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 hack out, mounted, and turned his
poor, suffering animal to the south again, trotting down the
snow-obscured tracks, cutting hack 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. I3alasar'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 he the most popular man in Machi. Wintering here might not he good
for you."
"Ah," Sinja said, swinging down from his horse. "I'll have all my dear
friends from Galt to keep my hack 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