Snowe arrived at the Meren valley's northern entrance on the sixth day with nine thousand soldiers and the particular controlled frustration of a general who had been outmaneuvered again and who knew it and who was, despite knowing it, still not certain how to prevent it from happening in the direction he had not yet anticipated.
He stood at the valley's mouth and looked south along the river road toward the distant position that the Verakhs' movement, reported by his cavalry screen, had placed in the market town of Millbridge, and he thought about the geometry of the situation with the cold, systematic attention that had made him the Lord Marshal's choice for the eastern province campaign.
The Horde was in the valley.
He was at the valley's northern mouth.
