I stared into the emptiness above his left shoulder, scowling at the sand swirling around the sheltered area.

“Am I getting through, Croaker? Am I making myself clear? I appreciate your devotion to the Annals, your determination to get the feel of the action, but...”

I bobbed my head, glanced at the wagons and their sad burdens. So many wounded, and so little I could do for them. He did not see the helpless feeling that caused. All I could do was sew them up and pray, and make the dying comfortable till they went-whereupon we dumped them to make room for newcomers.

Too many were lost who need not have been, had I had time, trained help, and a decent surgery. Why did I go out to -the battle line? Because I could accomplish something there. I could strike back at our tormentors.

“Croaker,” the Captain growled. “I get the feeling you’re not listening.”

“Yes sir. Understood, sir. I’ll stay here and tend to my sewing.”

“Don’t look so bleak.” He touched my shoulder. “Catcher says we’ll reach the Stair of Tear tomorrow. Then we can do what we all want. Bloody Harden’s nose.”

Harden had become the senior Rebel general. “Did he say how we’re going to manage that, outnumbered a skillion to one?”

The Captain scowled. He did his shuffling little bear dance while he phrased a reassuring answer.

Three thousand exhausted, beaten men turn back Harden’s victory-hopped horde? Not bloody likely. Not even with three of the Ten Who Were Taken helping.

“I thought not,” I sneered.

“That’s not your department, though, is it? Catcher doesn’t second-guess your surgical procedures, does he? Then why question the grand strategy?”

I grinned. “The unwritten law of all armies, Captain. The lower ranks have the privilege of questioning the sanity and competence of their commanders. It’s the mortar holding an army together.”

The Captain eyed me from his shorter stature, wider displacement, and from beneath shaggy brows. “That holds them together, eh? And you know what keeps them moving?”

“What’s that?”

“Guys like me ass-kicking guys like you when they start philosophizing. If you get my drift.”

“I believe I do, sir.” I moved out, recovered my kit from the wagon where I had stashed it, went to work. There were few new casualties.

Rebel ambition was wearing down under Stormbringer’s ceaseless assault.

I was loafing along, waiting for a call, when I spotted Elmo loping out of the weather. I hadn’t seen him for days. He fell in beside the Captain. I ambled over.

“...sweep around our right,” he was saying. “Maybe trying to reach the Stair first.” He glanced at me, lifted a hand in greeting. It shook. He was pallid with weariness. Like the Captain, he had had little rest since we had entered the Windy Country.

“Pull a company out of reserve. Take them in flank,” the Captain replied. “Hit them hard, and stand fast. They won’t expect that. It’ll shake them. Make them wonder what we’re up to.”

“Yes sir.” Elmo turned to go.

“Elmo?”

“Sir?”

“Be careful out there. Save your energy. We’re going to keep moving tonight.”

Elmo’s eyes spoke tortured volumes. But he did not question his orders. He is a good soldier. And, as did I, he knew they came from above the Captain’s head. Perhaps from the Tower itself.

Hitherto, night had brought a tacit truce. The rigors of the days had left both armies unwilling to take one needless step after dark. There had been no nighttime contact.

Even those hours of respite, when the storm slept, were not enough to keep the armies from marching with their butts drooping against their heels. Now our high lords wanted an extra effort, hoping to gain some tactical advantage. Get to the Stair by night, get dug in, make the Rebel come at us out of perpetual storm. It made sense. But it was the sort of move ordered by an armchair general three hundred miles behind the fighting.

“You hear that?” the Captain asked me.

“Yeah. Sounds dumb.”

“I agree with the Taken, Croaker. The travelling will be easier for us and more difficult for the Rebel. Are you caught up?”

“Yes.”

“Then try to stay out of the way. Go hitch a ride. Fake a nap.”

I wandered away, cursing the ill fortune that had stripped us of most of our mounts. Gods, walking was getting old.

I did not take the Captain’s advice, though it was sound. I was too keyed up to rest. The prospect of a night march had shaken me.

I roamed around seeking old friends. The Company had scattered throughout the larger mob, as cadre for the Captain’s will. Some men I hadn’t seen since Lords. I did not know if they were still alive.

I could find no one but Goblin, One-Eye, and Silent. Today Goblin and One-Eye were no more communicative than Silent. Which said a lot about morale.

They trudged doggedly onward, eyes on the dry earth, only rarely making some gesture or muttering some word to maintain the integrity of our bubble of peace. I trudged with them. Finally, I tried breaking the ice with a “Hi.”

Goblin grunted. One-Eye gave me a few seconds of evil stare. Silent did not acknowledge my existence.

“Captain says we’re going to march through the night,” I told them. I had to make someone else as miserable as I was.

Goblin’s look asked me why I wanted to tell that kind of lie. One-Eye muttered something about turning the bastard into a toad.

“The bastard you’re going to have to turn is Soulcatcher,” I said smugly.

He gave me another evil look. “Maybe I’ll practice on you, Croaker.”

One-Eye did not like the night march, so Goblin immediately approved the genius of the man who had initiated the idea. But his enthusiasm was so slight One-Eye did not bother taking the bait.

I thought I would give it another try. “You guys look as sour as I feel.”

No rise. Not even a turn of the head. “Be that way.” I drooped too, put one foot ahead of the other, blanked my mind.

They came and got me to take care of Elmo’s wounded. There were a dozen of them, and that was it for the day. The Rebel had run out of do or die.

Darkness came early under the storm. We went about business as usual. We got a little away from the Rebel, waited for the storm to abate, pitched a camp with fires built of whatever brush could be scrounged. Only this time it was just a brief rest, till the stars came out. They stared down with mockery in their twinkles, saying all our sweat and blood really had no meaning in the long eye of time. Nothing we did would be recalled a thousand years from now.

Such thoughts infected us all. No one had any ideals or glory-lust left. We just wanted to get somewhere, lie down, and forget the war.

The war would not forget us. As soon as he believed the Rebel to be satisfied that we were encamped, the Captain resumed the march, now in a ragged column snaking slowly across moonlighted barrens.

Hours passed and we seemed to get nowhere. The land never changed. I glanced back occasionally, checking the renewed storm Stormbringer was hurling against the Rebel camp. Lightning rippled and flickered in this one. It was more furious than anything they had faced so far.

The shadowed Stair of Tear materialized so slowly that it was there for an hour before I realized it was not a bank of cloud low on the horizon. The stars began to fade and the east to lighten before the land started rising.

The Stair of Tear is a rugged, wild range virtually impassable except for the one steep pass from which the cordillera takes its name. The land rises gradually till it reaches sudden, towering red sandstone bluffs and mesas which stretch either way for hundreds of miles. In the morning sun they looked like the weathered battlements of a giant’s fortress.

The column wound into a canyon choked with talus, halted while a path was cleared for the wagons. I dragged myself to a bluff top and watched the storm. It was moving our way.