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the river. Brown in color save for its long, buff muzzle, its head was crowned with a huge rack of thick antlers. Its stubby tail and brown ears flicked about. The creature surveyed the riverside, then cropped some of the grasses growing at river’s edge.
    Owen lowered the pistol and released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. At that range he couldn’t have hit the beast. No matter. Such was its size that a single lead ball wouldn’t bring it down. Even a jeopard might think twice.
    The monster looked in his direction for a moment, then ambled into the river and swam across the deep center channel. Once it had its feet under it again, the creature strolled toward the far shore, nibbling as it went. It never cast a glance back.
    Owen shivered, not so much out of draining fear, as the pure joy of seeing something so different. Yes, it distantly resembled the sort of deer his father and uncles hunted on the family estate, though much bigger. The deer were another product of the estate, more cattle than wild beasts. This, on the other hand, wandered boldly across the countryside as if it were a king.
    Definitely regal and apparently fearless.
    He almost turned back to the Prince’s estate to ask after it, but if that became his pattern, he’d never get back to Temperance before nightfall. He grabbed up his wet clothes, wrung them out as completely as he could, then went back to his horse. He draped the red coat over the back of his saddle, fitting the tails around his horse’s tail, and pulled the damp waistcoat back on.
    Riding back toward Temperance, Owen looked again at the countryside. The Prince’s words resonated in him, so he began his work immediately. If the war on the Continent was to spill over into Mystria, armies would somehow have to be brought together in a cohesive manner and set to battle. It was his job to find a way for that to happen.
    Within the first mile, several things became readily apparent. Owen had marveled at, and doubted, the feat of marksmanship that brought the jeopard down. That a man could kill a target at a hundred yards, even with a rifle, strained credulity. Even granting it was during the winter, when trees had been stripped of foliage, Owen wondered how the hunter had even seen the target at that range.
    The forests he rode through—and it was all forest save for swaths cleared around small farms or the occasional meadow—barely let him see thirty yards. The beast he’d seen at the river could have been moving through the woods parallel with him, and he’d never see it. He might hear it, but manage a clean shot? Impossible .
    The trail slithered through the countryside and doubtless had its origin in a game trail which many feet expanded. In places where water seeped up, or flowed down from hillsides, the road should have been impassible. In those spots, people had cut trees to shore up the road. They laid eight-foot lengths of log across the path, providing a modicum of stability in what would otherwise have been a marsh of stinking black mud. His horse preferred riding around the makeshift bridges when possible. The logs themselves showed some signs of wagon-wheel wear.
    Though caution had been taken in the wettest areas, the rest of the road hardly remained dry. Men and horses might be able to tolerate little uphill jogs and downhill runs, but a team of oxen pulling a cannon or a supply wagon would never make it. The single virtue of fighting in the Low Countries had been a system of well-maintained roads that made transport easier. Here, moving troops and supplies would be a nightmare.
    Unbidden came the memories of the last campaign on the Continent. The rain had fallen for days over roads better than this track, reducing them to mud. The Mystrians had taken to the hardship better than most. It struck Owen now that might have been because the only way they could feel superior was by refraining from complaint while their Norillian betters wailed and moaned.