they'd been his sons.
The pain came without warning. He saw it pass through the men like wind
stirring grass, and then it found Balasar himself. It was agonizing,
embarrassing, humiliating. And even as he struggled to keep his feet, he
knew what it meant.
The andat had been hound. The enemy had turned some captive spirit
against them. They'd been assaulted, but they were not dead. Hurt,
leaning on walls with teeth clenched in pain, formations forgotten and
tears steaming on their checks. Their cries and groans were louder than
a landslide, and Balasar knew his own voice was part of it. But they
were not dead. Not yet.
"Rally!" Balasar had cried. "To me! Form up!"
And god bless them, they had tried. Discipline had held even as they
shambled, knowing as he did that this was the power they had conic to
destroy, loosed against them at last. Shrieking in pain, and still they
made their formations. They were crippled but undefeated.
What would have happened, he thought, if he had not tried? What would
the world have become if he had listened to his tutor, all those years
ago, heard the tales of the andat and the war that ripped their Empire
apart, and had merely shuddered? There were monster stories enough for
generations of boys, and each of them as frightening as the next. If the
voting Balasar Gice hadn't taken that particular story to heart, if he
had not thought This will he my work; I ZL,'il/ make the a:'or/d safe
from these things, how would it have gone? Who would Little Ott have
been if he hadn't followed Balasar out to die in the desert? Who might
Coal have married? What would Mavarsin have named his daughters and sons?
tie heard the attack before he saw it. "There was no form to it-men
waving knives and axes pouring toward them like a handful of dried peas
thrown against a wall; first one, then a few, and then all the rest in a
clump. Balasar called to his men, and a rough shout rose from them. It
was ridiculous. He should have won. This band of desperate fools didn't
know how to fight, didn't know how to coordinate. Half of them didn't
know how to hold their weapons without putting their own fingers at
risk. Balasar should have won.
The armies came together with a crash. The smell of blood filled the
air, the sound of brawling. And more of them came, boiling up out of the
ground and charging down the streets. The humiliating pain made
Balasar's every step uncertain. Every time he tried to stand at his full
height, his knees threatened to give way beneath him.
All the ghosts that had followed him, all the men he had sacrificed. All
the lives he had spent because the world was his to save. They had led
to this comic-opera melee. The streets were white with snow, black where
the dark cobbles showed through, red with fresh-spilled blood. The men
of Machi and Cetani ran through the square barking like dogs. The army
of Galt, the finest fighting force the world had ever seen, tried to
hold them off while half-bent in pain.
It should have been a comedy. Nothing so ridiculous should have the
right to inspire only horror.
They will kill tis all, Balasar thought. Every man among us will be dead
by morning if this doesn't stop.
He called the retreat, and his men stumbled and shuffled to comply.
Street by street, the archers held hack the advancing forces with
IIIaimed arrows and bolts. Footmen stumbled, weeping, and were dragged
by men who would themselves stumble shortly and he dragged along in
turn. "l he sky grew dark, the snow fell thicker. By the time Balasar
reached the buildings in the south of the city that he'd ordered taken
that morning, it was almost impossible to see across the width of a
street. The snow had drawn a curtain across the city to hide his shame.
The army of \lachi also fell back, retreating, Balasar supposed, into
their warm holes and warrens and leaving him and his men to the mercy of
the night. There was little food, few fires, and a chorus throughout the
black night of men weeping in pain and despair. When Balasar dragged
himself away from the little fire in the cooking grate of the house in
which he'd taken shelter and relieved himself out the hack door, his
piss was black with blood and stank of bad meat.
He wondered what would have happened if he had stayed in Galt, if he had
contented himself with raiding the Wcstlands and Eymond, Eddensea and
Bakta. Ile wondered what would have happened if he hadn't tried.
Ile forced himself through the captured buildings until it became too
painful to walk. 'i'he men looked away from him. Not in anger, but in
shame. Balasar could not keep from weeping though the tears frozen on
his checks. At last, lie collapsed in the corner of a teahouse, his eyes
closing even as he wondered whether he would die of the cold if he
stopped moving. But distantly, lie felt someone pulling a blanket over
him. Some sorry, misled soldier who still thought his general worth saving.
Balasar dreamed like a man in fever and woke near dawn unrested and ill.
The pain had lessened, and from the stances of the men around him he
guessed he was not the only one for whom this was true. Still, too hasty
a step lit his nerves with a cold fire. He was in no condition to fight.
And the rough count his surviving captains brought him showed he'd lost
three thousand men in a day. They had been cut down in the battle or
fallen by the way during the retreat and frozen. Almost a third of his
men. One in three, a ghost to follow him; sacrifices to what he had
thought he alone could do. No word had conic from 1 ustin in the North.
Balasar wished he hadn't let the man go.
The clouds had scattered in the night. 'l'he great vault above them was
the hazy blue of a robin's egg, the black towers rising halfway to the
heavens had ceased dropping their stones and arrows. Perhaps they'd run
out, or there might only tie no point in it. Balasar and his men were in
trouble enough.
The air that followed the snows was painfully frigid. "The men scavenged
what they could to build up fires in the grates-broken chairs and
tables, coal brought up from the steam wagons. "l'he fires danced and
crackled, but the heat seemed to vanish a hand's span from the flame. No
little fire could overcome the cold. Balasar hunched down before the
teahouse fire grate all the same, and tried to think what to do now that
everything had fallen apart.
They had a little food. "I'he snow could be melted for water. 'I'hey
could live in these captured houses as long as they could before the
natives snuck in at night to slit their throats or a true storm came and
turned all their faces black with frostbite.
The only hope was to try again. They would wait for a day, perhaps two.
They would hope that the andat had done its damage to them. They might
all die in the attempt, but they were dead men out here anyway. Better
that they die trying.
"General (;ice, sir!"