The stockade wasn’t fancy—you could stick your arm between posts in a lot of places—but it’d slow down a barb attack in the unlikely event that there was one. Froggie eyed it with approval. His boys hadn’t forgotten how to work during the past three months in the Harbor.
The tents were up. Normally there’d have been six big ones holding a squad apiece, plus a pair of little bell tents with Slats in one and the other for Froggie and Verruca together. Slats still was separate, but Froggie’d traded the other little one for three more squad tents. He and Verruca would bunk down with the men—that was a better idea anyway, when you were out in the back of beyond with only a century—and the girls didn’t have to make their own shelters.
One tent was for the unattached girls; the rest bunked with the soldiers they’d paired off with. If you wanted privacy you shouldn’t have joined the army, but the extra tents provided a little elbow room when otherwise things would’ve been pretty crowded.
Froggie wondered where Sawtooth thought he was going to sleep. The question didn’t concern him; he just wondered.
Because he wasn’t especially hungry, Froggie paused for a moment on the low fighting step that let the troopers look over the top of the six-foot palisade. Glabrio walked over to him.
“The tree tassels are going yellow,” Glabrio said. “They were dirty blue when we landed, do you remember?”
Froggie shrugged. “You think it’s turning Fall?” he said. “I sure haven’t noticed it getting colder.”
The sky still looked bright, but the cookfires illuminated circles of ground. The green wood gave off clouds of smoke that looked oily but didn’t smell too bad. Girls dipped stew into troopers’ messkits, then sat beside them on split-log benches to share the food.
There was a lot of laughter. Froggie didn’t like this operation one bit, but even he had to admit that it felt good to get away from the Harbor and the eyes of hundreds of bureaucrats.
Slats watched them from across the encampment, his upper and middle arms twitching to separate rhythms. Froggie nodded toward the administrator. To Glabrio he murmured, “The poor bastard’s probably lonely. This can’t be a picnic for him either.”
There was a high, clucking scream. Sawtooth burst into the circle around the First Squad’s cookfire and began to shriek at Queenie. Froggie sighed and strode over to the commotion. He’d been as clear as he could be, but some people—and some barbs—just wouldn’t listen.
“What’s the problem?” Froggie demanded, not shouting but making sure that Sawtooth and Queenie both would hear him over their gabble. He couldn’t make out a word of it, they were talking so quick and angry.
“These sluts were proposing to eat meat!” the barb aide shouted, through the lavaliere now because he was speaking to Froggie. “They have no right to meat!”
“Is everything all right, Centurion Froggie?” Slats demanded nervously. He barely poked his head around the edge of one of the tents where he was hiding from the threat of violence.
“All’s fine, Slats,” Froggie called. Because Froggie was on top of things, the troopers kept a bit back. They were all steaming, though, and more than one man had his hand on his swordhilt.
“Look, buddy,” Froggie said to the barb aide. “I decide who eats what here. The girls do better work with a little sausage in their mush, and—”
“They are not breeders!” Sawtooth shouted. He struck the mess tin out of Queenie’s hand, spraying the savory brown stew across the ground in an arc. “I will not permit them to eat meat!”
“Top?” said Glabrio. He was standing right behind the barb.
“Yeah,” said Froggie, “but you have to clean it up.”
“What do you—” Sawtooth said. Glabrio grabbed his topknot with his left hand and pulled the barb’s head back.
Most troopers used their daggers for the odds and ends of life in the field: trimming leather for bootsoles, picking a stone out of a draft animal’s hoof, that sort of thing. Glabrio often carried only the dagger when he went scouting and didn’t want the weight and clatter of full equipment. He kept a working edge on one side of the blade, but the other was honed to where he could slice sunbeams with it.