Thrushchurl takes my shoulder again with a glistening hand, and I go dumbly with him. The carbine I carry suddenly seems disgusting to me, like a runny rotten leg, and I throw it down. Out of the rain glare Makemin steps toward us, solid, compact, strong high steps, and I watch him come into my heart like a worm flopping over. His face is hard and severe as a block of wood. I am turning into nothing, just water. I know I will have to cling to him just like all the rest of them do, and even clinging to him will take all the strength I have.

“Good, you still live,” he says flatly. “You will march with me. Your guidance is essential in this rain.”

We go on. Behind us, there is a field littered with our own soldiers.

*

The carts bog down and force us to stop again and again. As we scrape through the mud, we come quickly to the flat, uniform surface beneath that it covers. I peer ahead, where another line of trees has gathered like a barrier, and above them a vast looming presence of something I can’t quite make out, like the shadow of a mountain. Looking back down the column from the front, I see the same behind us.

Regular shouts through hard sound of the rain. One of the carts lurches forward as its wheels come free. An object jostles out from the back and drops at the feet of the Captain, who twists like a top, mud belches up in a cloud around him with a muffled splat.

Muck plops back down to earth.

I rush to him, my heart pounding. The grenade blew the Captain wide open.

*

When I was young I read a story about a madman who drowned two people, crept up behind one while he was at his shaving basin and thrust his head down into the water—for months I felt him behind me, I hated to get near to water. Now I feel him again. It feels as though it had already happened.

I’m walking with Silichieh.

“What do you think?” he asks me abruptly, tossing his head in Makemin’s direction. As usual his voice doesn’t go up at the end of his question.

“He’s insane.”

Walking.

“I think you are right.”

Walking.

“I know it ...” he says gravely, his eyes downcast. “Because I catch it too, every time they shoot. It’s kept me alive I guess so far ... I’m maybe afraid to think how much farther though.”

“Who’s alive? I don’t feel alive.”

“Don’t be silly. You’re more alive than they are,” he says evenly.

*