would have understood. Or if they didn't, they'd have done it all the

same. It was what they meant by faith.

When at last he returned to the library, one of his other captains-a

lanky man named Orem Cot-was pacing the length of the room, literally

wringing his hands in agitation or excitement. Balasar closed the door

behind him with a thump as the captain bowed.

"Sir," he said. "There's a man come wanting to speak with you. I thought

I'd best bring him to you myself."

"What's his business?" Balasar asked.

"Mercenary captain, sir. Brought his men down from Annaster."

"I don't need more forces."

"You'll want to talk with this one all the same, sir. His company?

They're from the Khaiem. Says they got turned out by the Khai Machi and

they've been traveling ever since."

"He's been in the winter cities?"

"For years, sir."

"You were right to bring him. Show the man in," Balasar said, then

stopped the captain as he headed to the door. "What's his name?"

"Captain Ajutani, sir. Sinja Ajutani."

IT HAI) BECOME CLEAR TO SINJA SHORTLY AFTER HIS ARRIVAL IN AREN TIIA'I'

he had misjudged the situation.

The company, such as it was, had passed through the mountains that

divided the Westlands from the lands that, while not directly

controlled, associated themselves with Machi and Pathai weeks before.

The men were young and excited to he on the march, so Sinja had pushed

them. By the time they'd reached Annaster, they were tired enough to

complain, but there was still a light in their eyes. They'd escaped the

smothering, peaceful blankets of the Khaiem; they were in the realm

where violence was met with violence, and not by the uncanny powers of

the poets and their andat. They had come to the place where they could

prove themselves on the bodies of their enemies.

Besides Sinja, only a dozen or so of the higher ranks had ever been in

battle. For the rest, this was like walking into a children's tale.

Sinja hadn't tried to explain. Perhaps they'd be able to find glory in

the soulcrushing boredom of a siege; perhaps they'd face their first

battles and discover that they loved violence. More likely, he'd be

sending half of them home to their mothers by midsummer, and that would

have been fine. He was here as much to stretch his legs as to keep his

master and friend the Khai Machi out of trouble with the Dai-kvo.

He hadn't expected to walk into the largest massing of military force in

memory.

Galt was in the southern wards, and it was there in force. All through

the Westlands, Wardens had forgotten their squabbles. Every gaze was

cast south. The common wisdom was that Galt had finally decided to end

its generations-long games of raid and abandon. It had come to take

control of the whole of the Westlands from the southern coast up to

Eddensea. There were even those who wondered whether it was going to be

a good season for Eddensea.

Sinja had done what he did best-listened. The stories he heard were, of

course, overblown. Men and women throughout the Westlands were in

different stages of panic. Someone had seen a thousand ships off the

coast. There had been agreements signed with Aren, but all the other

Wardens and all their children were to he slaughtered to assure that no

one would have claim to rule once the Galts had come through. There were

even a few optimists who thought that Balasar Gice-the general at the

head of this largest of all gathered armieswasn't looking to the

Westlands, but gathering his forces to take control of Galt itself. He

could overthrow the High Council and install himself as autocrat.

What it all came to was this: Any mercenary company working for anyone

besides Galt was likely to be on the losing side of the fight. The

collected Wardens were putting out calls for free companies and garrison

forces, preparing themselves as best they could. The fees that Sinja was

offered would have been handsome for a band of veterans and siege

captains, much less for a few hundred foreign sell-swords one step up

from thugs. And so Sinja had considered the money, considered the offers

and the stories and his own best instincts, then quietly packed up his

men and headed south to Aren to sell their services at a fourth of the

price, but to the winners.

The men had grumbled. Wide, square Westland coins had been dancing in

their minds. Morale had started to fail. So Sinja had paused in the Ward

of Castin, made contact with a free company who'd taken contract there,

and challenged their veterans to a day of games. Once Sinja's men had

understood and accepted his point, they bound their ribs and continued

to the south. No one had questioned his judgment again.

Aren was one of the wards farthest to the south. Low hills covered with

rich green grasses, towns of stone buildings with thatched roofs, elk

and deer so wise to the ways of men that the bowmen he sent ahead to

forage never caught one of them. Wherever they went, Sinja saw the signs

of an army having passed-ruined crops, abandoned campsites with the

ashes of a half hundred fires churned into the mud. But even with this,

he had been shocked when they topped one of the many hills and caught

first sight of the city of Aren.

No city under siege had ever seen so many troops at its wall. Tents and

low pavilions were laid out around it on all sides, dark oiled cloth

shining in row after row after row. The smoke of cook fires left a low

haze through the valley that even the rain could not wholly dispel, the

strange bulbous steam wagons the Galts used to move supplies and leave

their men unburdened seemed as numerous as horses in the fields, and the

squirming, streaming activity of men moving through each of the opened

gates made the city seem like a dead sparrow overrun by ants.

His men set camp at a polite distance from the existing companies while

Sinja dared the city itself. He entered the gates at midday. It wasn't

more than three hands later he was being escorted through the halls of

the Warden's palace to the library and the general himself. I Ie'd

surrendered his blades and the garrote he kept at his waist before being

permitted to speak with the great man. Either Balasar Gice felt this

unprecedented mass of men was too little for whatever task lay ahead of

him and was grabbing at every spare sword and dagger in the world, or

else Sinja was, for reasons that passed imagining, of particular

interest to him.

Either way, Sinja disliked it.

Balasar Gice turned out to he a smallish man, mouse-brown hair running

to white at the temples. He wore the gray tunic of command that Sinja

had seen before when he'd been in the field as a young man fighting