His smile might have been a grimace. “Well, aren’t you the ambitious one?

Do what you think needs doing, soldier. Either no one will notice it, or someone will complain about it.” He smiled at his own jest and sent me on my way. The supply sergeant took the requisition form from me, glanced at it, and then told me to help myself to what I needed in the warehouse.

When I asked for the use of a wagon to haul it, he shrugged and told me again to take what I needed. The warehouse was worse. I finally found the men on duty behind the warehouse, leaning against the back wall and smoking. Three of the four were bony plague survivors. I doubted they had the muscle to lift a hammer. I showed them my form, and they told me, as the sergeant had, that I might take what I needed. In the end, that was what I did. I found a cart and a heavy harness, stiff with disuse. I put patient Clove between the traces. The lumber was of poor quality, the nail kegs were jumbled together, and there was no order to any of it. I took what I wanted, including corn, oats, a sack of hay, and a currying brush for Clove, and loaded it all myself. When I was finished, I found the warehouse sergeant out at the back with his men. I asked him if he’d like to inventory what I’d taken. “I’ll trust you,” he replied, and did not even walk around to look at the laden wagon. It seemed to tax his ambition to walk as far as his untidy office, where he put a sloppy signature on my form and thrust it back at me. I left there feeling vaguely insulted by the whole procedure. Before I left town, I took my letter to the dispatch office and paid a breathtaking fee to have it delivered. Then I went to the infirmary to visit Hitch again. He was much as he had been the day before. When I complained about how slack discipline seemed at Gettys and the apathetic warehouse men, he grinned lazily. He motioned me closer to his bedside, as if to tell me a secret, and then said softly, “They danced it out of us, lad. You went to the end of the road, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did. I didn’t find it humorous, Hitch.”

“That’s Lieutenant Hitch, soldier!” he said sharply, and when I flinched, he laughed softly. “You should see what happens every time they try to send a road work crew into the forest. Half of them can’t remember their own names by the day’s end, and in a week, you might get a day’s worth of work done. Try it sometime yourself. Go walking into the forest. You’ll feel it. You feel it already, I’ll wager. I’m surprised you had the sand to get this far.” He lay back in his bed and let his eyes droop closed. “Don’t fight it, Never. There’s no point in fighting it. Your pay’s the same whether you work or slack. Relax, trooper.”