Eight thousand remained to him. Several hundred had been lost in battle or to the raids that had slowed his travel since Nantani. The rest he had left in conquered I'tani. 'T'here was little enough left of I'dun that he hadn't bothered leaving men to occupy the city. 't'here was no call to leave people there to guard ashes. tltani had offered only token resistance and been for the most part spared. 'Ian-Sadar had very nearly set the musicians to playing and lined the roads with dancing girls. That wasn't true, but as Balasar stalked hack through the great vaulted hall of the Khai's palace, his steps echoing off the blue and gold tilework high above him, his disgust with the place made it seem that way. They hadn't fought, and while that might have been wise, it wasn't something to celebrate. The only ones who had spines had been the poet and the Khai. Well, and the Khai's wives and children, whom he'd had killed. So perhaps he wasn't really in the best position to speak about what was honorable and noble after all.
'Darkness has come on as usual, sir;
Balasar looked tip. Eustin stood in salute at the foot of a wide flight of stairs. His tunic was stained, his chin unshaven, and even from five paces away, he stank of horses. Balasar restrained himself from rushing over and embracing the man.
'The darkness,' Balasar asked through his grin.
'Always happens at the end of a campaign, sir. You fall into a black mood for a few weeks. Happened in Eddensca and after the siege at NIalsam. 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 pass the news, but it seemed faster if I came myself.'
'Come LIP,' 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 'Ian-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 passed 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. TanSadar, the nearest city to the I)ai-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 conic south after Amnat-'Ian 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 he 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 he 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 I'tani?'
'Or send some downriver. Depends how much food there is. There's more than a few who'd he 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 he poor again in a season or two, but the dice stands in Kirinton will still he singing our praises when our grandsons are old,' Eustin said, then paused. 'What about our local man?'
'Captain Ajutani? lie's here, in the city. Wintering here with the rest of us. He's done quite well for himself. And for us. I le'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 arms' shifted 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 alikeseemed 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 'Ian- 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. lie found his mind turning hack 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 academics. 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 pricked 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.
'I'hey 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 Dal-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 buttery 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.'
