Private Ollen Marsh had not slept in twenty-eight hours.
The number was specific because Ollen counted everything. Hours awake. Rounds remaining in his quiver (fourteen). Days since his last hot meal (six). Steps between his sentry position and the latrine trench (forty-seven). Counting was the thing that his mind did when the alternative was thinking about where he was and what was happening and how unlikely it seemed that the next week would include him being alive.
Ollen was Rootist. Twenty-two years old. A farmer's son from a village in Demeterra's southern territories where the wheat grew tall and the rain came when the goddess said it should and where nobody had mentioned, when the recruitment officers arrived, that military service in the Green Accord would involve standing in a frozen forest on Day 29 of a war that made less sense with each passing hour.
