The winter has stretched out like a long penance with the wet now joining the cold. Progress on the road construction is, some days, impossible. Men are injured by falling stones. They squabble about digging rotations and declare the whole project misconceived. Who can blame them? The skin between their toes cracks in boots that are never dry. Fingers are painfully raw. Armor is rusting, noses run, and though Hugh insists they still respond with a thrust of the oriflamme when the White Wolf holds up a flame he does not, or will not, realize is empty, they do so in dispirited silence—despite the threats of the inquisitors who have now taken it upon themselves to harangue them, in God’s name, whenever they threaten to desert. Only one thing keeps them going, and it is the thought that up in the fortress the Cathars too must be tiring, for Hugh, with a mixture of persistent bribery and the threat of brutality, has had some success in cutting off their supplies.
