The Three Lands Omnibus Part 64

The Jackal was silent a moment bore nodding. "Yes," he said, "it must seem that way to you. Even good has become evil to you now that evil has become good. But you would not have come to me tonight if the demon had entirely destroyed your spirit. You would not have sought my advice on how to contain your darkness. I will not tell you, as the priests of the Unknowable G.o.d did, that you can change yourself; the priests may have been wrong. Sometimes the G.o.ds lay burdens upon us that we must bear during our entire sojourn through the Land of the Living. But you must not forget that the Jackal's fire is able to turn evil to good. I think that you will have to suffer greatly before you recognize the full meaning of that teaching, but this much I can tell you now: the ability you possess, to read into the hearts of men and to break their spirits, can be used to serve the G.o.ds."

"I have no desire to serve the G.o.ds." Quentin-Andrew's voice was flat, uninterested. His mind was drifting away toward the north, where new work awaited him.

"Do you desire to serve your work?"

The Jackal's voice caught at him, pulling him back. Quentin-Andrew, who had been at the point of turning away, paused to look back at the Jackal, but the ruler said nothing more, so Quentin-Andrew replied finally, "I am skilled at my work."

A smile appeared on the Jackal's face suddenly, as though his intruder had made a statement that revealed much. Quentin-Andrew remembered, with some uneasiness, that the G.o.d-man of Koretia had a formidable reputation for breaking prisoners, though the methods he was said to use were highly unorthodox.

The Jackal did not seem concerned to press his advantage. All that he said was, "You didn't need to use your dagger on me, you know. Your skill goes beyond that."

A warm wind whistled into the room, scattering the remains of the leaves; it stung the drying blood on Quentin-Andrew's cheek. Quentin-Andrew said slowly, "Your powers give you the ability to question prisoners without use of instruments. Everyone knows that."

"It is a technique that is not dependent on my G.o.dly powers; all of my thieves are taught it. I could teach it to you."

Quentin-Andrew narrowed his eyes against the glare of the moonshine. "In exchange for what promise?" he asked.

The Jackal shook his head. "In exchange for no promise. It would be an answer to the question you failed to ask." He added more softly, "When a darkness lies within a man, sometimes the only way to let light shine within him is to break open that man's spirit. Once the spirit is broken, you can then bring light into the man and mend what you have broken. Those are the two skills I teach to my thieves: how to break a man's spirit with words only, and how to mend that spirit with more words. Once you have practiced the second skill, you will understand why you have been forced to undergo the torture that you live in, the torture so deep that you have shielded yourself from its effects." The Jackal gestured toward the ledge of the unshuttered window. "Come sit with me; I will explain to you this form of questioning."

Quentin-Andrew walked forward, squinting his eyes against the light that the Jackal was walking through. He was thinking that this visit was twice worth the trouble he had taken to come here. Yet even as he sat at the Jackal's side and listened with obedient attention to what he was being told, he felt the contempt inside him grow to a peak.

Was the Jackal really fool enough to think that Quentin-Andrew would ever use the second part of what he was being taught?

CHAPTER THREE.

"The subcommander wishes to know whether you have placed him on the table yet."

The voice drifted through the darkness, a darkness that had become more p.r.o.nounced as the hours pa.s.sed. Quentin-Andrew's spirit was focussed upon the sensations in his wrists and in his chest. He barely heard the words spoken at the door by the young orderly.

Randal's voice was cool in reply. "Tell the subcommander that if he is dissatisfied with my skills, he is welcome to take over the work himself."

The orderly was persistent. "The subcommander says that a full day ought to be enough time in which to extract the information. He says that the Northern Army may attack at any moment."

"Bern," said Randal with frigid politeness, "who am I questioning?"

During the pause that followed, Quentin-Andrew tried to twist his body into a new position and immediately regretted the action. Only by biting his lip was he able to prevent sound from being emitted.

"The Lieutenant," said the orderly finally. "The chief torturer of the Northern Army."

"And how long, Bern, do you think it takes to break a man like that?"

This time there was no reply. Quentin-Andrew felt moisture trail down his arms, and inwardly cursed Randal for his skill. It had taken Quentin-Andrew only an hour to discover why Randal used leather straps for his bindings: as the wrists grew wet, the moisture constricted the leather, causing the wrists to sweat and bleed all the more. It was a subtle touch, a refined touch, and Quentin-Andrew had grown to appreciate that Randal was adept at such niceties.

The door to the cell was closing. Quentin-Andrew waited until he heard the click of the latch falling before he let out his breath, along with the sound that had been suppressed inside. Nearby, one of Randal's a.s.sistants sighed in his sleep. It was past midnight now, and all four of the inhabitants of this room were weary from the proceedings.

Randal's hand touched the back of Quentin-Andrew's head, and a moment later the cloth that had bound Quentin-Andrew's eyes for the past day fell free. Knowing as he did the stages of questioning, Quentin-Andrew did not take this as a good sign.

"Gasps," said Randal abruptly, as though he had guessed Quentin-Andrew's thoughts. "Gasps, and then moans, followed by tears, sobs, curses, screams, pleas for the questioning to stop, more screams, protests that one doesn't know the information a and then the breaking." He leaned against the dungeon wall that was warm from the leaping fire nearby and added reflectively, "The protests were a mistake, of course. You know as well as I do that if a prisoner is going to claim he doesn't know the information, he needs to do so at the beginning of the questioning, while he can still craft a skillful lie. Waiting until the end never works."

Randal's eyes were blood-veined with sleeplessness, but he did not waver his gaze from his prisoner's face. Quentin-Andrew began to turn away his face, a movement which ended abruptly as the back of Randal's hand collided with his cheek. This time, the sound that Quentin-Andrew made caused Randal's other a.s.sistant to murmur in his sleep; then the cell fell into silence once more. Quentin-Andrew had heard the clatter earlier when the dungeon was emptied of its last inhabitants. He suspected that this had been done at Randal's request.

Acting as though the slap had not taken place, Randal said mildly, "But of course we can't allow anyone to know how easy it is to break the mighty Lieutenant. It would be harmful for the reputation of all of us in this profession if it were publicized how quickly men such as us can be broken. Though I must admit that you are a special case, Lieutenant. I don't believe that, in all the years I've been working at this trade, I've ever met a soldier who is as sensitive to pain as you are."

Quentin-Andrew had been waiting for these words for a day and a night a had been waiting for them, indeed, for many years. The antic.i.p.ation of this moment did not seem to help. Quentin-Andrew closed his eyes against his torturer's look of frank pity. A moment later the blow of Randal's hand against his other cheek persuaded him that this was a poor decision. He jerked his eyes open and looked over at Randal, who was caressing in his left hand the instrument he had been using when they were interrupted.

"What I don't understand," Randal continued in a conversational manner, "is why you are holding out. You know what the end will be as well as I do, Lieutenant; you know that a man with your limitations is destined to break. So why, I have been asking myself, are you prolonging the pain?"

Quentin-Andrew had been asking himself that as well. For the first time in many hours, he dragged his spirit past the torment to a full awareness of Randal, sweat-soaked like Quentin-Andrew. Serious-faced now, his gaze one of painful concentration, the young man laid his instrument carefully aside on the disused table and said, "Is it out of loyalty to the Commander? But that would be foolish; you know that the Commander is not the sort of man who would have so much as spoken to you in peacetime. He finds you useful these days and seeks to protect you and keep your allegiance for that reason, but as for feeling affection for you a no, you are not that foolish." His statement was flat; he was reading what he wished to know in Quentin-Andrew's expression.

"Perhaps," Randal said slowly, "you are hoping that, if you show honor in this cell, the G.o.ds will forgive you for all that you have done over the years. But truly, Lieutenant, I cannot imagine that your wits have been destroyed to that degree. You know what fate awaits men like us a and you know that, if there was ever a moment when the G.o.ds could have forgiven you, it was lost eight years ago."

Quentin-Andrew, keeping his gaze carefully fixed on his torturer's blood-stained hands, thought to himself that Randal could not know the full truth of what he said. He could not know, though everyone in the Three Lands knew what the Lieutenant had done eight years before in the dungeon of the Chara's palace.

The only outward price which Quentin-Andrew had paid for that night was the loss of his patrol unit, since the Commander had quickly a.s.sessed the mood of Quentin-Andrew's men when all eleven of them had arrived at the Commander's quarters afterwards and stood in grim silence. Quentin-Andrew's second-in-command had been elevated to patrol lieutenant; Quentin-Andrew had been released from his patrol duties to take on work of greater importance to the Northern Army, as the Commander had tactfully expressed it.

That much the world knew. The world also knew the price that the Commander had paid for that night: the loss of his remaining supporters in Koretia, and the determination of the Koretians and Daxions from that night forward to fight the Commander to their deaths. Without that night, the Commander might have taken Koretia with little struggle. After that night, the Commander had been faced with the choice of denying his involvement in what had happened or subduing the southern peninsula by ruthless force.

To the Commander's credit, he had never denied what he had done. By contrast, Quentin-Andrew had added to his iniquity by suppressing one critical piece of information about that night. Not even the Commander knew how that night had ended; not even the Commander knew of the terrible, unforgivable act that had served as an immutable seal to the deeds of Quentin-Andrew's life.

Only Quentin-Andrew knew of that act and its consequences, and his knowledge of what he had done had cut into his spirit every day for the past eight years, like the precise stabs of a thigh-dagger. But Randal could not know that.

Indeed, Randal was now saying, "Oh, but the ways of the G.o.ds are mysterious. If I were to tell you that I knew their judgment upon you, you would laugh in my face. Perhaps I am wrong; perhaps the Jackal will extend his hand to you-"

The soft breathing of Randal's a.s.sistants was the only sound in the cell. Quentin-Andrew felt Randal's hand lift his chin. His eyes met Randal's.

"That is why you are holding out, isn't it, Lieutenant?" the torturer said softly. "You are trying to postpone that moment. You imagine that what you experience here will be less than what awaits you there. But Lieutenant ..." His voice grew softer still. "You have forgotten one important fact. You need not accept the fire."

So there, like a blade hidden in the palm of a hand, was the disclosure of the final temptation Quentin-Andrew had been awaiting a the temptation he had been awaiting all his life. There seemed no reason that he should hold out against that temptation.

"We owe the G.o.ds nothing," Randal said with quiet intensity. "Nothing. They made us what we are and abandoned us. They deserve nothing from us, and no gifts they might grant us will make up for what they have done to us. Don't fool yourself into thinking otherwise."

And Quentin-Andrew knew that, whatever lies his torturer might have told during their time together, Randal was now speaking nothing more than the simple truth.

The winter winds of Emor were mild in comparison to those found in the mountains of the northern dominions or on the frozen wastes of the mainland, but Quentin-Andrew, born at the southern edge of Emor, had never adjusted to the colder climes of the world. For that reason, he was grateful to find that this first evening back in the camp of the Northern Army would not be spent in the chill activity of patrolling the perimeter of the camp. Instead, he was sitting in relative warmth in the smallest of the camp's huts.

The man seated across from him, who had so little concern for the weather that he had tossed his cloak back from his shoulders, was taking an unusual amount of time to formulate his thoughts. When he finally raised his forest green eyes to look at Quentin-Andrew, his voice was quiet. "I'm glad to see you looking so well after your long convalescence, Lieutenant. Your ... injuries were so great that I was not sure that you would recover. And without your help, I had grave worries as to the future of the Northern Army."

One thing that could be said about the Commander of the Northern Army, Quentin-Andrew thought, was that he always meant what he said. He might omit information; he had certainly skipped lightly over his decision to isolate the Lieutenant while he was recovering from his injuries. This had been done for no special reason a no reason, that is, except that Quentin-Andrew had been in great pain during that time. Due to the isolation, only the Commander and the tight-lipped physician in attendance had learned how the Northern Army's torturer reacted to pain.

Yet if the Commander said that Quentin-Andrew's absence had endangered the Northern Army, he meant it. Another soldier might have reacted to this praise by stammering thanks or hotly denying the honor. Quentin-Andrew simply nodded silently.

The Commander, having pa.s.sed over the most delicate part of his speech, grew more brisk in voice as he turned to accept a cup of wine from his orderly. "Now that you're better, I'd be interested in hearing in more detail the exact circ.u.mstances of the attack."

"There is little to tell, sir," Quentin-Andrew replied, but waited until the orderly had handed him his wine and left. Then he said, "I sighted an intruder, and he attacked me."

The Commander gave a half-smile. "A simple tale. You don't mention that you defended yourself while an arrow was sticking out of your leg and after the attacker had slashed down at your chest with his sword. It is the arrow that interests me. It's not the typical weapon of an Emorian soldier. Was he a Daxion?"

"You saw his corpse."

"I saw that he was light-skinned and wearing an Emorian uniform. There was nothing to indicate he might have come from the south?"

"Nothing, sir. He cursed me in Emorian when I killed him, if that's of any help."

"It's a relief, at any rate." The Commander leaned back in his chair, raising his cup to his lips. The lamplight cast shadows upon the battle-scars on his hand. "I need not tell you, Lieutenant, that it will be hard enough to defeat Emor in this war without worrying about additional allies. If Daxis becomes alarmed at our progress and joins with Emor ... Well, we are still a comparatively small force in comparison with the Chara's. Fortunately, Daxis seems oblivious at this point to the possible consequences of our conquest of Emor. The G.o.ds who remain silent know that I have no quarrel with the Daxions, but if we should ever decide to cross the border into Koretia ..." He left the sentence unfinished and set his cup down onto the doc.u.ments that littered the table in front of him. "So he was not a Daxion soldier. Then why the arrows and bow? Those are not the weapons of a spy."

"No, sir. They are the weapons of an a.s.sa.s.sin."

The Commander's eyes, relaxed until now, grew suddenly sharp. In typical fashion, he waited only a breath's span before saying in a matter-of-fact manner, "For me?"

"I don't think so, sir. You were in battle that evening, as the Emorians knew." He paused before adding, "When I first marked him, the soldier was headed in the direction of my unit's hut."

"Dolan?" The Commander's voice rose, and his hand suddenly gripped the papers. In the next moment, his voice was level as he said, "You protect your men well, Lieutenant. I'm sure that you would have been sorry to lose your sublieutenant."

Quentin-Andrew smiled inwardly. The Commander was the one man in the Northern Army who kept up the pretense that Perry-John's son was nothing more than a lesser official who occasionally advised the Commander on matters concerning the southern lands of the Great Peninsula. To everyone else in the Northern Army, Dolan was the Commander's boy, the favored young man who had no talents other than a radiant worship of the Commander and a gift for listening attentively to the Commander as he thought through his strategies aloud.

If there was any soldier in the Northern Army who was more necessary to the Commander than Quentin-Andrew, it was Dolan, but this fact could not be commented upon in the Commander's presence. So Quentin-Andrew replied, "The Chara knows Dolan's value, sir. Since the time that you granted Dolan refuge from the Emorians, he has lent legitimacy to the Northern Army's claim to be more than a rebel army. And if you should enter Koretia accompanied by the son of the heir confirmed of that land ..." Like the Commander, he allowed his sentence to remain unfinished.

"Yes." The Commander's eyes had taken on an expression that Quentin-Andrew recognized, a look combining determination with vision. "Yes, I have thought of that much during the past six years of this war. With the Jackal dead from old age and Perry-John dead from chill-fever, the only legitimate claimant to the throne can be Dolan, and he is clearly unsuited to be a ruler. He knows this himself. He has hinted more than once that he would support me if I claimed Koretia's throne, and his support would make a great difference in whether the Koretians accepted me. But it would still mean war. If we reached that far south, Emor would be ours and would be in no position to dispute my claim, but Daxis surely would. And I do not make war lightly. War is a terrible thing, Lieutenant; it brings the horrors of destruction and fear and torture-"

He stopped abruptly, as though suddenly aware that he was condemning the evils of torture to the wrong person. After a moment he smiled and said, "And what do I have to offer Koretia that any other leader could not offer that land? Only this: that for the first time in the history of the Great Peninsula, two of the Three Lands would be willingly united under one ruler a for I have no doubt that, in the end, the Emorians will accept me as their ruler. After all of the heinous acts that the Chara has committed during this war a this latest a.s.sa.s.sination attempt is the least of his crimes a they must see the need to start over, to begin afresh with a new ruler, new laws to replace the corrupt ones, new customs to wipe away the evils of past years. I will fully support any man who has the ability to bring about this rebirth, but until such a man arrives, I cannot let Emor suffer under a tyrant, nor can I let Koretia be destroyed by rulerless anarchy. To bring Koretia and Emor closer together, to take another step in creating a single law for the whole of the Great Peninsula-"

"Yes, sir," said Quentin-Andrew. "Would you like me to send Dolan to you now?"

The Commander, who had risen to his feet in mid-speech and was striding up and down the small chamber with his eyes still full of visions, stopped abruptly and looked over at Quentin-Andrew, sitting motionless with no expression on his face. After a moment, the Commander laughed and reseated himself.

"I take your point," he said. "I will reserve my flowery speeches on the destiny of the Three Lands for when Dolan arrives this evening. I know that your concerns are more practical. In a word: your unit has captured a dozen intruders while you've been gone, and all of those prisoners need to be questioned. But you needn't start work on that until tomorrow. You've had a hard recovery, and the shapeless G.o.ds know that I owe you much for this sacrifice. As does Dolan, of course, but perhaps this evens out the debt you owe him."

"Sir?" Quentin-Andrew's voice was cool.

The Commander raised his eyebrows. "I'm referring to what you told me shortly after you were wounded... . You don't remember this?"

"No, sir. I was unconscious at the time."

"Not the entire time." The Commander's hand tapped the papers lightly, the sound swallowed by the winds moaning about the hut and by the crackle as the orderly added fuel to a fire in the adjoining chamber. The Commander's gaze remained fixed on Quentin-Andrew's. After a while, he said, "Well, it's a story that you should know, if you no longer remember it. Dolan, you see, was left to watch over you while I was being fetched from the battlefield. Aside from your captain, no one else knew that you had been wounded. You were taken to the Blue Tent a you remember that?" This as Quentin-Andrew shifted his feet slightly.

"No, sir." He had been reacting, in fact, to the words "taken to the Blue Tent," a phrase that was said to strike terror into any prisoner who had the misfortune to possess information that was of value to the Commander. The phrase, Quentin-Andrew well knew, was now regarded by inhabitants of the Three Lands to be as terrible as "May the Jackal eat his dead" and other such curses. Quentin-Andrew had never expected to hear the phrase used about himself. The usage made him feel uneasy.

"Your workplace seemed the best place in which to keep you in isolation for a short time," the Commander explained. "No one visits there aside from yourself. Unfortunately, on this particular evening, three of your men became drunk and goaded each other into visiting the Blue Tent to see what lay there. They thought that you were still on patrol. At the entrance to the tent they found Dolan-"

He stopped abruptly. His orderly had entered the room, holding a sheaf of papers. The Commander shuffled through them, nodded in approval, and said, "Let me know when Dolan arrives, Marcus. Otherwise, no more interruptions until I have finished with the Lieutenant."

The orderly murmured an acknowledgment, casting a nervous glance in the direction of Quentin-Andrew. Quentin-Andrew noticed it in the same way in which a man notices that the sun has risen once more. The Commander waited until the orderly had left the chamber before saying, "Dolan judged it better that you not be disturbed. You were ... in pain at the time, you see. He defended the tent against their entrance."

No trace of a smile appeared on Quentin-Andrew's face, but the Commander smiled himself, saying, "Not in that way. We both know that Dolan couldn't use his blade against another man if his life depended on it. No, what happened was that he cut his palm with his dagger and took a blood vow to kill himself if any man entered the tent." The Commander paused, pushed his cloak further back against the chair as though he were smothered by midsummer heat, and said quietly, "You told me that you believed he would have carried out his threat."

In a voice not noticeably warmer than a Marcadian mountain in winter, Quentin-Andrew said, "The men left."

"The men left indeed. Dolan, in his rare moments of stubbornness, can be very persuasive, as I know to my own cost. More than once he has convinced me to soften some harsh course I had planned to take in this war, and always, I believe, to the advantage of the Northern Army. He may never be a ruler, Lieutenant, but a ruler with that young man by his side would be beloved by the G.o.ds." The Commander suddenly sent his fist crashing down onto the table, causing the papers to flee to the floor. "A stubborn young man but a gentle one, as peaceful as a child." His voice grew hard. "When I finally meet with the Chara, Lieutenant, I will not forget what he tried to do to Dolan. I swear that to the invisible G.o.ds."

His fist remained white-knuckled for a moment more. Then he loosened his hand in order to pick up the wine cup, which had spilled red wild-berry wine over the papers that did not escape in time. With a sigh, he said, "But that will have to wait until we reach the Emorian capital, and whether we reach the Emorian capital depends on whether you remain well-rested." He smiled at Quentin-Andrew. "Your work, Lieutenant, remains vital to the Northern Army's survival. Without the information you obtain, we are blind to the Chara's schemes. Little though I like having to use such methods against prisoners, I trust that the G.o.ds who judge me will remember the number of lives that are saved each time we go into battle knowing what our enemy's plans are. I want this war to be short; I want the Great Peninsula to lie in peace once more."

He stood up. As Quentin-Andrew rose from his chair, his flesh aching, the Commander walked over and laid his hand on Quentin-Andrew's shoulder. "Welcome back, Lieutenant. I'm sure that your men are celebrating your return now."

And that, Quentin-Andrew thought darkly as he struggled his way toward his unit's hut through the evening wind, was the closest the Commander had ever come to telling him a lie.

The patrol unit's hut stood at the edge of the camp, separate from the other buildings. On this moonless night, it was as effectively hidden as though it were cloaked in mist. Quentin-Andrew pa.s.sed a slender figure stumbling through the dark: Dolan, on his way to spend time with the Commander. They crossed paths without speaking; Dolan's vision was not keen enough for him to see which soldier he was pa.s.sing. He would have made an easy target for the a.s.sa.s.sin, Quentin-Andrew reflected, and his memory lingered for a moment on an episode from his own past. Then he shrugged the memory away. He was oath-bound to the Commander, and though oaths meant nothing to him, the work suited him well enough. There was no point in worrying over whether his work in the past had been more pleasurable.

He paused at the edge of the hut doorway. The door was closed against the biting wind, but through the cracks in the wood came light and warmth and voices. The day patrol was off-duty now, and its members were exchanging candid remarks. Usually they had a lookout posted to ensure that Quentin-Andrew did not hear such remarks.

"... will ask for a transfer, I tell you." The voice was deep and crisp, belonging to Meleager, the best swordsman in the unit. "These past two months have been like a release from the pits of destruction. I had forgotten what my life was like when I didn't have to be forever on my guard, fearing his approach."

"Are you converting to the Koretian religion, Meleager?" Quentin-Andrew could hear the grin in the voice of Northcott, his Second Blade. Like the Commander and most of Quentin-Andrew's men, Northcott was a native of Emor's northern dominion of Marcadia. "*Pits of destruction' is putting it mildly, don't you think? I'd say it was more like the ice prisons at the end of the world."

"Then you agree with me."

"The shapeless G.o.ds above, who wouldn't? But if you think you'll be safer from the Lieutenant if you request a release from his unit ... Well, I'll ensure that your mother doesn't see your corpse. The sight would undoubtedly cause her heart to fail."

There was a pause; Quentin-Andrew pulled his cloak closer against the knife's edge of the wind. Then Orvin, the oldest guard in the unit, said, "This is ridiculous. We're scaring each other like nursery boys exchanging tales of death spirits. We all know that the Lieutenant won't lay his hands on anyone unless the Commander orders it, so we're all safe."

"Are we?" asked Northcott reflectively. "I wonder. At the rate that the Commander is purging his ranks of traitors, I wonder whether any of us is safe, however loyal we may be."

A pregnant pause followed. Someone tossed fuel into the fire, causing scented smoke to drift through the door-cracks. Then Meleager said, "Dolan is safe."

There were a few chuckles. Xylon, the youngest guard, spoke for the first time: "Dolan likes the Lieutenant. I wonder why?"

"Oh, Dolan," said Northcott, in a voice that did not even carry contempt a the subject was of too little importance for that. "Dull-witted Dolan likes everyone. If a barbarian raised his blade over Dolan's head, Dolan would give him a leaf bouquet."

The tension was broken by laughter. A moment later, the laughter stopped abruptly, and a silence deeper than death followed. Quentin-Andrew had chosen this moment to enter the hut.

Two of the guards, the ones who had not spoken, were in a corner by themselves, exchanging sips of wine from the same cup. Revis and Edel were long-time wine-friends, and they had a strong instinct for survival which caused them to avoid taking part in such conversations. The other four guards looked as though they had just stripped their bodies of all armor and placed themselves directly in front of the Chara's vanguard. Xylon, blushing violently, ducked his head and began to polish the sword on his lap; Orvin gave a soft moan and raised his eyes upward toward the G.o.ds; Meleager turned as white as a blizzard and clutched the flue-pipe, ignoring the heat under his hand. Only Northcott, who had been caught in this situation so many times that he forever carried the look of a man who is under a death sentence, had the strength to rise and approach Quentin-Andrew. Without a word, he handed Quentin-Andrew the patrol unit ring.

Quentin-Andrew slipped on the ring of his authority, allowing his gaze to drift again toward the men frozen before him. He said to Northcott, "The reports."

"Over there, sir." Northcott gestured toward a reed table at the far corner of the hut. Quentin-Andrew walked over to it, pausing on the way to ladle himself a cup of wine. By the time he sat down at the table and began reading through the reports that Northcott had prepared in his absence, a vigorous exchange of wine had begun taking place at the other end of the hut. Xylon was sharing wine with Orvin, Orvin was sharing wine with Northcott, and Northcott was pressing his wine upon Meleager, who seemed unaware that his hand was beginning to singe. Quentin-Andrew, his nose tickled by the familiar smell of burnt flesh, smiled inwardly. One of his credits as an army official, he thought to himself, was that he inspired strong friendships between his men. His very presence guaranteed that the other guards would cling together in a desperate fashion.

His own wine cup remained untouched by anyone but himself. The minutes drifted by, then the hours. There were many reports to read, and Quentin-Andrew always had a tendency to linger over the reports of how prisoners were captured. Gradually he became aware that the guards, now preparing for sleep, had broken their silence.

"I knew a man," Meleager said loudly, "who was wounded in five places, but he made no sound when the doctor sewed his wounds."

"That's a small story," said Orvin, keeping his gaze carefully fixed on the blanket he was unfolding. "I knew a man who laughed when his leg was sawed off."

"Of course," said Meleager, his gaze flicking toward Quentin-Andrew, "I'm sure there's at least one soldier in this camp who could put those men to shame."

Quentin-Andrew finished reading the reports, turned the stack on its head, and began reading the first report again.

"There's no doubt of that," Northcott contributed. "It need hardly be said."