Seasons of War

his city, that would be the other plausible center from which to make his campaign.
    ‘I need runners. A dozen of them. We need to reach the men at the palaces and tell them that the plan’s changed.’
     
    Sinja had ridden hard for the north. Even as he heard the distant horns that meant the battle within Machi had begun, he leaned down over his mount and pushed for the paths and rough mining roads that laced the foothills behind the city. And there, low in the mountains where generations ago it had been easy and convenient to haul ore, one of the first, oldest, tapped-out mines. Otah’s bolt-hole for the children and the poets, and the only thing between it and the city - Eustin and a hundred armed Galts. Visions of cart tracks crushed in the snow and disappearing into the mine’s mouth pricked at his mind. Let Eustin not find them.
    He reached the first ridge behind Machi just as a distant crashing sound came from the city, the violence muffled by distance and snowfall. The horse steamed beneath him. Riding this hard in this weather was begging for colic; the horse was nearly certain to die if he kept pressing it. And he was going to keep pressing it. If a horse was the only thing he killed before sunset, it would be a better day than he’d hoped.
    Sinja reached the tunnel sometime after midday. Time was hard to judge. Silently, he walked down into the half-lit mouth of the tunnel and squatted, considering the dust-covered ground until his eyes had adapted to the darkness. It was dry. No one had passed through here since the snow had begun to fall. He stalked back out, mounted, and turned his poor, suffering animal to the south again, trotting down the snow-obscured tracks, cutting back and forth - west and east and west again - his eyes peering through the gray for Eustin and his men. It wasn’t long before he found them - a dozen men set on patrol. There were eight patrols, they told him, and Eustin in the one that ranged nearest to the city. Sinja gave his sometime compatriots his thanks and went on to the south.
    His gloves were soaked, the cold creeping into his knuckles, when he found Eustin. Balasar’s captain and ten of his men had stopped a beaten old cart pulled by a mule and driven by a young man with a long Northern face and a nervous expression. Eustin and four of the men had dismounted and were talking to the panicked-looking man. Sinja called out and Eustin hailed him and motioned him down with what appeared to be good enough will.
    We’re allies, Sinja told himself. We’re Balasar Gice’s men on the day of the general’s greatest triumph.
    He forced his numbed lips into a smile and let his horse pick its way gently downslope to where the soldiers and the unfortunate refugee waited.
    ‘Not going with the general?’ Eustin asked as Sinja came within comfortable speaking distance.
    ‘Thought I’d let him kill all the people I knew without my being there. I’d only have been a distraction.’
    Eustin shrugged.
    ‘I’m surprised you’re staying around at all,’ he said. ‘You aren’t about to be the most popular man in Machi. Wintering here might not be good for you.’
    ‘Ah,’ Sinja said, swinging down from his horse. ‘I’ll have all my dear friends from Galt to keep my back from sprouting arrows.’
    Eustin’s noncommittal grunt seemed to finish the topic. Sinja considered the man on the cart. He looked familiar, but in a vague way, as if Sinja had known the man’s brothers but not him.
    ‘What have you got here?’ Sinja asked, and Eustin turned his attention back to the refugee.
    ‘Coward making a run for the hills,’ Eustin said. ‘I was talking with him about what he’s carrying.’
    ‘Just my son,’ the man said. ‘I don’t have any silver or gems. I don’t have anything.’
    ‘Seems unlikely that you’d live well out there,’ Eustin said, nodding toward the north and the snow-veiled mountains. ‘So maybe it’s best if you come back to the camp with us, eh?’
    ‘Please. My sister and her husband. They live in one of the low towns. Up by the Radaani mines. We’re going to stay with her,’ the man said. He was a good liar, Sinja thought. ‘I’m not a fighter, and my boy’s no threat. We don’t want any trouble.’
    ‘Bad day for you, then,’ Eustin said and gestured with his fingers. ‘The cloak. Open it.’
    Reluctantly, the man did. A sword hung at his hip. Eustin smiled.
    ‘Not a fighter, eh? That’s for scaring squirrels,