He lounged on a wash of sand excavated by the river wearing nothing but his hat with his clothes and effects lying on the beach behind him. For the first time in weeks he felt clean. He was idly watching the strange occurrences between the moons when he heard a horse coming up the path.

He flipped onto his belly. From under the hatbrim he could see the horse's knees, the rider's foot. He raised his head. A hussar sat the horse with his hands relaxed before him. A long barrel protruded over one shoulder and the butt of a rifle was visible at the opposite hip. The stub of a cigar hung out of his mouth.

He reached out and got Booky’s blade.

“Good day to you,” called the hussar.

He didn’t answer. He pulled over his trousers and flapped the sand out of them. He pulled over his shirt.

“I just wanna talk to you,” said the hussar.

“Go on then,” said Orc.

He had the trousers on and he thrust the pistol into his waistband so that the handle rested beside his naval. His head came through the shirt collar.

“You the one that done Lonnie last night?”

He shouldered on the strap of the satchel containing the journal and letter of marque and copper coin. “The man did himself.”

“Ain't no lie. You knew he was a deserter?”

“The barman mentioned something about it.”

“Well the marshal heard about what you done and he sent me down to sign you on to the relief.”

“The relief.”

“That's right.”

“What relief?”

“The marshal’s. He’s taking us into the Gap. We’re gonna find the baron. Maybe cut on some other deserters along the way. Maybe torch some of the dead.”

“They withdrew.”

The hussar leaned forward. He wore a leather girdle and it creaked when he moved. “What’s that now?”

“The risen. They withdrew from the Gap.”

“No shit and we aim to see they never come back. Why don't you come outta there?”

He rose dressed and armed. He looked square at the [hussar].

When the hussar saw what came out of the wash his eyes widened measurably and he sat back in his saddle. One of his hands migrated to the rifle’s shoulder strap where it crossed his chest. "Holy shit," he said.

"If you say so."

"You're an orc?"

"Last I checked."

"The marshal know that?"

Orc shrugged. "I don't know. I don't know who you're even talking about."

"Marshal Bartho Wallis."

He knew the name from the pages of the journal. She'd written about him. Back before he was a marshal.

With finger and thumb the rider flattened his enormous mustache around his mouth. "Reckon you came outta one of his camps."

"You'd be wrong."

"Then where'd you come outta?"

"Here and there."

"Well you can explain it to him direct. You ready to go to the deadlands?"

"To relieve the baron."

"Now you got it."

"No other reason?"

"I don't know what the hell you're gettin at son. The marshal said that's what we're gonna do so that's what we're gonna do. If his sayso ain't good enough for you then I'd welcome you to turn me down now fore you waste any more of his time and mine."

"Are there any dwarves in your outfit?"

"I'd say an orc's one mascot too many but if you know any I'd kindly provide an introduction with the marshal. You got a horse?"

"No."

The hussar took the cigar between two fingers and spat and put it back again. "Do orcs even know what to do with horses?" he said.

Orc looked at the hussar's mount. The head haltered in embossed leather and gold thread worked into the saddle. A shock of white daggered thinly up its nose and everywhere else was chestnut brown. Sable and sleek. "Most I'd say just eat them," he said.

"That what you're gonna do if we bring you along?"

He looked at the hussar. "I prefer eating men."

"Aw hell. You coming or what?"

"I don't know anything about campaigning."

"Ain't much to it. You shit in a ditch, you eat same as everyone else, you ride all day. Maybe walk in your case. You sure you can't ride a horse? You ever tried?"

"No."

"Anyone you kill is yours to loot. Spoils of war. You'll come out of it with plenty to sell. Plenty more to keep. Maybe set yourself up with some land. You ever worked land?"

"Yeah."

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The hussar nodded. "I knew most of you had." He cast his eyes back over his shoulder. "I gotta be getting back. Come on and meet the marshal. Make sure he knows what you are before we kit you up."

They moved through Keelboard with the hussar on his horse and Orc following behind him in his ratty clothes and limp hat like some kind of prisoner. They proceeded down dirt lanes between spare houses with hoarfrost melting off their windward faces. Sewage pooled around discarded rags in the gutters and the men of the frozen sea walked about them and somewhere in that depressed country of salt and ice a hornblower warned of bergs and shoals. They turned along the barrack wall and entered the square from the night before and they passed the well where boys and girls and women waited in turns to fill their buckets. Men with buckets of their own stood here and there hawking the fruits of the sea which were purple and spiked. They passed a shack where an empty hearse waited outside with a little oxidized bell hanging from a pole on its rear and inside a woman and a child wailed.

The hussar nodded at the house as they passed. "That there is Lonnie's place."

Orc never turned his head. The wailing kept on and he thought about the greenskins he’d cut from the gallows. The young and the mates they might’ve had.

The marshal quartered in a household adjoining a fenced yard where twoscore of rusted manacles were slowly disintegrating into the dried mud. The house had been painted white some decades ago and the way it flaked and peeled made it look like some pockmarked leper of a house. Inside the floors were tiled and the walls ornately paneled. The marshal's squire was a boy of about sixteen and he ran shoeless up the stairs ahead of them and rapped on the glassed door onto the balcony.

"Enter," said a voice.

The marshal sat at a writing desk smoking a wicker pipe and reading letters. Orc and the hussar and the squire stood along the wall and waited. Orc looked at him, looked at the yard below the balcony. The rusting chains. The auction block. The marshal nodded and sanded the letter and folded it on itself. He held it down on the desk with his pipe hand and he held a stick of red wax to the pipehead until four bloodred drops pooled in a coin across the fold. He set down the wax and knuckled the signet on his middle finger against the seal. Then he placed the letter on the corner of the desk, taking care to align their right angles. He sat back in his chair and looked at Orc. "Sit," he said.

The hussar and the squire settled onto a bench of carved wood. They left room for Orc but he didn't move from the wall. The smell of the place and the manner of the man before him had taken him back to his time with the brigadier. He was a cub again, uncertain of himself and his place in the world.

The marshal reclined back in his chair for a moment then he hitched one boot then the other on top of the desk. He shifted the repeater he wore dangling from its hip holster to rest between his thighs and he folded his hands upon it. His mustache was blond and his hair was receding and gray and tied up in a bun. He watched Orc. He spoke sidemouthed around the pipestem clasped between his teeth. "Well look at you," he said.

"Pass me a mirror."

"None of that cheek, orc," said the squire.

Orc looked at the boy and at the pair of knives sheathed across his chest.

The squire looked back at him. "And you'll address the marshal as sir."

"Who's the kid?"

"Who's the kid sir."

Orc smiled, amused. "Sir."

The marshal smiled back. "Excuse my nephew. He has little experience with your kind."

The squire turned a shade of pink and said no more. The marshal picked up a silver letter opener from his desk and touched its point against a finger and spun it lazily there. "You're not here to sign on," he said.

"I'm here to see what kind of man is willing to ally himself with an orc."

With the letter opener resting in his open palm the marshal gestured to himself like an orchestral conductor measuring time. "I am as you see me. And there are others. King Donnas himself would, as his grandfather before him did. As his father should have done once the dead began to rise. But that is not how it went. The second Donnas said keep them in the camps."

The marshal looked at his letter lying on the desk. He looked back at Orc. "You didn't come out of my camps did you?" he said.

"No."

"I thought not. I knew everyone in them and they knew me. It was not right fencing them in." He nodded down at the auction block in the yard. "Nor selling them off."

Orc didn't say anything.

"Where did you come from?"

"South a ways."

"Were you penned in one of the armiger's camps?"

"Sure. Maybe."

"Son if you had come out of one of his you would know it."

"Alright."

"Haven't you heard of him?"

"I might've."

"If you want to sign on with us you will need to speak plainly and truly. You may have been a fugitive before but with me you will be as any other soldier."

Orc noticed the squire slouch and study the floor. "Yeah I've heard of the armiger," he said.

"What do you think of him?"

"Plainly and truly I don't think of him at all."

The marshal nodded and leaned forward. "I believe you. Now tell me where you came from before you found yourself here."

"Down at the boomtown at the foot of the Gap. I don't know its name."

"And a posse of the armiger's ran you out. I already knew that. Where did you come from before then?"

"Across the sea."

Now the marshal leaned back. "I see. I see. One of Glad Nizam's then?"

Orc shrugged. "She was there."

"You were not with her at the elven forest were you?"

"No."

"Lucky for you. The armiger sold her out. You know he let her out of the camps on purpose."

"I heard something about that."

The marshal nodded. "Caged her in squalor and turned the screws and just when things were at their worst he opened the fence and set her loose."

Orc stood silent.

"She fought for him without even knowing it. You all did. Unwilling and unasked. Does that seem right to you?"

"No."

The marshal nodded. "Well now I am asking you. Sign on with us and let us see if together we can save the king's men. Are you in?"

Orc saw the squire was shaking his head. The hussar seemed to have fallen asleep. "You ran some camps?"

The marshal kicked his feet off the table and rose. He turned and overlooked the yard with the letter opener clasped behind his back. "I did as I was told," he said. "We all did."

"Not all."

The marshal half turned. "You speak of Brigadier Kathryn."

Orc did everything he could to keep his face passive. He didn't risk speaking.

The marshal turned the rest of the way and locked eyes with him. "What would an orc know of her?"

"Nothing," was all he could manage.

The marshal squinted at him. "You already sign on with her?"

"No."

"She run you out here to provoke me?"

"No sir."

The marshal came around the desk gripping the letter opener like a knife. "She has no sense of the law, orc. No sense of justice. She is a deserter herself, like that man you killed. Defying the king as she did. Traipsing about the deadlands murdering folk no matter their culpability. She has fooled plenty of your kind with her talk, but it is all of it fraudulent. You sign on with me and you will see the difference. Land for every irregular in my company. Rich partitions carved out of the deadlands. Good soil for cropping and mountains of ores in copper and tin and gold too. Everything you despoil is yours to keep and dispose of as you please. The dead do not need it son, but I can see from your eyes how you do. Come with me and take it."

Orc stood silently and tried to read the man for what else he might know of the brigadier.

"Are you not tired of folks treating you like trash?" the marshal was saying. "As lesser than? You ever wondered what it might be like to be treated like a man? Equal with the ones that enslaved you? Come with me and find out."

"I can't ride a horse," said Orc.

"You oughta learn," said the hussar. "I can teach you what you need to know."

The marshal shook his head. "He doesn't need a horse." He tapped the repeater on his hip and pointed at the pistol stuck in Orc's belt. "You know how to fire that singleshot?"

"Yeah."

"And swing that dirk?"

He looked at Booky's blade. "Yeah."

"Nephew," said the marshal, walking back to the balcony's rail.

"Yessir?"

"Sign him on."