A sentry leaned against an abandoned bullock cart, propping his musket against a shattered wheel. The faded painted letters on the side of the cart spelled out 35 TH foot-calahrian imperial army, not that he could read them, not that he cared. He took a quick glance around the other side of the cart and saw nothing, just a few dots of orange in the night where lanterns burned along the fortress walls. It was as run-down as the cart. Only in darkness did it still look fortlike, and even then the ragged line of lanterns showed where parts of the walls had collapsed through time and neglect.

He pushed his shako back on his head and ran a sleeve across his sweaty brow while undoing the top button of his uniform. You could poach an egg in this heat, he figured, then felt sick at the thought. There was a time when he'd scarf down a horse steak barely seared on the fire and ask for seconds, but the heat of this place robbed a man of appetite, and not just for food.

"Honor guard my arse," he grumbled to himself, pulling a small carved pipe and leather pouch of tobacco from a jacket pocket. "So the last Viceroy was daft enough to get himself killed here, so what? What honor do they think we're guarding now?" he asked, knowing he would not get a satisfactory answer, even if he wasn't just talking to himself. It was like that in the army. Ask away, the sergeants said, but you'll never like the answer. Made a soldier think there was little future in thinking much at all.

"Shoulda had a better guard two years ago, might have done him some good then," he said, chuckling at his own joke.