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.