Maps showed roads across this endless steppe. They were at best dirt tracks. At this time of year, with snow deep on the ground, whether you were on the road was often a matter of opinion. The truck carrying Fujita and his squad rumbled past another one that had overturned. Maybe the driver had tried to corner too fast. Maybe he'd run into a ditch. He would end up in trouble any which way.

Much the biggest and most modern building in Hailar was the railway depot. A few natives in sheepskin coats stared at the trucks that could go almost anywhere far faster than any horse ever foaled. What did they think, watching the modern world roll through their ancient town? Actually, what they thought hardly mattered. The modern world was here whether they liked it or not.

A train that would go east stopped at the depot-stopped a little past it, in fact, because snow and ice on the rails meant the brakes didn't grab as well as they would have most of the time. Some soldiers were already aboard, and had come this far west before starting east again. Fujita's unit left the cars packed as tight as tinned fish-the only way the Army seemed to know how to travel.

Well, the sergeant thought, we won't be cold any more. Each car had its own stove. And so many men stuffed the cars, the stoves might prove afterthoughts. Body heat would be plenty to keep everybody warm.

Slowly, the train started to roll again. Fujita still didn't know where he was going. He shrugged-being a sergeant, he had room to do that. What difference did it make. He'd get there whether he knew or not. Then he'd do…whatever needed doing.

Chaim Weinberg shivered in a trench. The war on the Ebro seemed to have frozen solid. The whole Spanish Civil War seemed to have frozen solid. The Soviet Union wasn't sending aid to the Republic any more-Stalin was using the planes and tanks and guns himself. After the broader war broke out, a surge of aid had come from France and England, who'd ignored the Republican cause before. Now, with the Low Countries conquered and France herself invaded, they were ignoring it again.

The only good news was, Hitler and Mussolini were also ignoring General Sanjurjo's Spanish Fascists. With the Royal Navy and the French actually paying attention to the Mediterranean, the reactionaries would have had a devil of a time getting anything through anyway.

And so both sides were running on momentum, using-and using up-what they'd had before the great powers forgot about them. Before long, one side or the other would run out. The side that still had something would win-unless seeing their proxies in trouble prodded rich sponsors into action again.

Meanwhile…Meanwhile, Weinberg lit a cigarette. It was a Gitane, part of the bounty that had flowed in from France. It was a damn sight better than native Spanish smokes, which tasted of straw and lots of other things besides tobacco. Chaim still longed for an American cigarette. With a Lucky or a Chesterfield, you didn't feel as if you'd swallowed a welder's torch every time you inhaled.

He smoked the Gitane down to a tiny butt, then stuck that in a leather pouch he wore on his belt next to his wound dressing. He'd got used to saving dog-ends when tobacco was even scarcer than it was now. Wrap half a dozen of them and you had yourself another cigarette. He would never have stooped so low in the States, but things were different here.

Nobody'd been trying to kill him in the States, for instance. He'd made a crude periscope: two hand-sized chunks from a broken mirror mounted on opposite ends of a stick. (Seven years of bad luck? Getting shot was bad luck. He hadn't broken this mirror himself, but he would have without even blinking if he'd needed to.) He stuck it up over the lip of the trench to see what the enemy was up to.

Smoke rose here and there from the Fascists' trenches. Nobody was shelling them; the artillery on both sides stayed quiet. But cold struck impartially. There were fires in the International Brigades' position, too.

A khaki-clad Fascist soldier came head and shoulders out of his hole for a moment. He wasn't a sniper-he was dumping a honey bucket. One good thing about the cold: no flies right now. The Spaniard ducked down again before a Republican sharpshooter could fire at him.

Chaim didn't think it was sporting to shoot a man who was easing himself or getting rid of slops. But bastards on both sides had rifles with telescopic sights. They thought they weren't earning their pay if they didn't use them. And so, every now and then, men got shot at their most defenseless.

Not far away, Mike Carroll was cleaning his rifle. The French had used Lebels by the million in the last war. They'd been old-fashioned then, and they were obsolete now…which didn't mean you still couldn't kill people with them. How many different kinds of rifles, how many different kinds of ammunition, did the Republicans use? Too goddamn many-Chaim knew that.

Carroll paused. "Spot anything interesting?" he asked.

"Sure," Weinberg answered. "Naked blond broad taking a sun-bath out in front of the Fascist line. Big tits, pretty face-what more could you want? Natural blonde, too. Either that or she peroxides her bush."

The other American started to put down the rifle and grab for the periscope. Just too late, he caught himself. "Fuck you, you lying asshole," he said. "You had me going."

"Yeah, well, she's a hell of a lot better than what's really there." Weinberg told him about the guy with the bucket.

"Whole war's full of shit," Carroll said. "Sanjurjo's guys, you…Everything. And nobody gives a shit about us."

"You just notice?" Chaim lit another Gitane. Mike Carroll looked like a puppy hoping for table scraps. Chaim handed him the pack. He took one with a nod of thanks and lit it with a Zippo. He fueled the lighter with kerosene-regular lighter fluid was impossible to come by on either side of the line here.

"Maybe we ought to go up to France," Carroll said moodily. "More Fascists-worse Fascists-to kill there."

"Good luck," Chaim said. Mike winced. He had about as much chance of getting up to France without authorization as he did of sprouting wings and flying there. Political officers behind the International Brigades' lines checked everybody's papers. If you didn't have orders to pull you out, you were in trouble.

Even if you got past the commissars, plenty of other Republican officials in towns and on trains would want to know where you were going and who said you were supposed to go there. If they didn't like your answers, they would either shoot you or chuck you into a Spanish jail. Not many things were worse than front-line combat, but a Spanish jail was one of them.

"All of a sudden, the States don't look so bad, you know?" Mike said with a grin that was supposed to mean he was half kidding, anyway.

"Maybe they'll let you repatriate," Chaim said. Sometimes the Internationals wanted nothing but willing fighters. Sometimes they figured you had to be willing or you wouldn't have volunteered. It all depended on the officer, on how the fighting was going-sometimes, people said, on the phases of the moon.

"Ah, fuck it," Mike said: the usual comment of every line soldier in every war since the beginning of time. "I'm just blowing off steam, you know what I mean?"

"Sure," Chaim said. And he did, too. It wasn't as if he'd never pissed and moaned since he got here. "All I wish is, people would remember us. We were a big deal till the rest of Europe blew up. Who gives a shit about Spain now? Stalin's forgotten all about it." That was a dangerous thing to say; the International Brigades toed Moscow's line. But a love of truth was part of what had led Chaim to Spain. He wouldn't give it up even here.

Mike Carroll had a tobacco pouch on his belt, too. He stuck the remains of the Gitane into it. "Well, so has Hitler," he answered. "That's not so bad."