Seasons of War

.’
    Sinja raised his hands, palms up as if he were offering Balasar the truth resting there. Balasar stepped close, putting his own hands below the captain’s and curling the other man’s fingers closed.
    ‘I won’t kill them,’ Balasar said. ‘They’re my men now, and I don’t kill my own. You can tell them that if you’d like. And that aside, Riaan isn’t going to fail us.’
    Sinja looked down, his head shifting as if he were weighing something.
    ‘I can be sure,’ Balasar said, answering the unasked question.
    ‘I’ve never seen one of these before,’ Sinja said. ‘Have you? I mean, I assume there’s some ceremony, and he’ll do something. If there was an andat beside him at the end, you’d have proof, but this thing you’re 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 father - move 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. He’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