Chapter 11: The Northern Camp

The Northern Army's winter camp lay on a frozen plain, two days' ride from the capital.

Chu had never been so glad to see a tent.

They arrived at midnight after two days in the saddle, with the wind scouring the snow into long white tongues across the flats.

Three hundred thousand men slept inside a ring of palisade and watch fires that ran out of sight in both directions.

Su Mian had ridden ahead.

He met them at the south gate in a sergeant's coat, with a lantern covered by his cloak.

"The night watch is mine," he whispered. "The old sergeant's. He wept like a girl. Come quietly, Boss, and keep your hood up."

The Director of Review went in on foot, with her scarlet robe hidden under a soldier's gray cloak, and nobody looked at her twice.

Chu walked beside her.

They did not speak of the hall, or the lamp.

She had not spoken of it since.

She had simply taken his hand in the saddle that afternoon and held it.

He had let her, and the thing they did not say had ridden between them.

The quartermaster's yard was dark and deserted.

Then a door opened, and a square old man with a white mustache stepped out.

He had one empty sleeve.

He looked at Chu in the lantern light and dropped to his knees in the snow.

"Marshal," said the old sergeant, in a voice with no breath behind it. "They said you were dead. They said you were a traitor."

"Get up, Sergeant."

"I'll not get up. I carried your banner at the Black Pass."

"And I carried you out of the Black Pass. Get up. You'll catch your death."

The old man wept openly and rose, and wiped his face with his one hand.

Behind him, in the dark doorways of the barracks, shapes were gathering.

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