“Why does there have to be a grand answer?” Cruxer asked. “The White King felt he was getting overextended, so he paused. The break does him more good than it does us. He has secured and fortified his supply lines between Atash and the siege at Green Haven. Not even we could get to those unless we wanted to give up Dúnbheo and the lake.”

Dúnbheo—the nonfloating Floating City—was the Forester name of the city the Nightbringers were going to try to save tomorrow. It controlled access to the Great River and the immense lake by which Green Haven was getting what little supplies it still was.

“He’s also had to deal with us,” Ben-hadad pointed out. “Isn’t it possible that we actually stopped him?”

“But he was advancing steadily,” Big Leo said. “Just as he has everywhere. Why stop halfway through Blood Forest? Why not at least push to the Great River everywhere and then consolidate?”

“Too much guerrilla warfare that way?” Winsen suggested. “He could capture the cities, but if he doesn’t deal with us first, supply lines get long and vulnerable.”

That could be it, but he’d advanced so fast elsewhere, leaving small forces to mop up any continuing resistance. Was Blood Forest simply different because of its huge population of hunters and hard terrain for supply lines?

“All the fights we’ve had have kept us from linking up with the satrap’s forces,” Tisis said. “If he pushed us to the river, it’s the only place we’d have to go.”

“We don’t want to link up with the satrap’s forces,” Kip said. Satrap Briun Willow Bough wanted Kip’s army—and Kip, if he could get him. What he didn’t want was another person running around his satrapy with an army he didn’t control.

Which was understandable, and the man was a decent sort. Unfortunately, he was also a moron who had no idea what to do with the army he already had. There was no way Kip was going to take orders from him about how to use his own very peculiar forces.

“We all know that,” Tisis said. “But the White King doesn’t. Joining forces is what most defenders would do.”

“You think he’s allowed us our victories?” Kip asked.

“Not the first one at Deora Neamh,” Tisis said. “Maybe not the skirmishes around the Ironflower Marsh or the Deep Forest Ambush. But we’ve sometimes traveled pretty far to get disappointing quantities of food or muskets. And you yourself said the black powder wagons were an assassination attempt.”

It had been a hollower victory than Kip had hoped. They had done everything right, wiping out the enemy and seizing everything with minimal losses. They even successfully disarmed the booby-trapped wagon. But then they found that of the five wagons, it was the only one loaded with powder. The others’ barrels were loaded with a layer of black powder, then sawdust.

The men of the wagon train hadn’t even known they were bait.

It was small comfort that the war dogs had hunted down the scouts sent to watch the outcome. It was small comfort that Kip had been right and there had been two scouts.

“We haven’t fought many drafters, either,” Kip said. “We’re missing something here.”

“Maybe we are,” Cruxer said, “but then the question is whether the White King has some grand design or whether it’s just an error. He’s already spent many lives to keep us away from a place we never intended to go. Just at the wagons he lost several hundred men, half a dozen wights, and five wagons trying to kill you. He’s a good orator, an inspiring leader by all accounts. But maybe he’s simply a poor strategist.”

“Poor enough to take two satrapies,” Winsen said dryly.

If anything, Kip thought, he himself was the one who was a poor strategist. Good tactician. Loved by his people… but he still couldn’t resolve the big picture. Damn, how he’d love to take some lectures with Corvan Danavis now. When he was a boy he’d wanted stories of battlefield heroics. Given the chance now, he’d say, ‘Talk to me about rations for cavalry when moving through forested river valleys.’ ‘What’s the breakdown of your command staff per soldier?’

“That was when the Chromeria didn’t know what we were up against,” Cruxer said.

Cruxer still said ‘we’ when he talked about the Chromeria. Kip loved him for that idealism, but he didn’t share it anymore.

“He’s successfully stalled reinforcements, though,” Tisis said. “We know from the White’s letters that he’s been trying to turn the other satrapies to his side or at least keep them out of the war. That’s not the work of a poor strategist.”

That Karris had written to the Nightbringers at all was the biggest shock for Kip. Without shaming anyone, she’d laid out the numbers—Tyrea and Atash were lost, the Ilytians didn’t care who won, the Nuqaba’s Paria had pulled back all its soldiers after Ox Ford and had never sent reinforcements, and other than the several hundred men Eirene Malargos had sent under Antonius, and her continuing supplies, Ruthgar had pulled back to its side of the Great River, busily fortifying a border too long and too porous to be fortified well.

Kip might have been at fault for part of that. Eirene could be forgiven for not wanting to send more soldiers when Kip simply took them. And if Kip’s co-opting of Antonius and his men was the reason Ruthgar wasn’t sending reinforcements to Green Haven, Kip could well become the reason the Chromeria lost this war.

With all those satrapies out, only Abornea and the small army directly under the Chromeria’s control were left. Karris had said nothing about that, and Kip wondered if that meant they were coming but coming late, or coming as part of a stratagem to sweep in at the last moment, or if Andross Guile had decided to cut his losses and let Blood Forest die.

Karris had also written about her insight that the White King wouldn’t mind a slaughter of both sides, and in fact might prefer it so he could remake the entire culture of the Seven Satrapies. It had seemed an odd, paranoid thought at first, but Kip didn’t think so anymore.

The White King hadn’t sent one man or one squad on a suicide mission: he’d sent hundreds to die, just to kill Kip and Tallach. And from how the camp had fallen, except for a couple of the wights, those people hadn’t volunteered.

That was some coldhearted butchery there.

“So he’s successfully tying up our reinforcements from coming,” Kip said. “But he’s not pressing his advantage. Why? Why why why?!”