The Shadowglade River runs shallow and clean through a bed of pale stones. The stones are visible right down to the deeper channels. Small fish move between them with the casual indifference of creatures that have not been hunted in any generation they can remember. The plants along the bank are thick and green and the right colors. The water is cold to the touch, and clear at the surface, and a soldier with a tin cup will pronounce it sweet.
That was the trouble. In a forest where the air had been emptied of insects and the earth had been emptied of rodents, a river left perfect was not a gift. It was a place a careful hand had decided not to touch yet. Every detail was the detail one would have wanted in a survival report. Every item on the small private checklist a soldier carries about water — clarity, current, life in the depths, life on the bank — was checked.
Ryder's platoon drank from it. Ryder, who had wanted to drink for the last mile, knelt at the bank and did not. He marked it on the map in a different ink than he had used for the dead birds. He told the column to fill what they needed and move on. He has not said so in any report, but he has begun to suspect that the river was being left for last, and that what was being saved for last is the part of the work no one in his platoon will be in any condition to read when it arrives.