The Tartar Steppe

Short answer: Drogo, who came to Fort Bastiani for four months, stays for more than thirty years. When an army finally appears from the north he is ill, and the commander, Simeoni, sends him away from the fort. Drogo never sees the battle; he is left alone with death in a room at a roadside inn.

On the first day Matti gave him two options: leave at once on a doctor's report, or stay four months and leave in due form after the next medical examination. Drogo chooses to wait four months. On 10 January, while Dr Rovina fills in his form, Drogo looks out of the window at the fort's walls rising in the dusk, feels his fate leaning toward the north, and tells the doctor he is well and wants to stay: «Doctor, throw that paper away.» In the following months the watches, the room, the friends and the horse races turn into habit.

After nearly two years, on an October evening, a black speck appears in the desert during Drogo's watch at the new redoubt, and in the morning a black horse is found. The soldier Lazzari, who goes to fetch the horse, doesn't know the password as he nears the fort and is shot by the sentry Martelli, a man he knows by the nickname «Arab». The same morning rows of armed men appear in the northern desert and everyone in the fort expects war. But the letter Colonel Filimore opens says they are units of the Northern State sent to mark the border and will not come toward the fort. The next day Captain Monti and Lieutenant Angustina set out with forty men to take the disputed ridge. The northerners reach the summit first, and Angustina dies while spending the night in the snow; his last words are «Tomorrow, God willing...». Drogo could have gone with them, didn't, and regrets it afterwards.

After four years at the fort, Ortiz advises him to leave. Drogo goes to the city on leave but feels like a stranger: his old friends are busy with their own lives, the meeting with Maria Vescovi is cold, and she soon leaves for Holland. The general tells him there is no transfer request in his file, that the garrison is to be cut roughly in half, and that his friends had filed requests without telling him; the file also holds a note about a sentry killed by mistake. Drogo returns to the fort, while friends like Morel leave one by one. Later Lieutenant Simeoni sees moving dots and a light at night in the north through his telescope and says a road is being built there. People laugh at him, Commander Nicolosi issues an order banning optical instruments, and Simeoni hands in his telescope and takes it all back. On 7 July Drogo himself sees a light in the distance. The road is finished fifteen years later, less than a kilometre from the fort, but the army does not advance. Matti, Monti and Nicolosi retire, the fort's commander is first Ortiz and then Simeoni, and a new lieutenant, Moro, arrives.

Drogo is now 54, deputy commander, and growing weak from a liver complaint. Afraid that if he leaves the fort once he will never return, he refuses an offer of rest. One spring morning Prosdocimo runs in with the news that troops are coming along the northern road. A message from General Stazzi says that two regiments and a light artillery group are being sent to the fort. On the terrace Drogo sees a black strip moving along the road through a telescope and faints. The next day Simeoni tells him he has sent a carriage, saying he will get better treatment in the city; in fact the room is needed, and three beds will fit in it. Drogo protests, and Simeoni makes it an order. Drogo leaves the fort and spends the night at an inn. That night the thought of death comes to him clearly, and he tries to meet it as his last battle. In the dark he straightens the collar of his uniform and smiles. The book ends there, without stating his death outright.