The men were ready: mustaches, beards, hats, folds of waxed capes covered with mended tears and clumsy patches; light arms, appropriate for the job they were about to do; no muskets or pikes or other impediments, only good and simple steel: swords and daggers from Toledo, Sahagún, Milan, and Biscay. Also an occasional pistol poked out of the wearer’s clothing, but it would be useless with powder saturated by so much rain. Between them they also had a few crusts of bread and some rope to tie up Hollanders. And those empty, indifferent gazes of old soldiers prepared to face the hazards of their office once again before one day returning to their homeland marked by a crazy quilt of scars, with no bed to lie in or wine to drink and no hearth for baking their bread. And if they didn’t achieve this, they would be what in soldier’s cant were called
Bragado finished his wine. Diego Alatriste accompanied him to the door, and the officer left without further conversation: no exchanges, no good-byes. The men watched their commander ride off down the dike on the back of his old field horse, crossing paths with Sebastián Copons, who was on his way back to the house.
Alatriste felt the woman’s eyes on him, but he did not turn to look at her. Without explaining whether they were parting only for hours or forever, he pushed open the door and went out into the rain, immediately feeling water through the cracked soles of his boots. The wetness seeped into the marrow of his bones, stirring the aches of old wounds. He sighed quietly and began to walk, hearing his companions splashing through the mud behind him, following him in the direction of the dike where Copons was standing as motionless as a small, strong statue beneath the steady downpour.
“What a cesspool of a life,” someone muttered.
And without further words, with heads lowered, wrapped in their soaked capes, the line of Spaniards faded into the gray landscape.