doing ... there's nothing to show, is there? So how will you know?"
"It would be embarrassing to walk into Nantani and have the andat
waiting to greet us," Balasar agreed. "But don't let it concern you.
Riaan isn't going to mumble into the air and send us all off to die.
I'll be certain of that."
"You have a runner in Nantani? Someone who can bring word when the
andat's vanished?"
"Don't concern yourself, Sinja," Balasar said. "Just be ready to move
when I say and in the direction I choose."
"Yes, General."
Balasar turned and strode to the door. He could see Eustin standing
close, his hand on his sword. It was a reassuring sight.
"Captain Ajutani," Balasar said over his shoulder. "What were you
speaking to Riaan about before we came?"
"Himself mostly," the captain said. "Is there another subject he's
interested in?"
"He was concerned when I spoke with him. Concerned with things that
never seemed to occur to him before. You wouldn't have anything to do
with that, would you?"
"No, General," Sinja said. "Wouldn't be any profit in it."
Balasar nodded and resumed the path to his rooms. Eustin fell in beside him.
"I don't like that man," Eustin said under his breath. "I don't trust him."
"I do," Balasar said. "I trust him to be and to have always been my
staunchest supporter just as soon as he's sure we're going to win. He's
a mercenary, but he isn't a spy. And his men will be useful."
"Still."
"It will be fine."
Balasar didn't give his uncertainties and fears free rein until he was
safely alone in the borrowed library, and then his mind rioted. Perhaps
Sinja was right-the poet could fail, the Khaiem could divine his
purpose, the destruction he'd dedicated himself to preventing might be
brought about by his miscalculation. Everything might still fail. A
thousand threats and errors clamored.
He took out his maps again for the thousandth time. Each road was marked
on the thin sheepskin. Each bridge and ford. Each city. Fourteen cities
in a single season. They would take Nantani and then scatter. The other
forces would come in from the sea. It was nearing summer, and he told
himself again and again as if hoping to convince himself that after the
sun rose tomorrow, it would be a question only of speed.
In the first battle he'd fought, Balasar had been a crossbowman. He and
a dozen like him were supposed to loose their bolts into the packed,
charging bodies of the warriors of Eymond and then pull back, letting
the men with swords and axes and flails-men like his fathermove in and
take up the melee. He'd hardly been a boy at the time, much less a man.
He had done as he was told, as had the others, but once they were safely
over the rise of the hill, out of sight of the enemy and the battle,
Balasar had been stupid. The grunts and shrieks and noise of bodies in
conflict were like a peal of thunder that never faded. The sound called
to him. With each shriek from the battle, he imagined that it had been
his father. The nightmare images of the violence happening just over the
rise chewed at him. I le'd had to see it. He had gone back over. It had
almost cost him his life.
One of the soldiers of Eymond had spotted him. He'd been a large man,
tall as a tree it had seemed at the time. He'd broken away from the
fight and rushed up the hill, axe raised and blood on his mind. Balasar
remembered the panic when he understood that his own death was rushing
up the hill toward him. The wise thing would have been to flee; if he
could have gotten back to the other bowmen, they might have killed the
soldier. But instead, without thought, he started to bend back the
leaves of the crossbow, fumbling the bolt with fingers that had seemed
numb as sausages. Though only one of them was running, it had been a race.
When he'd raised the bow and loosed the bolt, the man had been fewer
than ten feet from him. He could still feel the thrum of the string and
feel the sinking certainty that he had missed, that his life was
forfeit. In point of fact, the bolt had sunk so deep into the man it
only seemed to have vanished. The breaths between when he'd fired and
when the soldier sank to the ground were the longest he had ever known.
And here he was again. Only this time he was the one in motion. The
poets of the Khaiem would have a chance to call up another of the
andat-and the measure of that hope was his speed in finding them,
killing them, and burning their hooks.
It was a terrible wager, and more than his own life was in the balance.
Balasar was not a religious man. Questions of gods and heavens had
always seemed too abstract to him. But now, putting aside the maps, the
plans, all the work of his life prepared to find its fruition or else
its ruin, he walked to the window, watched the full moon rising over
this last night of the world as it had been, and put his hand to his
heart, praying to all the gods he knew with a single word.
Please.
8
Twilight came after the long sunset, staining red the high clouds in the
west. A light wind had come from the North, carrying the chill of
mountaintop glaciers with it, though there was little snow left on even
the highest peaks that could be seen from the city. It grabbed at the
loose shutters, banging them open and closed like an idiot child in love
with the noise. Banners rippled and trees nodded like old men. It was as
if an errant breath of winter had stolen into the warm nights. Otah sat
in his private chambers, still in his formal robes. He felt no drafts,
but the candles flickered in sympathy with the wind.
The letters unfolded before him were in a simple cipher. The years he
had spent in the gentleman's trade, carrying letters and contracts and
information on the long roads between the cities of the Khaiem, returned
to him, and he read the enciphered text as easily as if it had been
written plainly. It was as Nlaati and Cehmai had said. The Wards of the
Westlands were united in a state of panic. The doom of the world seemed
about to fall upon them.
Since the letters had arrived, Otah's world had centered on the news. He
had sent another runner to the Dai-kvo with a pouch so heavy with
lengths of silver, the man could have bought a fresh horse at every low
town he passed through if it would get him there faster. Otah had sat up
long nights with Nlaati and Cehmai, even with Liat and Nayiit. I Jere
was the plan, then. With the threat of an andat of their own, the Galts
would roll through the Westlands, perhaps Eddensea as well. In a year,
perhaps two, they might own Bakta and Eymond too. The cities of the
Khaiem would find themselves cut off from trade, and perhaps the rogue
poet would even become a kind of Galtic Dai-kvo in time. The conquest of
the Westlands was the first campaign in a new war that might make the