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     He said my name twice, as if he liked it on his tongue, and turned my head toward him with his hand. "Come with me," he whispered.
     I turned my face away, and tears came against my will, sliding down my cheek and into my ear. I'd heard what kind of woman followed a man to war: a sheath. A cataphract might share her with his armiger or lend her to a guest, and if he was not too particular, he might let his drudges have her now and then. If she didn't begin as a whore, she usually ended as one, wearing a sriped skirt and opening her legs for any man with coin until she was clapped out.
     He went on whispering. "You can ride the chestnut mare. She's steady. I'll get another mule for the baggage."
     "I won't be shared," I said.
     "never. You shall be my own." He said this so fiercely I believed him.

     "I know you've a honeypot hidden away; I'll stick my spoon in it yet," the armiger shouted after me.
     I looked over my shoulder. "Mind the bees," I said. "They sting very fierce." I tried to turn it into a jest, but the armiger was glaring. I had not begun well, making an enemy so early in the morning.
     I went around the fire to where Spiller was cooking bacon, and asked him in a low voice, "What is his name?"
     "Sire Rodela dam Whoreson by Sowpricker of Crux, that's what I call him."
     The bagboy snickered, said, "Sowpricker!" and jabbed the air with his spoon. Noggin's yellow teeth were crowded into his mouth, and now he showed too many of them. It was no mystery how he came by his name, for he looked as though he hadn't a thought of his own to slosh around in his wooden head.
     "So what do you call the armiger to his face?" I said.
     "Rodela dam Antlia by Musca. He's Sire Galan's cousin by bastardy--they have the same grandfather, but Sire Galan's father was bred on the wife, and his father on a Musca concubine. Although they do say Sire Rodela's mother is such a whore there's no telling who his father really is, and that makes him a bastard twice over, so say I. For sure, his blood is tainted with mud. I can always tell."
     "Bacon, Spiller," Sire Rodela yelled.
     Spiller tore off a piece of bread and put a slab of bacon on it. Then he turned his back on Sire Rodela and spat on it, winking at me. The spit looked like the foam of fat that sizzles from bacon, and the armiger was none the wiser. So we were at war long before we reached the battlefield.