Driven by a wind from the west—from Norway—the fine, steady, ice-cold rain had numbed Armfelt's face, making it difficult to speak. It had long-since soaked his felt tricorn, and found its way through small openings in his cloak to chill torso and legs.

It had not, however, frozen his eyes, which scanned his surroundings: forest, pastures—and grainfields where even on this 29th of July, the rye and barley stood scarcely a palm's breadth high. Horses and trailworn cattle foraged the pastures, more of them than the pastures could long support (though too few yet to launch the invasion with). Occasional rain-beaten steadings hunkered gray and sullen. One of them crouched just ahead, a dwelling and out-buildings, all of logs, girded by rail fence. It had the usual hops patch, marked by tall poles with vines growing on them. Firewood poles had been stacked on end, teepee-like. All obscured by rain, dulled by leaden sky. Everything was gray, even the rye, even the birches.

The road was a pudding of mud too soft for the ruts to hold their shape. The horse's plodding splashed it onto their bellies, and onto their riders' stirrups and boots. Turning to his aide, the general spoke, gesturing at the farmhouse; his dressed leather gloves were also wet through. "We will stop there, briefly," he said. "I want to see how things go with them."

"Yes, general."

Minutes later the group of horsemen turned from the road into the yard. A wagon had preceded them, in, then out, for here, off the road, the ruts had held their shape, telling the general that army foragers had visited. The riders stopped before the house. Armfelt's aide de camp dismounted, stepped to the door and knocked. It opened, and a face peered out, gaunt, with russet cheeks, and topped by disheveled reddish hair. The dulled features were worried at this visitation.

"My good man," the aide said, "General Armfelt would like to come inside and speak with you. Where can the others take shelter while they wait?"

The farmer gestured. "There is room in the hay shed for them; the army took most of the hay. And the stable; they took both horses. But be careful; soldiers live there now. Finns."

Armfelt swung down his long right leg, dismounting. "Thank you," he said, with no trace of irony. "My adjutant and I will come in out of the rain." He looked back then at his executive officer. "The rest of you retire to the stable with your horses. And be careful there. Disturb nothing. I will be brief."

The two officers went inside. A low fire burned in the fireplace; given the weather, the chimney wasn't drawing well, and the tang of woodsmoke was strong. The room had a planed plank floor; the rugs, if any, had been put away somewhere till the rain should stop, and the mud dry. The room had a table, a few stools and simple but well-made chairs, and two benches padded with a bear pelt. All made during long winter nights by the farmer himself, Armfelt thought. He'd no doubt killed the bear, too.

The farmer gestured at a bench, rather hopelessly, Armfelt thought. "We will stand," the general said, "and drip on the floor instead of the furniture." He paused. "What is your name, my good man?"

"Oluf Algotsson Indal."

"I am Lieutenant General Karl Gustaf Armfelt. I have come into your home to ask questions. And to Jämtland to command the army." To get them out of your homes and sheds, he added silently. May God solace you, and spare you more such trials. "You have already answered some of my questions. The army has requisitioned your horses and much of your hay. You were paid of course."

"Yes, general," the man said, shrugging as he spoke. Armfelt understood the shrug, too. The kingdom was bankrupt, the money paid for goods and livestock a pittance. Nor would money plow the fields or haul in firewood. Or the grain, if the weather permitted a harvest.

"Do soldiers also live in your house?" he asked. "Or just in your outbuildings?"

"A captain, a lieutenant, and an ensign live in the house. When they're here. Their men live in the stable and sheds, those who are here."

A whole company then, in so little space! Armfelt realized what company that must be, for none of the Finnish regiments would have arrived yet. This was where Longström's small force had taken lodging. "Do they behave well?"

Again the man shrugged. "The Finns have not stolen or destroyed anything. But the army? It could at least have left us one horse, and hay enough to feed it through the winter."

There'd been no chance of that, the general knew. The army needed every horse it could lay hands on, for the supply train, and this farmer hadn't hidden his. "Herr Indal," he said, "thank you for your courtesy. When your troubles are at their worst, think how much worse they could yet become, if this war is lost. Your Finnish guests can tell you about that."

He did not mention Ingria, where he and Lovisa had been born and spent their separate childhoods. In his wildest dreams he could not imagine Ingria freed now from Russian rule. After a moment's pause he added: "What of your cattle?"

"They left me two cows and a bullock, and hay enough to take them through the winter. If we feed them sparingly, and if it is not too long."

"Ah. Do you have paper? And pen and ink?"

The man shook his head. "I have only bible and prayer book."

"Um. Well. If anyone comes to take the animals you have left, or the hay, tell them General Armfelt told you personally they are not to be taken. Should anyone take them, they will answer to me. And tell Captain Longström what I have said." He paused, reading the farmer's reaction to the name. "He and his men, if they are here, will support your words, and the captain has my ear. I will instruct him when I see him."

Then he nodded in courtesy, and with his aide departed into the rain.

When they'd gone, Oluf Algotsson Indal stared at the puddles they'd left on the floor, and wondered if, just possibly, things might actually get no worse.

When visiting the fort the previous spring, Armfelt had stayed in the largest nearby farmhouse, and arranged to lodge there with his staff, when and if he returned. That had been in April, when he and Commissariat General Frisenheim had been reexamining the route into Norway. The snow had been deep enough, farmers had dug out their windows to let in daylight. The snow-buried road would have been impassable to horses, had the farmers not kept it open hauling firewood home on sleighs.

That had been fifteen weeks past. He found it very different now. General Horn had arrived a month before, with the Jämtland and Hälsingland regiments. He'd put the troops to work widening and improving the road (it had been little more than a trail), bridging streams, building ferries, and renovating the two small forts. But the winter's exceptional snows had been followed by a cold spring, and the thaw had extended into July. The first three weeks in July had been sunny and warm, but not enough to dry the road to any depth. Since then almost unbroken rains had made it difficult even for men on foot, and saddle horses. Thus some units were bivouacked not near the forts, but near the roadwork.

Armfelt arrived near midday. After eating, he and Horn had ridden some miles west up the road, to inspect the work in progress. Previously Horn had kept his commander informed via couriered reports; seen first-hand it was worse than he'd imagined. Crews of axmen labored in the rain, felling trees along the south side of the road, and cutting them into short logs for corduroying the road's worse stretches. Other crews made bundles of the branches, for fill on which the corduroys could be laid. Still others, mud to the knees and elbows, lay the bundles in the slop and trod them down, or manhandled the logs into place. Armfelt had seen few roads as bad, anywhere. East of the forts it was good by comparison.

Finally they inspected the bivouac of a Jämtish infantry company at work there. The troops lived in four-man tents, their blankets spread over straw, but at that hour no one was there. In a career that had spanned eleven years of mercenary service in Burgundy, Savoy, the Piedmont, Lombardy, Catalunya and Brabant, and seventeen in the defense of Finland, his Ingrian homeland, and Sweden's Bothnian coast, Armfelt had seen, and at times lived in, many such bivouacs, cold, dank and cheerless. What was different here was the wetness. Nothing was dry; nothing at all. Nothing could be.

They returned to Horn's headquarters for a late supper, and afterward, casual conversation over pipes and watered whiskey. His last official act of the day was to inspect the sickhouse, filled with wheezing, coughing men. It smelled of burnt gunpowder, lit to clean the air. From the general's experience, it wasn't bad.

His five-man staff had spent their time with their counterparts on Horn's staff, seeing what they needed to see, discussing what they needed to talk about. By the time Armfelt led them to the stable, the rain had thinned to a light drizzle. They knew by his manner he was not ready to receive their observations and thoughts. He was deep within his own.

Riding to the farmhouse where they were billetted, it seemed to Armfelt that Horn had done a creditable job here. The problems were many and severe, but the man had made progress on those within his power to amend.

And now they are my problems, Armfelt told himself. They had been all along, of course. He'd been the army's commander in absentia, and Horn had been his proxy. The major problem was the road. Higher up, along the border, last winter's heavy snows hadn't melted till assaulted by the rains, which had hardly paused for two weeks. And he could not avoid the thought that until they ceased, the army would be locked in here.

But that was not allowable, for the king had ordered him to capture Trondheim by the end of October.

The road work had been based on the reasonable assumption that the weather would break, and the road begin to dry. Dry out enough to bear wagons and artillery. But so far the weather hadn't broken, and despite the work, the road was getting worse. We will, he told himself, have to corduroy more of it.

Besides the weather, there was the problem of morale, growing out of short rations, hard labor with too little to show for it, and the wretched weather. And poor discipline in the Hälsingland Regiment, the sort of thing that could spread, and destroy an army. The Hälsingland regiment was the scrapings from an emptied barrel. It had been conscripted to replace the earlier Hälsingland regiment, whose survivors had been taken prisoner at Tönningen, in Germany. And because there was a shortage of good farmfolk left to conscript, they'd taken more than they'd liked of drifters and ne'er-do-wells from coastal and market towns, often not from Hälsingland at all. On the march to Duved, the soldiers' depredations on farms along the way had been so severe, Horn had ordered their colonel to determine the instigators and make them run the gantlet multiple times, as an example to the rest. While announcing that deserters would be hunted down and hanged.

The drizzle had nearly stopped, but in his preoccupation Armfelt hadn't noticed. He'd even guided his horse without noticing. Rations, he told himself, were a key; he was as sure of that as he was of God's infinite love. The men here were half starved. In Finland, in 1711, the supply problem had threatened to destroy the army; the troops had been starved, barefoot, and half-naked. The king had been in Turkey then, and the government in Stockholm unwilling to face up to the emergency. The Russians had already captured Viborg, and threatened to take the rest of Finland. Then Johan Frisius had stepped up, and personally provided the credit needed for rations, shaming Stockholm into a brief semblance of responsibility. And his Finns had resurged.

I almost won at Pälkäne, he thought. I almost won at Storkyro. My Finns fought like lions, and always against larger, better-equipped forces.

"Almost" won. Always "almost." The word offended Armfelt even while he took solace in it.

Finally he'd led the shards of the Finnish army across the Torne River into Sweden, fleeing their homeland. They'd done all they could. Their only remaining hope was the king.

That had been in 1714. Months later, the king had returned from Turkey, and knighted the deserving Frisius, giving him the noble name Frisenheim. Now Frisenheim, who had fed the army—on occasion even paid it out of his own credit — once again had the job of supplying the Finnish army. Which now, with its Swedish reinforcements, was called the Army of Jämtland. But here Frisenheim was backed by the royal authority, and he'd arrive in Duved in a week, God willing. Meanwhile his requisition parties were out in force, throughout the provinces known collectively as Norrland—the northern two-thirds of Sweden. Commandeering everything from herring to cheeses, from flour to lard and butter. And most especially, horses and hay and wagons, because barrels of salmon in a warehouse in Sundsvall were of no use to an army at Duved. They had first to be hauled the intervening 260 miles.

At least, Armfelt told himself, the road from Sundsvall is passable to wagons.

Only when he got down from his horse did he realize the drizzle had stopped. Entirely. Looking westward, he saw a gap in the clouds, showing Venus shining brightly in the twilight. Perhaps the rain is finally over, he thought. Perhaps.

He didn't really expect it would be, but he could hope. The weather was determined by God, working in unknowable ways for his own unknowable purposes. So when, in his bed that night, the general was wakened by thunder, wind, and driving rain, his disappointment was not extreme. But it did seem a hard blow to an army already sufficiently afflicted.

Matts Karlsson i Stentorp was more pleased than ever to work the front of the herd. They no longer followed shaded forest trails, and the dust cloud raised by hooves was much worse toward the rear—dust which mixed with the sweat on herdboy faces to form mud. Over all the long miles and weeks since leaving Blombacka, it had rained just twice, neither time enough to matter. When he thought about it, it seemed to Matts the crops back home must be poor indeed.

But he thought of it seldom. All his life, before that summer, the outside world had been a vague concept, less than real. That had changed. In his new life, Matts was a creature of the present, which, since they'd reached the village of Brunflo, was more interesting than ever. At Brunflo they'd reconnected to the world outside the forest: they'd met, and now followed a real road, where wagons rolled, drawn by bullocks yoked in pairs. They passed them, or encountered them, rather often now. According to Sergeant Björkebom, this was the road from Sundsvall to Fort Duved, Sundsvall being a town on the coast. Matts wondered how the sergeant knew. Perhaps the ensign had told him.

Matts liked it when the sergeant took time to tell him things, mainly how things were done in the army—and sometimes even why! (Matts didn't realize how exceptional that was.) It seemed to him that when the time came—when the general made him a soldier and gave him a uniform and gun and shoes—he'd be ready.

Meanwhile his friendship with Pål Eriksson had deteriorated, though they'd been friends at home. Pål talked as if he didn't like Matts now. "Why?" Matts had asked.

"Because you eat with Sergeant Björkebom. You talk with him more than you do with us."

That wasn't true, Matts knew; all the herdboys ate breakfast and lunch together. Cooked together and ate together, talking all the while. And slept together like spokes of a wheel, their feet to the fire, talking till they drifted off to sleep." Ever since you shot the bear," Pål went on, "you talk with Ensign Hasselbeck and Lieutenant Fågelsund more than with me. You're stuck up now, that's what you are."

Matts rejected that out of hand. Ensign Hasselbeck almost never spoke to him, even in passing, and of course Matts would never speak first to someone so elevated. Lieutenant Fågelsund sometimes greeted him, calling him poika, and grinning, but scarcely more than that. The main change was in the sergeant, who was almost like an uncle now. He still called him "idiot" sometimes, but not scornfully as he once had. And that change had begun before the bear, after he'd started sharing his hares with the sergeant.

"Well, think what you want to," Matts told Pål, "but I'd like still to be your friend. We've known each other since we were little." And you always wanted to be the boss, and mostly I let you, Matts realized. He wondered if Pål had been turning the others against him. The thought didn't stick though. There was little chance to talk while they worked; they were too busy, and too well separated. And in camp it was mainly him with whom Pål talked. They were from neighboring farms. Their families traded work, and they walked to church together.

But that had been then. In the army they could have different friends, find people they liked better. Matts realized he hadn't really liked Pål Eriksson that much; Pål complained a lot, and he was selfish.

But he would, Matts told himself, still talk to him, and with that, dismissed it from his thoughts.

North of Brunflo, much of the road was lined with farms. As the great trail-worn herd passed gaunt and bawling in a pall of dust, farmfolk watched ill at ease, or looked away scowling, as if some of their own cattle had been taken, or soon might be.

Here there were no wild meadows, only hay meadows and pastures used by local farmers. There were few cattle left in them, but earlier there'd been more, for they'd been grazed and tramped down, and because of the drought, weren't recovering. From time to time, Ensign Hasselbeck ordered the herd driven onto one of them—they had to graze somewhere or die on the road—and the farmers were in no position to complain.

Two days later they passed a large lake, with a town on an island. Sergeant Björkebom said the island was called Frösön, and that Fort Duved was not many days farther. This excited Matts and made his stomach uneasy. It was already hungry, of course; he hadn't been able to set snares the past three evenings.

Soon the farms became irregular, the settlements separated by stretches of forest. Matts still felt guilty about driving the army's herd into the pastures, but he knew the reasons for it: the king needed the army, and the army needed the cattle so it could eat. If it didn't, the soldiers would be weak, and if they lost the war, the Russians would come. And the cossacks, who would take the girls and women, kill everyone else, and burn all the farms. That’s what people said.

On the third day past Big Lake, it began to rain, hard and cold, and kept on all day. As a farmboy, Matts was glad, even though he was quickly soaked through and shivering. The parched and stunted grain might make a crop yet, and the meadows could recover. That night they set up tents to sleep in—set them up in the rain—and there were no campfires for drying clothes.

The rain continued for a second day, and a third. By the time they reached Järpen, the gladness had been soaked and rain-whipped out of them. Matts' lips were blue when he told Sergeant Björkebom, "I want only to reach the fort and be under a roof again."

The sergeant's shrubby brows lifted. "A roof?" he said. "Your roof there will be the same one you've got now: your tent."

Matts gawped, and the sergeant shook his head. "Idiot! A skans [small fort] is far too small to house an army. The officers may sleep under a roof—certainly some of them will—but not me, and especially not you. On campaign in Poland, we slept in tents, or under the sky, winter and summer." He eyed the boy quizzically. "You'll get used to it, pojkjävul. Soldiers can get used to anything." The sergeant paused as if examining his own words. "They'd better be able to," he finished, as if to himself.

Used to anything. The words reminded Matts of something his grandfather had told him once when the crops had been poor, a year when he was small, and cried because he was hungry. "Stop crying," the old man had said. "You'll have to get used to it." And he had gotten used to it, more or less, but he greatly preferred a full belly.

From time to time the rain stopped for an hour or a few, but never long enough to dry out. Once the clouds even cleared briefly, and the sun made the meadows steam. It was then Matts got to see a large mountain close up, towering above them on the north. But a cloud lay on its top like a cap, so he got hardly a notion of what it looked like up there. Meanwhile he was always cold; he ached with it. Corporal Lindskog told the herdboys to wear a blanket like a cloak, that he would issue them other blankets for sleeping. The cloak blankets were quickly wet through, and though they helped, all the herdboys got sick, every one of them— coughing and wheezing—but they had to work anyway. There was no ambulance wagon—no wagon at all—and running around keeping the herd moving also warmed them a bit. Several times Pål, coughing and gagging, dropped to his knees and puked up slime, then lay gasping on the sodden ground until helped to his feet.

Twice they stopped for the night near a farmstead. Then Ensign Hasselbeck had the sergeant take the herdboys to the farmhouse, with orders to the farmer to keep them in a heated room that night. At the second such farm, the farmer and his wife did even better. The farmer built a fire in the smoke house/brewery for the boys to sleep in, while his wife heated porridge for them, and gave them cheese and buttermilk, and flatbread with butter. Matts was impressed, because these people had little for themselves; he recognized famine bread, bark bread, when he ate it. But eat they did, though Pål, and Jakob Nilsson from Forshaga, ate only a little. When they'd been fed and warmed, the farm wife spooned some vile but hot potion into each of them, then put a poultice of cow manure on their bony chests, much as their mothers might have. The rest of the night they spent on straw ticks under dry blankets, sleeping the sleep of exhaustion, despite their coughing and wheezing, and the smell of the poultices.

In the growing light before sunrise, the sergeant returned and rousted them from sleep. Their blanket cloaks had warmed, and given off most of their water to the heat from the fireplace. Sergeant Björkebom told them the rain had stopped. The farm wife gave them barkbread again, and porridge, even slivers of cheese, and watching from her stoop as they left, sent silent prayers after them.

Unfortunately the clouds paid little attention to prayers. By the time the herd was moving, it was raining again, not hard, but enough that the herdboys soon were wet through.

Pål arrived at the lower fort on Sergeant Björkebom's horse, slumped in front of the saddle. Jakob Nilsson, who seemed as sick as Pål, rode in front of Ensign Hasselbeck. All the boys were put in the sickhouse, which was already full of coughing, wheezing soldiers. After one night there, Matts declared himself cured, but the barber/surgeon in charge knew better. By then Matts' clothes were dry, and during the next two days he intermittently helped, taking medicines to soldiers, tending the fires in the fireplaces, removing dry clothes from the racks and replacing them with wet, feeding men too sick to feed themselves, and in general being useful.

Several soldiers died that day—and two herdboys. Pål was the first person Matts knew, of his own age, to die, and briefly it shook him. Whether or not that had anything to do with it, over the next sixteen hours, Matts' coughing, and the congestion in his chest, eased greatly.

The next day dawned to a change of weather; the rain had stopped. There was intermittent sunshine, and only brief scattered sprinkles. The sergeant major of Jämtland's Regiment sent a corporal to the sickhouse, with a list of names of men to check on. And a list of the herdboys who'd come from Blombacka under Ensign Hasselbeck; they'd been assigned to the regiment as civilian labor.

With the surgeon's permission, the corporal got the herdboys out of bed, all but the sickest one, and sized them up, his eyes stopping on each. One was distinctly huskier, stronger-looking than the others; good for roadwork, the corporal decided. "You," he said pointing, "stand over there." The boy did as he was told, looking worried. Two were slighter than the rest; let them tend cattle, the corporal decided. "You and you," he told them, his forefinger identifying, directing, "over there." Physically the rest had little to distinguish them; they were lanky verging on scrawny. Underfed, he told himself, but in a year like this, they'd be no better off at home, and probably worse. And they were used to hard labor, though for strength they fell well short of grown men.

He turned to the surgeon. "Which are fit for duty now?"

The surgeon pointed at the husky one. "He can go." He looked at Matts then, and almost spoke, but thought better of it; he'd see if he could keep him, as an orderly. "The others," he went on, "should rest another day. They were all very sick when they arrived. Now that they're doing a little better, it would be a shame if they got worse again." He paused; his expression turning sour. "We buried two of them yesterday."

"I can go, corporal," Matts said. "I'm well enough to work."

The offer took the corporal by surprise. "Well enough to chop down trees, and carry corduroys?"

"Yes, corporal."

The corporal looked questioningly at the surgeon, who shrugged. "If he wants to go."

Damn fool kid, the corporal thought. "Good," he said. "Stand by him." He pointed to the huskier boy, then turning to the others, added, "I'll come for you another time. The surgeon will be watching you. If he tells me you're pretending to be sicker than you are, it will go hard for you."

He gave his attention to the two he'd take with him. "What is your name?" he asked the husky one.

"Axel Jonsson i Övergård."

The corporal glanced at his list, found the name and marked it. Then he looked up at Matts. "And yours?"

"Matts Karlsson i Stentorp."

The corporal marked again. "Do you know where your things are kept?"

"Yessir," said Axel. "Yes corporal," said Matts, feeling superior for knowing the proper address.

"Good. Get them, then report to me at the surgeon's office. He will sign you over to me."

He turned away, and with the surgeon left the room. The two boys looked at each other, Matts with respect for Axel's size and obvious strength, Axel with respect for Matts' having killed the bear, and for gaining the respect of the Finns.

"I think we'd better do it," Matts said.

"Yes, I guess so."

It was past noon when they reached the work site, six miles on foot upstream of the fort. So far as they could, they walked in the forest's edge, instead of on the road, which was a churned morass, laborious even to walk in. Trees had been cut along its south side, widening it to twenty feet, and making room for ditches. The stumps had been cut waist high and the side roots chopped through, so horses could pull them over. Their trunks were gone, cut into corduroys and laid in the road's worse stretches.

The boys were turned over to a sergeant, who turned them over to a private, who showed the two where they would sleep. The road crews camped near the job, to save the time and energy of walking so far. The two boys were separated now, attached to different squads.

They put their bedrolls in the tents they'd sleep in. Then the private led them back to the road, where he dropped Axel off with another soldier, a hulking powerful man, muddy to the thighs. Matts he led down a well-worn sledge trail through spruce forest, to a meadow that fringed the swollen river, just below where a creek flowed into it. There, eight or ten soldiers worked with spades, digging gravel and throwing it onto stoneboats fitted with low plank sides. A yoke of bullocks stood hitched to each stoneboat, placidly chewing their cuds while they waited. Matts' guide turned him over to still another soldier, a tall young man with big shoulders, who straightened, a spade in his hands. He looked Matts over. "I am Private Skoogh," he said. "You will work with me. There are spades over by that fallen tree." He gestured. "Get one and come right back."

Matts did. They worked for some hours, during which only a few spatters of rain fell. Finally their sergeant told them to end off. They walked to the river, washed any mud from their spades, then piled them on an empty stoneboat and hiked up through the forest to their tents. One man had been sent up early, to cook for the entire squad. Using tinder, gun powder, birch bark, flint and steel, he'd built a fire of dead spruce limbs stored in a tent. Built a fire, then burned it to a bed of coals. Now the squad's iron pot sat on the fire stones and coals, the cook squatting beside it, giving the contents an occasional stir. He watched as the squad arrived. His eyes stopped on Matts, and he scowled.

Matts didn't notice. He was salivating, his belly eager with hunger. Going to his tent, he went to his pack and took out the tin plate, large wooden mug, and knife, fork and spoon he'd brought from home. Then he returned to the fire, to the end of the short line of soldiers, and watched the cook serve. When his turn came, the portion was small—perhaps half what the others had been getting.

A voice spoke sharply. "Ekblad! Give him a fair share!" It was the squad leader, a sergeant, who'd spoken.

"That is a fair share. A child's share. He's not a soldier."

"Do as you're ordered! If you talk back to me once more, I'll report you to the provost!"

The man filled Matts' bowl so it overflowed, scalding the boy's thumb. Matts said nothing; barely flinched. The squad sat around eating and talking, in a loose circle on short sections of log. Matts, feeling himself an outsider, would have found a place on the fringe, but Private Skoogh called to him. There was room on his log.

"Sit," he said, and Matts sat. "You're not a Jämtlander," Skoogh commented. "That's plain from your speech."

"I am a Värmlander."

"Ah. Most of us are from here in Jämtland." He lowered his voice then, and gestured toward the cook. "He is a sailor who got drunk and missed his ship at Sundsvall, where a conscription party picked him up. Just now he hates the world, including you and me and the rest of us, and he's looking for trouble. The sergeant says leave him alone, and I'm willing. Most of us are; in a fight, we suspect he would use his knife." He dipped a piece of hardtack in his soup, and took a bite. "You must have been with the beef herd that arrived a few days ago."

"Yes. I was a herdboy"

"I hear it had an escort of Finns."

"Under Lieutenant Fågelsund, yes. They joined us at Orsa Lake."

"How were they? The Finns."

"All right. We all worried a bit at first. They felt dangerous. But they were all right." Matts thought of telling Skoogh about Lieutenant Fågelsund taking him moose hunting, and about killing the bear, but decided not to. It might seem boastful.

Some of the other soldiers had been more or less listening. One of them laughed. "This army will have more Finns than Swedes, when all the regiments get here. Twice as many, I've heard." He laughed again, then lowered his voice. "Ekblad better not pour hot soup on a Finn." He made a gesture, like cutting someone's throat. "Ekblad's knife wouldn't worry one of them. A Finn would open him up like a herring, and think nothing of it. They are good with knives."

Grinning, he turned to Matts. "Show me your hands."

Puzzled, Matts held one out, the one nearest the soldier, who reached, took it, and felt the palm with his thumb. "All callus," the man said. "I knew it. You shoveled like a man and never winced, so I knew you weren't getting blisters. You've swung a scythe, an ax, a pitchfork, all of them. You'll do all right here, boy. You'll get along." He lowered his voice again. "But be careful around Ekblad. I think he is ripe for the madhouse."

Inwardly Matts flinched at that, and peered around for the cook, who was sitting apart now, muttering to himself and not looking at the others. Then the boy heard someone say that lemmings had been falling from the sky lately. That he'd seen some.

"What is a lemming?" Matts asked. Cautiously; his grandfather sometimes told him wild stories to fool him.

"They're a small rat, about the size of a fist. Round like a guinea pig, with tails shorter than their feet. And they don't eat the ducks, or anything else that moves, only grass, and the grain in the fields."

"Lemmings," someone else said, "are what they have in heaven instead of lice. When the angels comb their hair, lemmings fall out. They fall to earth in swarms."

Another soldier got to his feet. "I'll believe that when I see them falling," he said. "But now I'm going to bed. Maybe I'll dream about them."

The man who'd brought up the subject laughed. "I suppose you don't believe in the sun," he called after him, "because you haven't seen it lately."

They all laughed then, including the man who was leaving. All but Matts, who didn't feel sure of himself yet with these soldiers. Three others got up and went to their blankets, too. Most of the rest stoked their pipes with tobacco—pipes made of horn, or baked clay, or carved from soapstone. The sergeant, who sat a bit off on the fringe, had listened without speaking. Matts watched him get up and come to the fire now, to poke a long splinter in among the embers. When it flamed, he lit his pipe with it; the pipe bowl looked to be carved from some dark wood. Then he went to his seat again, seeming to look into the distance as he smoked.

"The sergeant doesn't say much," Matts murmured.

"With some people," Skoogh murmured back, "the more they see, the less they talk. The sergeant was in the fighting from Narva to Lesnaya. The Russians took him prisoner, but he escaped, and walked all the way to Finland. Or so I've heard. The old hands say so, so it's probably true."

Matts shook his head. "I never heard of those places you said. Have you been there?"

Skoogh smiled. "No, I'm glad to say. I've never been in the war, only heard about it. But I've been to Trondheim."

Matts had never heard of it, either. "Trondheim?"

Skoogh seemed surprised at the boy's reaction. "The place we're going to capture," he said. "It's an important town in Norway. With luck, you'll see it in two or three months.

"Norway?"

"That's right. Trondheim's not so far from here. In winter I could ski there in less than four days. I did once, when I left home. I wasn't sixteen yet. But in summer? With cannon and wagons and all this rain?" He shook his head, then added in a whisper. "We'll do good to get to Skalstugan, and that's this side of the border. It would be better to wait till November, when the mud and rivers freeze and the snow comes, then ski in."

Matts lowered his voice too, to match the young soldier's. "Why don't we then? Wait till the mud freezes."

Skoogh shrugged, his face hard now. "Because the king wants it captured before then."

Matts looked at that and decided he knew too little even to think about it. "Are there really lemmings?" he asked.

Skoogh smiled. "Yes, there are lemmings, but they don't fall from the skies. They come down from the fjelds by the thousands of thousands, in furry streams. I've seen them. I grew up on a farm at Ånn, not many miles from here, near the edge of the fjelds . Yes, I've seen lemmings all right."

"Why did you go to Trondheim?"

"To become a sailor. It's the closest seaport to Ånn."

Matts' eyes brightened. "You were a sailor?"

"For three years."

"Did you visit other countries then?"

Skoogh's smile widened. "Oh yes. Every ship I sailed on was from another country—the Netherlands, England, Norway—and we went to many countries besides those."

Matts considered that. When he was small, he'd assumed everybody in the world spoke the same language. Then, at church, he'd heard about the Tower of Babel, where God had made the different peoples speak different languages. But that had never been real to him till he'd heard the Finns.

"Do they speak different languages in the countries you went to?"

"Oh yes."

"How do they know what each other says? How do they know the words, so they can say them?"

"They learn it from their parents."

"Is it hard?

"For us Swedes? Learning Dutch and English isn't so hard, unless you want to sound like an actual Englishman or Dutchman. But to just get by, they're not hard. They have a lot of words that are like Swedish. In France and Portugal though, and the Indies and Egypt, I never understood anything they said. Not a word."

"What about Norway? Will we understand them there?"

"Usually, especially when you get used to it. If you were there today, you'd understand most of what they said, and mostly they'd understand you."

"Say something in Norwegian. Can you?"

"Sure. I lived there for two years, and I have a talent for languages." He recited the Lord's Prayer then, as said in Trøndelag. "Did you understand that?"

"Sure. It's the Lord's Prayer. They just say it a little differently."

"How about this?" Lars said a pair of sentences phrased to use words different from Swedish.

Matts frowned. "It's about something killing sheep I think, and coming down the chimney."

"That's pretty good."

"Say it in Swedish."

That too had an expression Matts didn't know. "It's Jämtish," Skoogh explained. "There are different languages, but there are also different dialects—ways people talk in different parts of a country. In Jämtland or Värmland for instance. If it wasn't for the church," he added, "Sweden would have twenty different languages, and Norway a hundred. But every Swede hears the same sermons and learns the same catechism, and reads the same prayer book and hymn book as they do in every other part of the country. So we all know Swedish, even if we say things a little differently."

Matts looked thoughtfully into the fading embers, thinking of how the Finns talked Swedish, when they did. "Have you ever known Finns?" he asked.

"Yes. I went to a place in Norway with a squad of Finnish soldiers, dressed like farmers so people wouldn't know what they were. I was their guide, because I speak Norwegian like a Norwegian, and I know the paths over the fjelds. I could talk, and the Norwegians would think I was one of them."

"Why did the Finns want to go there?"

"I'm forbidden to talk about that."

Matts frowned thoughtfully, then changed the subject. "I would like to learn another language. Would you teach me?"

"It would take time; more than we'll have."

"Norwegian then. That shouldn't take so long."

Skoogh's brow wrinkled thoughtfully. "I need to think about it. We'll see." He got to his feet. "Now it's time to sleep. I'll see you in the morning."

As it happened, he saw him sooner than that. They'd been assigned to the same tent.

Johan Henrik Frisenheim, the commissariat general assigned by the king to the Army of Jämtland, was as glad as anyone to waken to sunshine. He raised himself on an elbow, sensing the early morning household stirrings of summer on a large farm. In this case a priest farm, much better able than most to provide hospitality to an important official and his party. Throwing back his blankets, Frisenheim swung his legs out of bed, and in his nightshirt stepped barefoot to the window. The sky was blue, and within his limited view, utterly cloudless! He rubbed his hands together as if at a smörgåsbord. It seemed to him the change was not an ephemeral regency between two dynasties of rain; this time the sun would stay awhile.

The fire in his fireplace had burnt down to faded rose beneath pale gray wood ashes. His clothing had been dried and laid out. He had a personal servant, Väinö Ridala. Tireless and phantom-like, Ridala had looked after him since they'd been driven from Nyen, in what then was Finnish Karelia. Moving with new energy, the commissariat general pulled on his drawers, removed his nightshirt with a sweep that left it on his bed, pulled on his undershirt and deerskin kneepants, and called to Ridala to bring his boots. Then he sat down on a stool and pulled on his yellow woolen army-issue hose. Ridala was there with the boots before the second stocking was on the general's thick left calf. The boots had been cleaned the night before and set to dry, then freshly oiled in the morning's smaller hours.

Frisenheim skipped shaving. He was eager to be on the road, eager to reach Duved, and his new duties. His good friend Armfelt would not be offended if he arrived with a day's growth on jaw and cheeks. And the king was 600 miles away in Strömsund.

Ridala adjusted the general's periwig. "Thank you, my friend," said Frisenheim, then left the room. Captain Ösund and Lieutenant Staszic were waiting in the corridor. "Major Algren will be along shortly," Ösund said. Together the three of them walked to the dining room. A serving girl straightened from laying out their places, and disappeared into the kitchen.

A moment later their host, Pastor Andersson entered. Unlike the officers, he wore a beard, spade-shaped. "Good morning, gentlemen," he said. "I trust you slept well."

Each answered for himself, the replies overlapping. All but their host spoke Swedish with a distinctive East Baltic sound. The pastor had greeted them briefly the evening before, his nightshirt stuffed into his trouser-waist, but had not sat down with them. They'd been expected, but arrived hours late, and he'd gone to bed. Now they sat down together. The serving girl came in with their breakfast: roast beef, barley porridge, slices of strong dark limpa with butter, and to top it all off, a soft-boiled duck egg for each man. Then the pastor offered a lengthy prayer, thanking God for the food, and praying for a good harvest, that the entire kingdom might eat well. At the same time describing the famine and suffering as if the all-seeing deity hadn't noticed.

It was, Frisenheim thought drily, less a prayer than a sermon to the commissariat general, the man responsible for supplying the Army of Jämtland. A needless sermon, because Frisenheim knew at least as well as the pastor how bad conditions were. He himself had urged His Majesty to postpone the invasions of Norway, both in the south and the north, until a good harvest had been gathered. Governor Hamilton, the head of civil government in Norrland, had gone so far as to risk the royal displeasure by sending His Majesty a sample of what the peasants were living on: famine bread, made more of the ground inner bark of pine or aspen, heather buds, threshing chaff and the rest, than of flour. And the story was, his Majesty had eaten it—sampled it at least—but he had not changed his orders.

His Majesty was not a man who explained himself, but it seemed to Frisenheim he knew the king's reasons. The royal envoy, Von Görtz, was on Åland, negotiating peace terms with Andrew Osterman, the Tsar's advisor on foreign affairs. And Karl's negotiating position would be strengthened by a conquest of Norway, and a consequent peace treaty with the Danes. Thus a year's delay was unacceptable to him. And the people had survived famines in the past; most would survive another.

When Pastor Andersson finally intoned his "amen," Major Algren, who hadn't wanted to interrupt, came into the dining room apologizing for being late.

"Is Major Algren able to ride today?" the pastor asked, phrasing it formally in the third person. "Or will he stay the day with us, to recover?"

Algren had suffered a severe flux the day before—the reason for the party's lateness. He'd spent considerable time in the woods or behind roadside thickets, in the rain with his trousers pulled down around his boots, suffering miserably. Dressed as he was now, in traveling clothes, the pastor's question had been more a courtesy than a serious invitation. "I seem largely to have recovered, pastor," the major replied calmly, "and there is much for us to do at Duved."

"Indeed," Frisenheim said meaningfully, and began to eat. The meal took less time than the pastor's prayer. Or so it seemed, for the one was pleasure, the other tedium. Within the hour, Frisenheim's party was on horseback, riding west up the road toward Duved. He'd dispatched a corporal ahead on their fastest mount, to let Armfelt know he expected to arrive the next day.

The commander's room was the largest in the farm house—he'd displaced the farmer and his wife—but with ten senior officers and benches to seat them, plus their lit pipes, it was both crowded, and pungent. The officers attending included not only his general staff, his adjutant, and the senior chaplain, but two generals besides himself, with a third expected momentarily, each a senior regimental commander. Considering their interpersonal histories, which included several rivalries, two or three grudges, and waiting for an eleventh man, the mood was remarkably genial. The tobacco helped, and a day of sunshine.

The eleventh, Lieutenant General Reinhold Johan de la Barre, was the tallest of them all, and the doorway was little more than six feet high. He didn't duck low enough, and struck his slightly lowered cranium on the lintel, knocking off his tricorn, displacing his periwig, and very nearly dropping him to his knees.

"Welcome, General de la Barre," Armfelt said. "Are you all right?"

De la Barre's fingers went to the sparsely haired point of impact, exploring. His periwig and felt tricorn had padded it against the worst of the blow, but still it had been hard enough to produce a moment's blackout, and a metallic taste in his mouth. "I am a Finn," he answered, "despite my paternal grandfather's origin. A blow on the head is of little matter."

Chuckling rippled through the room. While he rearranged his periwig, someone asked "How is the lintel?" De la Barre knew the voice, and answered without showing irritation; he wouldn't give the man the satisfaction. "I will spare it my retaliation—this once," he added, then bending, picked up his hat.

Armfelt had taken in the exchange, implied as well as spoken. "Well then," he said, and looked at Senior Chaplain Falck. "Your Grace, would you pray for us, and for our noble purpose?"

Falck bent his wigless gray head, then waited, giving the others a few seconds to bend their necks. "Almighty God," he intoned, "we are gathered here on the eve of a crusade against the King of Denmark—a faithless man whose oath, sworn on Your Book, means no more to him than that of a parrot that knows not what it says. A king who has allied himself with the lecherous, faithless Augustus, and the drunken, pagan barbarian Peter, in their honorless...."

Blessed Lord, thought Armfelt, let him not ramble on as long as sometimes.

In fact Falck rambled for only eight minutes, though it seemed longer; except for his own, the sole "amen" when he finished was Armfelt's. Falck straightened his shoulders and neck, then spoke to the commander. "With the Herr General's permission, I will go to my quarters now."

"As you wish, Herr Prosten," Armfelt said, bowing slightly. Ten pairs of eyes followed Falck's departure; a rude and ill-tempered man, he was not liked by the army's senior officers. When the door had closed behind him, de la Barre spoke: "The man has a sour tongue and a sourer disposition. Is it not possible to leave him behind?"

"If he requests it, I'll approve it. In fact I suggested it to him before we left Gävle, but he would not hear of it. Watch him as he goes up and down stairs; clearly his back gives him much pain. To sit in the saddle costs him dearly, and as for standing? I have it from a reliable source that his feet are as painful as his back. I'm grateful I do not suffer as he does."

Ah, thought de la Barre, that explains more than his disposition. More than once, on the road, he'd smelled whiskey strongly on Falck's breath. But it gives him no license to inflict his disposition on others, and the old mule is too stubborn to follow our commander's good advice. As for pain while riding... De la Barre suspected hemorrhoids, and was not inclined to sympathy for someone he disliked. If I were commander, I'd leave him behind, like it or not. Karl has too much respect for the old man's rank.

He didn't fault his commander for it though; Armfelt stood by his officers in their times of trouble, and de la Barre, as much as any, had reason for both respect and gratitude.

Meanwhile, Armfelt went on to other matters. "As you know, gentlemen, His Majesty would have us already on the way. You know also why we aren't. We are seriously short both of pack horses and saddle mounts. Governor Hamilton has had parties scouring the countryside all the way to the coast, commandeering any horses that seem serviceable, not even sparing the clergy's stables." His gaze moved to Horn. "The second matter has been the road over the mountains. For you newcomers, it is a chain of bottomless mud holes connected by more mud, worse than you've heard. But it will have to do."

He stroked his long jaw. "It will be some time before we can expect all the horses needed. After services on Sunday, Jämtland's Regiment will break camp under General Horn." He nodded at the man. "With them will go Captain Möller's artillery. The road is a serious problem for anything on wheels, but if we are to take Trondheim, we will need artillery. The other regiments will leave as horses are available."

Meanwhile, de la Barre thought wryly, His Majesty's clock continues to tick.

"Major Palmstruch reports that between the border and Sul, the Danes have felled numerous förhuggningar, and Captain Longström has patrols scouting alternative routes. As far as Skals Lake, our route is set. From there? We shall see. Longström's people have made their presence known from Snåsa in the north to Meråker in the south, creating uncertainty in the enemy's mind. They have identified half a dozen possibilities. But the most suitable is through Sul and Steine Skans.

"General Budde knows that as well as we do. He is a seasoned old war dog, and knows his terrain. As for his army...we do not know how large it is at this time. But few of his soldiers are battle seasoned; many are only mobilized militia. As warriors, they do not approach our Finns."

He looked his senior officers over, both staff and commanders. "General Horn knows what I expect of him. He earned his command with his bravery, his blood, and his good judgement in battle. As most of you know, we served together, he and I, in Ingria and Karelia under General Cronhiort in the war's first years. Also, some of his men know the country we will travel through—know it well—so his regiment is the natural choice to lead the march." He paused. "Any comments?"

It was Major General Otto Reinhold Yxkull who responded. "Sixty years ago, these Jämtlanders were Norwegians, and their allegiance was to the King of Denmark. Can we trust them?"

Armfelt turned to Horn. "General Horn, I will let you answer that."

Horn got to his feet. "Two years ago I might have asked the same question, but now...I have cultivated my company commanders because they are either Jämtlanders or have served with the regiment for some time. The Jämtlanders have always been Jämtlanders, and loyal to whichever king ruled them. But in Viking times, or so they believe, their forefathers came here from Norway to get away from the hard-handed Eiriks. True they travel back and forth—and intermarry with their neighbors on the other side—but they had rather be Swedes than Norwegians."

He looked around at the other senior officers. "As soldiers they are obedient, and apply themselves honestly. They are not yet so fierce as our Finns, and of course not battle-hardened, but they are upright and self-reliant. I will not hesitate to lead them into battle."

Horn sat down then. Other questions were asked and other matters discussed. Then, an hour later, the regimental commanders left for their own billets, and the general's staff found their beds. Leaving behind the two senior generals, to smoke a final pipe together, and talk. "What are you thinking?" de la Barre asked.

"We have a hard task, my friend."

"But far the better army."

"Better now, yes. But better when we stand before Trondheim? We have to get there, first. And you know what the country is like, between here and there. And the supply problems."

"Supply problems? You're used enough to them, you and these Finns. And they know you. When Lybecker was called back to Sweden, and you replaced him, deserters came back! Hungry, unpaid for months, but they came back! At Pälkäne and Isokyrjö, the only orders they refused were orders to retreat!" De la Barre grunted a laugh. "Most commanders would envy their loyalty to you."

He'd let his pipe die. Now he knocked the dottle from its bowl, and got to his feet, Armfelt following suit. "You called Budde an old war dog," de la Barre finished, "but you are the old war dog, my friend, and your army knows it. They are as loyal to you as you are to them." They shook hands, then, and de la Barre left, Armfelt watching the door close behind him.

Armfelt lay awake awhile, thinking not of Jämtish loyalty — or de la Barre's — but of mud, horses, artillery—and somehow of His Majesty's clock inexorably ticking, as if de la Barre had mentioned it aloud. After a while he slept, and dreamt of them all.

The next morning Frisenheim arrived, and a few hours later, Governor Hugo Hamilton rode into the fort with his party. The two talked at length with Armfelt and his generals, de la Barre and Horn, about the logistical problems in general, and most especially the shortage of horses. They were about to adjourn when an aide entered, followed by another officer. "General Armfelt," the aide said, "Major Hård is here to see you." Then more softly, "From Strömsund."

From Strömsund. The room fell still. The aide left, closing the door behind him. Armfelt recognized Major Hård by name and face; he'd been on His Majesty's staff at Lund during Lybecker's court martial. Now he was unshaven and red-eyed, his boots and breeches, even the skirt of his tunic mud-spattered. Clearly he'd traveled hard and fast. Strömsund was—how far? Seven hundred miles or more, Armfelt thought.

Hård saluted sharply. "Herr General!" he said, then held out an envelope with the king's seal. "From His Majesty!"

Gravely Armfelt took the envelope and slit it with his pen knife, removed the sheets it held, and began to read. To de la Barre it seemed his commander paled just a bit, but when he'd finished, his voice sounded much as usual. "Gentlemen," he said, "His Majesty's letter explains why Major Hård found it necessary to ride so hard. We are ordered to begin our march no later than tomorrow."

Once more the room was silent, till Armfelt spoke again, his voice grave. "Major, it is impossible for the army to leave tomorrow." He said it matter-of-factly, but with clear regret. "We are still seriously short of pack horses. More have been procured, but haven't arrived yet, and others have yet to be acquired."

He turned, gesturing toward the other men. "I presume you know Commissariat General Frisenheim and Governor Hamilton. They arrived yesterday. And this is Major General Horn. We've been discussing the situation."

Hård interrupted; he was His Majesty's voice here. "Discussion is not the solution. Horses are not the solution. Will is the solution. Will, and obedience to orders."

"Thank you, major. Our discussion was of when the horses in hand will arrive, and what must be done to acquire the rest. But we are slowed by more than lack of horses. Some of my regiments are not here yet. Their progress has been impeded by the heavy rains, swollen streams, and the state of the roads between here and the Bothnian coast. I'll begin sending regiments up the road as I can, those with the necessary horses. Meanwhile," he added, "we have stopped graining horses, in order to have bread for the men."

Hård would not be put off. He turned to Hamilton. "Governor," he said, "acquisition is your responsibility. Acquisition of horses, cattle, foodstuffs, forage..."

The old Scot reddened, but he spoke quietly. "It is God, not I, who has not seen fit to comply with His Majesty's wishes."

Now it was Hård who reddened, but the governor gave him no chance to retort. "Otherwise the horses and all the rest would be here now. As for foodstuffs, if you order me to take the farmers' seed grain, I will see to its collection. The women and old men are little able to hide or defend it. They are too weak from hunger. Then there will be no crop at all next summer, regardless of God's weather. Perhaps you will blame me for that, too. And if I utterly strip the farmers of horses..."

Armfelt cleared his throat, cutting off the governor before he could say anything more dangerous than he had. "Major," the general said, "perhaps you'd like to see the road to the west. You can evaluate for yourself why so many horses are needed. It is unclear how useful wagons will be, though we'll start out with them, because to depend on pack horses requires many more animals."

Tired as Hård was, and Hamilton as well, Armfelt took both of them, along with Frisenheim, Horn and de la Barre, riding westward up the miserable quagmire of a road as far as Shed Lake (Bodsjön), a round trip of twelve miles. As they rode, Horn described the work done or in progress, and the problems. "This is just the beginning," he finished. "It gets worse ahead. With your agreement, tomorrow you and I can ride to Medstugan, about twice as far. Or all the way to Skalstugan if you'd like. We can stay the night there if need be. The cabin's been repaired. You will be the king's eyes."

The road impressed, even dismayed Hård as no argument or explanations could have. He was thinking in particular of the difficulties in bringing even the lightest siege guns over this road. But said nothing of that. His was the king's voice here, and His Majesty considered difficulties irrelevant.

They returned to the fort to a late supper. The major would spend the night there, in the room held for the king. Afterward he and Armfelt shook hands in the privacy of the night outside. "You must harden your will, Herr General," Hård said.

At that, Armfelt's long strong face turned morose. Without speaking, he nodded acknowledgement and rode off to his billet, shaking as if with an ague. He fought it, willed it to stop. I have been hard for many years, he thought; I can manage for as many more as necessary for the king to free Finland of Russians.

Meanwhile, he reminded himself, the sun had shone on him and his army for three days in a row now, and seemed to offer more to come. He might hope.