“Prisoners?” a sergeant asked.
“Yes,” Relam said, nodding. “If there are prisoners that will complicate things. We need to free them before the fighting starts or they’ll be used as hostages.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Oreius asked quietly. “Freeing them would require sneaking into an enemy camp in broad daylight and cutting their bonds without the guards noticing.”
“We’ll see if we need to worry about that first,” Relam replied. “Have the men staying here fortify the camp, ditches around the perimeter, maybe some sharpened stakes. Just in case. No fires, either.”
“Understood, sir,” the first sergeant muttered. “We’ll get to work immediately.”
Relam nodded. “Good. Dismissed.” As he went to dismount and jump down onto the thick underbrush, he had a thought. He nudged Buck and the white horse snorted and turned in place, trampling bushes and grass flat, snapping branches and squashing leaves.
“Much better,” the prince muttered as he dismounted. “Now I have a place to put my tent.”
He unrolled the canvas structure and set it up quickly, then looked around the camp to see how the others were faring. Oreius was already set up, of course, and the squads were moving along fairly well. Relam took Buck to the horse lines, which were situated in an area with a fair amount of vegetation to crop, then returned to his tent and sat outside it, waiting for the scouts to return.
In the meantime, the soldiers finished pitching their tents and began digging the trench that Relam had ordered. Shovels and buckets were produced and earth began flying as the soldiers went to it with a will. Those that had no tools worked with their hands, or thick tree branches if they could find them. Others began sharpening stakes to put in the trenches. There wasn’t enough time to create a truly formidable barrier, but it would be enough to at least give any attackers pause and buy the defenders time to organize themselves.
The work continued through the late afternoon and into the early evening. Relam walked around the perimeter a few times during that span, checking in on the sergeants, hoping for news from the scouts. But there was no news to be had and Relam was forced to return to his tent, where he sat quietly and watched the proceedings as the day wore on.
Dinner came and went. The prince ate alone, chewing disconsolately on strips of dried meat, interspersed with bites of bread and cheese that was starting to grow stale. As he was finishing his meal, Oreius sat down beside him.
“Your scouts have been gone a long time,” he observed, glancing to the west.
Relam nodded worriedly. “Yes. They have.”
“What will you do if they don’t show up?”
The prince glared at the old warrior. “We’ll deal with that problem when it gets here. If it gets here,” he added, glancing west in his own turn.
Oreius snorted softly. “Are you ready for tomorrow?”
“Can one ever be ready for their first battle?” Relam replied softly. He did not look, but he sensed that Oreius was watching him sharply. “Those men we passed on the road earlier,” he said, swallowing. “They made me realize that tomorrow, some of my soldiers could end up the same way. What gives me the right to ask them to risk so much?”
“They elected to serve the kingdom,” Oreius replied. “They fight because they believe in the kingdom. And in the leaders of the kingdom.”
“But-”
“This is not the time to be second guessing yourself, boy,” Oreius warned. “You need to be strong, confident, or your men will lose courage. They fight for you tomorrow, for your father and for your kingdom. They fight because they believe. Your job is to uphold what they believe. Let them see the future of this kingdom.”
Relam frowned, trying to process what Oreius had just said. “You’re saying that I must prove myself to them?”
“Yes,” Oreius agreed. “Otherwise, they are believing in something that is not real.”
As he spoke, Relam heard muted greetings from the edge of camp. He stood, brushing leaves and damp earth from his clothes, and looked west. Four horsemen were cantering around the perimeter, looking for a way in. They rode around the ring of stakes to the eastern side, where a narrow gap had been left for them to pass through. The riders crossed into the camp, and two sentries immediately filled the gap with sharpened stakes.
The riders came straight to Relam and halted, dismounting. “We found them, sir!” the lead rider reported. “An hour and some to the west, right where the trader said they would be. Apparently they were confident enough to stay in one place even though their prisoner escaped.”
“Numbers?” Relam asked eagerly.
“Sixty, maybe a few more. Some of them had fresh bandages. Maybe that caravan put up a bit of a fight.” The scout frowned in concentration, trying to remember other details. “The camp is fairly disorganized, tents and pavilions pitched anywhere there’s space, cook fires scattered all over. The wagons and most of the loot is piled in the center of camp. We saw no sign of any prisoners.”
“That’s a relief,” Relam murmured. “There weren’t any tents with guards on them?”
“There was one,” another scout interrupted. “But it was more a pavilion than a tent. We think it’s where the leader sleeps and holds meetings.”
“That’s possible,” Relam agreed. “What about around the camp? Were there many sentries?”
“Half a dozen,” the first scout replied promptly. “Spread out quite a bit too. Easy pickings for our men.”
“And the trees?”
“Plenty for our archers, with good line of sight. The camp itself is in a clearing, nothing to stop our arrows.”
Relam nodded. “Good
