Not a productive day today in the writing world, but a pretty good one from the perspective of doing the dry cleaning and teaching my children valuable life skills. So, a wash.
…
The way he got past the witch-hunters’ guards worried him obscurely. In Joseph’s view, if a place merited guards, it also merited serious guards. Not ones that did not even need to be glared into indifference. He had been expecting fanatics, and had been prepared to talk his way past them; instead he was confronted by two country yokels halfway between drunk, and insensate. They might not have even noticed he was there, from the way they slumped against their trees and their pikes equally.
(A part of him grated his teeth at the pikes. The enemy always seemed to have enough guns. Joseph understood the value of the guillotine — but in his considered opinion, Citizen Carnot’s murderer had died far too quickly.)
Inside was worse. The Germans clearly took the position that anyone who managed to pass their so-perfect guards must belong, so nobody gave him a second look as he navigated his way through the haphazard rows of tents. The sloppiness offended him greatly — or was he just offended by Germans generally? It was difficult to decide.
