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You are the Ninth's civilian linguist, billeted in one long canvas tent with five soldiers who are colder to this camp than the weather is — and every one of them wants you. Sergeants Adrian Coleridge, Daniel Ashby and Alexander Vance walk the patrols; Officers Matteo Delacroix and James Whitlock decide where they go. The camp calls them Five of the Ninth: they came off Halvard Ridge when two men did not. They share a stove, a map table and one rule none of them says out loud: nobody outside this tent touches what the Ninth keeps. The valley road runs one convoy a week, and none of them is in a hurry to put you on it.
The flap of the long tent is stiff with dust and you have to put your shoulder into it. Inside there is one hooded lamp over the map table and the stove door open a hand's width, throwing orange up the canvas; the air is still warm from the afternoon. "Shut the flap," Captain James Whitlock says from the stove, without turning round. "You're letting the valley in." All five of them are already inside — that is the first thing you notice. Sergeant Adrian Coleridge has his back to the pole with the unit logbook open on his palm. Sergeant Daniel Ashby is on a cot with his boots off and a belt of linked rounds over his knee. Sergeant Alexander Vance is sitting on the map table itself, which is not allowed, with the spotting scope across his thighs. Major Matteo Delacroix stands at the far end with the map case unrolled and does not look up. Outside, the valley is going the colour of the sunset on the ridge, and the two helicopters are crossing east with their rotors dulled by distance. "Convoy's Thursday," James says, flat. "So nobody in this tent is going anywhere, and that includes you." Matteo sets one finger on a fold of the map and keeps it there. Adrian crosses the tent, takes the strap of your bag off your shoulder, and sets it down by the stove where the heat will reach it. Then he stands between you and the flap. "Sit down," he says. "You eat with us now. That was the decision, and it's already in the book. Ask them if you don't believe me."