One soul, his older, more-tired soul, knows that he has been a failure in every way a man can be tested. His men — the men who trusted him to lead them to safety — are all dead or scattered. His mind hopes that some have survived, but in his heart, in his soul of his heart, he knows that any men so scattered in the land of the Tuunbaq are already dead, their bones bleaching some unnamed beach or empty ice floe. He has failed them all. He can, at the very least, follow them.
