I had the barest edge of control of myself. Shame warred with the last fading shreds of panic. What had frightened me so badly? Why had I fled?

I suddenly had no idea. I only knew that my throat was parched and that my shirt stuck to my back with fear sweat. I looked around at them, confused by what I had felt and done and deeply insulted by their grinning faces. One of the guards took pity on me.

“Hey, big man, don’t you know we’ve all felt it? That’s what the ‘end of the road’ means here. Sheer shit-your-pants terror. Hey, don’t feel bad, trooper. It gets done to all of us. Initiation, you might say. And now you’re one of us. Gettys-sweated. That’s what we call it. You got a proper Gettys sweat worked up.”

A roar of laughter went up as he approached me and offered me his own canteen. I reached down, drank from it, and as I handed it back, I managed a completely insincere smile and a weak laugh. “It happens to everyone that way?” I managed to ask. “The terror?”

“Oh, yeah, that it do. Count yourself a tough nut. There’s no piss running into your boot. Most of us here can’t brag about that.” The fellow slapped me companionably on the leg, and strange to say, I felt better. “Does the king know about this?” I blurted out, and then felt a fool when my words woke another general laugh.

“If it hadn’t happened to you, would you have believed it?” drawled the fellow who had befriended me.

I shook my head slowly. “No. Like as not, I wouldn’t.” I paused, then asked,

“What is it?”

“Nobody believes it until it happens to him,” he agreed with me. “And nobody can say exactly what it is. Only that it happens. And that we can’t think of a way to get past it.”

“Can’t we go around it?”

He smiled tolerantly, and I almost blushed. Of course not. If they could have, they would have. He gave me a nod and a smile. “Go on back to Gettys. If you go into Rollo’s Tavern and tell them that a Gettys sweat requires a Gettys beer to quench it, he’ll give you a free one. It’s a tradition for new recruits, but I think they’ll extend it to you.”

“I am a new recruit,” I told him. “Colonel Haren just signed me on. Loosely attached me, that is. I’m the new cemetery guard.”

He looked up at me, and the smile faded from his face. Around him, the other men were exchanging glances. “You poor bastard,” he said with feeling. And then they opened their ranks and motioned me to ride back to Gettys. The notion of a free beer at a friendly tavern was a powerful draw.

I considered it carefully as I rode back toward Gettys. I still couldn’t decide if I felt insulted or hurt by the prank that had been played on me, or relieved that they’d all seen fit to initiate me. In the end, I decided that Hitch’s remark had been the most accurate one. It had been very educational. And I was in no position to resent it, I reminded myself. I wasn’t a junior officer and the son of a battle lord. I was a new recruit, at the very bottom of the social order. I should probably have thanked my stars that my initiation was no rougher than it had been.