Shots are resounding from the abutment, and all along the treeline around me.

*

The ground is littered with bodies. The vomiters stood or sat impassively watching the others die. With an impatient upward snap of his hand, Makemin orders me to rise and join him, then stops when he sees the dead narrator at my feet.

“Who shot this man?”

Some of my patrol stand together, nearby, eyes on the ground. He struts up to them and begins staring in their faces, one at a time. They shrink under his look. Abruptly he turns back to me.

“I will find the culprit later—or,” he momentarily twists back from the waist looking at them while walking toward me, “perhaps you will all be responsible?”

Now he marches up to me.

“And you—” he says almost with disgust, “I suppose you were too busy embracing your comrade to interrogate him?”

Keeping my face expressionless, I tersely repeat the narrator’s story. Why not? Makemin’s face remains tensed but he is soaking it up, every word. When I’m done, he is silent and staring for a moment, but I have told my story in such a way as to answer any questions he might have before he asks them.

“Good,” he says finally, and it isn’t a compliment. He likely mistrusts me. If he doesn’t, so much the worse for him. He should mistrust me. I intend to kill him. It feels false when I write the words. Marching back toward the abutment, he cries out to my patrol.

“Strip the body and return to the road! Get any papers and bring them to the interpreter! Interpreter is with me!” He makes a backhanded gesture over his left shoulder to show I should follow him.

We return to the abutment, where the other soldiers mill. Those nearest us snap to when Makemin bursts out of the woods. He picks out four men with his finger, saying “you” each time. Then he turns and surveys the clearing.

“Bring him here.”

He points to a man sitting on a stone a few dozen yards away. The soldiers rattle over to him at once, take him by the arms, and bring him.

The man is naked, scrawny but not as wasted as some of the others. Tufts of black curly hair still grow from the sides of his head, and his discolored lips and chin are partially concealed by a threadbare beard. The front of his body is marked by an inky vomit stain from chin to groin. He walks between the soldiers, who are meaty, enormous in contrast, without resisting, head cocked a bit to one side. They bring him to a stop a few feet from us. He swallows loudly, and a brown streak escapes one corner of his mouth, stops in his beard.