Despite the spring weather, the colonel still lounged in his chair by the blazing hearth fire. No ray of daylight penetrated his chamber. I wondered if he ever left this room.

He turned his head as I entered and sighed. “Trooper Burve. You again!

What is it now?”

“Specks stole a body out of the graveyard last night, sir. I had to enter the forest to recover it. I had contact there with a Speck man and woman.”

“Did you? That’s the only part of your story that is unusual. Did you antagonize them?”

I considered his question. “I took the body back. They didn’t seem to approve, but I simply did it.”

“Well done.” He nodded sharply. “We’ve found that to be the best way to deal with them. Approach what must be done calmly, inform them of it, and then do it. They soon come to understand that we know what we’re doing and it’s for the best. For the most part, they’re a passive people. The only time they’ve ever attacked us, we had shed Speck blood first. They became very distressed about the road construction and tried to interfere with it. Instead of talking to them, some fool lost his head and shot one.

Instead of fleeing, the Specks charged at us. Well. We had no choice except to use our weapons then. A lot of Specks died. Such a one-sided battle was unfairly called a massacre. The papers in Old Thares published a very biased account, and all the officers involved were rebuked. What should they have told their men? ‘Don’t shoot until they’ve killed some of us?’”

His indignation had brought two bright spots of color to his cheeks. He took a deep breath to calm himself. “So. We don’t want a situation like that again. Do as you’ve been doing. Simply bring the bodies back. Don’t make threats. Don’t shoot at Specks. Just do your duty, but don’t provoke them to bloodshed. Remember I assigned you to the cemetery to prevent this, not so you could come here and complain about it. You did recover the corpse and rebury it?”

“Yes, sir, I did. Sir, I thought I should report my contact with the Specks.”

He lifted a wine glass from a table at his elbow and sipped from it. The liquid was a dark crimson. “It’s of no consequence. It’s spring, trooper.

Spring always brings the Specks down to trade. Soon it will be summer.

Then it will be high summer, and people will die of plague. Lots of them.

And as fast as you bury them, the Specks will try to dig them up. By the end of summer, if you don’t die of the plague, you’ll be like all the rest of us. Praying for winter to come and cursing it when it gets here.”

He spoke with absolute certainty. When he was finished, he resumed staring into this fire.

“Sir. It seems to me I might better serve in my post if I could find a way to prevent the Specks from stealing bodies before summer and the plague season hits.”