On the morning following the capture of Steine Skans, Armfelt again convened his staff, the rest of his regimental commanders, and commanders of smaller units not attached to a regiment. Notably Captain Longström. They met in the staff room at the Skans, relaxed and confident, though more than one brought a headache with him from the previous night's partying.

Chaplain Falck had stayed in bed. The grueling trip through the wilderness had worsened his lumbago, his arthritic hips and knees, and his now bleeding hemorrhoids. So it was Nils Idman, a chaplain in Armfelt's own old regiment, who opened the meeting with prayer.

"Heavenly Father," Idman began, "we thank Thee for the victory here. Bless these brave commanders and this brave army. Give them the strength and will to continue to overcome. Give us, we pray Thee — give the town of Trondheim into our hands, and the land and people of Norway into the merciful hands of Your servant, our blessed King Karl. Bless Sweden and her people, and please God give strength and succor to the people of Finland. Give the occupying army — its commander, its officers, its soldiers — a sense of Your own blessed mercy, that they may manifest it...."

Idman was less long-winded and his prayer more pertinent than the general's staff was used to. After the Amen, it was de la Barre who spoke, before Armfelt could begin the proceedings they were gathered for. "Where is Pastor Falck?"

"He finished yesterday's march on a litter," Armfelt answered. "There was blood on his saddle, and he could not walk. He's as hard-willed as any man among us, but I would not see him suffer so at his age. I'm leaving him here with the garrison. When the road through Sul freezes, and we have snow, he will ride back to Sweden in a sleigh. God spare him another day on horseback!"

De la Barre smiled inwardly. Hard-willed? Karl Gustaf is being polite. "And your army's new bishop?"

"Pastor Idman will serve in that capacity."

Armfelt scanned the room. "The army will have to do with a single day of rest for now; we leave tomorrow morning. Skaanes Skans is a day's march west, and I want it in our hands by tomorrow night, if possible without fighting. The army can rest another day there.

"Then we'll move on Trondheim, and God willing, capture it before Budde can complete its defenses. Captain Rickman has reported on the routes from Skaanes to Stjørdal...." Armfelt reviewed the routes with them, and Captains Rickman and Longström elaborated with the details they'd observed, or their patrols had reported.

Armfelt suspected that Budde would not seriously contend for Skaanes Skans. It was on the shore of Trondheim Fjord, built to protect its upper reaches from naval incursions, and neither placed nor designed to inhibit a land invasion from Sweden. But while it could therefore be bypassed, its capture was dictated by the provisions it held. And as a strategic strong point on the road from Sweden, for the shipment of supplies and the evacuation of wounded. He expected hard fighting at Givings Ridge, where both Longström and Rickman had reported förhuggningar and breastworks. While Trondheim would feature more difficult defenses.

Meanwhile, given the sorry state of the supply route from Duved, in Sweden, the provisions at Skaanes were very important. To capture military stores had been part of warfare since before history. But Armfelt had never been happy confiscating provisions from civilians, any civilians. And in fact, the king had ruled they must be paid for, in Norway as in Sweden and Finland. Which was especially appropriate since he intended to join Norway to Sweden. And though his treasury had been effectively bankrupted by 18 years of war, he'd managed to provide Armfelt with a money chest for the purpose. It would cover only a fraction of the value, but there would be payment. And while the farmers might not like it — would not like it — they'd recognize that the Swedish king viewed them as having rights. In fact, he was treating them as he treated his own subjects in wartime: no harder than he must.

Further, military discipline was to be strictly, and broadly, enforced among the foragers, with regard to the persons and goods of all Norwegian civilians who remained on their farms, and did not war against or threaten the invaders. Whom King Karl represented as their liberators. Foraging was to be orderly, and restricted to assigned units, which were to abide strictly by regulations. Robbing, looting and abusing would be severely punished. In Sweden, men had been forced to run the gantlet for crimes like those, and some had not survived it. Another had been hung. The point would be emphasized — and if necessary, publicly demonstrated — by similar punishments in Norway.

After a day of rest, on the morning of September 3, the army marched west from Steine Skans on a decent road (though the bridges had been destroyed), through pleasant sunshine and fields of late-ripening grain. At about 8 PM that evening, the commander of Skaanes Skans surrendered the small fort without resistance, and the army set up camp in nearby fields. In the dark, for the equinox was upon them. Reminding them that winter was coming.

The next day the army enjoyed another day of rest. It had marched as far west as the landscape allowed. On September 5, it turned southward, for a two-day march through fertile farmland to the village of Åsen. From Åsen they marched six miles farther, and camped again. Ahead the road entered a narrow pass, but not a pass over a mountain range. This one bypassed a steep-faced mountain by creeping along its foot, whose shattered stones edged Trondheim Fjord. It was a trail pretending to be a road, on one side cliffy, aproned here and there with scree slopes. On the other edge lay deep cold water. And Budde had closed the option of bypassing it by boat; for miles, every boat his men could find, they'd commandeered or destroyed.

Here and there it was bordered on the upslope side by forest. Near its entrance, förhuggningar had been felled, and breastworks built and manned. A forbidding proposition. But it seemed to Armfelt there might be an option.

During the fighting in Finland, Karelia and Ingria, Armfelt had proven himself a good analyst and planner, with analyses and plans built on the excellence of his outnumbered and outgunned troops. In the final battle of his unsuccessful defense of Finland, a key engagement was described in a letter by the Russian commander: «Then began a firefight that continued for almost an hour, and please believe me when I tell you, I hope never, ever again to witness such skill in [firing and reloading.]»

But directing large-scale actions was not Armfelt's forte. His successes had come in leading a cavalry company, or a battalion, in action, and his reputation was rooted in Ingria and Karelia. There he'd led raids in force against Russians and Cossacks, disrupting and pillaging enemy positions, often operating in a wild, ill-defined and forested no-man's land, striking unexpectedly, capturing prisoners, horses, wagons, and the always much-needed supplies. His capture of Steine Skans had made use of somewhat the same approach but with a large force, surprising, attacking out of the wilderness. And even there, the force involved in the fighting had been small and skillfully used. [see note]

Not often does a general accompany a patrol. This was a patrol in some force — Captain Peter Longström's entire 70-man company of mounted raiders. It had left camp at first dawn, on a rough farmers' road, a wagon trail through heavy forest of spruce and old pines, with scattered birch and aspen.

A much smaller patrol, six men, had scouted the area two days earlier on Armfelt's orders, and its report seemed to promise what the general had hoped for. And needing a break from administration and planning, he decided to view the terrain for himself. There might even be a fight, something he hadn't really seen, personally, since Isokyrjö, in the failed defense of Finland.

Armfelt didn't at first hear the thuding hooves of a single horse; his hearing was less sensitive than it had been. But Captain Longström heard them, and raised a gloved hand. His small column stopped. Some seconds later, one of his scouts appeared, his horse jogging back to them, its rider relaxed and grinning.

"Sir, it turns off a couple of furlongs ahead. With no fresh tracks except ours from day before yesterday."

"Ours" referred to the earlier, six-man patrol, of which the trooper had been a member. They'd reported a dairy camp trail, old and not heavily used. Prior to the recon patrol, it had last been ridden a few days earlier, up and back by three or four horses. Farm horses, judging by the hooves, perhaps bringing down cheeses and butter.

Presumably the cows were still up there somewhere. The patrol hadn't gone that far. There'd been no need to; it had found what the general had hoped for. "Good, Ahti," Longström said. "Continue."

Ahti saluted again, and turning his horse, jogged off.

The patrol rode on then. A second scout sat his horse at the foot of the side trail. When he saw his captain and the general, the man waved, and receiving an answering wave, disappeared among the trees.

Longström and Armfelt followed, with the company. This trail was narrower and much less trampled than the one they'd left. Blowdowns had been lopped down or cleared away by farmers, to accommodate cattle and packhorses. It climbed steadily, slanting mildly upward along the mountain side, with occasional switchbacks. The patrol rode without speaking, and slowly, sparing the overused horses. After a bit, off to the right between the trees, they glimpsed the deep blue fjord sparkling in the sun. Armfelt's pulse quickened, his eyes brightening.

A little later, at another switchback, Ahti met them again, and beckoning, led them off the trail. For a while they picked their way among the trees, around or over occasional blowdowns, for here, winds from the north swept the forest, culling weakly rooted or decaying trees. A bit farther along, the slope steepened below, the forest opened, and Ahti swung off his mount. "Here," he said. "This is the place."

They all dismounted, leaving the reins hanging. On their right, a precipice overlooked the fjord. To their left, the mountain continued to climb, steep but no longer precipitous, and forested. On foot, Armfelt walked with Longström to the terrain break, where peering down the plunging slope, they saw outcrops and broken rock, with only a few scraggly pines precariously rooted. Far below, it tailed off a bit, with aprons of scree — treacherous accumulations of broken rock spreading downward. Between the scree aprons, scattered clumps of trees had stood, but many had been felled, and dragged downslope to form log breastworks overlooking the pass "road." In their shelter, scores of small figures could be seen, some wearing red jackets, others peasant homespun — militia and armed peasants lounging behind the felled tree trunks, muskets at hand, waiting for the invaders to try the pass.

Armfelt seldom grinned — he was a sober man — but he grinned now, wolfishly, and spoke to Longström, who gave orders in rapid Finnish. His hard-bitten Finns too were grinning. Some unsheathed hatchets and attacked young birches, cutting pry poles. Then their captain raised and aimed his carbine — Saxon-made, its barrel rifled, a gift from the king himself — and squeezed the trigger. The boom rolled, but the source direction was uncertain, as usual with a first shot, and the men below sat up or got to their feet, looking around. High above them, his movements deft but quick, Longström reloaded, fired again, and this time a red jacketed figure fell sprawling.

Meanwhile his Finns had spread out, positioning themselves by boulders — no shortage of those — and began to push and pry. One rock, then others began to roll, then to bound down the precipitous slope, dislodging others and going airborne, until a small avalanche of rocks was bounding, hurtling, crashing downward. Faintly the Finns, moving to other sizable rocks, heard cries of alarm from downslope. Even Longström and the general himself joined in the action. Below, figures clambered over the breastworks, fleeing — running where the ground permitted — two of them half carrying, half dragging a wounded comrade, and angled westward toward where boats could be seen at the water's edge. Farther along the slope, they were joined by scores more that the Finns and their general hadn't seen.

The Finns watched the boats, some 30 of them, pull away, 10 or 12 men in each, their oarsmen long hardened to rowing, they and their passengers peering up the precipice to where men in blue jackets exulted. The boats made good time, westward down the fjord. It seemed to the Norwegians their defensive positions had become untenable, and the primordial crashing rocks had broken their morale.

Armfelt had followed up promptly on the opportunity. Several infantry companies started along the pass road before evening, to discourage a return by the Norwegians, but it proved unneedful. The next morning the army followed.

Besides being the general's adjutant, Major Karl Kristof von Gertten was Armfelt's director of the march. To fully appreciate Langstein Pass, it had to be experienced, and Gertten was doing just that. No "road" he'd seen before had matched it. Meanwhile it had begun to rain — the rocks were slick with it — and adding to everything else, just ahead a mass of rock and earth had slumped onto the already miserable road.

There is no way we can get that powder wagon — or any wagon — over that, von Gertten told himself. And bellowed. "Wallmo! Get that pile of rocks out of the way!"

"At once, major!" Sergeant Major Jakob Petersson Wallmo had already been eyeing the low mound, very largely of rock, expecting the order. Turning in his saddle, Wallmo addressed Sergeant Karl Gustafsson Björkebom, giving more explicit instructions. Björkebom turned his horse and rode back along the line of march, shouting his own orders. Within seconds, soldiers were yielding the right-of-way to the engineer platoon of Jämtland's regimental headquarters company, with a tool wagon. The platoon, with its appended civilian laborers, hustled forward as fast as the jumbled, wet stoney surface allowed.

Meanwhile, Langstein Pass was chewing up the army's badly worn shoes, and only God knew how they'd replace them.

Matts Karlsson i Stentorp was not having a good day. That morning, while loading a pack horse, he'd been kicked in the thigh. Fortunately it wasn't broken, but the whole leg was the color of port wine. A Norwegian horse it was, whose owner hadn't wanted to sell, but like Swedish farmers before him, had been given no choice. The horse had exacted revenge. The leg hurt severely, but Sergeant Björkebom had told Matts to work it off. He's as bad as my mother, Matts told himself glumly. Well, not quite. She'd have wrapped the injury with a poultice of sheep manure before sending him back to his duties. Sergeant Wallmo had imposed no poultice.

And in fact the pain's edge had dulled to a hard constant hurting that made him hobble but didn't disable him. Meanwhile Sergeant Löfgren had teamed him with Crazy Ekblad — who for whatever reason hated his guts — to lift and carry rocks and dump them into the fjord.

Still, Ekblad hadn't struck him, or even threatened to. He simply scowled a lot. Mostly they worked independently, taking separate rocks, but sometimes they took a larger rock together.

"Here! This one next!" Ekblad ordered, and setting his feet, bent to grasp the end of a longish slab larger than they'd dealt with before. Matts bent and strained, but could not raise his end. His hands slipped off it. Setting his own end down, Ekblad straightened, reexamining the rock. "Here," he said, "take this end. It's smaller; you can wrap your arms around it," and stepped around to the end Matts had failed with. The order startled Matts, who exchanged positions with the ex-sailor and grasped the smaller end. Ekblad raised the larger end, while Matts, with an effort, raised the smaller. Then, taking small uncertain steps, they bore it carefully across slippery, uneven footing to the water's edge and set it down, watching it slip into the dark water. Ekblad turned to Matts. "We won't take another so large, if I can help it. You do well for a boy, but we don't want to kill you."

Matts almost stared. "Thank you, Private Ekblad sir," he said, and went for a solo rock. He'd thought killing him was what Ekblad wanted to do, would already have done, if the army had permitted. Now Ekblad's praise — or implied praise — had somehow made his day, and Matts' painful leg felt not quite as bad as it had a minute earlier.

It happened on a short, steep pitch. The horses were driving hard, when the cannon they pulled slid sideways on a tilting slab, and a wheel caught in a gap between two boulders. Several things broke then simultaneously: the main wheel of the gun carriage, and the belly-bands and hames straps of the horses pulling it. Released by the broken harness, they burst forward, and the left wheelhorse went down on the rocks, dumping the teamster. Surprisingly, both horse and man got up on their own. The other three horses stopped too, to stand motionless.

The gun carriage was tilted half sideways, and the gun commander ordered his crew to unseat the gun barrel. They did, with some effort, then they waited for a replacement carriage to be brought up, and a harness mender.

Meanwhile a passing Finn, a large, massive, taciturn man, stopped, squatted deeply, wrapped his arms around the cannon barrel, and with a roar of effort — "SAATANA!" — straightened. Then set the muzzle on a rock, raised it again, and struggled the heavy barrel backward onto his shoulder till it balanced. Soldiers paused, stared. Then, with small uncertain steps, and grunts of effort, he carried it up the short pitch and let it down at the top, leaning it against another boulder. One of his squad had paused to pick up the man's musket, and grinning, handed it to him. The giant muttered his thanks, and they resumed the march.

For two days the army worked its way along the six-mile-long pass, arriving at the other end somewhat disordered. There von Gertten and the unit officers sorted them out, and exhausted but in decent enough spirits, the army made camp at a place called Vold. Once more they'd overcome real difficulties without loss of human life — this time without even being shot at! When the general went to bed that night, in a comfortable farmhouse near Skatvold's church, he was pleased with what he'd accomplished, and fell asleep without foreboding.

Eventually to dream — dreamt of dreaming, and of wakening to find himself in a sleigh. Idman was with him, looking like the Christ — brown-blond beard, white robe… "Where are we going, pastor?" he asked, and Idman said "to hell, Karl Gustaf." The words shocked him, filled him with dread. "To hell?" "Hell on earth, general. That's where hell is, you know."

Then Idman disappeared, and he was alone. Looking aound, he saw only a long line of men marching past him on the road, through snow to their thighs. They were white as the snow. "Are you my army?" he asked one of the them. "Ja visst, herr general," the soldier said. He too looked like the Christ. "Why are you so white?" "Because I am dead, herr general."

A thought arose then. "Am I dead too?" "Oh no, general." "How…how did you die?" But the man was gone. All the soldiers were gone. His horses were gone, and the driver, the sleigh. He looked all around, and all he could see was snow.

Alone in the night. His heart shriveled to a walnut.

Then he wakened. The room was lit only by embers in the fireplace. His face was wet with tears, and his soul desolate. He swung his legs out of bed, felt the plank floor beneath his feet, and stood. What a terrible dream, he thought, even as the images slipped away, were gone or buried. Leaving only desolation tinctured with dread. Going to his baggage, he dug from it a silver flask, sat down on his bed, and unstoppering the flask, drank. Shuddered, felt heat scald his throat, and after a moment drank again. A few minutes and a few swallows later he lay back down, and after a bit, fell once more asleep. So far as he knew, he dreamed no more that night.

In the morning he awakened to the shadow of that desolation, a vague, low-grade dread undefined and unrecognized. By the time he'd dressed and eaten, and participated in morning prayers, that dread had slipped beneath awareness, leaving only a faint residue to color his frame of mind, his decisions, his actions.

....On September 11, in a letter to Commissariat General Frisenheim at Duved, Lt. Gen. Karl Gustav Armfelt reported that the troops had begun to suffer need. With an army of more than 6,000 men, the provisions they'd gotten at Steine and Skaanes melted rapidly, and the general began to feel irresolute: stay there or move on? He decided to stay, for advancing would increase the distance supplies would need to come. He waited a whole six days for a supply train from Duved: six days of adversity, misfortune and disappointments. It seemed clear that luck had abandoned him. Delay after delay afflicted the supply train, and this led to one disappointment after another, heaping hunger, privation, rain and dread on an army deep in enemy territory.

And when the supply train finally arrived, it brought little more than the troops had used during their wait.

Had Armfelt given the army only a single day to rest, then pushed on, he might well have reached the Stjørdal River while it was still crossable. And Trondheim while the city and its defenders were still dismayed at the series of defeats, with work on the defenses still seriously incomplete, and an epidemic rampant among soldiers and citizens. But Armfelt didn't know about conditions in Trondheim, nor could he predict the vile weather. Also he believed that förhuggningar felled by the Norwegians since September 7 would cause serious difficulties at Givings Ridge. In reality, the förhuggningar had been abandoned. [see note]

As a result of the delay, the army arrived to find the Stjørdal River swollen and raging from [again] persistent rains. Building pontoons, he undertook to bridge it, but the rampaging river swept the bridge away before it could be anchored. His response was typical Armfelt: bite the bullet, adjust, and proceed with what appeared to him the best option remaining -- returning back northward, first to the Levanger district, next to the Værdal district, where he set about harvesting the abandoned fields, threshing, baking, foraging -- building up a commissariat on the site. Only then would he strike southward again toward Trondheim.

Some writers (like his ever impetuous king) have criticized not only Armfelt's decisions, but his character for making them — a probably inevitable case of 20/20 hindsight. And the royal impatience, which was rooted in the war's broader context..

The army was camped beneath leaden skies, largely in muddy pastures and stubble fields, where rain swept the puddles. The more senior officers were billeted in farmhouses, from whose stone chimneys the rank smoke barely rose, spilling over and flowing sluggishly down the roofs, dissipating in the saturated air. Sergeants and some of the junior officers occupied the outbuildings, and envied their seniors. The lower ranks, most of them, sheltered in rows of lugubrious gray tents, too demoralized even to envy. Half the army was coughing.

Rain had been falling almost uninterruptedly for days, with no intervening sunshine to spark hope in the soldiers' hearts. Or dry their cold wet clothes, their cold, sodden, disintegrating shoes, their dank and miserable blankets. Fires were hard to kindle, and burned poorly, spending most of their heat to dry their wood.

An adolescent boy, his pants around his knees, squatted over a straddle trench, relieving his bowels of the thin and retched excrement produced by seriously inadequate rations. He was fortunate not to have rampant diarrhea. When he was done, and had fastened his breeches with cold-clumsy fingers, he scuttled through the thin rain and disappeared into one of two crude log buildings, long and low, hurriedly raised by the Jämtland Regiment as one of its two sjukhusena —"sickhouses" — built to accommodate the seriously ill.

For two days Matts had worked harvesting a rye field. The work was more like gleaning than harvesting, for the Norwegian farmhands had fled to the forest when the Finns and Swedes first appeared, and again when the army had returned, and most of the crop, unharvested, had been beaten down by the rain, to lay on the sodden ground. To harvest it, the soldiers had to pick up the heads with wet fingers clumsy from cold. The luckier worked in outbuildings -- worked day and night -- threshing, grinding, and baking. Building up a commissary for the march south against Trondheim.

An army of coughing, shitting, and sometimes puking soldiers. In an army of the sick, only the sickest were sent to the sickhouses, whose orderlies tended to catch what their patients had, and joined their ranks. Sergeant Major Wallmo remembered that his sometime messenger had served as a hospital orderly at Duved Skans, back in Sweden, so he'd pulled him from harvesting and assigned him as orderly in one of the sickhouses. Crude, cold, drafty, it reeked of wood smoke. And gunpowder, burned to clean the air. The dirt floor was largely covered with rows of the sick, on low piles of damp moldy straw and marsh hay, with blankets laid over them. Beneath the reek of smoke lurked the smell of mold, sickness, sour excrement…and death.

Matts fed more wet wood into a fire pit, grateful he wasn't out in the weather, harvesting. Another soldier had died, minutes earlier, before Matts' very eyes; his labored breathing had simply stopped. Died of lungsjukan, influenzal pneumonia in this case, but the barber/surgeons had only the vernacular name for it. Matts did not wonder why God let men die. It simply happened; death was part of life, its closing episode. Nor did he worry whether he might die in this cold damp place; he either would or he wouldn't.

Nonetheless, the experience shook him. No one before had ever died while he watched.

Having fed that fire, he went on to feed the others, and when next he noticed, another man occupied the straw where the dead man had been, though the blankets had been changed. This man seemed less sick, and his cough was different. Stronger. When he finished coughing, Matts recognized him.

"Good day, Private Eckblad sir," Matts said.

The blurry eyes shifted, focused, and the soldier grunted. "We meet again," Eckblad husked weakly, then paused. "You're not sick. What are you doing here?"

"Sergeant Major Wallmo sent me to help the surgeons, sir."

"Ah." "You're lucky... You could be out in that djävla rain, gleaning grain out of the mud." Ekblad's speech was punctuated with pauses to get his breath.

"I was, sir, until yesterday. Two orderlies here came down with lung sickness, and I had helped in the sickhouse at Duved Skans, so the Sergeant Major posted me here."

Ekblad lay staring at Matts without speaking, as if gathering strength. Then, "You look a lot like Elof…the last time I saw him... My younger brother."

"Thank you sir."

"Don't thank me for that... I didn't like him much... I was jealous of him. Mother always favored him at table... He got bigger servings." ... "But father favored me. I was…more help on the farm. And Elof was sneaky... He'd slip away. You're not sneaky... You speak honestly; act honestly."

Matts didn't know how to answer that. "Uh...where is your home?"

Ekblad's eyes had closed, and for a moment he did not answer. Then they opened. "An island off the Finnish coast. But Swedish... It was called Mellanö... Then ... "then, when I was 13...my father's squad was called into service, and...I was oldest, so I …so I became the man on the farm... But my mother was the boss. Then" ..."then she gave me the bigger servings... I had more work to do."

He coughed some more, and afterward his eyes closed. Matts could hear the breath rattle in Ekblad's chest. The boy straightened, looking around for work to do; then, eyes still closed, Ekblad spoke again.

"It was a good torp; we kept a cow...and an ox" … "Near the shore...were sand dunes...with thin grass on them...and gulls and terns would swoop and circle... We grazed a few sheep there." He paused again, to catch his breath. "And on one side was heath...with heather, and juniper, and pines... And swales...with bog cotton, and sedge." .

"And...between the house and the meadow...was a grove of birches and pines...that sheltered the house from the sea winds... Thrushes nested there..." "They would swoop on the cat when it climbed the nesting trees... And I helped... I'd throw sticks and stones at the cat…and pine cones…and she'd give me a dirty look.... 'Go catch mice!' I'd tell her." Ekblad actually twitched a smile, and closed his eyes again, as if revisiting the grove in his mind, perhaps hearing the thrush's liquid trills. "How they would sing, those thrushes, when it was...getting …getting light in the morning...and again at dusk in the evening... It was...beautiful."

The eyes remained closed, the only sound Ekblad's rattling breath, and after a minute Matts slipped away to find things needing to be done: a new patient helped in, a message carried, a slop bucket emptied. And always the fires to tend.

Later that day, Ekblad was beset by chills, so the barber/surgeon ordered him taken to the nearby sauna to cook the chills out. The sauna, like the sick house, was crudely built, of logs hastily squared, chinked with clay and sphagnum. The slab roof leaked, its door sagged on crude hinges, and in lieu of a chimney, it had a small smokehole in the roof. A savusauna it was, oven-hot, and reeking with woodsmoke. More smoke than in the sickhouse, because the smoke hole was so small. Smoky enough, tears flowed before the sweat did.

And hot! Almost too hot to breathe, it seemed to Matts.

Its benches were half full of naked men wearing only their ragged underdrawers. And even in haying time, Matts had never seen such sweating! It dripped from brows, noses, chins; rivulets flowed down limbs and torsos, drained from benches, turned the floor to mud.

The regiment was Swedes, and therefore the occupants were Swedes, not Finns. The sicker slumped apathetically. Others simply sat glumly, ordered there to clean themselves. Once in a while one would whisk himself with a birch switch, or wash himself at a bucket, while on a block of wood, a corporal sat in charge, also in his underdrawers, as glum as any of them, a birch rod in one hand as his badge of office. After that first curious scan, Matts carefully looked no more; what would Pastor Sundberg say to such flagrant nudity!

Jössi Ekblad, on the other hand, did not fret. His home island was in the Turku Archdiocese, its Archbishop Finnish, not Swedish, and the attitude toward the sauna's nudity there was at worst casual, even friendly. In fact, on Mellanö, the parish men's sauna was a popular weekly meeting place — even the pastor attended — and no underdrawers were worn!

Meanwhile Jössi settled gratefully on a bench, the only man there who was happy with the situation.

Matts, on the other hand, left as soon as Ekblad sat down — he'd been ordered not to stay, and was grateful to leave. Old taboos, enforced by shame and priestly authority, and strengthened by threats of hellfire, can be hard to shed.

But no one hesitated to drink from the common cup. Heedless and unknowing, they shared their various pathogens. When, an hour later, Matts was sent to retrieve the ex-sailor, he found him unconscious on the mud floor. He'd fallen asleep and toppled off the bench, and the corporal had decided to let him lie there. Matts gripped Ekblad's sweat-slick shoulder and shook it. Slowly the soldier got up, took off his underdrawers, plunged them into a bucket, used them to clean the mud off, rinsed and wrung them out, put them back on, and smiling, nodded to Matts.

They left then, Ekblad seeming on the path to recovery.

That evening, by the flickering russet light of the sickhouse's heating fires, activity had stilled. Then Matts went to Jössi Ekblad and squatted beside him. He'd been thinking, wondering. "Why did you leave the torp to become a sailor?" he asked. "Did your brother take your place? — Elof? Is that his name? Or did your father come home?"

Ekblad's eyes had dulled since returning from the sauna. Now it seemed to Matts they sharpened for a moment, just a little, though his expression remained dull and exhausted. The chill hadn't come back, so far as Matts knew, but except for that, the rejuvenation from the sauna had faded. Died.

"My father did not come home... I, we..." He was seized again with coughing that left his hands shaking as if trying to dislodge ants. It left Matts shaken, too, witnessing it. After half a minute Ekblad answered. "When I was 15...my sister went to work at the landlord's house... She was 14. Less than a year later she was discharged, six or seven months pregnant." The question had burned Ekblad, and he'd gotten that last out without pausing. Then he had another coughing seizure that uncovered a new and weaker state. For two or three minutes he lay flaccid. But his eyes did not close, only stared at the roof, dull eyes, in a dull gray face. Finally he spoke again, his voice a whisper now; Matts had to lean close to hear. "That whore's son knocked her up...then discharged her for" … "for lewd behavior. She died giving birth. I'll never forget how she screamed... At least...Pastor Englund...let her be buried in the churchyard."

For the first time in his life, Matts Karlsson I Stentorp seethed with sudden rage at injustice, a rage that swamped his generally good nature. Then Ekblad spoke again, a splash of cold water that brought Matts back shocked. "I would have killed him," Ekblad said, "but..." Matts had to lean close again. "My mother lost her mind then... She killed herself with the butcher knife... Pastor Englund buried her, too...though I was told later...the landlord complained to the bishop that her burial had…profaned the ground, and the others buried there."

Ekblad said almost nothing more that evening, except — when half an hour later Matts stopped to look at him, the man spoke as if no time had intervened since he'd last spoken to Matts. "Självmord (self murder) they called it... Elof and I both left then. The djävul landlord kicked us off the torp...and let it to someone else... So we went to sea... After Englund confirmed Elof in the Church so...so he could get work...though he knew hardly a word of his catechism.

"I think he tried, Englund did, to be a good man… I never looked at that before."

Matts slept in the sickhouse, to be available if needed. He was up, and emptying slop buckets in the latrine, when Sergeant Major Wallmo checked the sickhouse next morning. The barber/surgeon told the sergeant major the boy was a find — that his diligence and good sense were exemplary. Wallmo toned it down a bit, passing it on, telling Matts only that the surgeon had spoken well of him.

When Matts had a chance, he approached Ekblad's bed, then held back. The barber/surgeon was checking the sick soldier, who it seemed had a conspicuously high temperature. His hand was on Ekblad's forehead. "I could feel your heat when I was five feet away!" he said. Then noticed the hovering boy. "You! Matts! Fetch me a basin! I need to bleed this man."

Matts knew the drill. He scurried off, to return with a basin. The surgeon was ready for him. From his small field kit he'd removed a snäppare, a small blood-letting scalpel. Raised Ekblad's limp arm and pulled up the sleeve, while Matts positioned the basin. Then, with the scalpel, the man opened a vein. Blood splashed into the basin, a pint or more of it, before the surgeon pinched the cut closed, wrapped the forearm tightly with bandage, tied it, and nodded approvingly.

"That should do it," he said to Ekblad. "I'll be back later. If you are still this hot, I'll let out some more."

A little later Matts returned. Ekblad's eyes were closed, his breathing more labored than ever. Matts bent, speaking quietly. "Are you awake sir?"

The eyes opened, their focus seeking slowly for the boy. "Ja." The word was barely audible.

"Should I leave you alone?"

Ekblad's arm moved feebly. "No... Stay."

Then, slowly, with many pauses for breath, he began telling about his life as a sailor. His coughs, when they came, were weaker than before, the rattling worse, the words harder to hear, but he persisted. It was as if he was transferring his life, his memories, to the boy. Matt did not leave him, to feed a fire or even look around, till after half an hour the voice stopped, and the face sagged. But Ekblad still lived; Matts could hear his breath rattle.

The next time Matts checked, Ekblad was rolling around on his straw, muttering incoherently, and emitting heat Matts could feel without having to reach toward his forehead. Straightening, he hurried to the barber/surgeon. "Sir!" he began.

The man gestured silence. "Stay," he said, and finished the examination he was doing. Then, straightening, he turned to Matts. "All right. What is it?"

"Private Ekblad is thrashing on his bed, sir. And talking, but I can't understand what he's saying. He is really hot!"

The surgeon gusted a sigh. "Förbanna! I'll have to bleed him again. Get the basin."

This time he took more blood, two pints. Ordinarily he was not a surgeon who bled his patients heavily, but it seemed to him the case was urgent.

Now Matts stayed by Ekblad, willing him to live. Ekblad's breathing was weaker then ever, and he'd ceased his rolling about. Sometime later, his breathing stopped entirely. A few minutes later a chaplain came in, and prayed briefly, then soldiers removed the body.

Matts finished the day in a daze. When Sergeant Major Wallmo came in with the supervisory surgeon, Matts went to him. "Sergeant Major, sir, I want to be transferred back to harvesting."

Wallmo's eyebrows rose. "Why?"

"Private Ekblad died today.

"Several men died today. What was there about Ekblad's death that troubles you?"

Tears threatened to overflow Matts' eyes. "We had become friends, sir. Except for me, I think he had none in the army."

Friends? Ekblad? The sergeant major's attention sharpened.

Then Matts told briefly of Ekblad's narrative, of the torp, his sister and mother, even the birds, and began on his years at sea. Wallmo listened gravely, then cut it short. "Well. Do you still want to be a soldier?"

"Yessir, Sergeant Major sir." The words didn't have the certainty Wallmo was used to from the boy.

"Soldiers become used to death, Matts. Go and find Lars Skoogh. Tell him what you told me. See what he says. Go now."

When Matts had left, Wallmo shook his head. Still a boy, he told himself, but you cannot let yourself become his father. Perhaps Skoogh would be his big brother. Otherwise the boy would have to tough it out on his own.

Matts went to Lars's tent, and finding him asleep, left without waking him. He would, he thought, talk with him another time. Meanwhile he returned to his own straw bed in the sickhouse. Where, briefly, quietly, he wept. Afterward, lying there, it occurred to him he hadn't wept when Pål Eriksson had died, at Duved Skans. Pål, whom he'd known and played with all his life. Later, before sleeping, he realized that he and Pål had shared little of consequence, while Ekblad…

The men who'd died during the army's harvesting/threshing/baking were buried in neat rows of graves there, each marked by a short upright pine board carved with the deceased's name and hvil i frid, "rest in peace." Pine because the pitch it contained slowed decay. But even so, the board would rot soon enough, and break off.

To be reclaimed by the earth, as would the dead soldiers. In time, grain would grow there, or pasturage, or trees, and life would proceed.