothing.’
Calis stopped and restrained Erik. ‘Don’t say anything to anyone about what you suspect, Erik. I don’t want to lose another Sergeant Major. Bobby may have fancied himself a dog, but he was a loyal and tough one. You’re just as loyal and just as tough, though you don’t know it yet.’
Erik nodded at the compliment. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘I’m not through. I don’t want to lose another Sergeant Major because Duke James hanged him to keep him silent.’ He looked Erik in the eyes. ‘Do I make myself clear?’
‘Very.’
‘Come along, then, we’ve got to march this lot back to Krondor and hand them over to William to turn into garrison rats. If they somehow find themselves in the mountains, they may survive a little longer than the average soldier, so we’ve done them a favor, but none of these men will be of service to us.’
Erik said, ‘That’s the truth.’
‘Go find me some more men, Erik. Desperate men if you must, but get me some men we can train.’
‘Where should I seek them?’ asked Erik.
Calis said, ‘Go see the King before he leaves Krondor. If you ask him nicely, he may give you a warrant so you can steal the Border Barons’ best men from them. The Barons will not be happy when you do this, but if we lose this war, invasion from the Northlands is the last thing we’ll need worry about.’
Erik, remembering the map of the Kingdom in William’s office, said, ‘That means a journey to Northwarden, Ironpass, and Highcastle.’
‘Start with Ironpass,’ instructed Calis. ‘You’ll have to move fast, and while you’re bringing the men south, march them through the Dimwood and avoid Sethanon. Get them here as soon as you can.’ Then with what Erik had come to think of as Calis’s evil grin, he said, ‘You have two months.’
Erik suppressed a groan. ‘I need three!’
‘Kill some mounts getting there if you must, but you have two. I need another six hundred good men, two hundred from each of those garrisons here in Krondor in two months.’
‘That will leave them with less than half their standard garrison! All of the Barons will object.’
‘Of course they’ll object,’ said Calis with a laugh. ‘That’s why you need the King’s Warrant.’
Erik hesitated, then set off in a jog, leaving a startled Calis behind. ‘Where are you running to?’
‘Krondor,’ said Erik. ‘I need all the time I can squeeze, and there’s someone I must say good-bye to.’
Calis’s laughter faded into the background as Erik continued to run. He was still running when he passed a startled Alfred and the men marching back to camp.
Erik had spent a difficult day with the King and then with Kitty. While the King wasn’t too adverse to stripping his northern garrisons of soldiers needed there to defend his realm from the marauding goblins and dark elves, he was less than enthused with Calis entrusting the task of selecting those men to a sergeant. He reminded Erik that he carried court rank now, and he shouldn’t let any of the Barons question his right to carry out those orders, but silently Erik wondered how he would force a nobleman with nearly four hundred armed men trained to obey to do what Erik wanted should the King’s Warrant prove insufficient.
He told Jadow that Calis would be returning later with the men who were to be reassigned to the Prince’s garrison, and then left to find Kitty.
She took the news of his two-month absence with a calm exterior, but Erik had come to know her well enough to see she was upset. He wished he could spend one more day with her, but knew that Calis’s time limit was nearly impossible.
They slipped out of the inn and spent an emotional hour together, and at the end Erik had come as close as he dared to breaking his word to Calis about not repeating what he suspected. He just warned Kitty that should he not be around when that ‘something big’ she suspected finally happened, she should