Dear Diary,

I remember thinking 'how is it taking so long for a bunch of people on foot to get from Phileo to Newark?' I get it now.

No real news on the dreaming front; still kinda rooching my way over the rocks. Still dangling bits in the water along the lakeshore. Got an ever increasing number of tadpoles out by the lakeshore, so not gonna take myself out of the water any time soon, I don't think.

Breakfast wound up being half Drivers' rations, half venison, I think. Apparently the local wildlife is way more copacetic about wandering within sight of the expedition when most of them are asleep, and the few who aren't are standing still trying to blend into the background while watching to see if anything's sneaking up on us. I know I heard a few shots from further up the column before I settled in to sleep. None after I woke up; I guess all the dumb local wildlife had been Darwined by then.

Apparently Heroes, and therefore Cadets, weren't expected to take a formal 'watch' when rolling with Volunteer Units. I felt some kinda way about that, so I tagged my smarter half. Because she gets annoyed when I call her my better half.

Hey, Kitten, you awake?

I got a grumbling, I am now. Really I am. What's the emergency? in return.

Not really an emergency. Just need your ginormous brain to tell me the why of something.

If you can't figure it out, I'm not sure I'll be able to do so at one remove, but go on.

Why don't Cadets stand watch? I mean when we're leading Volunteer units?

She chuckled, the sound pleasantly fuzzy in my brain. Because if Heroes are leading Volunteer units, they're acting as officers, so they might have other duties while not on the move. Decisions and plans to make, paperwork to do, that kind of thing. Also, there are at least fifteen sets of non-Hero eyes for every hero, so it's not like there's any lack of people on watch.

So, like, I could take a watch if I wanted to?

Her response came back with a warning edge to it. If you try to stay up all night every night, I will wax most wroth with you, my goofy Goddess.

I chuckled as I sent back, Yes, Mom.

Anything else? The other two are still asleep, and forgive me, but I'd like to join them.

Nah. Thanks for enhancing my cluefullness. Love you, Kitten.

Love you too, Goof.

My sense of her there listening faded slowly, like she'd kept the line open while falling asleep. I remember doing that more than once back in Camden, although in my case it was with my sister just after my mom died. Weird, but it really put me in a much better mood about freezing my ass off while waiting for everything to get packed up. I tried to pitch in, but one of my Sergeants nodded to the side for a quick confab.

"Ma'am, I'm not going to tell you not to help out breaking down or setting up camp, but..." His murmur trailed off with a bit of a tentative warning note.

I smiled to let him know I wasn't pissed about the suggestion, but asked, "why shouldn't I?"

The answering smile told me I'd asked the right question. "Part of the Volunteer training that Heroes aren't a part of; setting up and breaking down camps. Digging latrines for long term camps, putting up barricades in hostile territory, setting up tents and campfires."

I nodded, not just because I understood, but to keep him talking. Back in my Camden ROTC days, I remember our Sergeant telling us all that if we wound up officers, to listen to our non-commissioned officers, like Sergeants, because most of them had more experience in the real world of soldiering than most of us would ever get. Which is why I wanted to learn as much as I could from him while he was in a talkative mood. "I guess if they've been trained and I haven't, I'm more likely to make more work than I help with. Where do they learn all that from?"

"All of that's kind of passed down from Veterans to the new Volunteers. About half of our soldiers here are Veterans, which means they all know that, and can each take one Volunteer under their wing to train them up." He paused, like he had something more to say, but wasn't sure if he should say it.

"I don't bite. Much. Please, tell me anything you think I need to know. Let the other Sergeants know that as well."

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"You've probably got an edge on all of us in terms of raw Strength, Agility, and Endurance, so you'd probably help us get done a little faster. Which, in an emergency? Would be fantastic. The problem is that if you do pitch in? All of us wind up thinking it's an emergency, and puts everybody on edge. We can only keep that kind of thing up for so long, so if you're helping out every day? We won't have that edge when we need it." He stopped, looking at me for signs that I'd understood and hadn't taken offense.

"Okay, I get all that. I'll be hands off unless we're pressed for time in the 'seconds count' sense. Anybody gonna have a problem if I watch what they're doing? I might be able to be an actual help when the time comes if I do."

He shook his head and smiled, "That might actually help. Knowing the boss is watching lights a fire under some folks who need it. Just, if you see somebody slacking, or looking like they are? Please bring it to the Sergeants' attention. If you're involved, it's official. If we take care of it, it's not."

"I'm sure you'll tell one of us if something official needs to be done?"

He nodded. "Absolutely, ma'am. Also..."

"Yeah?"

He looked a little uncomfortable, but continued, "We're Veteran heavy. Everybody thinks we're some kind of special strike force, which makes them think we're heading out to face off against Calverton with twenty Cadets and three hundred soldiers. There have been some rumors about what happened up at Newark's gates, but that's only making things worse." He stopped, looking like he wanted to go on, but had run out of words.

Speaking quietly so no one else heard, I asked, "were any of the soldiers here at the battle in Newark?"

He shook his head. "No, ma'am."

"Were any of them on Camden Yards' north wall to see the battle there?"

He looked a little confused when he answered, "no, Ma'am. The watch on the walls was all Guards, with Cadets bolstering their numbers." He paused for a moment.. "There really was a battle outside the walls?"

"Yep. Half the 'Damn Army snuck around General Lancaster's force and made it all the way to the north walls of Camden Yards."

He let out a low whistle, then shook his head in confusion. "All of us were still training with the new Volunteers outside the Academy. I... why... We didn't get called forward to defend the walls?"

I knew what I wanted to say, but for some reason couldn't get it out. Trying to ignore the heat in my face, I said, "ask Cadet Driver or Cadet MacConno. They were on the north wall that day."

That didn't alleviate his confusion, but the dismay I'd seen lurking behind his eyes softened. At a guess I'd say he assumed Angel and Bill had something to do with stopping the 'Damn Army. Which, I suppose, in a way they did. It had never consciously hit my brain that day, but somewhere deep inside I'd known my friends were on the wall, knew that if the 'Damn Army made it to the wall, they'd be overrun and killed if they were lucky.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Also, and please keep this between yourself and the other Sergeants, but honestly I think most of what we're gonna run into at Lancaster House is Plague victims."

He smiled at that. "We all know exactly how long the Plague lasts with you around, Ma'am." He nodded to something over my shoulder. "Looks like Cadet Lancaster wants to speak with you, Ma'am. I'll be about it then?"

"Sounds good." He snapped off a salute, which I returned, and he marched back to where the unit had our camp most of the way broken down already.

I turned to see Lancaster just nearing conversational distance. As he came to a stop, he nodded and said, "Commander."

"Good Morning, Larry." I dunno why I kept using not only his first name, but a diminutive. Maybe I figured if he pulled that Lancaster-issue stick out of his ass, we might get along better? No idea, really, just seemed like the right thing to do. I couldn't rule out that I enjoyed needling him with it, though.

"Good Morning. I had two things I wished to confer with you about."

I tilted my head sideways in a 'go on' gesture. "Shoot."

After taking a moment to grok what I meant, he opened with, "I think it best if, at least until we get to cleared roads, we stop at mid-day for a short break, and switch off which units are breaking trail. My units from yesterday are barely in condition to march today."

I nodded. "Yeah, I guess the first half of the day before we'd spent on roads inside the City, which didn't have nearly as much snow piled on them."

"Exactly."

"Okay then. D'you think we ought to swap them the other way? Rotate the front unit to the back and push everyone else forward?"

He shook his head. "No, Commander. Not only will it appear weak, but it would put our least combat-ready units on rearguard."

"Yeah, I get you. If my units hadn't been fresh, I might have wound up gryphon chow."

His smirk told me what he thought of that. "My other issue is that I think for our nightly camps, we need to start putting up some kind of barricade around our encampment."

That meant a lot more work to set up and, if we wanted to break the barricade down, break down the camp. That meant less time on the road, which meant it would take us longer to get to Lancaster House. "Explain?"

He didn't get the booger look I expected. Instead he just said, "despite our moderate success in supplementing our stores, there are fewer animals around than I'd normally expect. That means something has been scaring them away. It could be bandits, it could be a pack of smaller predators, like wolves, or it might be a single larger predator, like a large bear or even a drake."

"Will a wall help with that?"

He shrugged. "Against bandits? If we keep it simple, just dig a trench and pile the dirt into a mound on the inside of it, with all of our crossbows it would take an army our size or larger to reliably dislodge us. Against most natural predators, just the size of the encampment will deter them from approaching boldly, and the barricade will give them a clear sign of what we consider 'our encampment'."

All that made sense, but I caught what he hadn't said. "So, what if we run afoul of a large predator, like a grizzly bear, or a drake, or even a Dragon?"

He shook his head, a smile that was half grimace twisting his face. "Against a large bear or even a drake? The wall might at least give our soldiers a morale boost for having the high ground."

"And if it's a Dragon?"

"Then we all pray that the rumors about what you did north of the Yards' wall are true."