Under the floating snow, the camp was lit up like a small city. There were glowing lanterns and candles hanging everywhere, and I could even make out a few hanging near the stockade's pillboxes. All these flames bloomed in the whitish darkness in a thousand flickering halos. Pipes and naker were being played in the alleys of the canvas village, which was the name the soldier now gave to the civilian cantonment, and somewhere above, behind the walls of Ac-Pass, the screeching notes of a lonely old woman resounded. It must have been quite a different party up there. Thanks to a mild summer and an excellent harvest, we were adequately supplied by Nawd Corju, while in the warehouses of Windy-Pass the grain had to be counted for almost two moons. The battlements of Ac-Pass seemed deserted, and I suspected that the scent of grilled meat rising from our camp might be the cause.

Ringer and Jask were waiting for me a few steps away from the val pavilion, impatiently stomping in the snow to stay warm. The fatigue was easily readable on their faces. For several weeks, captain Morvin - who had been put in charge of organizing supplies since he had recovered - had assigned them both to escorts. Thus, they spent their days accompanying the movements of the shepherds and grooms.

A turntable system had been set up for the horses, at any given time we kept only about fifty in the camp, and the others grazed in the valleys to the west to save fodder. This perpetual flow of animals required a permanent guard, which meant for the escorts incessantly going back and forth from the Pass to the foothills. Between the steep, rocky slopes and the quagmire of the road, it was a route that no one would have wanted to take every day.

Under heavy eyelids, the two soldiers were watching me sideways.

I could tell by just looking at them that this had not been their idea. That they had probably accepted reluctantly, in order to remain on good terms with the vaïdoerk. Spending the first night of the Belmo babysitting me didn't really make them happy. "Hail to you, young Fyss!" shouted Ringer in an overly cheerful voice. Ringer always insisted on calling me "young," and I think in his mind "Fyss" was more of a description than a name. I tried not to think about what Ulrick might - or might not - have told them, and with a sweeping motion, I sent the purse in the direction of Ringer. Jask picked it up in mid-air and shook it near his ear. His tense expression softened somewhat. "Let's have a drink," he said in an even voice.

We descended to the canvas village as the snow sprinkled our faces with icy kisses and our breaths evaporated into the crystal air. The civilian camp lay west of the fortifications, along the road, in rows of ragged tents that looked organized from a distance. The place turned out to be treacherously labyrinthine once you got inside, especially at night. Cutting through the alleys was extremely unwise because of the ropes and wires that held some of the pavilions in place, and you risked attracting the wrath of the locals if a clumsy foot tore off the smallest fastener. One could come across a good dozen varieties of tents, from the large rectangular pavilions provided by the primacies for Wadd's workers, through the pitifully simple structures of the vagabonds, to the wildest variations of the tradesmen's tents, round and oval marquees, huge pavilions of colored felt, and yurts of stacked furs.

It was crowded that night. The alleys were filled with noisy figures, and braziers were being lit by the roadside. Above one of them, a fat pig was already turning and an eager crowd was gathering around the smell of grilled bacon. The teeming din was beginning to drown out the melody of the music. We stopped on the frozen path and I rubbed my reddened nose while Jask and Ringer debated the evening's program: to stay here with the meat and the crowd, or to look for a seat in their usual joint. It was quickly agreed that it would be the usual joint, because the pickpockets would be more numerous in the crowd. We pushed our way between the rows of dark tents, against the flow of the crowd. After three steps we were stopped, then followed by an insistent kid, whose cart was pulled by a skinny dog. The kid was selling chestnuts (obviously wormy) and beer (extremely watery). Jask spit the beer into the snow, but Ringer threw a coin to the kid anyway, so that he would stop bothering us with his nasal voice.

The drinking tent was filthy and in its center was an oily brazier in a large cast iron pot with a hole in it. The owners of the place had installed shingles for a floor, put a dozen tables and benches on top (most of them from abandoned farms), and even installed a counter, which was actually a carpenter's trestle. It was only slightly less noisy than outside, but at least, thanks to the piled-up bodies, it was relatively warm. For a pewter coin you could fill your tumbler twice with a decent beer, under the sharp eyes of an old whore with slit nostrils and her highlander companion. The face of the latter vaguely reminded me of someone, and I thought it was possible that I had already seen him hanging around Brown's dock.

We sat at the end of one of the long tables, next to a toothless, arthritic old man who was clutching his mug so tightly that I wondered if he would ever be able to let go. Across from us, a drunken woman was laughing on the lap of a hairy lumberjack and opening her mouth wide to have alcohol poured down her throat.

Most of it was getting in her corset, but she didn't seem to care. Jask went to refuel our tumblers while I sat facing the door, cautiously studying the rest of the crowd and cursing Ulrick's lessons. Workers, for the most part. A pair of vagabonds chatting in a low voice in a dark corner of the tent. A small group of militia men, drunk and yelling, with thick faces and brown curls. Next to the fire, a pot-boy was stirring the embers, his lips blue, his pupils dilated like saucers. He could only stand with the help of the main mast of the pavilion. I had before me the usual fauna of the camp, all gathered in the same place.

Soon I was getting more and more drunk. So were my drinking companions. A few hours later, we were singing with the four militiamen, sitting or standing on the same rickety table, and the pot-boy was sleeping on the "counter". Two of the soldiers had come from Fork, I had told them about my stay at the inn and the bright memory I had kept of the vast pastures of Wadd, and I think I made a good impression on them. One of them, who had laughing eyes, was the author of a catchy - but particularly indecent - text about why legate Carson never left his farm. We all sang along to the chorus, and with the help of alcohol, after rhyming "legate" with "idiot", we all had a good time. "I must admit that the fate of Brown-Horn was no longer on my mind. The rest is much less clear, but I remember walking arm in arm with Ringer in the alleys, and then tripping over a dog that had tried to bite me. We ended the night in the biggest brothel of the whole camp.

It was an aggregate of two dozen different tents, themselves covered by another ingenious system of stretched canvas. You could move around in it as if you were inside a real building, and although the walls weren't really walls, there were reeds on the floor and hanging lanterns. The illusion worked, right down to the basic doors at the intersections of the cloth corridors. The establishment was run by a chubby pimp with an oiled beard and impeccable nails. He had a flat nose, two gold teeth, a crude signet ring of the same material, and dressed in a purple tunic of stained silk in a crude effort at exoticism.

I couldn't tell if he was trying to pass for Sertilian, Rajjan or something else, but his ridiculous accent seemed to work with the clientele, whether it was the idiots of the militia or the uncultured workers. The hallway housed the whores who weren't busy elsewhere, something to drink while waiting your turn, and two large, shaggy men, whose gruff looks and studded clubs were there to ensure peace and quiet. I had never been in an establishment like that before. I remember, as the world rocked all around me, finding it creepy and exciting at the same time.

We drank a few more glasses of bad booze, I remember that Ringer was staggering around laughing at the top of his lungs, all the while screaming that I could hold my drink better than him. Who paid, how it happened exactly, I would be unable to say, but what is certain, it's that I ended the night between the thighs of a fat drunken whore, with a hoarse voice and a vulgar make-up. I don't remember anything about what we did, except that it was quick and that I was afraid to throw up on the whore. I remember that afterwards she had cried. I had watched her flabby, white flesh stir under the sobs. She couldn't have been more than twenty years old, but from some angles she was already twice that. Despite the sobs, the whore had finally decided to let me sleep with her. Her folds were warm and, even though she snored, she smelled like raw milk and, more importantly, I was too tired to get anywhere else.

I was woken up late the next day by Ulrick. The Val was bent over me and he didn't look happy. The whore grumbled something from her bed, then rolled over heavily and went back to sleep. I blinked.

The Val shook his head. Without further ado, he tore me out of the stinking sheets like removing the fish from the net, and dragged me out under the irritated but submissive gaze of the pimp and one of his sleepy brutes. Ulrick barely gave me time to put on my pants before pushing me out. I walked barefoot in the middle of the canvas village, in a snow so putrid that it looked like a frozen sewer.

"Next time you'll get yourself a mare, or a goat," snorted the Val behind me as I struggled with my cloak. I felt so embarrassed that I didn't dare protest, but I was also a little disappointed that I didn't remember much. "That's still better than narcosis." Narcosis was a terrible affliction, which made you sleep more and more, until one day you didn't wake up. The disease had a reputation for haunting poorly kept military brothels in particular and had already decimated armies. I swallowed, my mouth pasty, shivering because of my snowy toes. "Haï, Ulrick," I managed to whisper, still in shock from the rude awakening. A part of me was still warm, under the sheet of the fat prostitute.

I had expected to be sick after the drinking. I had already seen enough men drinking as I had the day before, and the regular regurgitation of the pot-boys was part of camp life. Still, aside from a lot of fatigue (and the cold), I was feeling relatively well. "This whole thing was a bad idea, I can see that now," Ulrick grumbled, handing me my boots. He was now walking ahead of me and we had reached the road. I moved forward, my head bowed by the diatribe. "I saw Ringer this morning," continued the Val, "and I gave him a dressing-down, though he was in no condition to remember much of it. You'll avoid their company for a while. Definitely, even, if you have any sense." I spat into the snow, immediately on the defensive. Waking me up and dragging me half-naked through the camp, fine. Picking on my friends, I didn't accept, and it made everything else less supportable at the same time. "I'm not your wife, Ulrick," I hissed, angrily pulling on my boots. "I'll hang out with whoever I want." The old warrior raised an eyebrow. "If you were my wife, I'd have no orders to give you," he growled contemptuously. "Only a gedesleffe would think that a woman must be possessed. Or that her cunt should be bought. You're not my wife and you'll do as I say."

It was obviously shame that spurred my anger, and I hadn't been angry like that for a very long time. But at that moment, I was simply not ready to hear what Ulrick had to say. To agree with him on this point was to agree with him on everything else, on Brown-Horn and my clumsy attempts to reconnect with a life that, according to him, should no longer exist. There was also the fact that the wine had done its work. I knew I was about to turn the page, and it felt painfully like a funeral. Grief and shame had made me bad. "Mothering me won't bring your son back," I muttered acidly.

I didn't mean a word of it, but I wanted to hurt Ulrick. To punish him for being right, and most of all, after those weeks of lonely suffering, I didn't want to be alone in mourning anymore.

I saw the Val stiffen and knew that my words had slipped through the crack, just as they had on the plateau, shortly before I found my rage. I wondered briefly if I would regret it as much as I did that time. Ulrick stared at me for a few moments with a look that I would have thought impassive, had I not known him so well. Then, just as I thought he was going to hit me, he turned his back on me and walked away without a word, leaving me where I stood, in the middle of the road. The pair of militiamen coming the other way moved out of the way, and one of them stumbled in the snow. There were insults, but in low voices and long after the warrior was out of earshot. I watched him striding away in the direction of the military camp. Ulrick's sudden and silent departure had defused the anger. I had nothing left but my arms dangling, a slightly stupid feeling and that empty taste in my mouth.

That day, the vaïdogans were maneuvering near the hillsides, in that space cleared to the south by the waddan lumberjacks. It was one of the two group trainings that the vaïdoerks had per week, and not even the celebrations of the Belmo were able to disrupt the unwavering rhythm of the cataphracts. Usually, I would have been expected to participate. Given the state I was in, both physically and emotionally, I decided to blow it off and take a day off. So I hung out for a few hours on the road, between the civilian camp and the fortifications, trying not to think about anything or meet anyone. The sky was clear.

A sparkling sun reflected off the snow and hurt my eyes. The wind was blowing from the east, in cold gusts that made my head sink into my shoulders. Forty spans above the camp, when the gusts brushed the battlements, or the rock of Windy-Pass, they raised the snow in white plumes which then fluttered like brushstrokes on the black stone. It was hunger that pushed me towards the val pavilion in the middle of the afternoon.

We always left a man at the camp, so that the pickpockets and the brigands wouldn't have the idea of coming to help themselves to our things. It was the great Sigburt who was in charge of the guard and stewardship that day, and he was sweeping the floor of the tent when I appeared.

The warrior looked at me a little curiously, greeted me courteously, but said nothing more. I liked Sigburt, with his sweet face and his braided beard even browner than Wadd's soil. He had a frank and easy laugh and equally frank manners, but he was considered quiet among the Vals, shy even, compared to others. In battle, he was a quick and fluid man, but punchy as a charging bull. I went to one of the mats that lay around the fire pit and helped myself to some of the lukewarm stew left over from lunch. Then, with the help of the heat and digestion, I soon recovered the sleep from which Ulrick had snatched me earlier.

I didn't sleep very long. A hand was over my mouth and someone was shaking me gently. I suspected it was a joke by Sven or one of the other yunlings, like the time I had slipped a bunch of slugs into Ereck's bed. But the grip was still very tight.

There was the weight of a man standing back there, and something wet too.

I opened my eyes. Tiny dark spots on worn leather gloves.

Then the blade landed on my cheek, thin and straight, and still red. A familiar face leaned over me and my blood ran cold in my veins. "I'd rather bring you back alive," the assassin said softly, with a toothy grin. "But if you act like a dick, it'll be dead."