She won. Not one in a hundred Rebels survived, and most of those deserted early.

The Howler spread disease with the globes he dropped. It reached its critical stage soon after the Lady and I departed, chasing Soulcatcher. The Rebel wizards could not stem it on any significant scale. Thus the windrows of dead.

Even so, many of the enemy proved partially or wholly immune, and not all of ours escaped infection. The Rebel took the top tier.

The plan, at that point, called for the Black Company to counterattack. The Limper, rehabilitated, was to assist them with men from inside the Tower. But the Lady was not there to order the charge. In her absence Whisper ordered a withdrawal into the Tower.

The interior of the Tower was a series of death traps manned not only by the Howlers easterners but by wounded taken inside previous nights and healed by the Ladys powers.

It ended long before I could thread the maze to my comrades. When I did cross their trail, I learned I was hours behind. They had departed the Tower under orders to establish a picket line where the stockade had stood.

I reached ground level well after nightfall. I was tired. I just wanted peace, quiet, maybe a garrison post in a small town.... My mind wasnt working well. I had things to do, arguments to argue, a battle to fight with the Captain. He would not want to betray another commission. There are the physically dead and the morally dead. My comrades were among the latter. They would not understand me. Elmo, Raven, Candy, One-Eye, Goblin, they would act like I was talking a foreign language. And yet, could! condemn them? They were my brothers, my friends, my family, and acted moral within that context. The weight of it fell on me. I had to convince them there was a larger obligation.

I crunched through dried blood, stepping over corpses, leading horses I had liberated from the Ladys stables. Why I took several is a mystery, except for a vague notion that they might come in handy. The one that Feather had ridden I took because I did not feel like walking.

I paused to stare at the comet. It seemed drained. Not this time, eh? I asked it. Cant say Im totally dismayed. Fake chuckle. How could I be? Had this been the Rebels hour, as he had believed, I would be dead.

I stopped twice more before reaching camp. The first time I heard soft cursing as I descended the remnants of the lower retaining wall. I approached the sound, found One-Eye seated beneath the crucified forvalaka. He talked steadily in a soft voice, in a language I did not understand. So intent was he that he did not hear me come. Neither did he hear me go a minute later, thoroughly disgusted.

One-Eye was collecting for the death of his brother Tom-Tom. Knowing him, he would stretch it out for days.