Her own hips ached, and the cold and sun coarsened her skin. She slept without dreaming, the chill of the night and the black exhaustion in her body tugging her in opposite directions. By day, she rode with Jorey as often as she could, Captain Wester riding with them in the guise of her servant. They fell into conversation, the two men, awkwardly at first, but as the days passed, they found a greater ease. Wester treated Jorey as Clara imagined he would any client who had hired him, with deference constrained by a brutal kind of honesty.
Yes, making a field camp in the north had been a mistake. If the army had stayed at Porte Oliva, it wouldn’t be in such terrible conditions. No, there was no reliable path north that wouldn’t cross the border into Northcoast, and even if there were, the days would be shorter and colder there. Better to take a longer southerly path. And avoid the Dry Wastes on the other side of the mountains. As terrible as the Birancouri plains were, the Dry Wastes would have killed them all faster. Jorey took the knowledge in, even the painful truth of his own missteps, with a student’s focus. Under other circumstances, Clara imagined her son and the banker’s mercenary might have been friends, though perhaps it was the desperation of the campaign that gave them common ground.
The mountains began as a thicker kind of haze to the east, a complication of the sunrise. Clara had expected them to loom up more quickly, especially once they’d found the jade strip of the dragon’s road to smooth their passage. It was another three days before they reached the field where Antea and Birancour had faced one another in the previous year. A rude and dismal snow clung to the shadows, but the earth there was largely bare brown. She wondered at first who had come to bury all the spring’s fallen bodies. It was only when they paused to make camp that she noticed the bones: a rib here, a knob of foot or knuckle there. The dead were still with them but scattered. Returning slowly to the ground, to be forgotten as so many generations before them had done.
She found Marcus Wester at the siege towers looking over the weapons that Geder had sent to destroy the dragon, and the captain’s expression was oddly rueful.
“Evening, m’lady,” he said as she approached, then he looked around to be sure there were no others close enough to overhear. “Do I need to come play the servant some more?”
“No,” she said. “I was only wandering a bit before the sun went down and it got too cold to move about.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Probably should have left these behind earlier, but I’d hoped the pass would be clear enough to take them. Some of them, at least.”
The mountain pass that led up and to the east glowed like an ember in the falling sunlight. She wondered what it was about sunsets and dawns that made them so bloody. “How bad is it?”
“The trail? Bad enough.”
“Impassable?”
“Won’t know for certain until we’ve tried passing it, but I’ve seen it worse,” Wester said, squinting up at the siege engines. “If there was a better option, I’d speak for it. Your son’s scouts all agree that even Kit won’t be able to talk these great bastards through. We’ll have to abandon them.”
“Should we destroy them, then?”
“Why would we?”
“It’s something my late husband used to talk about. Ruining the things you leave behind so that the enemy can’t make use of them.”
“Assumes you know who the enemy is,” Marcus said. “These things are only good against one target, and I’m not particularly concerned that Birancour will track Inys down and pull him out of the sky anytime soon.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Clara said.
“Don’t suppose the Lord Regent’s made more of them?”
“I couldn’t say. I’d left Camnipol before he made these,” she said. And then, “I’m afraid that trekking back to Bellin may be the wrong thing.”
Wester made a low assenting grunt, then tapped his palm against the tower’s side and turned away. “Under other circumstances, I’d advise against it. Taking the pass in winter’s a gamble at best, and long odds. Going south means food, warmth, shelter. But it also means more of the priests, and giving up on providing Antea anything like a garrison force. So there’s your trade-off.”
“Are we certain that a defense will be needed there?”
“Yes,” Wester said. “And we’ll need to get through before the weather gets warm.”
“Before that?” Clara said. “And here I was lighting candles in hopes of a day that didn’t freeze the water in the skins.”
“Wouldn’t hope for that,” Marcus said. “If you’re going to be the kind of reckless we’re being, you want to do it in midwinter. The snow’s not so fresh that it’s all powder and it’s not warm enough to thaw. Being buried by an avalanche… Well, it’s our biggest risk after freezing or starving or getting caught in a storm. Still, it’s something worth avoiding if we can. A long march in winter isn’t a sign things have gone right.”
“This is their second. Or is it third now?” Clara said. “This war feels as though it’s been going on forever.”
To her surprise, he laughed. “Well, count it as the fight between the dragons, and it has.”
“It’s too large, isn’t it?” she said. “War. History. Each battle growing from the quarrels that came before and sowing the seeds of the ones that come after.”
“I try not to think about it,” Marcus said. “Getting these men through another day, and lining up a decent chance of the day after that’s more than enough to keep me busy. All the rest will be there when we’re past Bellin.”
Something in his voice—some combination of mordant humor and compassion and despair—chimed in her breast. He would, she thought, do whatever he could to protect these soldiers from the dangers that lay before them. Though they were the enemy, though they would have killed him where he stood and her besides if they had known a little more of the truth. There was something both noble and doomed about it.
Perhaps she made some sound without realizing it, because Wester shot her a look, lifted a querying eyebrow.
“I admire your willingness to help with this,” she said.
“It’s the job.”
For a moment, she thought he might say something more, but instead he spat, shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket, and turned toward the tents. A colder breeze was coming from the north, not powerful enough to call a wind, but biting. It would be unpleasant if it kept up through the night. They walked together down the slope. Arrayed below them, the army camp looked less like the force that had brought the world to its knees than a collection of refugees at the mercy of the wide, uncaring sky. Wester’s expression was calm. Peaceful, even. It was as if he found comfort in the absurdity of suffering. Perhaps he did.
The last rays of the falling sun painted them both in red, and the bone-strewn battlefield of the world as well.
Cithrin
Marcus Wester was gone. Master Kit was gone. Isadau was gone. Carse was the greatest city of Northcoast, and it still felt empty. Lonely. As many bodies packed the taprooms, as many dogs loped yapping through the streets, as many meetings with suppliers, debtors, mercenaries, and officials of the crown filled the day, and still she felt alone. It didn’t help that Cary worked the troupe from the late, sluggish sunrise to the early twilight. Or that Yardem, love him though she did, seemed folded in his own thoughts. Or that Inys had fallen into a sulk that hadn’t proven murderous again as yet, but might at any time. Cithrin woke in the morning feeling anxious and unmoored, worked through the day at whatever there was to be done, inventing tasks when there were none, and settled in at night with her fears and her ambitions and her wine.