the wagons loaded and ready, the soldiers straining against time itself to close the distance between where they now stood and Udun. 'Three of his captains asked permission to send out parties. Hunting parties still, but only in part searching for game. Balasar gave each of them his blessing. The dream of the desert didn't return, but he had no doubt that it would.
In the days that followed, he felt keenly the loss of Eustin. Somewhere to the west, Pathal was falling or had fallen. The school with its young poets was burning, or would burn. And through those conflagrations, Eustin rode. Balasar spent his days riding among his men, talking, planning, setting the example he wished them all to follow, and he felt the absence of Eustin's dry pessimism and distrust. The fervor he saw here was a different beast. The men here looked to him as something besides a man. They had never seen him weep over Little Ott's body or call out into the dry, malign desert air for Kellem. To this army, he was General Gice. They might be prepared to kill or die at his word, but they did not know him. It was, he supposed, the difference between faith and loyalty. He found faith isolating. And it was in this sense of being alone among many that the messenger from Sinja Ajutani found him.
The day's travel was done, and they had made good time again. His outriders had made contact with local forces twice-farm boys with rabbit bows and sewn leather armor-and had done well each time. The wells in the low towns had been fouled, but the river ran clean enough. Another two days, three at the most, and they would reach iidun. In the meantime, the sunset was beautiful and birdsong filled the evening air. Balasar rested beneath the wide, thick branches of a cottonwood, Hat bread and chicken still hot from the fires on a metal field plate by his side, their scents mixing with those of the rich earth and the river's damp. The man standing before him, hands flat at his sides, looked no more than seventeen summers, but Balasar knew himself a poor judge of ages among these people. He might have been fifteen, he might have been twenty. When he spoke, his Galtic was heavily inflected.
'General Gice,' the boy said. 'Captain Ajutani would like a word with you, if it is acceptable to your will.'
Balasar sat forward.
'He could come himself,' Balasar said. 'He has before. Why not now?'
The messenger boy's lips went tight, his dark eyes fixed straight ahead. It was anger the boy was controlling.
'Something's happened,' Balasar said. 'Something's happened to one of yours.'
'Sir,' the boy said.
Balasar took a regretful look at the chicken, then rose to his feet.
'lake me to Captain Ajutani,' Balasar said.
Their path ended at the medical tent. The messenger waited outside when Balasar ducked through the Hap and entered. The thick canvas reeked with concentrated vinegar and pine pitch. The medic stood over a low cot where a man lay naked and bloody. One of Sinja's men. The captain himself stood against the tent's center pole, arms folded. Balasar stepped forward, taking in the patient's wounds with a practiced eye. Two parallel cuts on the ribs, shallow but long. Cuts on the hands and arms where the bov had tried to ward off the blades. Skinned knuckles where he'd struck out at someone. Balasar caught the medic's eye and nodded to the man.
'No broken bones, sir,' the medic said. 'One finger needed sewing, and there'll be scars, but so long as we keep the wounds from festering, he should be fine.'
'What happened?' Balasar asked.
'I found him by the river,' Sinja said. 'I brought him here.'
Balasar heard the coolness in Sinja's voice, judged the tension in his face and shoulders. Ile steeled himself.
'Come, then,' Balasar said as he lifted open the tent's wide flap, 'eat with me and you can tell me what happened.'
'No need, General. It's a short enough story. Coya here can't speak Galtic. There's been footmen from the fourth legion following him for days now. At first it was just mocking, and I didn't think it worth con„ cern.
'You have names? Proof that they did this?'
'They're bragging about it, sir,' Sinja said.
Sinja looked down at the wounded man. The boy looked up at him. The dark eyes were calm, perhaps defiant. Balasar sighed and knelt beside the low cot.
'Coya-cha?' he said in the boy's own language. 'I want you to rest. I'll see the men who did this disciplined.'
The wounded hands took a pose that declined the offer.
'It isn't a favor to you,' Balasar said. 'My men don't treat one another this way. As long as you march with me, you are my soldier, whatever tongues you speak. I'll be sure they understand it's my wrath they're feeling, and not yours.'
'Your dead men are the problem, sir,' Sinja said, switching the conversation back to Galtic.
The medic coughed once, then discreetly stepped to the far side of the tent. Balasar folded his hands and nodded to Sinja that he should continue. The mercenary sucked his teeth and spat.
'Your men are angry. Having those shrouds along is like putting a burr under their saddles. They're calling my men things they didn't when this campaign began. And they act as if it were harmless and in fun, but it isn't.'
'I'll see your men aren't attacked again, Sinja. You have my word on it.'
'It's not just that, sir. You're sowing anger. Yes, it keeps them traveling faster, and I respect that. But once we reach tldun and tJtani, they're going to have their blood up. It's easier for ten thousand soldiers to defeat a hundred thousand tradesmen if the tradesmen don't think defeat means being beaten to death for sport. And a had sack can burn in resentments that last for lifetimes. All respect, those cities are as good as taken, and we both know it. There's no call to make this worse than it has to be.'
'I should be careful?' Balasar said. 'Move slowly, and let the cities fall gently?'
'YOU said before you wanted this done clean.'
'Yes. Before. I said that before.'
'They're going to be your cities,' Sinja said doggedly as a man swimming against the tide. 'There's more to think about than how to capture them. It's my guess Gait's going to be ruling these places for a long time. The less the people have to forget, the easier that rule's going to he.'
'I don't care about holding them,' Balasar said. 'There are too many to guard, and once the rest of the world scents blood, it's going to he chaos anyway. This war isn't about finding ways for the High Council to appoint more mayors.'
'Sir?'
'We are carrying the dead because they are my dead.' Balasar kept his voice calm, his manner matter-of-fact. The trembling in his hands was too slight to be seen. And I haven't come to conquer the Khaiem, Captain Ajutani. I've come to destroy them.'
The first refugees appeared when Otaii's army was still three days' march from the village of the Dai-kvo. They were few and scattered in the morning, and then more and larger groups toward the day's end. The stories they told Otah were the same. Ships had come to Yalakeht-warships loaded heavy with Galtic soldiers. Some of the ships were merchant vessels that had been on trade runs to Chahuri 'lan. Others were unfamiliar. The harbor master had tried to refuse them berths, but a force of men had come from the warehouse district and taken control of the seafront. By the time the Khai had gathered a force to drive them hack, it was too late. Yalakeht had fallen. Any hope that Otah's army might he on a fool's errand ended with that news.
In the night, more men came, drawn by the light and scent of the army's cook fires. Otah saw that they were welcomed, and the tale grew. Boats had been waiting, half assembled, in the warehouses of Galtic merchants in 'alakcht. Great metal boilers ran paddle wheels, and pushed their wide, shallow boats upriver faster than oxen could pull. Boats loaded with men and steam wagons. The low towns nearest Yalakeht had been overrun. Another force had been following along the shore, hauling food and supplies. The soldiers themselves had sped for the Dal- kvo. Just as Otah had feared they would.
Utah sat in his tent and listened to the cicadas. They sang as if nothing was changing. As if the world was as it had always been. A breeze blew from the south, heavy with the smell of rain though the clouds were still few and distant. Trees nodded their branches to one another. Utah kept his hack to the fire and stared out at darkness.
'There was no way to know whether the Galtic army had reached the village yet. Perhaps the Dai-kvo was
