“Abbot,” he said briefly, and made the customary gestures of respect.

In the shadow of a boulder up ahead, Colonel Aspe sat with some officers and antinomials. He was eating grapes and spitting out the seeds while the others argued. It was a peculiar kind of argument. The captain of his regiment, a bandy-legged southerner with a round head and false teeth, was angry. He pointed and swore at the antinomials, but his accent was thick, and his teeth clattered when he spoke.

“Schob. Thamn you. Fwerk,” he said, but nobody could understand him. And so he shook his fist, and looked up at his orderly standing near, and relapsed into his native language, all spitting sounds and growls.

The orderly saluted stiffly and translated. “He says it was for you, loping the ridge. For you kept. No.

Colonel’s orders; he was telling you. I tell you! Scrape that shit off the rocks!” He gestured towards the enemy soldiers above their heads. “Now what you do here? What are you? Where you go?”

One of the antinomials was a wide man with a shaved head and a flat, white, masklike face. He wore sunglasses, and his skin after weeks in the sun seemed to be getting paler as the others burned and tanned, bleaching like shell or bone. He turned his face away and then he smiled, humming an inquisitive little tune. He didn’t understand.

The southerners glared at him, the captain spitting and cursing while his orderly clicked his heels and translated. “You bastard, please!” he said. “Cowardly shithead! Cannibal! Why not ridge? You, on ridge.” He saluted.

“He’s saying,” said the colonel’s adjutant, “that you were supposed to follow the hills. He says those were your orders. He says if you had followed orders, we wouldn’t be stuck here in the valley with those fellows above us.”

“Supposed,” said the antinomial thoughtfully. “Supposed to do.” He frowned, and the tune he was humming changed.

The colonel smiled. “Suggested, my brother.” He sang a little song in his harsh voice.

“Hot there,” said the antinomial, putting words together with difficulty. And he coated them with humming, which made them hard to understand. “Too hot up there. No water. I come along the river.”

“Besides,” said the adjutant, dapper and smooth. “I don’t understand the fuss. We’re not stuck here. We can ride right through. Argon’s at the monastery.”

The southern captain started to spit and growl. His orderly translated, saluting. “Fool! You are fool! Sir!”

He gestured towards the bridge above their heads, and the helmets of the enemy soldiers. “They kill us here. Too . . .” He put his palms an inch apart, indicating “narrow.”

The antinomial looked at him with scorn. “Slaves are afraid of death,” he said. “Only slaves.” He got to his feet and started walking towards the road, but the colonel laughed and sang a song that made him turn around.

“Maybe you should let him go through, sir,” said the adjutant. “We need a scout.”