Part 27 (1/2)

'Always happens at the end of a campaign, sir. You fall into a black mood for a few weeks. Happened in Eddensea and after the siege at Malsam. All respect, sir, it's like watching my sister after she's birthed a babe.'

Balasar laughed. It felt good to laugh, and to smile, and to be reminded that the foul mood that had come on him was something he often suffered. In truth, he had forgotten. He took Eustin's hand in his own.

'Good to have you back,' Balasar said. 'I didn't know you'd returned.'

'I would have sent a runner to pa.s.s the news, but it seemed faster if I came myself.'

'Come up,' Balasar said. 'Tell me what's happened.'

'It might be best if I saw a bathhouse, sir . . .'

'Later,' Balasar said. 'If you can stand the reek, I can. And besides, you deserve some discomfort after that birthing comment. Come up, and I'll have them send us wine and food.'

'Yes, sir,' Eustin said.

They sat on couches while pine logs burned in the grate, sap hissing and popping and sending up sparks. True to his word, Balasar sent for rice wine infused with cherries and the stiff salty brown cheese that was a local delicacy of Tan-Sadar. Eustin recounted his season - the attack on Pathai, his decision to split the force before moving on to the poet's school. Pathai hadn't been as large or as wealthy as a port city like Nantani, but it was near the Westlands. Moving what wealth it had back to Galt would be simpler than the other inland cities.

'And the school?' Balasar said, and a cloud pa.s.sed over Eustin's face.

'They were younger than I'd thought. It wasn't the sort of thing they sing about. Unless they're singing laments. Then, maybe.'

'It was necessary.'

'I know, sir. That's why we did it.'

Balasar poured him another cup of the wine, and then one for himself, and they drank in silence together before Eustin went on with his report. The men they'd sent to take the southern cities had managed quite well, apart from an incident with poisoned grain in Lachi and a fire at the warehouses of Saraykeht. That matched with what Balasar himself had heard. All the poets had been found, all the books had been burned. No Khai had lived or left heir.

In return, Balasar shared what news he had from the North. Tan-Sadar, the nearest city to the Dai-kvo, had known about the destruction of the village for weeks before Balasar's prisoner-envoys had arrived. The story was also widely known of the battle; one of the Khaiem in the winter cities had fielded an army of sorts. The estimates of the dead went from several hundred to thousands. Few, if any, had been Coal's. The retelling of that tale as much as the sacking of Udun had broken the back of Utani and Tan-Sadar.

A letter in Coal's short, understated style had come south after Amnat-Tan had fallen. Another courier was due any day bringing the news of Cetani and Machi. But if Coal had kept to the pace he'd intended, those cities were also fallen.

'It'll be good to know for certain, though,' Eustin said.

'I trust him,' Balasar said.

'Didn't mean anything else, sir.'

'No. Of course not. You're right. It will be good to know it's done.' Balasar took a bite of the brown cheese and stared at the dancing flames where the wood glowed and blackened and fell to ash. 'You'll put your men in Utani?'

'Or send some downriver. Depends how much food there is. There's more than a few who'd be willing to make a winter crossing if it meant getting home to start spending their shares.'

'We have made a large number of very rich soldiers,' Balasar said.

'They'll be poor again in a season or two, but the dice stands in Kirinton will still be singing our praises when our grandsons are old,' Eustin said, then paused. 'What about our local man?'

'Captain Ajutani? He's here, in the city. Wintering here with the rest of us. He's done quite well for himself. And for us. He's given me some very good advice.'

Eustin grunted and shook his head.

'Still don't trust him, sir.'

'He's more or less out of opportunities to betray us,' Balasar said, and Eustin spat into the fire by way of reply.

Over the next days, the army s.h.i.+fted slowly from the rigorous discipline of the road to the bawdy, long, low riot that comes with wintering in a captured city. The locals - tradesmen and laborers and utkhaiem alike - seemed stunned by the change. They were polite and accommodating because Balasar's men were armed and practiced and thousands strong, but as Balasar walked down the long, winding red brick streets, he had the feeling that Tan-Sadar was hoping to wake from this nightmare and find the world once again as it had been. A hard, bitter wind came from the north, and behind it, the season's first thin, tentative snow.

He found his mind turning back to the west and home. The darkness Eustin had seen in him grew with the prospect of returning. The years he had spent gathering the threads of his campaign had come to their end; that it was ending in triumph only partly forgave that it was ending. He found himself wondering who he would be now that he was no longer the man driven to destroy the andat. In the mornings, he imagined himself living on his hereditary estate near Kirinton, perhaps taking a wife. Perhaps teaching in one of the military academies. All his old dreams revisited. As the sun peaked low in the sky and scuttled toward the horizon, the fantasy darkened too. He would be a racing dog with nothing left to chase. And worst, in the dark of the nights, he tried to sleep, his mind p.r.i.c.ked by another day gone by without word from the North and the sick fear that despite all their successes, something had gone wrong.

And then, on a cold, clear morning, the courier from Coal arrived. Only it wasn't from Coal. Not really. Because Coal was dead, and Balasar had another ghost at his heels.

'They came without warning,' Balasar said. 'They were hiding in the trees, like street bandits. He was the first to fall.'

'I'm sorry to hear it,' Sinja said. 'It was a dishonorable attack. Not that the honorable one did them much good from what I've heard.'

Eustin's face might have been carved from stone.

'You have a point to make, Captain?' Balasar asked.

'Only that he did make an honest man's try on the field outside the Dai-kvo's village, and he failed. There's only so much you can count against him that he tried a different tack.'

He killed my men, Balasar wanted to say. Wanted to shout. He killed Coal.

Instead, he paced the length of the wide parlor, staring at the maps he'd unrolled after he'd unsewn the letter from the remnants of the northern force. The oil lamps hung from their chains, adding a thick b.u.t.tery light to the thin gray sunlight that filtered in from the windows. Cetani was occupied, but the library was emptied, Khai and poet missing along with the full population of the city. Machi remained. The last of the poets, the last of the books, the last of the Khaiem. His fingertips traced the route that would take him there.

'It's no use, General,' Sinja said. 'You can't put an army in the field this late in the season. It's too cold. One half-decent storm will freeze them to death.'

'It's still autumn,' Eustin said. 'Winter's not come quite yet.'

'It's a northern autumn,' Sinja said. 'You're thinking it's like Eddensea, but I'll tell you it's not. There's no ocean nearby to hold the heat in. General, Machi isn't going anywhere between now and the first thaw. The Dai-kvo's meat on a stick. Your man burned his books. They have the same chance of binding a fresh andat before spring that I have of growing wings and flying. And you have every chance of killing more of your men than have died since we left the Westlands if you go out there now.'

'You've always given me good advice, Captain Ajutani,' Balasar said. 'I appreciate your wisdom on this.'

'I wouldn't call it wisdom particularly,' Sinja said. 'Just a common interest in not turning into ice sculpture in a bean field somewhere between here and there.'

'Thank you,' Balasar said, his tone making it clear that the meeting had ended. Sinja saluted Balasar, nodded to Eustin, and made his way out. The door closed with a click. Eustin coughed.

'Do you think he's lying?' Balasar said. 'He'd been living in Machi. If there were a place he didn't want captured, it would be there.'

Eustin frowned, arms folded across his chest. He looked older, Balasar thought. The grief of losing Coal was heavy on his shoulders too. In a sense, they were the last. There were other men who had taken part in the campaign, but only the two of them had been there from the beginning. Only they had been to the desert. And so there was no one else who could have this conversation and truly understand it.

'He's not lying,' Eustin said. His voice was thick. Balasar could hear how much it had cost him to agree with Sinja. 'Everything I've heard says the cold up there is deadly. It's not a pleasant day out now, and the season's milder here.'

'And Machi's army?'

Eustin shrugged.

'It wasn't an honorable fight,' he said. 'If we empty Utani and Tan-Sadar, we've got something near three times the men Coal had at the end.'