I advanced to him, desperately holding out Hitch’s recommendation. “Sir, you’re my last hope,” I said bluntly. “If you will not take me, I do not know how I will fulfill the good god’s destiny for me. I beg you to consider me. Use me in any capacity. I will take the humblest assignment. All I wish to be able to say is that I serve my king as a soldier.”
He seemed surprised at my vehemence. He took the piece of paper I offered him, and while he read it, either slowly or several times, I considered the offer I’d just made him. Did I mean it? Could I humble myself to serve in any capacity? Was it still so essential to my pride that I be able to call myself a soldier? A few short days ago, I’d been willing to put all that behind me and begin a new life as an innkeeper in a ghost town. Yet here I stood with my pride abandoned and my heart beating like a drum as I hoped by all I held holy that the eccentric man before me would accept me into his dispirited, sloppy regiment.
He looked up at last from the piece of paper. Then he leaned forward carefully and set it on the flames of the fire. My heart sank. As he straightened up, he said, “You seem to have made a good impression on my scout. Few people manage to do that. Myself included.”
“Sir,” I said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
He leaned back in his chair and breathed out through his nose. His wriggled his feet, one slippered and one bare, on the hassock before him. “It’s not easy to keep men at this post. A lot of them die of the plague. Those that survive are sickly, and often die of something else. Some desert. Others prove unsatisfactory in an extreme enough way that I am forced to dismiss them. Even so, I try to hold to a certain standard for choosing those who will serve under me. Under ordinary circumstances, I would not choose you. I’m sure I don’t need to elaborate on why.”
“Sir,” I managed to say again, keeping my tone even. He did not look at me, but only at his own feet. He touched their toes together.
“But the circumstances are not ordinary.” He cleared his throat. “My scout makes few requests of me. I make many of him. Most of them, he fulfills for me. I am inclined to grant him this request.” As I caught my breath in hope, he finally turned his head to look at me. “How do you feel about cemeteries?” he asked me.
He asked in a pleasant and engaging way, as if he had asked a little girl her favorite color at a tea party.
“Cemeteries, sir?”
“We have one here at Gettys. Two, actually. The old one is just outside the walls of the fort. That one doesn’t concern me. It’s the new one, an hour’s ride from here, that is the problem. When plague first struck here, several years ago, my predecessor had a new cemetery established some distance from the fort. Because of the smell of all the dead bodies, don’t you know? He’s buried there himself, as a matter of fact. That’s why I’m the commander now. It passed me by.” He paused a moment and smiled a tight and toothy smile, as if very pleased with his own cleverness at not dying of the plague. I wasn’t sure what response to make, and when I was silent, he spoke on.
“The cemetery is rather large considering the size of our living population, and that it is only recently established. And Colonel Lope gave no thought, when they started burying people there, that it might be a hard location to defend. Four times now I have requested a budget and artisans so that our cemetery might be properly protected with a stout stone wall, and perhaps a watchtower. Four times now, I have been ignored. The road is all our king can think of. His road. And when I ask for supplies and funding to wall the cemetery, he always responds by asking me how many miles of road I’ve built in the last season. As if the two were connected!”
He paused for my reaction. When it became clear that I didn’t have one, he harrumphed and continued. “I’ve assigned men to guard the cemetery. They don’t last long at the duty. Cowards. And as a consequence, the depredations against our beloved dead continue.”
“Depredations, sir?”
“Yes. Depredations. Insults. Ignominy. Blasphemous disrespect. Call it what you will. They continue. Can you stop them?” He gravely tugged at the ends of his moustache as he spoke.
I had no clear idea what he was asking of me. But I did comprehend that it was my sole opportunity. I rose to the occasion. “Sir. If I cannot, I will die trying.”
“Oh, please don’t. It would just be another grave to dig. Well. That’s settled then. And just in time, it appears!”
He spoke the last words as he leapt from his seat, for there had been a knock on the door. Even before he reached it, the sergeant had opened it. He entered, bearing Hitch’s saddlebags. The colonel seized them greedily and dug though them to resurrect the same oilskin-wrapped packet that Hitch had guarded so assiduously. “Oh, thank the good god, it’s not been harmed or stolen!” he exclaimed. He carried it directly to a small table near the fire’s light. I stood, feeling awkward, unsure if he intended me to witness this act or not. I felt I should go, but feared that if I left, no one else would recognize that I’d been accepted into the regiment. I needed to know where to go to sign my papers and assume my duties. So I quietly remained. The sergeant departed as quickly as he had entered.
