The sun shines there more strongly, on the water and on the town, so that I can see some smoke trickling against the shadows. But here even the light is thin. I report back to Makemin.

“Both paths will take us to the city.”

“Which is shorter?”

“I’d say they’re both about as short. But the lower one looks slide prone to me.”

“Which will put us nearer the enemy?”

“The lower.”

“Then we take it; you will go with the scouts and alert us about slides.”

“It’s more time if we have to double back.”

“Yes but we’re not mountain goats like you. The men need to get down soon or they won’t be in condition to fight.”

I am paired with two of the more reliable scouts, a terse, dark-skinned man from the asylum, and a brisk woman from the Yeseg militia. We go ahead, picking the path among the rocks.

By nightfall we traverse the short pass that brings us out onto the slopes above Vscriathjadze’s paltry few lamps. We begin our descent, using a switchback path among boulders. I perk up hearing an unfamiliar sound, like insects, heavy beetles flying by on thick wings that wouldn’t be up here it’s not a kind of place for beetles—a far away pinging noise like tiny metal hammers—Makemin’s voice booms out—

“Under cover!”

—as a bank of shot rolls in over us in the dark. I throw myself on the ground and drag sideways toward the rocks—peering up eyes against brows I see the fleeting shapes of the enemy soldiers sweeping pendulously from side to side. They form a whirlpool around us; Makemin is doing something, calling his men together. A sweet-heavy fatigue is pouring down on me like a stream of sand weighting me to the ground. With effort I get myself under cover and let my head droop against the stone. In among the noise, now compounded by the sound of Makemin’s thunderbolt and the rifles of his sharpshooters, comes a concatenation of raving and sobbing, mournful and mirthless laughter from the asylum soldiers. They are floundering in helpless panic. The noise grates intolerably on me. I try to rouse myself, but even from here I can see the enemy circling, one rank flashing between me and another, space opening and closing between them as they dance past, guns cracking without a single flash, nothing to make anything more than silhouettes out of them.

... A voice repeats the same phrase, moving from place to place. After a while I make out the “All clear” and so out I come, numbly scanning the ground for bodies. I walk neither quickly nor slowly to a crumpled shape—dead. Another, also dead. There are at least a dozen. Who knows how many, if any, lie dead up there and around us, where the enemy were. Our number is patently less again.