Three days later, we finally rode into Gettys. We made an odd sight, I’m sure. I sat on big Clove while Hitch rode hunched beside me on Renegade. The drawroot had doubtless saved his life by sucking much of the toxic infection from his flesh, but that did not mean he was a well man. His fever had not abated. By night, it rose and tormented him. It had burned the flesh from his bones. I took him straight to his regiment’s doctor.
That morning we had descended from the hills into a wide, shallow valley. As we finally broke clear of the cover of the trees, I reined in, startled at what I saw.
I’d always had a clear image of Gettys in my mind. I’d pictured it like the great stone citadels of the west. It would have watchtowers on its high walls, and secondary earthworks surrounding it. There would be banners flying from its ramparts, and it would bristle with soldiers and artillery. The flags would snap smartly in the breeze on that last fortification of the Gernian kingdom. Savage wilderness would surround it.
What I saw was a cruel joke on my boyhood vision. On the hillside on the other side of the valley, commanding a view of the valley, was a wooden palisade that boasted a mere four watchtowers, one at each corner. In the valley below us, we could see the King’s Road, cutting a straight line toward the stronghold and continuing past it up the hills and toward the mountains. Behind the fort, the land rose abruptly in steep foothills that were the final line of defense before the Barrier Mountains. The mountains, which loomed above them, were steep and tall and thickly forested.
On the north side of the fortress, there was a compound with several long, low buildings that reminded me of barracks surrounded by a lower palisade, with two watchtowers looking over them. On the opposite side, a neat town had been laid out, with straight wide streets and sturdy structures. But outside that tidy heart a hodgepodge of makeshift cottages and houses scabbed the valley floor. Smoke from several hundred chimneys smudged the clear autumn air. The streets straggled and wandered among the houses like a child’s scribble on rough paper. The valley trapped the smoke, the smells, and the distant sounds of the disorderly settlement below us. What struck me the most about the sprawling community was that so much of it was made of wood. Old Thares had been brick and stone, and Franner’s Bend had been constructed of mud brick. I had grown up on the plains, where lumber was used to decorate stone buildings. Never before had I seen so many structures in one place all built entirely of wood. On the valley floor, between the settlement and us, farms had been claimed. Few looked prosperous. Rail fences had fallen, and in some fields the weeds stood tall and brown. In others, the stumps of trees still stood where some ambitious settler had logged off a pasture but gone no further with it. The whole panorama of fortress, town, and surrounding farmlands spoke of an endeavor begun with energy and order that had wavered and fallen into disrepair and despair.
“There it is,” Lieutenant Hitch said without enthusiasm. “Gettys. Your new home. My old home.”
“It’s bigger than I expected,” I said when I had recovered somewhat.
“Regiment’s about six hundred strong. It was almost a thousand in our peak days, but with plague and desertion, it’s all the colonel can do to keep us above five hundred men. We were supposed to get reinforcements this summer, but the plague got them first.
“Thanks for getting me here. Let’s go down and see if one of the Gettys doctors can mend me. And if they can’t mend me, let’s hope they’ll have enough laudanum that I won’t care.”
We rode across the brushy plateau to the King’s Road, and followed it down toward the city.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the only thing dirtier than a very old city is a rather new one. In an old city, people have established where the garbage and waste of all kinds will go. It’s not that there is less of it, but that it has been channeled to one place, preferably in a less desirable area of the town. Gettys had no such protocol. Nor had it grown naturally, with farms supporting a growing population and a pleasant setting that attracted more settlers that in turn stimulated more commerce. Instead, there had been a military occupation inside a fortification, followed by a population of deportees that had scant skills for settling a wilderness. Their failed efforts were manifest. Fields had been plowed and perhaps planted once, but now were a rumpled tapestry of stones, broken earth, and weeds. Drunken fences wandered across the land. Feral chickens scratched in the earth and fled at our approach. We passed open waste pits just off the side of the road. A flock of croaker birds hopped and squabbled on one fresh rubbish heap. They did not flee us, but opened their black-and-white wings and squawked menacingly to warn us off their feast. I could not repress a shiver as we passed them. Always, they reminded me of that dreadful wedding offering. We saw some scattered cattle and one small flock of eight sheep with a little boy watching over them. But for every sign we saw of industry and effort, a dozen failures flanked them.
The outer town around the fort was a mixture of old shacks and hasty new construction, interspersed with collapsed remnants of earlier efforts at housing. The smells and sounds of dense human population surrounded us. Cart and foot traffic vied with one another at the intersections of the rutted, mucky roads. A bony woman in a faded dress and a tattered shawl gripped two small children by the hands as she hurried along the windy street. The children wore no shoes. One was bawling loudly. Hitch nodded his head at them. “Prisoner’s family. Free workers live in this part of town. Poorer than dirt, for the most part.”
At the next corner, I was shocked to see two Speck men sitting cross-legged. They wore wide brimmed hats of woven bark and castoff rags. The begging hands they reached out to passersby were disfigured with peeling blisters. “Tobacco addicts,” Hitch told me. “That’s about the only thing that makes a Speck leave the forest. They can’t take direct sunlight, you know. Used to be a lot more of them, but a lot of them caught a cough and died last winter. We’re not supposed to sell or trade tobacco to Specks, but everyone does. You can get just about any Speck-made thing you want for tobacco.”
“This place is even worse of a slum than Franner’s Bend,” I observed. “All of this will need to be razed if Gettys is ever to become a proper city.”
“Gettys will never be a city. None of this will last,” Hitch pronounced. “The Specks resist it with every bit of magic they can muster. That’s why it can’t prosper. The Specks dance to make it fail. For five years now, they have danced. No town can stand against that. It will wither and die and go back to the earth. Wait a day or two. You’ll start to feel it, too.”
His words were no stranger than many of the things he had told me over the last couple of days. I only wished I knew how many to give credence to. The tales and admonitions he offered me were sometimes so far-fetched, it seemed it must be the fever talking rather than a rational man. I now felt that he knew more of me than I’d ever shared with anyone, and that I knew far more of him than I was comfortable with. Even so, he remained a stranger to me, for I wondered who he would be if I removed the fever that both clouded and colored his thoughts.
We drew curious glances from the people in the streets. Their attention lingered on Hitch slouching in his saddle as much as they did the fat man on the big horse. I soon discovered one advantage to Clove and that was that people gave way to him. Even in the crowded marketplace, the gathered folk parted to let us pass. Renegade and his burden followed in our wake.
We came to the older, more prosperous section of Gettys. The main street was lined with stores and warehouses. Their proprietors had smelled a profit to be made off this ragtag town, and come east to take advantage of it. Their dwellings were neatly maintained and tightly roofed, with glass windows and rain gutters and sheltered porches. The side streets were straight, and I glimpsed well-built if poorly maintained houses. “The cavalla families live here,” Hitch told me. “This part of town was built a long time ago. Before the Specks turned against us.” Outside a tavern four men in cavalla uniforms sat on a bench, smoking and talking. They were all thin and hollow-eyed. I stared at them for a moment, and then grasped the reality of something I’d known for years. Plague regularly swept through this town. Most of the regiment would be plague survivors. We rode past a bake house, the clay ovens bulging from the side of the structure out into the street. For a few moments we were warmer as we passed. The aroma of fresh bread assailed me so strongly I nearly tumbled from Clove’s back. I imagined it so strongly that I could feel the chewy texture on my tongue, taste the golden butter that would melt as I troweled it onto the bread, even the rasp of the crust against my teeth. I gritted my teeth and rode on. Later, I promised my rumbling gut. Later.
We reached the wooden palisade. The skinned logs had been set vertically in the ground. Weathering had silvered them, and bits of moss and tiny plants had found purchase in the cracks. In a few places, ivylike vines were twining up the logs as if they were a trellis. The plants, I thought to myself, would devour those walls. Whoever had let them get started near the fort was a fool. The gates stood open, but the sentries on duty there possessed a military bearing that those at Franner’s Bend had lacked. I pulled in Clove, but Hitch lifted his head and rode around me. “Let us through,” he said gruffly. “I’m in a bad way and I need the doctor. And he’s with me.”
To my surprise, that was all that was needed. They did not salute the lieutenant or ask him any questions, but mutely nodded and let us pass. Renegade and Hitch had taken the lead and we followed. A few heads turned to mark our passage, but no one impeded us. They seemed unsurprised to see Lt. Hitch in such dismal condition. I merited longer stares than he got.
The inner Gettys disappointed me as much as the outside had. Instead of crack soldiers, I saw men who wore their uniforms with days of dust settled in the wrinkles, and frayed cuffs and stained shirtfronts. Some of them wore their hair longer than mine. I saw no one walking with purposefulness, no troops drilling, and felt no sense of military preparedness. The men on the streets looked listless and unhealthy. I had expected to endure the avid curiosity of their stares. Instead they regarded me with an almost bovine acceptance.
Lieutenant Hitch kept up his façade until we reached the doors of the infirmary. This structure appeared to be better maintained than the rest of the buildings inside the fort. I dismounted, exchanging the discomfort of riding for the new aches of standing on my own feet, and went to help Hitch.
“I can do it myself,” he said, and then fell off his horse. With difficulty, I kept him from hitting the street. He gave a soft caw of pain as I hauled his good arm over my shoulder and walked him into the infirmary. The front room was whitewashed with a single desk in it and a bench along the wall. A pale young soldier looked up at me in surprise. His uniform was badly fitted; his jacket, cut for a man with broad shoulders, drooped oddly over his concave chest. He did not look competent to be left in charge, but there was no one else there.
“Lieutenant Buel Hitch has been mauled by a wild cat. The wounds are badly infected. He needs a doctor’s skills right away.”
The boy’s eyes grew very wide. He looked down at the logbook and the two pens and inkwell carefully arranged on the bare desktop as if hoping to find some advice there. After a moment, he seemed to make a decision. “Follow me,” he said. He opened a door opposite the one I had entered by, and I found myself in a wardroom. There was a long row of beds along one wall. Only two were occupied. In one, a man was sleeping. In another, a man with his jaw bandaged stared disconsolately at the wall. “Put him on an empty bed,” my guide instructed me. “I’ll go fetch the doctor.”
Hitch roused himself slightly. “Get me Dowder. I’d rather have a drunk who knows what he’s doing than old Poker-up-his-ass, I’m-a-doctor-because-I-read-a-book Frye.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy replied, unsurprised, and hurried off to do as he was bid.
I sat him down on a tautly made bed. “You seem very familiar with this place.”
Hitch began fumbling with the buttons of his shirt. “Too familiar,” he agreed, but did not elaborate. As he worked his slow way down the row of buttons, he asked me, “Do you have a pen and paper?”
“Do I have what?”
He ignored my incredulous question. “Go borrow some from the desk. I’ll give you a note to the colonel. There’s no sense you waiting on me. They’ll be keeping me here a few days, I imagine.”
“Longer than that, I’m guessing.”
“Go get the paper and pen. I’m hanging on by my teeth, Never. Wait too long, and I’ll be no good for you.”
“Nevare,” I said, and went out to the boy’s desk to borrow the requested items. He was not there, and after a moment’s indecision, I simply took what I needed. I carried them back to Hitch.
He took them with a sigh. There was a small table by each bed in the ward. He grunted as he leaned over it to write.
“What shall I do with your horse and gear?”
“Oh. Bring my saddlebags in here. Tell the boy to make sure Renegade is cared for properly. He’ll call someone to take care of it.”
By the time I returned with his saddlebags, which he had me put under the bed, the note was finished. He blew on it carefully and then handed it to me, unfolded, so that I might read what he had written. “Take it to the colonel.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay here with you until the doctor comes?”
“There’s no point to it. The boy will find Dowder, they’ll sober him up with a cup of coffee or two, and then he’ll do what he can for me. You got me here alive, Never. That was more than I thought anyone could do.”
“It was the magic, not me,” I replied jokingly.
A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. “You only laugh because you don’t know how true that is. Get out of here. I’m going to sleep until Dowder comes. Pull my boots off for me.”
I performed that service for him, and then helped him swing his feet up onto the bed. He hissed out a stream of quiet curses as he eased himself back onto the bed. In contrast to the clean blanket and muslin-covered pillow, his filthiness was shocking. He closed his eyes and his breathing deepened. “I’ll come by and see you later,” I told his still form.
I put the pen and ink back as I had found them. I walked outdoors into the sunlight before I allowed myself to look at what he had written. The letters straggled over the page, the scrawl of a very ill man. It wasn’t the kindest letter of recommendation I’d ever seen.
“This is Never. He doesn’t look like much, but you should let him enlist. He’s got a spine, and he sees things through. If he hadn’t come willing and helped me, I’d be dead now, and you know how much that would annoy my dear father, not to mention inconvenience you.”
That was it. No date, no greeting the colonel by title, not even Hitch’s own signature. I stood staring at it, wondering if it were some sort of a terrible joke on me. If I dared show this to the colonel commanding Gettys, would I immediately be thrown out of his office? I was reading it over again when I saw the boy soldier hurrying back. A tall, dapper man with a captain’s insignia on his collar followed him. The boy stopped at the sight of me. “What did you do with the scout?” he asked me worriedly.
“I left him on a bed in the ward, as you suggested. He asked me to ask you to look after his horse.”
The boy scratched his nose. “I’ll get someone to do it.”
I turned to the captain. “Do I have the pleasure of addressing Captain Dowder?”
“I’m Captain Frye. Doctor Frye to almost everyone. Who are you?”
His question was both brusque and rude. I kept my temper. I knew I did not present a respectable appearance. No doubt I was nearly as filthy as Buel Hitch. “I’m Nevare Burv—” I fell over my own surname. I let it go. “I brought Lieutenant Hitch in. A wildcat has mauled him badly. He asked that Dr. Dowder be fetched for him. I’m sorry you were bothered.”
“So am I. But I’m sober enough to walk, and Dowder, as usual, is not. Nor does Lieutenant Hitch command this entire post, though he seems to think he does. Good day, sir.”
“Sir? If I might ask a favor?”
He turned back to me irritably. The young soldier had already vanished inside.
“Could you tell me where I might find the commanding officer? And where, prior to that, I might find a bathhouse?”
He looked even more annoyed. “There’s a barber just outside the gate. I think he has a bath in the back.”
“And the commanding officer’s headquarters?” I felt stubborn now, determined to wring the requested information from him.
“You’ll find Colonel Haren in that building over there. The writing over the door says, ‘Headquarters.’” He stabbed a finger in the direction of a tall structure just down the street from us, and then turned on his heel and went into the infirmary.
I took a breath and blew it out. Well. I’d asked for that, I supposed. The faded lettering was almost legible from where I stood. I simply hadn’t noticed it. With a sigh, I led Clove away.
I found the barber with little difficulty. It was a bit harder to get him to take me seriously when I requested a bath, a shave, and a haircut. He demanded my money first, and took it before he would even heat the water. He had several tubs in the back room of his shop. I was glad to find them all empty. It was not modesty, but shame that made me relieved no one would witness my ablutions. None of his tubs were large enough for me to bathe comfortably, and he was remarkably chary with the hot water and soap. Nevertheless, I managed to get cleaner than I’d been in many a day, and even to soak away some of my aches. I emerged from the lukewarm water feeling more like myself than I had in a long time. When I was dry, I dressed in my cleanest clothing and went out for my shave.
He was good at his trade, I’ll give him that. His tools were sharp and shining. He gave me a soldier’s haircut. As he shaved me, he handled my face familiarly, pulling skin tight as he worked and pushing my nose to one side. “How many of these chins would you like me to shave?” he asked me once, and I forced myself to laugh at his jest and told him, “All of them.”
Like most men in his trade, he was garrulous, asking questions of me when it would have been very hazardous for me to attempt to speak, and telling me all the gossip of the fort as he worked. I soon knew that he’d been there six years, and that he’d come east with his soldier cousin, reasoning that wherever there were soldiers, a good barber could find work. Brede Regiment had been holding Gettys then. Brede had been a good regiment before it came to Gettys. But everyone said that about Farleyton Regiment, too, and look at it now. He hated Gettys, but would never have the money to move back west, so he tried to make the best of it. Everyone hated Gettys. He’d had a wife once; she’d run off with a soldier, and when he left her, she’d turned to whoring. I could probably buy her for less than what I’d paid for my bath and haircut, if I fancied heartless sluts. I’d soon discover that I hated Gettys, too, he predicted. He asked me where I was from and accepted a mumbled answer from me as he scraped busily at my throat. While he was cleaning his blade, I told him that I’d brought Lieutenant Hitch back to Gettys after he’d had a run-in with a wildcat.
“Hitch, eh? I’d probably have helped the cat myself,” he told me, and then went on with a long tale of a very complicated brawl in a tavern in which Hitch had distinguished himself by ending up fighting both of the men who had originally been combatants. He seemed to find it very amusing.
“So. You’ll be heading back home now,” he asked me when he’d finished and offered me a towel to wipe my face on.
“Actually, I thought I’d try to see Colonel Haren and enlist,” I told him.
He took that as a knee-slapping joke. He was still roaring with laughter when I handed his towel back to him and took my leave.
The sentries on the gate likewise found it amusing. Getting entry to the fort was not as easy without Hitch, I discovered. After they had dismissed my first request as a joke, I reminded them that they had admitted me in Hitch’s company only a couple of hours ago. “Oh, yes. Now that you mention it, I remember your great big…horse!” one exclaimed. After several more jests of that subtlety, they consented to let me pass. I reentered Gettys and went directly to Colonel Haren’s headquarters.
Colonel Haren’s headquarters were constructed entirely of sawn lumber and once had been painted. Flakes of green paint clung to the weathered timber. The splintery planks that made up its porch were uneven and warping away from one another.
The slum that had sprung up around the fort, the lethargic air of the sickly soldiery, and this final evidence of a commander without ambition filled me with trepidation. Did I want to enlist with such a regiment, under such a command? The rumors I had heard about Farleyton Regiment came back to haunt me: once a top outfit, now fallen on hard times. Desertion and dereliction of duty were rampant here.
What other regiment would take someone like me?
I ascended the two steps, crossed the rough porch, and entered. A sergeant in a faded uniform sat behind the desk. The walls of the room were lined with wooden shelves jumbled with books and stacks of paper at all angles. A gun rack in the corner held two long guns and an empty stock. An unsheathed sword kept them company. The sergeant had taken a saber cut down the face in some distant past. It had healed into a fine seam that pulled down at his left eye and the corner of his mouth. His eyes were a very pale blue, so pale that at first I wondered if he were blinded by cataracts. Gray hair in a wild fringe stuck out around his bald pate. As I entered, he looked up from some bit of sewing. When he set it aside on the corner of his desk to greet me, I saw he was darning a black sock with white yarn.
“Good morning, Sergeant,” I greeted him when he just stared at me.
“You want something?”
I controled my disdain of his sloppy manners. “Yes, Sergeant. I’d like to meet with Colonel Haren.”
“Oh. He’s in there.” He tilted his head toward the single door behind him.
“I see. May I go in?”
“Maybe. Try knocking. If he’s not busy, he’ll answer.”
“Very well. Thank you, Sergeant.”
“Yeah.”
He took up his sock and bent over his work again. I tugged my shirt as straight as it would go, crossed the room, and rapped sharply at the door.
“Come in. Is my sock mended yet?”
I opened the door to a dim room, lit by the fire in an open hearth in the corner. A wave of heat rolled out to greet me as I opened the door. I stood a moment, letting my eyes adjust.
“Well, come in, man! Don’t stand there letting the cold get in. Sergeant! Is my sock mended yet?”
The sergeant called the answer over his shoulder. “I’m working on it!”
“Very well.” He answered as if the delay were anything but “very well.” Then he transferred his gaze to me and said irritably, “Come in, I said, and close the door.”
I did as he bade me. The room confounded me. It was dimly lit and stuffy with heat. I felt as if in one stride, I’d covered hundreds of miles and was back west in Old Thares. Fine carpets covered the floors, and tapestries hid the planks of the wall. An immense desk of polished wood dominated the center of the room. Oak bookcases filled with leather-bound volumes lined one entire wall, floor to ceiling. A marble pedestal supported a statue of a maiden with a basket of flowers. Even the ceiling had been covered with plates of hammered tin. The shock of contrast between this inner sanctuary and the rough building that housed it nearly made me forget why I was there.
The reason for his query about the sock was abundantly clear. One of his feet was bare. The other wore a dark sock and a lambskin slipper. I could see the cuffs of his cavalla trousers. Over them he wore an elaborate silk smoking jacket, belted with a tasseled length of the same fabric. The silk skullcap on his head also had a tassel. He was a pale, bony man, taller than me, with long feet and hands. What hair he had was blond, but his magnificent mustache looked rusty. The ends of it were waxed to points. He looked like a caricature of a country gentlemen rather than the commander of the king’s last outpost.
There was a well-cushioned chair with a footstool before the fire. Colonel Haren ensconced himself there and then demanded of me, “What do you want, then?”
“I wished to speak to you, sir.” I kept my tone extremely civil despite his brusqueness.
“Well, you are. State your master’s business and be quick about it. I’ve other things to do today.”
Two ideas fought to be first out of my mouth. At my realization that he thought I was a servant, I longed to tell him in no uncertain words that I had no master. The second was that I doubted he had anything else to do today. I closed my teeth against expressing either and then replied tightly, “I do not come as a servant with a message from his master. I come as a soldier son, hoping to enlist with your regiment.”
“Then what’s that in your hand, man?” he demanded, pointing to Hitch’s roughly worded letter of recommendation. I understood now, I thought, why Hitch had phrased it so crudely. Even so, I did not want to present it, lest he think the rough sentiments were my own. I kept a firm grip on it, despite his open and waiting palm.
“It’s a recommendation from Lieutenant Buel Hitch. But before I present it, I’d like to tell you a bit about myself and my—”
“Hitch!” He sat up straight in his chair, letting his unshod feet fly off the footstool and slap onto the floor. “He was due back days ago. I could not imagine what detained him! But he’s back at the fort now?”
“Yes, sir, he is. He was badly injured when a big cat attacked him. When I met up with him, he was feverish and weak from blood loss. I’ve been traveling with him for the last five days or so, to be sure that he arrived here safely. I took him straight to the doctors when we arrived.”
He looked agitated at my news. “But…he was carrying a package for me. Did he say nothing of it?”
I instantly recalled the oilskin-wrapped package in Hitch’s saddlebags. “He said nothing of it to me, sir. But his saddlebags are intact. I put them under his bunk in the infirmary. When I came away, Dr. Frye was going in to see him. I have high hopes for his full recovery.”
I could have saved my breath. As soon as Colonel Haren heard that Hitch was in the infirmary, he strode to the door of his office and flung it open. “Sergeant. Stop whatever you’re doing. Go directly to the infirmary. Scout Hitch is there. His saddlebags are under his bed. Bring them directly here.”
The sergeant moved with surprising alacrity to his command. Shutting the door, the commander turned back to me. “Well done, man. Thank you for letting me know Hitch had returned. You have my gratitude.”
The way he spoke and the way he returned to his chair before the fire indicated that our interview was at an end. When I continued to stand there, he glanced back at me, nodded emphatically, and repeated, “Thank you.”
“Sir, letting you know that Lieutenant Hitch had returned to Gettys was not my sole reason for coming here. As I was telling you, I’m a soldier son. I’m interested in enlisting in your regiment.”
He raised one eyebrow. I noticed it had a sort of a tufty twirl. “Impossible, man. Don’t deceive yourself. You’re not fit to be a soldier.” He spoke the words bluntly.
I advanced to him, desperately holding out Hitch’s recommendation. “Sir, you’re my last hope,” I said bluntly. “If you will not take me, I do not know how I will fulfill the good god’s destiny for me. I beg you to consider me. Use me in any capacity. I will take the humblest assignment. All I wish to be able to say is that I serve my king as a soldier.”
He seemed surprised at my vehemence. He took the piece of paper I offered him, and while he read it, either slowly or several times, I considered the offer I’d just made him. Did I mean it? Could I humble myself to serve in any capacity? Was it still so essential to my pride that I be able to call myself a soldier? A few short days ago, I’d been willing to put all that behind me and begin a new life as an innkeeper in a ghost town. Yet here I stood with my pride abandoned and my heart beating like a drum as I hoped by all I held holy that the eccentric man before me would accept me into his dispirited, sloppy regiment.
He looked up at last from the piece of paper. Then he leaned forward carefully and set it on the flames of the fire. My heart sank. As he straightened up, he said, “You seem to have made a good impression on my scout. Few people manage to do that. Myself included.”
“Sir,” I said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
He leaned back in his chair and breathed out through his nose. His wriggled his feet, one slippered and one bare, on the hassock before him. “It’s not easy to keep men at this post. A lot of them die of the plague. Those that survive are sickly, and often die of something else. Some desert. Others prove unsatisfactory in an extreme enough way that I am forced to dismiss them. Even so, I try to hold to a certain standard for choosing those who will serve under me. Under ordinary circumstances, I would not choose you. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on why.”
“Sir,” I managed to say again, keeping my tone even. He did not look at me, but only at his own feet. He touched their toes together.
“But the circumstances are not ordinary.” He cleared his throat. “My scout makes few requests of me. I make many of him. Most of them, he fulfills for me. I am inclined to grant him this request.” As I caught my breath in hope, he finally turned his head to look at me. “How do you feel about cemeteries?” he asked me.
He asked in a pleasant and engaging way, as if he had asked a little girl her favorite color at a tea party.
“Cemeteries, sir?”
“We have one here at Gettys. Two, actually. The old one is just outside the walls of the fort. That one doesn’t concern me. It’s the new one, an hour’s ride from here, that is the problem. When plague first struck here, several years ago, my predecessor had a new cemetery established some distance from the fort. Because of the smell of all the dead bodies, don’t you know? He’s buried there himself, as a matter of fact. That’s why I’m the commander now. It passed me by.” He paused a moment and smiled a tight and toothy smile, as if very pleased with his own cleverness at not dying of the plague. I wasn’t sure what response to make, and when I was silent, he spoke on.
“The cemetery is rather large considering the size of our living population, and that it is only recently established. And Colonel Lope gave no thought, when they started burying people there, that it might be a hard location to defend. Four times now I have requested a budget and artisans so that our cemetery might be properly protected with a stout stone wall, and perhaps a watchtower. Four times now, I have been ignored. The road is all our king can think of. His road. And when I ask for supplies and funding to wall the cemetery, he always responds by asking me how many miles of road I’ve built in the last season. As if the two were connected!”
He paused for my reaction. When it became clear that I didn’t have one, he harrumphed and continued. “I’ve assigned men to guard the cemetery. They don’t last long at the duty. Cowards. And as a consequence, the depredations against our beloved dead continue.”
“Depredations, sir?”
“Yes. Depredations. Insults. Ignominy. Blasphemous disrespect. Call it what you will. They continue. Can you stop them?” He gravely tugged at the ends of his moustache as he spoke.
I had no clear idea what he was asking of me. But I did comprehend that it was my sole opportunity. I rose to the occasion. “Sir. If I cannot, I will die trying.”
“Oh, please don’t. It would just be another grave to dig. Well. That’s settled then. And just in time, it appears!”
He spoke the last words as he leapt from his seat, for there had been a knock on the door. Even before he reached it, the sergeant had opened it. He entered, bearing Hitch’s saddlebags. The colonel seized them greedily and dug though them to resurrect the same oilskin-wrapped packet that Hitch had guarded so assiduously. “Oh, thank the good god, it’s not been harmed or stolen!” he exclaimed. He carried it directly to a small table near the fire’s light. I stood, feeling awkward, unsure if he intended me to witness this act or not. I felt I should go, but feared that if I left, no one else would recognize that I’d been accepted into the regiment. I needed to know where to go to sign my papers and assume my duties. So I quietly remained. The sergeant departed as quickly as he had entered.
Colonel Haren carefully untied the string that had bound the packet shut. When the last fold of oilskin was carefully laid back to reveal the contents, he gave a huge sigh of contentment. “Oh. Beautiful,” he exclaimed.
My nose had already told me what he had unwrapped. Smoked fish. I could smell it, and my day’s hunger clawed at me with frantic desire. My mouth watered, but my brain wondered how smoked fish could be so important.
“Alder-smoked river salmon. It’s glazed with honey. There is only one small group of tribesmen who still prepare their fish this way. And they will only trade with Scout Hitch. Now, I suppose, you see why a word from him is held in such high esteem by me. Only he could obtain this for me, and only at this time of year. Ah.”
As I watched in consternation, he pinched off a tiny morsel of shining, dark red fish and lifted it to his lips. He set it on his tongue and then, without closing his mouth, breathed in past it. Eyes closed, he finally closed his mouth. I could have sworn that his mustache quivered with delight. He moved the food about on his tongue like a wine connoisseur savoring a vintage. His throat moved very slowly as he swallowed. When he opened his eyes and looked at me, his face held a look of dazed satiation. “Are you still here?” he asked me vaguely.
“You didn’t dismiss me, sir. And I have not yet signed my papers.”
“Oh. Well. Dismissed! The man at the desk out there will help you with your papers. Just make your mark where he shows you. You can trust him.” And with that, he turned back to his fish. As I opened the door, he added, “Take Hitch’s saddlebags back to him, would you? Nothing else in there for me, I’m sure.”
I picked up the worn leather bags and slung them over my shoulder. I shut the door quietly as I left, wondering if the man was completely mad or just so eccentric that I couldn’t tell the difference. Then I decided that it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t question my luck in finding someone who had allowed me to enlist.
The sergeant put his darning aside with a sigh when I stood in front of his desk. “What is it?”
“Colonel Haren said I should see you about my enlistment papers.”
“What?” He grinned, certain I was joking.
“My enlistment papers,” I said flatly.
The smile faded slowly from his face. “I’ll draw them up for you,” he said with obvious reluctance. “It may take a little while.”
“I’ll wait,” I told him, and did so.