 They stamp their feet and try not to touch bare skin on the frozen barrels of their weapons lest their flesh be ripped off. They peer through the deep ebony night of their dark log-lined dugouts into the frigid tundrum toward the south and east across the ice-choked river and watch for it, wait for it, and wonder how many will come and how they will perform when they do. And they wonder, too, if and how they will ever get out of this place, this frozen Hades, this last place on earth at the top of the world.