“Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll make a point of it.”

“You do that, trooper. You do. You’re one of us now.”

His words warmed me, and he actually stepped around his desk to shake my hand. Once that was settled, he sent me off to a supply sergeant. A note from the colonel’s desk sergeant informed him of my “cemetery guard” assignment. He laughed at me, and then diffidently gave me a kit that included no uniform parts that fit me save a hat. “Best I can do for you,” he dismissed that issue. The long gun they gave me had seen hard use and little care. The outside of the barrel was badly pitted, and the stock had cracked, but been repaired with brass tacks and string wound tightly around it and coated with varnish. The butt plate was missing entirely, and the saddle scabbard needed restitching. “Probably wouldn’t be much good to you anyway,” the supply sergeant answered my scowl. “Out where you are, if the Speck ever got serious, one rifle wouldn’t hold them back. But chances are you’ll never see one doing any mischief to take a shot at him. Don’t worry about it, sojer.” I accepted my “weapon” with a frown, resolving to inspect it thoroughly for myself before firing it.

“You riding out to the end of the road today?” he asked me as I turned to go.

I turned back to him. “Sergeant Gafney in Colonel Haren’s office did recommend it to me.”

He nodded sagely. “He’s wise to do so. ’Twill give you a much better grasp of what we’re all about. Good luck, trooper.”

I had not been assigned to any patrol. I had no corporal, no sergeant, no officer at all to report to. Like the scouts I had once disdained, I was loosely connected to the regiment, given a task, and would be, I suspected, ignored unless I failed. When I went to the infirmary to return Hitch’s saddlebags, he gave me a dazed smile when I outlined my enlistment. The laudanum the doctor had given him for his pain had made him very genial. “So you’re off to the cemetery, are you, then? Better and better, Never. You’ll have one of the more lively commands around here. It’s the best I could have hoped for, for you and for me. Rest in peace!” He lolled his head on his pillow. “Laudanum. Ever had laudanum, Nevare? It makes getting hurt worth it.” He sighed, and his eyes started to sag shut. Then they abruptly flew open, and he said with sudden command, “Before you go to the cemetery, ride to the end of the King’s Road. It won’t take you more than a couple of hours. Do it today. Very educational.” He flung himself back onto his pillows as if he had told me something of great import. And on such a note, I left him there, glassy-eyed and slack-jawed.

I made a final stop at a general store to buy food with some of my hoarded coins. I was not sure how regular the pay would be in such a remote location. I’d been told that I could ride into town each day to eat in the mess, but thought it would be nice if I had food available at my lodgings at the cemetery. No one escorted me to my new assignment, or even gave me a list of expectations. The sentry at the east gate of the fort pointed out my road to me. “Just ride that way, toward the mountains. You’ll see it.” And that was that.

The cemetery was more than an hour’s ride from the gates of Gettys. The road got progressively worse the further Clove and I went, while houses and other signs of settlement dwindled almost immediately. Soon I had left all signs of successful settlement behind. Occasionally I would see an overgrown cart track that led to an aborted farm, but no one lived out this way. It seemed very peculiar to me that every single farm east of the fort had been abandoned. As the road became steeper, winding ever upward into the foothills, all attempts at settlement vanished. The forest drew closer to both sides of the road, dark and menacing. I caught myself riding as warily as if I knew I were being stalked, but saw no one.

I came finally to a rough sign by the side of the road. “GETTYS CEMETERY,” it read, and an arrow pointed to a narrower road that led up a bare hill. The hill had been logged off; in some places, stumps still dotted it, while beyond the cleared zone, the ranked trees of a deciduous forest stood in a straight row where the logging had stopped. I started to turn Clove’s head toward it, and then recalled Hitch’s words. “Ride to the end of the King’s Road.” I glanced back at the sun, wondered how far it was, and then decided that I’d find out. If I didn’t come to it by nightfall, I’d simply turn back.

I soon began to doubt that decision. The road led ever uphill. It was poorly engineered; there were washouts down the center of it, and in one place a stream had eaten a gully across it. It had been repaired badly with coarse stone. I wondered at how shoddily the King’s Road was being built. Was not this the king’s great work, the project on which he pinned so many hopes? What ailed the men overseeing its construction? I could understand that common criminals were not the best workers for such a project, but surely competent engineers oversaw them?

The road narrowed, and the forest grew ever closer. Twice I startled at motion, just at the corner of my peripheral vision. In each case, I turned my head and saw nothing. Later, I caught a glimpse of the largest croaker bird I had ever seen. It perched in a tree that was half dead, on a bare branch that almost overhung the road. I marveled at the size of it, for it looked like a black-and-white man perched up there. Then, just as I rode alongside it, it suddenly separated into three birds that took flight. I watched them go, wondering how I could have mistaken three for a single entity, and wondering, too, what a scavenger such as a croaker bird was watching for beside the road.

I began to see signs of ongoing work. An empty wagon rattled down the hill toward me. Clove and I gave way and allowed the team to pass. The driver did not so much as turn his head or nod at me. His gaze was set, and he hurried his team at a dangerous pace for such a heavy vehicle going downhill. I began to hear sounds in the distance and soon passed a rough work camp by the side of the road. In a small clearing there were five crude shelters, a corral holding a dozen horses, and an open-sided barn. Two wagons sagged on broken axles beside the barn. It looked desolate and, except for the penned horses, deserted. I had never seen a drearier place. Hopelessness wafted from it like a bad smell.

I suddenly did not want to go any further. I’d seen enough. It was all adding up to something I didn’t want to admit. The old nobles had been right. This was a futile, senseless project. It would never be completed, no matter how long we worked on it or how much the king spent. It was wasteful, stupid, and cruel to the men dragged from their city lives to toil in a foreign wilderness. I wanted to turn Clove around and go back. But in the distance, I could hear men’s voices raised in command and the creak of heavy wagons. Hitch had told me to see the end, and I resolved that I would, if only to satisfy my curiosity as to why he would give me such a strange command. It did not take me much longer to come to the work site.

I’d seen my father’s much smaller road crew at work and knew how it was supposed to operate. There was a rhythm and order to good road building. The best route should have been marked out, the trees taken down, and the ground surveyed to grade. In some places, earth would have to be scraped away and in others, wagons would dump the excess to build up the roadbed. Rock and gravel would be brought in, to lift the roadbed above the lie of the land. Done right, the operation was almost like a dance as some men prepared the way and other workers followed.

The operation before me was chaos. The overseers were either ineffectual or did not care. I saw a wagon driver shouting at men who were digging in the path that his laden wagon must traverse. Further on, two groups of workers had paused to watch their foremen come to blows. The men were fighting doggedly, trading heavy blows in a sullen, mindless way. No one tried to stop them. The convicts in their ragged shirts and trousers leaned on their shovels and picks and watched the fistfight with dull satisfaction. The workers wore leg irons that limited them to a short stride. It struck me as barbaric.