Half a mile back in the woods, the sleigh road petered out. The major moon had topped the horizon behind them, but even so, beneath the forest canopy it was so dark that even on the narrow sleigh road, travel had been slow and somewhat blundering. Without the road, it was too dark to travel, short of dire emergency, so Jerym set sentries, and the rest lay down to sleep.
They'd sweated off the insect repellent they'd worn, and Kelmer applied more. They were all more or less inured to mosquitoes, but it bothered him to have them biting when he lay down to rest. He wondered if the troopers really would sleep, they'd seemed so exuberant. He lay mentally numb for a time, not really thinking, disconnected images and fragmented thoughts passing through his mind. Once it occurred to him that until tonight he'd thought of himself, usually, as one of them, a trooper. Not always, but usually, for here with the White T'swa, as with the 6th Regiment at Blue Forest, the troopers were remarkably easy to be with, get along with. But tonight it seemed to him that a gulf had opened between himself and them, a gap that couldn't possibly close. That he was no trooper, could never be. He was an impostor. Finally he slept, dozing fitfully until dawn began to thin the darkness.
The sentries wakened them and they started on again, speeding to a trot when the forest became light enough. Apparently no one had followed them into the night. Kelmer wondered if indeed the Komarsi had any idea where they might be, or how many, or even what had happened at all.
After about two miles, they topped a low ridge, the highest in the vicinity, and ranged northward briefly along the crest to where they'd stashed their packs. Jerym called a halt there, and they opened their packs to eat before pushing on again.
At midday they stopped. Sentries were posted. They ate, and men lay down to nap for half an hour, Kelmer a little apart from the others. Jerym came over to him and sat down beside him. Kelmer avoided meeting his eyes.
"How did it go for you last night?" Jerym asked.
You know how it went for me, Kelmer thought. You know exactly how it went for me. "Not very well."
"Tell me about it."
There was no sympathy in the words, no consoling. But in spite of that, or perhaps because of it, Kelmer rose a bit from the mental quagmire he was in.
"I was scared. So scared, I felt like I couldn't move."
"Ah. Sounds like a bad night, all right. But you moved when you had to; moved up, moved back. And lots of people would have felt as bad." He paused. "Beyond being scared, how was it?"
The question struck some deep cord of dread in Kelmer. He put a cap on it, but it wasn't a tight seal. It seeped through. Was it all the men they killed? he wondered. That didn't indicate as part of it; a small part at most. No, what really bothered him was the troopers who hadn't come back. It had bothered him a bit when Jerym had talked that first night about a company being used as bait on Terfreya, bait in a trap, and getting shot to pieces. It had bothered him like a gentle prod at a ripe boil. But tonight had truly hit him, hit him hard.
Kelmer was able to look at Jerym now, at the calm face, the steady eyes. His voice was little more than a whisper when he answered. An intense whisper. "Where are Trimala and Fenwer, and Ekershaw?" It occurred to him that he hadn't sorted out who else was missing.
Jerym gazed thoughtfully at him, and to some detached part of Kelmer Faronya, it seemed that the trooper was looking for a way to put it. "Ekershaw's still alive, and so are Pelley and Kalbern. But BJ saw Kalbern go down, so I suppose he's wounded and a prisoner. The others are dead; Olkerfel died maybe an hour ago."
Kelmer's short hairs began to prickle. "How do you know?"
"When one of us dies, he joins us, lets the others know. That happened even on Terfreya sometimes. Last night it was strong. The training on Oven finished opening that channel for us."
Kelmer stared, then turned away. And began to shake, shake hard. He hadn't known any of the dead men closely, couldn't even place who Olkerfel was, but a deep grief welled up in him, a grief somehow too dry to find release in tears. He felt Jerym's hand on the back of his shoulder, a brief touch, then he was aware that the lieutenant had left.
Awhile later he heard Jerym whistle the nappers out of their sleep. Getting up, he put his pack on and joined the others. After a few minutes of hiking, he began to feel almost all right again.