She drew hard on the stick, looked eastward to the distant camp of the Bolkando. No fires. Even the standards tilted like the masts of some foundered ship. I fear we won’t be enough, not to do what the Adjunct needed, what she wanted. It may prove that this entire journey will end in failure, and death .
Brys came out of the tent to stand beside her. He took the stick from her fingers and drew on it. He’d begun doing that a few weeks past, seeking, perhaps, to calm his nerves in the wake of his nightmares. But she didn’t mind. She liked the company.
‘I can almost taste the thoughts of my soldiers,’ he said. ‘We will have to kill and eat the last horses. Won’t be enough – even sparing the water to make a stew … ah, if we could have scavenged, this might have succeeded.’
‘We’re not done yet, my love.’ Please, I beg you, do not answer that with yet another sad smile. With each one, I feel you slip further away .
‘It is our growing weakness that worries them the most,’ he said. ‘They fear we won’t be fit to fight.’
‘The Perish, if anything, will be even worse off.’
‘But they will have some days in which to recover. Besides which, Aranict, one must fear more the Assail army.’
She lit a second stick, and then gestured with one hand. ‘If all of Kolanse is like this, they won’t have an army.’
‘Queen Abrastal assures me that Kolanse continues to thrive, with what the sea offers, and the fertile valley province of Estobanse continues to produce, sheltered from the drought.’
And each night the nightmares take you. And each night I lie awake, watching you. Wondering about all the other paths we could have taken . ‘How have we failed her?’ Aranict asked. ‘What more could we have done?’
Brys grimaced. ‘This is the risk when you march an army into the unknown. In truth, no commander in his or her right mind would even contemplate such a precipitous act. Even in the invasion of new territories, all is preceded by extensive scouting, contact with local elements, and as much background intelligence as one can muster: history, trade routes, past wars.’
‘Then, without the Bolkando, we would truly be marching blind. If Abrastal had not concluded that it was in her kingdom’s interest to pursue this – Brys, have we misjudged the Adjunct from the very beginning? Did we fall into the trap of assuming she knew more than she did, that all that she had set out to do was actually achievable?’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’