Location:The Northern Ranges — Cold Shoulder, The Third Point of the Escort Route
Date/Time:TC1857.10.21 – TC1857.10.24
The first snow on Cold Shoulder took the sound out of everything, and the thing Freya listened for after that was breathing.
Twelve children in a line on a slope in snow make almost no noise at all. The boots go in and come out, and the snow takes it. The packs creak, and the snow takes that too. What is left, if you walk at the back and keep your mouth shut, is twelve small sets of breathing, and you learn them in a day, and after that you can tell from the back of the line which one is tired and which one is frightened and which one has decided to stop talking to the one in front.
She had been learning this for three weeks and a leg and a half, and what she had understood by the second leg was that walking at the back was not guarding.
It was counting.
***
