Seasons of War

Balasar felt a superstitious dread at sending him away.
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘Be careful,’ Balasar said. ‘That’s all.’
    A trumpet called, and Balasar turned back to the city. Sure enough, there was something - a speck of black on the white. A single rider, fleeing Machi.
    ‘Well,’ Eustin said. ‘Looks like Captain Ajutani’s come back after all. Give him my compliments.’
    Balasar smiled at the disdain in Eustin’s voice.
    ‘I’ll be careful too,’ he said.
    It took something like half a hand for Sinja to reach the camp. Balasar noticed particularly that he didn’t turn to the bridge, riding instead directly over the frozen river. Eustin and his force were gone, looping around to the north, well before the mercenary captain arrived. Balasar had cups of strong kafe waiting when Sinja, his face pink and raw-looking from his ride, was shown into his tent.
    Balasar retuned his salute and gestured to a chair. Sinja took a pose of thanks - so little time back among the Khaiem and the use of formal pose seemed to have returned to the man like an accent - and sat, drawing a sheaf of papers from his sleeve. When they spoke, it was in the tongue of the Khaiem.
    ‘It went well?’
    ‘Well enough,’ Sinja said. ‘I made a small mistake and had to do some very pretty dancing to cover it. But the Khai’s got few enough hopes, he wants to trust me. Makes things easier. Now, here. These are rough copies of the maps he’s used. They’re filling in the main entrances to the underground tunnels to keep us from bringing any single large force down at once. The largest paths they’ve left open are here,’ Sinja touched the map, ‘and here.’
    ‘And the poets?’
    ‘They have the outline of a binding. I think they’re going to try it. And soon.’
    Balasar felt the sinking of dread in his belly, and strangely also a kind of peace. He wouldn’t have thought there was any part of him that was still held back, and yet that one small fact - the poets lived and planned and would recapture one of the andat now if they could - took away any choice he might still have had. He looked at the map, his mind sifting through strategies like a tiles player shuffling chits of bone.
    ‘There are men in the towers,’ Balasar said.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ Sinja said. ‘They’ll have stones and arrows to drop. You won’t be able to use the streets near them, but the range isn’t good, and they won’t be able to aim from so far up. Go a street or two over and keep by the walls, and we’ll be safe. There won’t be much resistance above ground. Their hope is to keep you at bay long enough for the cold to do their work for them.’
    Three forces, Balasar thought. One to clear out the houses and trading shops on the south, another to push in toward the forges and the metalworkers, a third to take the palaces. He wouldn’t take the steam wagons - he’d learned that much from Coal - so horsemen would be important for the approach, though they might be less useful if the fighting moved inside structures as it likely would. And they’d be near useless once they were underground. Archers wouldn’t have much effect. There were few long, clear open spaces in the city. But despite what Sinja said, Balasar expected there would be some fighting on the surface, so enough archers were mixed with the foot troops to fire back at anyone harassing them from the windows and snow doors of the passing buildings.
    ‘Thank you, Sinja-cha,’ Balasar said. ‘I know how much doing this must have cost you.’
    ‘It needed doing,’ Sinja said, and Balasar smiled.
    ‘I won’t insist that you watch this happen. You can stay at the camp or ride north and join Eustin.’
    ‘North?’
    ‘He’s taken it to guard. In case someone tries to slip away during the battle.’
    ‘That’s a good thought,’ Sinja said, his tone somewhat rueful. ‘If it’s all the same, I’d like to ride with Eustin-cha. I know he hasn’t always thought well of me, and if anything does go wrong, I’d like to be where he can see I wasn’t the one doing it.’
    ‘A pretty thought,’ Balasar said, chuckling.
    ‘You’re going to win,’ Sinja said. It was a simple statement, but there was a weight behind it. A regret that soldiers often had in the face of loss, and only rarely in victory.
    ‘You thought of changing sides,’ Balasar said. ‘While you were there, with all the people you know. In your old home. It was hard not to stand by them.’
    ‘That’s true,’