off it and down them there came icy winds; at the head of the ravines one caught sight of steep, steep peaks. So high did they seem, that you would have said two or three days were not time enough to reach the summit.
‘And tell me,’ said Ortiz, ‘is Major Bosco still there? Does he still run the musketry course?’
‘No, sir, I don’t think so. There’s Zimmermann – Major Zimmermann.’
‘Yes, Zimmermann, that’s right, I’ve heard his name. The point is that it is a good many years since my time. They will all be different now.’
Both now had their own thoughts. The road had come out into the sun again, mountain followed mountain, even steeper now with rock faces here and there.
‘I saw it in the distance yesterday evening,’ said Drogo.
‘What – the Fort?’
‘Yes, the Fort.’ He paused, then added to show that he knew how to behave: ‘It must be very large, isn’t it? It seemed immense to me.’
‘The Fort – very large? No, no, it is one of the smallest – a very old building. It is only from the distance that it looks a little impressive.’
He was silent for a moment, then added:
‘Very, very old and completely out of date.’
‘But isn’t it one of the principal ones?’
‘No, no, it’s a second class fort,’ Ortiz replied. He seemed to enjoy belittling it but with a special tone of voice – in the same way as one amuses oneself by remarking on the defects of a son, certain that they will always seem trifling when set against his unlimited virtues.
‘It is a dead stretch of frontier,’ Ortiz added, ‘and so they never changed it. It has always remained as it was a century ago.’
‘What do you mean – a dead frontier?’
‘A frontier which gives no worry. Beyond there is a great desert.’
‘A desert?’
‘That’s right – a desert. Stones and parched earth – they call it the Tartar steppe.’
‘Why Tartar?’ asked Drogo. ‘Were there ever Tartars there?’
‘Long, long ago, I believe. But it is a legend more than anything else. No one can have come across it – not even in the last wars.’
‘So the Fort has never been any use?’
‘None at all,’ said the captain.
As the road rose more and more the trees came to an end; only a scattered bush remained here and there. For the rest – parched grass, rocks, falls of red earth.
‘Excuse me, sir, are there any villages near at hand?’
‘No, not near. There’s San Rocco, but it will be twenty miles away.’
‘So I don’t suppose there’s much in the way of amusement?’
‘Not much, that’s right, not much.’
The air had become cooler, the flanks of the mountains were becoming more rounded, announcing the final crests.
‘And don’t people get bored, sir?’ asked Giovanni more intimately, laughing at the same time, as if to say that it would be all the same to him.
‘You get used to it,’ answered Ortiz and added with an implied rebuke: ‘I have been there for almost eighteen years. No, that’s wrong, I’ve completed my eighteenth.’
‘Eighteen years?’ said Giovanni greatly impressed.
‘Eighteen,’ answered the captain.
A flight of ravens passed, skimming the two officers, and plunging into the funnel of the valley.
‘Ravens,’ said the captain.
Giovanni did not reply – he was thinking of the life that awaited him; he felt that he was no part of that world, of that solitude, of those mountains.
‘But,’ he asked, ‘do any of the officers stay on who go there on their first posting?’
‘Not many now,’ answered Ortiz, half sorry at having decried the Fort and noticing that the other was now going too far, ‘in fact almost no one. Now they all want to go to a crack garrison. Once it was an honour, Fort Bastiani, now it almost seems to be a punishment.’
Giovanni said nothing but the other went on:
‘All the same, it is a frontier garrison. Speaking by and large there are some first class fellows there. A frontier post is still a frontier post after all.’
Drogo kept silent; he felt a sudden oppression. The horizon had widened; in the extreme distance appeared the strange silhouettes of rocky mountains, sharp peaks rising in confusion into the sky.
‘Even in the army things are looked at differently these days,’ Ortiz went on. ‘Once upon a time Fort Bastiani was a great honour. Now they say the frontier is dead – they forget that the frontier is always the frontier and one never knows.’
A little stream crossed the road. They stopped to water their horses and, having dismounted, walked up and down a little to stretch themselves.
‘Do you know what is really first rate?’ said Ortiz and laughed heartily.
‘What, sir?’
‘The messing – you’ll see how we eat at the Fort. And that explains the number of inspections. A general every fortnight.’
Drogo laughed out of politeness. He could not make out whether Ortiz was a fool, whether he was hiding something or whether he simply talked like that without meaning it.
‘Excellent,’ said Giovanni, ‘I’m hungry!’
‘We’re nearly there now. Do you see that hillock with the patch of gravel? Well, it is just behind it.’
They set off again; just beyond the hillock with the patch of gravel the two officers emerged on to the edge of a slightly sloping plateau and the Fort appeared a few hundred yards away.
It did indeed seem small compared with the vision of the previous evening. From the central fort, which was like nothing so much as a barrack with a few windows, two low turreted walls ran out to connect it with the lateral redoubts, two on each side. Thus the walls formed a weak barrier across the whole width of the gap – some five hundred yards – which was shut in on the flanks by high precipitous cliffs.
To the right, at the very foot of the mountain, the plateau fell away into a sort of saddle; there the old road ran through the pass and came to an end against the ramparts.
The Fort was silent, sunk in the full noonday sun, shadow-less. Its walls – the front could not be seen since it faced north – stretched out yellow and bare. A chimney gave out pale smoke. All along the ramparts
