Morale at the academy was subdued as we staggered forward into the new year. It wasn’t just the number of deaths the plague had visited on us, though that was bad enough. The plague had come among us and slaughtered us at will, an enemy that all of our training could not prevail against. Strong, brave young men who had hoped to distinguish themselves on battlefields had instead died in their beds, soiled with vomit and urine and whimpering feebly for their mothers. It is never good to remind soldiers of their own mortality. We had believed ourselves young heroes, full of energy, courage, and lust for life. The plague had revealed to us that we were mortals, and just as vulnerable as the weakest babe in arms.

The first time Colonel Rebin had assembled us on the parade ground in our old formations, he had ordered us all “at ease” and then commanded us to look around us and see how many of our fellows had fallen. He then gave a speech, telling us that the plague was the first battle we had passed through, and that just as the plague had not discriminated between old nobility and new nobility, neither would a blade or a bullet. As he formed us up into our new condensed companies, I pondered his words. I doubted that he truly realized that the Speck plague had not been a random contagion but a true strike against us, as telling as any military attack. The Specks had sent “Dust Dancers” from the far eastern frontiers of Gernia all the way to our capitol city, for the precise purpose of sowing their disease among our nobility and our future military leaders. They had succeeded in thinning our ranks. If not for me, their success would have been complete. Sometimes I took pride in that.

At other times, I recalled that if not for me, they never would have been able to attack us as they had.