“You’re going to travel in this weather?” One-Eye demanded.

“Captain wants us back.”

I took Soulcatcher a platter of scrambled eggs. I do not know why. He did not eat often, and breakfast almost never. But he accepted it, turned his back.

I looked out the window. The mob had discovered the change. Someone had brushed the snow off Raker’s face. His eyes were open, seemed to be watching. Weird.

Men were scrambling around under the table, fighting over the coins we had left behind. The pileup seethed like maggots in a putrid corpse. “Somebody ought to do him honor,” I murmured. “He was a hell of an opponent.”

“You have your Annals,” Soulcatcher told me. And, “Only a conqueror bothers to honor a fallen foe.”

I was headed for my own plate by then, I wondered what he meant, but a hot meal was more important at the moment.

They were all down at the stable except me and Otto. They were going to bring the wagon around for the wounded soldier. I had given him something to get him through the rough handling to come.

They were taking their time. Elmo wanted to rig a canopy to shield Otto from the weather. I played solitaire while I waited.

Out of nowhere, Soulcatcher said, “She’s very beautiful, Croaker. Young-looking. Fresh. Dazzling. With a heart of flint. The Limper is a warm puppy by comparison. Pray you never catch her eye.”

Soulcatcher stared out the window. I wanted to ask questions, but none would come at that moment. Damn. I really wasted a chance then.

What color was her hair? Her eyes? How did she smile? It all meant a lot to me when I could not know.

Soulcatcher rose, donned his cloak. “If only for the Limper, it’s been worth it,” he said. He paused at the door, pierced me with his stare. “You and Elmo and Raven. Drink a toast to me. Hear?”

Then he was gone.

Elmo came in a minute later. We lifted Otto and started back to Meystrikt. My nerves were not worth a damn for a long time.

The engagement gave us the most gain for least effort of any I can remember. It was pure serendipity that went one hundred percent our way. It was a disaster for the Rebel.

We were in flight from the Salient, where the Lady’s defenses had collapsed almost overnight. Running with us were five or six hundred regulars who had lost their units. For speed’s sake, the Captain had chosen to cut straight through the Forest of Cloud to Lords, instead of following the longer southern road around.

A Rebel mainforce battalion was a day or two behind us. We could have turned and whipped them, but the Captain wanted to give them the slip instead. I liked his thinking. The fighting around Roses had been grim. Thousands had fallen. With so many extra bodies attaching themselves to the Company, I had been losing men for lack of time to treat them.

Our orders were to report to Nightcrawler at Lords. Soulcatcher thought Lords would be the target of the next

Rebel thrust. Tired as we were, we expected to see more bitter fighting before winter slowed the war’s pace.

“Croaker! Lookee here!” Whitey came charging toward where I sat with the Captain and Silent and one or two others. He had a naked woman draped over his shoulder. She might have been attractive had she not been so thoroughly abused.

“Not bad, Whitey. Not bad,” I said, and went back to my journal. Behind Whitey the. whooping and screaming continued. The men were harvesting the fruits of victory.

“They’re barbarians,” the Captain observed without rancor.

“Got to let them cut loose sometimes,” I reminded him. “Better here than with the people of Lords.”

The Captain agreed reluctantly. He just does not have much stomach for plunder and rape, much as they are part of our business. I think he is a secret romantic, at least when females are involved.

I tried to soften his mood. “They asked for it, taking up arms.”

Bleakly, he asked me, “How long has this been going on, Croaker? Seems like forever, doesn’t it? Can you even remember a time when you weren’t a soldier? What’s the point? Why are we even here? We keep winning battles, but the Lady is losing the war. Why don’t they just call the whole thing off and go home?”

He was partially right. Since Forsberg it has been one retreat after another, though we have done well. The Salient had been secure till Shapeshifter and the Limper got into the act.

Our latest retreat had brought us stumbling into this Rebel base camp. We presumed it was the main training, and staging center for the campaign against Nightcrawler. Luckily, we spotted the Rebel before he spotted us. We surrounded the place and roared in before dawn. We were badly outnumbered, but the Rebel did not put up much of a fight. Most were green volunteers. The startling aspect was the presence of an amazon regiment.

We had heard of them, of course. There were several in the east, around Rust, where the fighting is more bitter and sustained than here. This was our first encounter. It left the men disdainful of women warriors, despite their having fought better than their male compatriots.

Smoke began drifting our way. The men were firing the barracks and headquarters buildings. The Captain muttered, “Croaker, go make sure those fools don’t fire the forest.”

I rose, picked up my bag, ambled down into the din.

There were bodies everywhere. The fools must have felt completely safe. They hadn’t put up a stockade or trenched around the encampment. Stupid. That is the first thing you do, even when you know there is no enemy within a hundred miles. You put a roof over your head later. Wet is better than dead.

I should be used to this. I have been with the Company a long time. And it does bother me less than it used to. I have hung armor plate over my moral soft spots. But I still try to avoid looking at the worst.

You who come after me, scribbling these Annals, by now realize that I shy off portraying the whole truth about our band of blackguards. You know they are vicious, violent, and ignorant. They are complete barbarians, living out their cruelest fantasies, their behavior tempered only by the presence of a few decent men. I do not often show that side because these men are my brethren, my family, and I was taught young not to speak ill of kin. The old lessons die hardest.

Raven laughs when he reads my accounts. “Sugar and spice,” he calls them, and threatens to take the Annals away and write the stories the way he sees them happen.

Hardass Raven. Mocking me. And who was that out there roaming around the camp, breaking it up wherever the men were amusing themselves with a little torture? Who had a ten year old girl trailing him on an old jack mule? Not Croaker, brothers. Not Croaker. Croaker isn’t no romantic. That is a passion reserved for the Captain and Raven.

Naturally, Raven has become the Captain’s best friend. They sit around together like a couple of rocks, talking about the same things boulders do. They are content just to share one another’s company.

Elmo was leading the arsonists. They were older Company men who had sated their less intense hungers for flesh. Those still mauling the ladies were mostly our young regular hangers-on.

They had given the Rebel a good fight at Roses, but he had been too strong. Half the Circle of Eighteen had ranged themselves against us there. We had had only the Limper and Shapeshifter on our side. Those two spent more time trying to sabotage one another than trying to repel the Circle. Result, a debacle. The Lady’s most humiliating defeat in a decade.

The Circle pulls together most of the time. They do not spend more energy abusing one another than they spend on their enemies.

“Hey! Croaker!” One-Eye called. “Join the fun.” He tossed a burning brand through a barracks doorway. The building promptly exploded. Heavy oaken shutters blew off the windows. A gout of flame enveloped One-Eye. He came charging out, kinky hair smoldering below the band of his weird, floppy hat. I wrestled him down, used that hat to slap his hair. “All right. All right,” he growled. “You don’t have to enjoy yourself so damned much.”