The guide snapped his head up as if he were explaining to his own superior the exasperating futility of directing Khmers. Then he fled.
Fools, Nang thought. Troop footfalls beat quick cadence on the jungle roads about him. He felt calm, centered. There is nothing in this plan, he thought. The yuons have numerical superiority and they waste it. They will not waste us.
“Met Nang,” Taun whispered very quietly. “Why do we sit?”
“Do you wish to be the first to die?”
“Our place is at the front,” Taun said. He had turned, still in his squat, and seized Nang’s shoulder.
“What end will it serve to commit your yotheas to the yuon attack?” Nang sat as passive under Taun’s pressure as he had under the trail guide’s.
“Without fire one cannot blossom into a soldier,” Taun retorted with a slogan fr
