It quickly became apparent he would run out of food before Willis ran out of words. “I was a wandering man like you, once,” Willis began. “You remember all that business in South Hill, five years ago? Well, you must have heard about the Wilton garrison being burned down, at least.”

Garland had heard about it, all right. That had happened in his first months as a deserter, the first summer that Cadmar had been general. Garland hadn’t yet learned to trust his ability to disguise himself as Shaftali. People’s anger at the Sainnites had been running high that year, and with every reported atrocity in South Hill, it had risen even higher. Never mind that the Sainnites had taken as bad a beating as they had given–their garrison practically burned to the ground, and who knows how many seasoned soldiers killed or disabled. Of course Garland could not ask someone to explain to him why, if the violence in Shaftal was such a terrible thing, no one became outraged at, or even mentioned, those dead Sainnites.

Willis had been telling him about his own involvement in the events in South Hill, and Garland didn’t want to care or pay attention. Now Willis was saying, “And that was cowardice. That commander was always holding back. And Mabin, backing him up, that was cowardice too.”

Garland looked up from his nearly empty plate, shocked. Even among the Sainnites, Councilor Mabin was a legend. Someone else at the table said swiftly, “Oh, Mabin is a great leader, no doubt about that! But perhaps she has lost her vision. Thousands of fighters she’s got at her command–maybe not as many as there are soldiers, but close enough–and yet she won’t let them take offensive action. A few decisive blows is all that would be required!”

“She doesn’t believe enough,” someone else murmured. “She doesn’t believe in Shaftal enough.”

These other voices fell immediately silent as Willis took up his tale again. “So I left South Hill. And for a good long while, I confess I was giving in to despair. I don’t know how long you’ve been without a family, but for me a year was nearly enough to kill me. There I was, half frozen in an inn like this one, begging someone to spare me a penny so I could eat a bit of bread. Well, you know, it leaves a person thinking that he really is of no account. And that was when I heard the story of the Lost G’deon.”

Garland looked around himself. Everyone at the table appeared transported by devotion. After all this talk of courage and belief, Garland belatedly realized what these people had actually meant. They believed–he’d never seen anything like it before–and what they believed in was a story. Garland had heard the story, of course, but when he had heard it the first time–that same winter, apparently, that Willis had first heard it–he had given it no importance. He had thought that this wild tale of a big woman piercing Mabin in the heart with a steel spike was just another legend about the Councilor’s astonishing ability to survive. But eventually Garland had figured out why Shaftali people were enthralled by this story, a reason that several people at the table were now repeating in an eager chorus: “Only the G’deon can spike someone’s heart and leave the heart still beating. Only the G’deon can do it, without a trial, to put that person’s life in the G’deon’s hands.”

“And a question came to me,” said Willis, his voice more and more taking on the sonority of speechmaking rather than conversation. “I thought to myself, if there’s a G’deon in Shaftal, then why does she not act to free us of the Sainnite curse? Why does she spike the heart of our brave, much admired general? And then she came to me, the Lost G’deon herself.”

“You’ve met her?” Garland cried.

“A vision,” impatiently muttered the woman at his left. Apparently, this was not the proper time to interrupt Willis.

“She came to me,” continued Willis. “And she said, ‘Don’t you see, you fool? Mabin has failed Shaftal. And so have you,’ she said to me. ‘But I’m giving you one last chance. Act decisively! Rid Shaftal at last of the Sainnites that befoul the blessed land! Eliminate the Sainnites, and I will come at last. Do not make me wait!’” Willis’s voice had risen to a shout; now he lowered it to a murmur. “That’s what she said. And I was pierced by her words, I say, pierced to the heart. And from that day on I’ve lived only to do the G’deon’s will.”

He turned to Garland, no doubt to check the effect of his words before he delivered the final persuasive speech that probably had convinced each of his devoted followers to join the company.

Garland stood up. “Good luck to you!” He fled, even leaving his dirty plate behind. He ran full tilt up the stairs to his bedroom in the chilly attic, and bolted the door for the first time since he had become a resident. They could easily kick down the door, of course, but the innkeeper family would surely not stand for that. Surely not!

His sweat was ice cold. He was shaking so he could hardly stand, but was too terrified to sit. His ears ached with listening, but he heard only the sound of the roof creaking the way it always did on a windy night.

After some hours he finally convinced himself to get into bed, and, some hours after that, to fall asleep. His dreams were full of bloodshed. He ran and ran, but wherever he fled, his mother’s people and his father’s people were in battle with each other. And then Shaftali and Sainnite both turned on him crying out, “No one of your heritage will ever cook for us!” “So what?” he replied, absurdly. “At the rate you’re killing each other, there soon will be no one to cook for!”

He awoke late, with an innkeeper pounding on his door, and by the time he stumbled downstairs, Willis and his people were long gone.

Chapter Three

A soldier’s life swings between boredom and terror. Even though Lieutenant‑General Clement had endured thirty‑five dull winters in Shaftal, she still preferred the boredom. But oh, she yearned for sunshine–though not for the renewal of conflict that would accompany better weather.

Surely I am old enoughto know that there’s no point in wanting anything,she thought.

As she stepped into the spare quarters that housed the General of Sainnites in Shaftal, she could hear the hollow clangor of the midday bell. Cadmar, though he had even less to do at this time of year than Clement did, was just getting around to shaving. Peering into a tiny round mirror, he deftly turned his face this way and that to follow the track of the razor. His chin glimmered with a white frost of stubble where he had not yet shaved, and he had to stretch his sagging skin for the razor. “Well?” he said, without looking at Clement.

“Nothing to report, General.”

He grunted and gestured with his razor in the direction of his table, on which sat a dented, soot‑smeared tea kettle. Clement crossed the chilly room to the even chillier bay window, where one shutter hung open to let in what passed for light. Soldiers desperate for something to do had recently refinished Cadmar’s battered table, and its surface now shone like ice and was just about as slick. As Clement poured herself tea, the heavy pottery mug nearly slid over the table’s edge. The tea did not steam as it poured, and no warmth seeped from the mug into Clement’s cold‑numbed hand.

“Do you want some tea, Gilly?” she asked the general’s lucky man, who sat like a blasted crow on his stool.

“Not if the tea is cold,” Gilly said, without looking up. He turned a page, squinting in the dim light.

“You need spectacles.”

Cadmar, still peering into his tiny mirror, uttered a snort. “Spectacles wouldn’t help his appearance any!”

“They couldn’t hurt,” said Gilly absently.

Gilly was a hideous man. His face and form might have been put through the wringers in a laundry and then frozen in that twisted, crumpled state. His face was crooked, his eyes uneven, his ears out of level, his shoulders hunched in a position of permanent furtive‑ness, his spine so contorted it seemed amazing he could stand, even with the support of a sturdy cane. However, Clement was oblivious to Gilly’s ugliness except when Cadmar amused himself by pointing it out. Cadmar had plucked the ugly beggar boy out of a Hanishport gutter thirty years ago, but it was Clement who, by defending him from the soldiers’ abuse, had won his lifelong friendship.