The rain stopped, began again in a sudden, violent torrent, then died away to a drizzle once more. The sun was invisible behind the clouds, the world illuminated by a sourceless gray light that left everything flat and without shadows. In her idle moments, Winter wondered if she’d died and gone to her own personal hell. But I’m not alone. Are there hells for entire regiments? Those moments were few and far between, though, and most of the time she had eyes only for the ground directly in front of her. Each tiny puddle might be an inch deep, or an ankle-breaking hole; each stretch of mud could slide underneath her or sink her to the knee.

She chewed a hardtack cracker as she went, without enthusiasm. The men and women around her slogged on, not singing, not even speaking, with no energy to spare for anything except the next breath and the next step. Sometimes they tripped and fell, or flopped to the ground and lay gasping in the mud. More often, when they couldn’t bear any more, they simply vanished, slipping to the side of the road and away into the underbrush.

It grew darker so gradually that Winter didn’t notice the sun had set until she held up a hand and realized she could only see the outline of her fingers against the sky. Full dark came not long afterward, and torches blazed along the column, making it feel even more like some sort of demonic procession. The entrance to the campsite was marked by a blazing bonfire, which ought to have been ominous, but after so long in the cold and wet, Winter wanted nothing more than to lie down amid the flames and let them roast her dry.

The scouts were waiting there, and they had food. Chickens were cooking over smaller fires, fat dripping and sizzling, and the delicious aroma of roasting pork served as a beacon. Just the smell revived Winter somewhat, and she sat down beside one of the fires, among the other soldiers.

“—didn’t want to sell,” one of the scouts was saying, a hard-faced woman with a Docks accent. “Said our money wasn’t worth anything, and he wouldn’t sell to the enemy anyway. So I told him, ‘You see these muskets? They mean we’re taking your goddamned chickens. Your only option is whether you get anything in return.’ He decided he wanted the money after all.”

“Fucking Hamvelts,” someone else said. “If this is what their country is like, no wonder they’re such ugly bastards.”

“I don’t know,” someone else said. “Place we stopped, there was a daughter who gave me quite a looking-over, and I can’t say I would’ve minded a turn.”