After night fell, Jasya and Wori and the others old enough to be taken hobbled back to the shelter, ducking past him on the threshold and finding their places in their banner groups as he had assigned them. He waited until all were back except Yudit, who was forced to remain with the sergeant all night. He had to wait, because three nights ago they had lost Jolas, done to death in a rough way that Shai sheared away from recalling, having seen the aftermath. He hadn’t thought to go looking for the lad until morning, and by then of course it was far too late.

Yet what could he have done anyway?

How was it possible he could not keep them all safe?

Too restless to sleep, he braced himself across the opening so no one could grab one without him knowing. He considered paths of escape. Could they sneak out at night? By the two sentry fires, shadowed forms paced on watch. The pair of men set to watch the prisoners’ shelter kept up a steady murmur, an idiotic conversation about a game called hooks-and-ropes.

Rain passed over, out of the southeast. He dozed, woke when a child whimpered, but it was only a dreaming cry, not repeated. The watch fires glowed red. At the forest’s edge, mist untangled from the vegetation to drift into what had been some poor soul’s tended garden.

He rubbed his eyes. The mist took on a flowing shape, a ghost winged with a gleaming trail as if its spirit were blown back in an unseen wind from the land beyond the Spirit Gate.

The soldier was dead, then, his ghost wandering in confusion. That left thirty-five, still too many for a single woodchopper to take on.

Yet for an instant, as the ghost crossed the compound toward the byre where the sergeant slept, he saw in the misty shape the form of a woman who looked exactly like Cornflower.

Merciful One! Would her haunt never let him rest? He shut his eyes, wishing desperately for sleep, anything to shut down the fevered workings of his exhausted mind. If he breathed slowly, if he cupped hands before his heart in the attitude of prayer and murmured the beseeching phrases, perhaps he could find peace.

“I go to the Merciful One for refuge. Accept my prayers out of compassion. Peace.”

Footsteps pattered on the ground like a fall of rain. He opened his eyes as Yudit crouched beside him.

“The sergeant’s dead,” she whispered. “They’ll think I did it, and they’ll kill me. But I was just lying there. A ghost came in and stole his spirit.” Shivering, she clutched his arm.

“Who’s dead?”

“The sergeant.” She pressed two objects into his hands: the wolf ring and the belt buckle.

“Get inside.”

Shaking, she crawled past him. Whispered questions greeted her. He eased out from the threshold and crawled to the corner of the shed, from which he could see down the central village path. No ghost emerged from the building where the sergeant slept. Maybe the sergeant’s ghost had already passed through Spirit Gate. Or maybe Yudit, in her fear, had been mistaken.