been if he hadn't followed Balasar out to die in the desert? Who might
Coal have married? What would Mavarsin have named his daughters and sons?
tie heard the attack before he saw it. "There was no form to it-men
waving knives and axes pouring toward them like a handful of dried peas
thrown against a wall; first one, then a few, and then all the rest in a
clump. Balasar called to his men, and a rough shout rose from them. It
was ridiculous. He should have won. This band of desperate fools didn't
know how to fight, didn't know how to coordinate. Half of them didn't
know how to hold their weapons without putting their own fingers at
risk. Balasar should have won.
The armies came together with a crash. The smell of blood filled the
air, the sound of brawling. And more of them came, boiling up out of the
ground and charging down the streets. The humiliating pain made
Balasar's every step uncertain. Every time he tried to stand at his full
height, his knees threatened to give way beneath him.
All the ghosts that had followed him, all the men he had sacrificed. All
the lives he had spent because the world was his to save. They had led
to this comic-opera melee. The streets were white with snow, black where
the dark cobbles showed through, red with fresh-spilled blood. The men
of Machi and Cetani ran through the square barking like dogs. The army
of Galt, the finest fighting force the world had ever seen, tried to
hold them off while half-bent in pain.
It should have been a comedy. Nothing so ridiculous should have the
right to inspire only horror.
They will kill tis all, Balasar thought. Every man among us will be dead
by morning if this doesn't stop.
He called the retreat, and his men stumbled and shuffled to comply.
Street by street, the archers held hack the advancing forces with
IIIaimed arrows and bolts. Footmen stumbled, weeping, and were dragged
by men who would themselves stumble shortly and he dragged along in
turn. "l he sky grew dark, the snow fell thicker. By the time Balasar
reached the buildings in the south of the city that he'd ordered taken
that morning, it was almost impossible to see across the width of a
street. The snow had drawn a curtain across the city to hide his shame.
The army of \lachi also fell back, retreating, Balasar supposed, into
their warm holes and warrens and leaving him and his men to the mercy of
the night. There was little food, few fires, and a chorus throughout the
black night of men weeping in pain and despair. When Balasar dragged
himself away from the little fire in the cooking grate of the house in
which he'd taken shelter and relieved himself out the hack door, his
piss was black with blood and stank of bad meat.
He wondered what would have happened if he had stayed in Galt, if he had
contented himself with raiding the Wcstlands and Eymond, Eddensea and
Bakta. Ile wondered what would have happened if he hadn't tried.
Ile forced himself through the captured buildings until it became too
painful to walk. 'i'he men looked away from him. Not in anger, but in
shame. Balasar could not keep from weeping though the tears frozen on
his checks. At last, lie collapsed in the corner of a teahouse, his eyes
closing even as he wondered whether he would die of the cold if he