‘Thank you, sir.’
And now, everything had proceeded to match the Factor’s predictions. Brohl Handar would accompany the expedition, refuting her every argument against the idea. Reading his expression, she saw a renewed confidence and will-the Overseer felt as if he had found, at last, firm footing. No error in his recognition of his true enemy. The unmitigated disaster lay in the Edur’s belief that he had made the first move.
She said now to the Overseer, ‘Sir, if you will excuse me. I must have words with my officers.’
‘Of course,’ Brohl Handar replied. ‘When do you anticipate contacting the enemy?’
Oh, you fool, you already have. ‘That depends, sir, on whether they’re fleeing, or coming straight for us.’
The Overseer’s brows lifted. ‘Do you fear this Redmask?’
‘Fear that yields respect is not a bad thing, sir. In that fashion, yes, I fear Redmask. As he will me, before too long.’
She rode away then, down to her troops, seeking out, not an officer, but one man in particular, a horseman among the Bluerose, taller and duskier than most.
After a time she found him, gestured him to ride out to her side, and they walked their horses along one edge of the road. She spoke of two things, one loud enough to be heard by others and concerning the health of the mounts and other such mundane details; the other in much quieter tones, which no-one but the man could hear.
‘What can you see of the horizon’s bruised smear, that cannot be blotted out by a raised hand?’
Redmask glanced over at the foreigner.
Anaster Toc smiled. ‘Lying in a ditch amidst the wastes of humanity is something I would recommend to any nascent poet. The rhythms of ebb and flow, the legacy of what we discard. Wealth like liquid gold.’
Not entirely sane any more, Redmask judged, unsurprised. Skin and bones, scabbed and stained with fiery, peeling rashes. At least he could now stand without the aid of a stick, and his appetite had returned. Before long, Redmask believed, the foreigner would recover, at least physically. The poor man’s mind was another matter.
‘Your people,’ Anaster Toc continued after a moment, ‘do not believe in poetry, in the power of simple words. Oh, you sing with the coming of dawn and the fleeing sun. You sing to storm clouds and wolf tracks and shed antlers you find in the grass. You sing to decide the order of beads on a thread. But no words to any of them. Just tonal variations, as senseless as birdsong-’