A couple of nights later, thunder rumbled in the north as the Unkerlanter soldiers made camp. But it couldn't have been thunder; the sky, for once, was clear, with swarms of stars twinkling on jet black. When the weather was very cold, they seemed to twinkle more than on a mild summer night. Leudast noted that only in passing. He knew too well what that distant rumbling that went on and on meant. Scowling, he said, "We're close enough to the fun to hear eggs bursting again. I didn't miss 'em when we couldn't, believe you me I didn't."

"Fun?" Werbel hadn't been in the company long, but even he knew better than that. "More chances to get killed, is what it is."

"That's what they pay us for," Leudast answered. "When they bother to pay us, I mean." He'd lost track of how far in arrears his own pay was. Months- he was sure of that much. And he should have been owed a lieutenant's pay, or a captain's, not a sergeant's, considering the job he'd been doing for more than a year. Of course, Recared should have been paid like a colonel, too.

Werbel listened to the eggs in the distance. With a sigh, he said, "I wonder if they'll get caught up before the war ends."

Leudast's laugh was loud, raucous, and bitter. "Powers above, what makes you think it'll ever end?"

Sidroc was glad Forthwegians had the custom of wearing full beards. For one thing, the thick black hair on his chin and cheeks and upper lip went a little way toward keeping them warm in the savage cold of southern Unkerlant. Coming out of Gromheort in the sunny north, he'd never imagined weather like this. Had anybody told him even a quarter of the truth about it before he knew it for himself, he would have called that fellow a liar to his face. No more.

For another, the beards the men of Plegmund's Brigade- Forthwegians fighting in the service of their Algarvian occupiers- wore helped distinguish them from their Unkerlanter cousins. Unkerlanters and Forthwegians were both stocky, olive-skinned, hook-nosed, both given to wearing long tunics rather than kilts or trousers. But if Sidroc saw a clean-shaven face, he blazed at it without hesitation.