We’d held up just out of sight to primp, braid our hair, and put on a bright sash or a gold torque. Most of my troopers were common warriors, but our incidental pickings let them dress like nobles. Galo, my mother’s sister’s son, was calling the verses from the driver’s bench of the cart full of loot we’d taken from the villa we’d sacked two nights before. The woman we’d taken at that place sat beside Galo, proud as a queen. She looked like a scarlet butterfly perched beside a cheerful toad. Some foragers come in whooping and hollering, but that spooks the herd they’re driving. My boys took care of business first, and anybody who didn’t learn that right quick got the stuffing knocked out of him before I booted him from the troop. “If you’re good enough to ride with Taranis,” they said in the Crow’s war band, “you’re good enough to ride back from Hell!” Well, my boys say that, anyway. The rest call us cocky bastards, but they know that we generally bring in as much food as any two of the other foraging troops.
