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“It was Nemasis, was it
not, that hired you?”
    Eunion loved to
hear of the goings-on in the wider world, and he was one of the few men who
could dissect them with intelligence. Rictus looked down at Rian. She was sat,
chin on knees, between them, rubbing Mij’s belly with her bare toes. He caught
Eunion’s eye, and saw the apology in the older man’s face.
    “It was a
protracted campaign,” he said gruffly, and he set his hand on his daughter’s
nape as though to comfort her.
    “There was little
fighting - one or two clashes south-west of Machran. But they were stubborn,
the Vengans. They have good land around that earth-walled city of theirs, and
they would not admit defeat even when we drove them from the field. So it
became a siege of sorts.”
    “A siege!” Rian
exclaimed, as though this were some marvellous revelation.
    “A rarity, in this
age,” Eunion said. He rasped one hard palm across the white bristles on his
chin.
    “A rarity, thank
God. And in winter, too. We sat there all through the coldest months of the
year, and ate the country bare all around while the Vengans sat in their city
and starved. They made a sally at the turning of the year, and that was their
mistake. We took the gatehouse, and then it was all over.”
    “And the terms?”
Eunion always wanted to know. It came of his own fate in life, perhaps.
    “What did you do
to them?” Rian demanded. His own eyes, in his daughter’s face, looking up at
him.
    “Well, the
Nemasians had been made to freeze in camps half the winter instead of sitting
at home with their wives, so they were not disposed to mercy.”
    Rictus was
reluctant to say more. He had no wish to convey to his daughter, or to this
good, gentle man beside her, the carnage and chaos that had concluded the campaign.
    “Did Venga
survive?” Eunion asked, tight-lipped.
    “Yes. She lost
most of her good land.” And most of her sons and daughters, Rictus added to
himself, thinking of the hopeless lines of shackled children filing up the
roads towards the Machran slave-markets.
    “Our own
casualties were light, not above fifty for the whole episode.”
    “Fifty? That’s
nothing - you barely fought at all,” Rian accused him.
    “Hardly at all,”
Rictus agreed, though something in his face made Rian set a hand on his knee in
obscure apology.
    “And what news
from Machran, master?” Eunion persisted. “We’ve been hearing stories down in
Onthere and Hal Goshen, but they are so garbled as to be little better than
myth. Have you heard any more about what is happening in the east?”
    Rictus frowned,
rubbing his right thigh just below the hem of his chiton. There was a pink scar
there where a Vengan arrow, almost spent, had smacked into his flesh the year
before. It had been a long time healing in the winter camps and it troubled him
still when he sat awhile on the cold ground, as he did now.
    The east, where
this new thing had arisen, this prodigy. It was all anyone had ever asked him
in his travels - what word of the east? What is he doing now? This apparition,
this phoenix of war.
    “It’s hard to separate
myth and fact when it comes to talking about the east,” he said at last. “I
know he is well inland from Idrios now, and I heard word that Gerrera and
Maronen had fallen to him.”
    “It’s true, then -
he does head this way!” Rian exclaimed, and she lifted both her hands as though
to catch a posy.
    “If he has
Maronen,” Eunion said tersely, “then his next step must be Hal Goshen.”
    “That is my
thinking also.”
    “Master, Hal
Goshen is barely -”
    “I know,” Rictus
said curtly.
    “What does he
want, father?” Rian asked.
    Rictus shrugged. “Some
say he aims at nothing more than overlordship of all the Macht cities. But that’s
absurd.” He spoke over Rian’s head, meeting Eunion eye to eye.
    “When we were in
Machran, Karnos was talking of invoking the terms of the Avennan League, and
this time I think the core cities will respond. If