man in the camp would stand before him on the battle lines, and only a few, he hoped, would walk behind him in his dream.
Sinja Ajutani's camp was enfolded within the greater army's but still separate from it, like the Baktan Quarter in Acton. A city within a city, a camp within a camp. The greeting he found here was less warm. The respect he saw in these dark, almond eyes was touched with fear. Perhaps hatred. But no mistake, it was still respect.
Sinja himself was sitting on a fallen log, shirtless, with a bit of silver mirror in one hand and a blade in the other. He looked tip as Balasar came close, made his salute, and returned to shaving. Balasar sat beside him.
"We break camp soon," Balasar said. "I'll want ten of your men to ride with the scouting parties today."
"Expecting to find people to question?" Sinja asked. There was no rancor in his voice.
"'T'his close to the river, I can hope so."
"They'll know we're coming. Refugees move faster than armies. The first news of Nantani likely reached them two, maybe three weeks ago.
"Then perhaps they'll send someone here to speak for them," Balasar said. Sinja seemed to consider this as he pressed the blade against his own throat. There were scars on the man's arms and chest-long raised lines of white.
"Would you prefer I ride with the scouts, or stay close to the camp and wait for an emissary?"
"Close to camp," Balasar said. "The men you choose for scouting should speak my language well, though. I don't want to miss anything that would help us do this cleanly."
"Agreed," Sinja said, and put the knife to his own throat again. Before Balasar could go on, he heard his own name called out. A boy no older than fourteen summers wearing the colors of the second legion came barreling into the camp. His face was flushed from running, his breath short. Balasar stood and accepted the boy's salute. In the corner of his eye, he saw Sinja put away knife and mirror and reach for his shirt.
"General Gice, sir," the boy said between gasps. "Captain Tevor sent me. We've lost one of the hunting parties, sir."
"Well, they'll have to catch up with us as best they can," Balasar said. "We don't have time for searching."
"No, Sir. They aren't missing, sir. They're killed."
Balasar felt a grotesque recognition. The other men in his dream. This was where they'd come from.
"Show me," he said.
The trap had been sprung in a clearing at the end of a game trail. Crossbow bolts had taken half a dozen of the men. The others were marked with sword and axe blows. Their armor and robes had been stripped from them. "Their weapons were gone. Balasar stepped through the low grass cropped by deer and considered each face.
The songs and epics told of warriors dying with lips curled in battle cry, but every dead man Balasar had ever seen looked at peace. However badly they had died, their bodies surrendered at the end, and the calm he saw in those dead eyes seemed to say that their work was done now. Like a man playing at tiles who has turned his mark and now sat back to ask Balasar what he would do to match it.
"Are there no other bodies?" he asked.
Captain "Ievor, at his elbow, shook his great woolly head.
"There's signs that our boys did them harm, sir, but they took their dead with them. It wasn't all fast, sir. This one here, there's burn marks on him, and you can see on his wrists where they bound him tip. Asked him what he knew, I expect."
Sinja knelt, touching the dead man's wounds as if making sure they were real.
"I have a priest in my company," Captain "Icvor said. "One of the archers. I can have him say a few words. We'll bury them here and catch up with the main body tomorrow, sir."
"They're coming with us," Balasar said.
"Sir?"
"Bring a pallet and a horse. I want these bodies pulled through the camp. I want every man in the army to see them. Then wrap them in shrouds and pack them in ashes. We'll bury them in the ruins of Udun with the Khai's skull to mark their place."
Captain "Icvor made his salute, and it wasn't Balasar's imagination that put the tear in the old man's eye. As "I'evor barked out the orders to the men who had come with them, Sinja stood and brushed his palms