Varens squeezed the trigger and blasted a neat round hole in the sentry’s chest that smoked as he stepped over the corpse. He dropped the gun.

This act of violence half woke him.

He should have been warm, but his feet were freezing and felt wet. A chill wind made him colder still. He tried to go back to sleep.

There was a sharp pain in his wound.

How could this be? he thought in his dream. I am ready to go back to the war. I am fit enough to die.

Another stab of pain made him gasp and wake slightly. He tried to go back to sleep, but there was an irritating rattling noise growing all around him. It sounded like reeds, reeds in the wind.

Varens’ eyes snapped open.

He was totally disoriented. Pale strands waved at the height of his nose, filling the world as far as he could see and dividing it into hissing paleness and darkness above. It took him a moment to see the strands as reeds, and the darkness as the sky where clouds sped over stars under the urging of the wind.

His feet were cold because he was stood in the shallow water at the edge of the marsh. They were going numb. His skin bumped under his hospital gown. His hands were wet too, and his face. He would die out here if he did not get back. It took him a moment to get his bearings and locate the hospital. It looked small, the marble a blue blur in the dark. He had come a long way, well past the edges of the meadows and into the marsh itself.

His dream came back to him: the dead soldiers. Or was this the dream, and what he remembered in the dream the true memory? It couldn’t be possible. He could not hurt another soldier.

He suddenly felt dizzy. He reached his hand to his forehead. There was something slimy on his hand, and he wiped it on his gown. His forehead was hot. He had a fever. He should get back; there was something very wrong with him.

He turned to face the hospital. His limbs were shivering, and his muscles ached.

Definitely a fever.

‘I’ve caught my damned death out here,’ he muttered. He sloshed through the mud, making for the firmer ground of the meadows. He had nearly made it when a familiar voice called out in the marsh.

‘Bolus?’ he called back.

He strained his ears. The last of the year’s insects chirruped in the chilly night. He heard nothing else, and he dismissed the voice as a delusion.

‘One! One! One!’

‘Bolus?’ Varens said again, more loudly. He could see nothing through the reeds, which grew tall where the marsh turned into meadow. Cursing, he struggled his way onto firmer ground and looked back. Iax’s solitary moon appeared from behind a scudding cloud, lighting everything silver and black.