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I could see the fires, the smoke rising.
    It was quiet now, and the ashes, the charred planks and blackened poles, would lie beneath the coating of snow.
    I did not understand the business of the ritual knife. I did not understand the casting of oneself upon one’s sword.
    Perhaps that was because I was unworthy.
    Once, long ago, in the delta of the Vosk, I had betrayed my codes.
    I did understand facing a foe, a weapon drawn. I suppose there are various honors, as there are various men. Yet that each has an honor seemed to me significant. Those without an honor I found it difficult to comprehend. Yet perhaps they were the wisest, or most clever. The urt often survives where the larl perishes. And yet I did not think the urt the better for this. It remains an urt.
    Death need not be a defeat; to die well is the final victory.
    “Ho!” I cried to the night. “I am here! Greet me!”
    It would be doubtless unpleasant to return to one’s city, routed and defeated, clad in ashes and rags, to face its councils, to be denied bread, fire, and salt, but better, I thought, that than flight, or falling upon one’s sword, for then one might return to war. Life, I thought, sometimes requires a greater courage than death. Different men, different honors. Let each choose his own, or be chosen by his own.
    I remembered the parapet.
    When things are done, I thought, how might one better sell one’s life than splendidly, gallantly, amidst ringing steel?
    It is not the worst of deaths to perish in sweat and blood, a sword in one’s hand.
    But different men, different honors.
    “Tal!” I cried. “I am alone. I serve Lord Temmu. Are you not here?”
    I was not needed. I had formed and trained the cavalry, and commanded it in the northern forests. Others might command it, Torgus, Lysander, even young Tajima.
    “I am here!” I called. “Greet me!”
    Where, I asked myself, are they? Surely there would be several here, the Ashigaru and officers, warriors of the two swords, to guard the place, to watch for others, to dispatch the patrols and kill squads.
    But there was silence.
    The tarn stirred behind me, closer now, still to my right.
    No, I thought, they are not here; they are hunting.
    “It seems I must come again!” I called to the night.
    What would they be hunting? Men, of course. Might any be left, weeks after the attack? Could any have survived, in the mountains, and cold?
    Fool, I thought, fool!
    I recalled the tiny flicker of light I had seen in my flight. It could have been the camp of a patrol or kill squad, but it seemed a tiny fire, not that serving several men, contented, sure of themselves, with rice boiling in the helmet. It had been positioned such that it could be seen only from the air.
    I had failed to think clearly. Sick with grief, and pain, and misery, disturbed and distracted, I had hoped for little more than the self-indulgent gratification of a meaningless sacrifice. I was unworthy of the scarlet, I had betrayed my responsibilities and the remnants of my command. Was this not a treason compared to which my lapse in the marshes was meaningless? I was still the commander of the tarn cavalry, however torn and depleted it might be. There lay my duty, which, for the sake of a childish vanity, I had been on the point of forswearing. One of my men, perhaps more, had need of me. He, or they, had lit their tiny signal, and I, in the madness of my rage and shame, had failed to understand, and respond.
    I suddenly became aware of dark shapes about me.
    The tarn scratched at the snowy earth with talons.
    “Up!” I cried, leaping to the mounting ladder, which swung beside the saddle, and the tarn screamed, and its mighty wings smote the air, and it ascended, I clinging to the mounting ladder. In a few moments I had attained the saddle, and buckled the safety strap. In the moonlight below I could see several figures, peering upward.
    I could not concern myself with them.
    I was once again Tarl Cabot, an officer, the