Eustin had survived. The others-Little Ott, Bes, Mayarsin, Laran,
Kellem, and a dozen more-were bones and memory now. Because of him. He
shook his head, clearing it, and the wind was only wind again.
"No offense, General," the High Watchman said, "but there's not enough
gold in the world for me to try what you did."
"It was necessary," Balasar said, and his tone ended the conversation.
THE JOURNEY TO THE. COAST WAS EASIER THAN IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN. THREE
men, traveling light. The others were an absence measured in the ten
days it took to reach Lawton. It had taken sixteen coming from. The
arid, empty lands of the East gave way to softly rolling hills. The
tough yellow grasses yielded to blue-green almost the color of a cold
sea, wavelets dancing on its surface. Farmsteads appeared off the road,
windmills with broad blades shifting in the breezes; men and women and
children shared the path that led toward the sea. Balasar forced himself
to be civil, even gracious. If the world moved the way he hoped, he
would never come to this place again, but the world had a habit of
surprising him.
When he'd come back from the campaign in the Westlands, he'd thought his
career was coming to its victorious end. He might take a place in the
Council or at one of the military colleges. He even dared to dream of a
quiet estate someplace away from the yellow coal smoke of the great
cities. When the news had come-a historian and engineer in Far Galt had
divined a map that might lead to the old libraries-he'd known that rest
had been a chimera, a thing for other men but never himself. He'd taken
the best of his men, the strongest, smartest, most loyal, and come here.
He had lost them here. The ones who had died, and perhaps also the ones
who had lived.
Coal and Eustin were both quiet as they traveled, both respectful when
they stopped to camp for the night. Without conversation, they had all
agreed that the cold night air and hard ground was better than the
company of men at an inn or wayhouse. Once in a while, one or the other
would attempt to talk or joke or sing, but it always failed. "There was
a distance in their eyes, a stunned expression that Balasar recognized
from boys stumbling over the wreckage of their first battlefield. They
were seasoned fighters, Coal and Eustin. He had seen both of them kill
men and boys, knew each of them had raped women in the towns they'd
sacked, and still, they had left some scrap of innocence in the desert
and were moving away from it with every step. Balasar could not say what
that loss would do to them, nor would he insult their manhood by
bringing it up. He knew, and that alone would have to suffice. 't'hey
reached the ports of Parrinshall on the first day of autumn.
Half a hundred ships awaited them: great merchant ships built to haul
cargo across the vast emptiness of the southern seas, shallow fishing
boats that darted out of port and back again, the ornate three-sailed
roundboats of Bakta, the antiquated and changeless ships of the east
islands. It was nothing to the ports at Kirinton or Lanniston or
Saraykeht, but it was enough. Three berths on any of half a dozen of
these ships would take them off Far Gait and start them toward home.
"Winter'II be near over afore we see Acton," Coal said, and spat off the