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Forest's doing. Ned was no gentleman, as far as he was concerned. Gentleman or
not, Ned knew what he was doing with unicorn-riders.
At last, with evening twilight fading from the sky, they had to stop for the
night. Thisbe sent the spriest men out to gather wood and fill water jugs.
Other soldiers simply flopped down, exhausted. As fires began to burn, the
weary men gathered around them to toast hard bread and meat and simply to get
warm. All through the first part of the night, more and more stragglers joined
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them: men who'd marched as hard as they could, but hadn't been able to stand
the pace.
Gremio held a chunk of hard bread over the flames on a forked stick. He
didn't watch while he did it; he was one of those who preferred not to think
about the weevils that were abandoning his supper. Sometimes, of course, he
had to eat bread without toasting it first. He preferred not to think about
everything that crunched between his teeth then, too.
Sergeant Thisbe sat at the same fire, looking as worn as Gremio felt. One by
one, soldiers lay down where they were and started to snore. Thisbe yawned,
but stayed awake. So did Gremio. After a while, with more and more snores
rising around them, Gremio quietly asked, "Can we talk?"
"I don't really think we've got a whole lot to say to each other, sir,"
Thisbe answered. "Not about that, anyway."
"I know what I know," Gremio said. "I have the evidence." Yes, he was a
barrister through and through.
"You'll do what you want to do, sir." Thisbe's voice was toneless.
"But " Gremio couldn't shout. He couldn't even swear, not without . . . He
shook his head. "I don't want to tell anybody about "
"I'm glad," the sergeant said.
"I just want to "
Sergeant Thisbe interrupted again: "To what, sir?" Normally, a sergeant who
kept interrupting an officer would find himself in trouble in short order.
Things weren't normal here, as Gremio knew too well. Thisbe went on, "There's
nothing you can do, sir. There's nothing anybody can do till the war's over."
"But then " Gremio said.
"But then, who knows?" Thisbe broke in once more. And, once more, Gremio let
the sergeant do it without a hint, without so much as a thought, of reprimand.
"I think you're the best company commander the regiment's ever had. To the
hells with me if I know whether that means anything else." A shrug. "We'll
find out then. Not now."
"You know what I think of you some of it, anyhow," Gremio said. "You know I
wanted to get you promoted to lieutenant."
"I didn't want that. You know I didn't want that." The harsh, flickering
shadows from the fading fire exaggerated Thisbe's rueful expression. "Now I
suppose you think you know why I didn't want it, too, gods damn it."
"Maybe I do," Gremio said, quite sure he did. He took a deep breath, then
continued, "Well, here's something you may not know, Thisbe d Sergeant. Once
upon a time "
"Before I got wounded?" Thisbe asked.
"Oh, yes, a long time before you got wounded," Gremio answered. "Once upon a
time, a long time before you got wounded, I told myself that if I ever met a
girl who could do the things you can, I'd marry her on the spot."
"Did you?" Sergeant Thisbe's voice held no expression whatever. When Gremio
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tried to read the underofficer's face, he found he couldn't. The brim of
Thisbe's hat cast black shadow all across it, for the sergeant stared down at
the muddy ground.
Gremio nodded. "That was what I said to myself, and I meant it, too. You can
take it for whatever you think it's worth, Sergeant."
"It would be worth a lot, I figure, to a girl like that," Thisbe said. "But
I'm not so much of a much. I expect you could find half a dozen girls who knew
more than a dumb soldier like me ever dreamed of, just by snapping your
fingers." The sergeant's light, true tenor was uncommonly earnest.
"You don't give yourself enough credit." Gremio had to fight to keep anger
out of his voice. "For as long as I've known you, you've never given yourself
enough credit, and I can't figure out why."
Thisbe still didn't look up. The sergeant's laugh seemed anything but
mirthful. "You know me. You know where I am. Can't you figure it out for
yourself?"
"Well . . . maybe I can," Gremio said.
"All right, then. And if you don't mind my saying so, sir, that's about
enough of that for right now. That's too much of that for right now, if you
want to know what I really think." Thisbe's yawn was theatrical, but probably
no less real on account of that. "I'm going to wrap myself in my blanket and
go to sleep. You ought to do the same thing."
"Yes, so I should." Seeing Thisbe yawning made Gremio want to yawn, too not
that he wasn't already weary after a long day's march. "Good night, Sergeant."
"Good night, sir." Thisbe's blanket was worn, almost threadbare. Gremio had a
thicker, finer one. Were things different, he would gladly have given his to
the underofficer, or at least invited Thisbe to crawl under it with him. He
remembered doing exactly that, back in the days before Thisbe was wounded. He
could no more imagine doing it now than he could imagine chasing all the
southrons back to their own part of Detina singlehanded.
His hat made a tolerable pillow. He'd long since stopped worrying about
having anything fancier. He fell asleep almost at once, as he always did when
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