“You’re…alive!” Ebrooks gasped out the word. He reached me, seized me in a sweaty hug, and then leaned on me, panting. Kesey had given it up. He stood, bent over, his hands on his knees, his mostly bald pate bobbing as he tried to catch his breath. After a time for breathing, Ebrooks panted, “When you didn’t come back by nightfall, we waited for you. But when night shut down and fear was flowing out of the forest thick as tar, we went back to town and told the colonel you were dead. God’s breath, Nevare, how did you survive? Are you sane still? No one knows how you can stand to live this close to the forest. And now you’ve gone and spent a night in there. Are you crazy, man?”

“Clove and I got turned around in there. We had to wait for dawn to find the way home. That’s all. It wasn’t pleasant, but I’m not hurt at all.” The lies were nearly effortless. “Why did you tell the colonel I was dead?”

Kesey had staggered up to us by then. “Well. That seems to happen a lot to fellows that have this job.”

“And the colonel was really upset to get the news. He said, ‘That’s all I need, with this review coming up! Another dead cemetery sentry.’ And he tried to tell us we’d have to take on guarding the graves. But we said, ‘No, sir, thanky kindly.’”

“I didn’t think you could just say, ‘No, thank you’ to an order.”

Kesey and Ebrooks exchanged a look. Ebrooks spoke. “It’s been a long time since the colonel issued a real order. I expect he’s afraid of what he’d have to do if he did and no one obeyed it. Easier not to test his authority than find out it’s gone.”

Kesey shook his head sadly. “It’s a shame, really. That man used to be able to blow fire when he wanted things done. But since we come here, well. He ain’t the officer he used to be, that’s all.”

“And we ain’t the regiment we used to be, either,” Ebrooks pointed out sourly. “It’s one and the same. We’ve lost so many men to desertion and suicide or just plain bad ends that the colonel worries all the time about his numbers. They keep sending us scads of prisoners to work the road. Well, pretty soon they’re going to have more prisoners than their guards can manage, even with soldiers to back them up. And if the prisoners don’t turn on us and burn the place down, then the Specks will get us. Gettys is a bad post. I wish they’d send their high mucky-mucks to inspect us and have done. They’ll turn us out of Gettys, probably send us somewhere worse. Though it’s hard to imagine anywhere worse than this.”

“Well. I suppose I’d best get cleaned up and go let the colonel know that I’m not quite as dead as he’d heard.”

“That would be good,” Ebrooks agreed. I think he was happy that I’d offered to do it myself, rather than suggesting that he should have to correct his own mistake. They went back to their groundskeeping while I went to my cabin. I was ravenously hungry, and I emptied most of my small larder. By the time I’d washed, shaved, and changed my clothing, it was late afternoon. I saddled Clove and headed for town.

Several surprises awaited me there. The first was that a contingent of Specks had set up a scattered tent village on the outskirts of Gettys. I would later learn that they always came by night to pitch their tents for the trading season. When it was over, they vanished just as swiftly. Within the tents’ shelter, both male and female Specks were strangely but decently clad in a mix of Gernian garments and Speck versions of Gernian garments. Those I saw outside the tents’ shade were veiled in head-to-toe shrouds woven from bark cloth supplemented with fresh leaves and flowers. The garments looked like fishnets that had been dragged through a garden but protected their sensitive skins from sunlight.

Their trade goods were furs, carvings, smoked venison, bark, and leaves for brewing what the Gettys folk called “forest tea,” as well as mushrooms, berries, and a prickly fruit I didn’t recognize. I looked, but did not see any of the fruits or mushrooms that Olikea had brought to me. Either Olikea and her father were not among them or they were veiled and unrecognizable. I thought it intriguing that despite our fear of the Speck the trading was brisk, with local merchants competing with traders from the west to buy the best furs.

The Speck trade gave an oddly festive air to Gettys. It was the liveliest I had ever seen that mournful place. The Specks were acquiring fabric and felted hats, mostly for novelty, I suspected. Glass beads and brightly painted tin toys were almost as popular as sugar, candy, and sweet cakes. One wily Old Thares trader was exchanging casks of honey for the best furs

When I walked into the colonel’s offices, his sergeant jumped as if he had seen a ghost. He didn’t make me wait to speak to the colonel, but ushered me right in. When he left, I noticed that the door didn’t shut firmly, and I suspected he listened outside it. The colonel was extremely pleased to find me still alive. He actually offered to shake my hand before giving me a rambling lecture on not straying too far from my post and letting my superiors know when I thought I might be gone overnight. He claimed that he had just been putting together names for a search party to send after me, though I saw no signs of such activity. He was singularly uninterested in what had befallen me in the forest. Instead he actually patted me on the shoulder and gave me a silver piece from his own pocket, telling me that he was sure I could use a drink after my “jittery night.”

I thanked him for it as humbly as I could manage. Sometimes his eccentric kindness toward me grated on my pride. He dismissed me, but spoke again when my hand was on the doorknob. “And do something about that uniform, soldier. You know we have a contingent of nobility and officers coming to inspect us at the end of this month. Since we arrived here, I’ve never had a man in my command look less like a soldier than you do.”

“Sir. I’m sorry, sir. I’ve asked several times for a better uniform. Supply always tells me that they have nothing in my size.”

“Then you may tell them I said they should issue you something that you could have altered. You should at least be somewhat presentable, though it would probably be best if you avoided town while the inspection was in progress. I don’t intend to have our inspection team visit the cemetery, but the good god alone knows what they’ll take it into their own heads to do.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied grimly. I tried to keep my face expressionless. I knew that he only spoke the truth, but it did not make it any easier to accept. I touched the doorknob.

“Trooper. Regardless of what others may think of me, I know what goes on in my command. Your efforts with the cemetery have not gone unnoticed. I’ll add that although you look the least like a soldier of all my troops, in your efforts to protect our honored dead, you’ve behaved more like a soldier than most men in my command do at present. Now go have that drink.”

His words smoothed my rumpled feathers a bit and I left in a better state of mind. The silver piece was a generous bonus, and I decided I’d take his advice and have a beer before I left town.

Gettys was a lively place today. In addition to the Specks coming to town, several western traders had arrived with merchandise to sell to the soldiery and trade goods to barter with the Specks. The streets were busy, so when I encountered Spink and he frantically signed to me that I should meet him in the alley behind the blacksmith’s shop, I was not much worried that we’d be noticed together. Nonetheless, even in that noisy area, I resolved to maintain appearances.

“Nevare! I heard you’d gone missing. Thank the good god that you’re alive and unharmed!”

That was how Spink greeted me, but as he moved to embrace me, I reminded him of our varying statuses with a brusque, “Thank you for your concern, Lieutenant Spinrek. I assure you, it was not much of an adventure, but mostly my own foolishness that delayed me.” I hoped the look on my face conveyed that there was far more to tell, but that it would have to wait. Behind us, the smithy’s harsh clanging of metal on metal screened our words.