Later they had seen the colonel stand up, surrounded by a circle of his family, his steel fist raised to the sky, and they had heard some of his talking, too, a low toneless whisper. It had no words or voice. Yet still it wasn’t buried among all the other sounds, the shouts, barking laughter, people ringing saucepans like gongs, people making music. It rose above those noises like a kind of vapor, like the distilled essence of all the sounds in that disordered camp. It seemed to distill what all of them evoked in different ways, a yearning for something out of reach, and the defiant joy that comes from never settling for anything less.

“I have to get back as quickly as I can,” Thanakar was saying. “I’m the only one who can redo hands.

Bloodstar gets to the wrist all right, but the fingers turn out webbed, like a fin or a flipper. Not that we have the materials to do a careful job. Still, they must be wondering where I am.”

“We’ll go back in the morning,” said the commissar, half-listening. “We’ll all go back. The guns are impregnable from this side.”

The bonfires had burned low, and before long everything was dark. But tracer shells still drew occasional parabolas across the sky. They fell short, noiselessly, and flared up.

The two men heard footsteps coming up the slope, and Aspe stepped into their lamplight, carrying a bottle. He was smiling and flushed. Exultation freed his movement and the gestures of his hands, and made him seem bigger even than he was. The air was cool, yet his face shone with sweat, the seams and scars standing out in silver lines along his cheeks.

“I have come to see if you are comfortable,” he said. “I’m going back.” He paused when they said nothing, then continued. “I should have brought the horse. I was a fool. I have to walk, but I feel like walking. I have them,” he exulted. “I have them in my hand.”

“What do you mean?” asked Thanakar.

“Tonight they swore to follow me. Me. They swore to obey me for one month. It’s not long enough, for a long journey. It doesn’t matter. What is a month to them? A word. I will make it long enough.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, of course not. Why should you? When have you ever understood anything of importance?” Aspe sprawled down heavily on the stones in front of the tent, and his bottle made a chink as he put it down.

He took out his knife and made a line in the dirt. “This is the valley,” he said. “North and south. The guns are at this end,” he said, touching the north end with his knife. “The guns and the monastery. We are here,” he continued, bisecting the line with a small mark. “Just north of this notch, facing the guns. The army is here, where we left them on the other side. Tonight I go back to join them, and tomorrow morning we must circle round, out of the valley onto the ridge. I know the way.” A tracer lit the sky, and lit the valley from the monastery to the notch, and showed the escarpment on either side. “I will meet King Argon there.” Aspe pointed with his knife to the top of the ridge northeast of where they sat. “I know the place. But I must keep men here. Otherwise the King will try and move his guns. But when he shoots those flares, he thinks he sees my army. My brothers and sisters will stay here all day. They have given their word.”