Bert had lost some of his easy wit. Oh, in a battle he could keep it up, keep joking and smiling and mocking the enemy. But this? They had been travelling so long, and all of it in the same steady, unrelenting misery. It made it harder to have known the places they passed through, to remember the burned-out husks - most of them abandoned for years - as the thriving towns and villages of his childhood. Harder still to find anything to laugh at in the bodies they found, or the few close calls they had with Farson's outposts. For the first few days, he had kept himself together, kept finding stories to tell and comical little jokes to play. Then they had come fewer and further between, less light in his eyes, more weariness in his walk, and for the last few days, he had been sunk in a sullen silence.

He cried sometimes, in the night. They all did, besides Roland. They all pretended, in the cold light of morning, that they had not.

For the most part, though, he simply kept on going. That, too, they all did. They had lost one more along the way - not to fighting, but to an infection, one which had left him delirious and weak - and had buried him under a rough wooden cross and gone on walking. It seemed like they would go on walking forever.

In fact, when Kaine stopped, he almost walked into her. He'd heard the whistles, of course he had - he hadn't let himself slide that far into depression - but he had been watching the road ahead, not her. He stopped when she spoke, though, canting his head a little, listening. A Guardian?

"Hold up!" He hurried after her, looking more animated than he had in days. "Kaine, you're sure?"