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Ask! Your information merits reward.
I wish to be included in this expedition. I wish to sail west.
Aurungzeb stared closely at the hideously inhuman face of his court mage. I need you here.
My apprentice Batak, whom you know, is well able to take my place, and he does not have the same
disability that afflicts me.
Are you seeking a cure in the west, or oblivion, Orkh?
A cure if I can find one oblivion if I cannot.
Very well. You shall sail with the expedition.
Orkh faded back into misty shadow as the vizier came into the room, bent low, eyes averted.
My Sultan, the Nalbenic ambassadors are here. They await your inimitable presence.
Aurungzeb waved a hand. I ll be there directly.
The vizier left, still bowed. Aurungzeb stared around the chamber.
Orkh? Are you there, Orkh? But there was no answer. The mage had gone.
T HE first snows had come to the Searil valley. Shahr Baraz had felt them in his tired old bones before he
had even thrown off the furs. His head ached. It had been too long since he had slept out under the stars
like his forebears, the chieftains of the eastern steppes.
Mughal already had the fire going. It was almost colourless in the bright morning light and the snow glare.
Melted slush sizzled around the burning wood.
Winter arrives early this year, Mughal said.
Shahr Baraz climbed to his feet. Darkness danced at the corners of his vision until he blinked it away. He
was almost eighty-four years old.
Pass me the skin, Mughal. My blood needs some heat in it.
He drank three gulps of searing mare s-milk spirit, and his limbs stopped shuddering. Warmth again.
I had a look over the hill as the sun came up, Mughal said. They have pulled back the camps to the
reverse slopes and are busy entrenching there.
A winter camp, Shahr Baraz said. Campaigning is finished for this year. Nothing else will happen until
the spring.
Jaffan s loyalty is to you, my Khedive.
Jaffan will obey the orders of Orkhan or he will find his head atop a spear before too long. He will not
be left in command for he was too close to me. No, another khedive will be sent out. I hope, though, that
Jaffan will not suffer for letting two old men slip away into the night.
Who will the new khedive be, you think?
Who knows? Some creature of Aurungzeb s who is more malleable than I. One who will put his own
ambitions above the lives of his men. The Searil will flow scarlet ere we take that fortress, Mughal.
But it will fall in the spring. It will fall. And where will we be then?
Eating yoghurt in a felt hut on the steppes.
Mughal guffawed, then bent his face to the fire and nudged the kettle into the flames. They would have
steaming kava to warm them before they broke camp and continued their journey.
Will you turn your back on it so easily? he asked.
Shahr Baraz was silent for a long time.
I am of the old Hraib, he said at last. This war which we have begun will usher the world into a new
age. Men like myself and John Mogen were not destined to be leaders in the times to come. The world
has changed, and is changing yet. The Merduk people are no longer the fierce steppe horsemen of my
youth; their blood is mixed with many who were once Ramusian, and the old nomadic times are only a
memory.
Even the way of the warrior itself is changing. Gunpowder counts for more than courage. Arquebus balls
take no heed of rank. Honour counts for less and less. Soon generals will be artisans and engineers rather
than soldiers, and war will be a thing of equations and mathematics. That is not the way I have waged it,
or ever will.
So yes: I will turn my back on it, Mughal. I will leave it to the younger men who come after me. I have
seen a Merduk host march through the streets of Aekir; my place in the story is assured. I have that to
take with me. Now I will ride east to the land of my fathers, there to see the limitless plains of Kambaksk
and Kolchuk, the birthplace of our nation, and there I will leave my bones.
I would come with you, if I may, Mughal said.
The terrible old man smiled beneath the twin tusks of his moustache.
I would like that. A companion shortens a journey, it is said. And it will be a long journey.
But it is the last journey, Mughal murmured, and poured steaming kava for them both.
T ELL me what you see, Macrobius said.
They stood on the battlements of the citadel of Ormann Dyke, a cluster of officers and soldiers and one
old man who was missing his eyes. Corfe stared out at the white, empty, snow-shrouded land beyond the
flinty torrent of the Searil river.
There is nothing there. The camps have been abandoned. Even the trenches and walls they delved and
reared are hard to see under the snow; mere shadows running across the face of the hills. Here and there
is the remnant of a tent, a strew of wreckage covered with snow. They have gone, Holiness.
What is that smell on the air, then?
They gathered their dead under the terms of the burial truce, and burned them on a pyre in one of the
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