Fiddler straightened in his chair and cleared his throat. Hedge poked him in the ribs as he was about to begin. After a menacing scowl, he tried again. 'It's like this, Sergeant. We've seen a hell of a lot of our friends die, right? And maybe we didn't have to give the orders, so maybe you think it's easier for us. But I don't think so. You see, to us those people were living, breathing. They were friends. When they die, it hurts. But you go around telling yourself that the only way to keep from going mad is to take all that away from them, so you don't have to think about it, so you don't have to feel anything when they die. But, damn, when you take away everybody else's humanity, you take away your own. And that'll drive you mad as sure as anything. It's that hurt we feel that makes us keep going, Sergeant. And maybe we're not getting anywhere, but at least we're not running away from anything.'

There was silence in the room. Then Hedge punched Fiddler in the arm. 'I'll be damned! You got a brain in there, after all. I guess I been wrong about you all these years.'

'Yeah, right,' Fiddler said, rolling his eyes at Mallet, 'and who is it who's burned his hair off so many times he's gotta wear some ugly leather cap all the time, hey?'

Mallet laughed, but the tension remained and everyone's gaze swung back to fix on their sergeant. Slowly, Whiskeyjack studied each man in his squad. He saw the caring in their eyes, the open offer to the friendship he'd spent years suppressing. All that time pushing them away, pushing everyone away, and the stubborn bastards just kept on coming back.

So Sorry hadn't been human. His conviction that all she'd done was within the possibilities of humanity now seemed to rest on uncertain ground. But it did not collapse. He'd seen too much in his life. There'd be no sudden faith in his view of human history, no burgeoning optimism to chase away all the demonic memories of the hells he'd lived through.

Still, there came a time when some denials lost their function, when the world's relentless battering at him made his foolishness obvious even to himself. He was, finally, and after all these years, among friends. That was a hard admission and he realized he was already impatient with it. 'All right,' he growled, 'enough with the flapping lips. We've got work to do. Corporal?'

'Sergeant?' Kalam replied.

'Get yourself ready. You've got the daylight hours to reestablish contact with the Assassins' Guild. Meanwhile, I want everyone else to lay out their weapons and give them a good cleaning. Repairs to armour. There'll be an inspection, and if I find a single damn thing I don't like, there'll be hell coming down. Understood?'

'We hear ya,' Mallet said, grinning.