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he
couldn't be more miserable, his father finally called for him, leading him into
an emptied barracks so they might warm their hands side by side before the last
remnants of a hearth fire.
     
    The barracks was one of the
ancient ones, with the heavy lintels and low chapped ceilings, and the stables
built in, so that the men could sleep with their horses—a relic of the days
when Sakarpi warriors worshipped their steeds. The candles had guttered so that
only the dying hearth provided illumination, the kind of orange light that
seemed to pick out details at whim. The battered curve of an iron pot. The
cracked back of a chair. The face of a troubled king. Sorweel did not know what
to say, so he simply stood, gazing at the luminous detail of coals burning into
snowy ash.
     
    "Moments of weakness come
upon all Men," Harweel said without looking at his son.
     
    The young Prince stared harder
into the glowing cracks.
     
    "You must see this,"
his father continued, "so that when your time comes you will not
despair."
     
    Sorweel was speaking before he
even realized he had opened his mouth. "But I do , Father! I do
desp—!"
     
    The tenderness in his father's
eyes was enough to make him choke. It knocked his gaze down as surely as a
slap.
     
    "There are many fools,
Sorwa, men who conceive hearts in simple terms, absolute terms. They are
insensible to the war within, so they scoff at it, they puff out their chests
and they pretend. When fear and despair overcome them, as they must overcome us
all, they have not the wind to think ... and so they break."
     
    The heat enclosed the young
Prince, thinning the moisture that slicked his skin. Already his palms and
knuckles were dry. He dared look up at his father, whose bravery, he realized,
burned not like a bonfire, but like a hearth, warming all who stood near its
wisdom.
     
    "Are you such a fool,
Sorwa?"
     
    The fact that the question was
searching, genuine, and not meant as a reprimand cut Sorweel to the quick.
     
    "No, Father."
     
    There was so much he wanted to
say, to confess. So much fear, so much doubt, and remorse above all. How could
he have doubted his father? Instead of lending his shoulder, he had become one
more burden—and on this day of days! He had recoiled, stricken by thoughts of
bitter condemnation, when he should have reached out—when he should have said, "The
Aspect-Emperor. He comes. Hold tight my hand, Father."
     
    "Please..." he said,
staring into that beloved face, but before he could utter another word the door
flew open, and three of the greater Horselords called out.
     
    Forgive me...
     
    ***
     
    Even upon the walls, the famed
and hallowed walls of Sakarpus, the heat of the barracks stayed with him, as
though he had somehow carried away a coal in his heart.
     
    Standing with his father's High
Boonsmen upon the northern tower of the Herder's Gate, Sorweel stared out
across the miserable distances. The rain continued to spiral down, falling from
fog skies. Though the plains ringed the horizon with lines as flat as any sea,
the land about the city was pitched and folded, like a cloak cast upon a vast
floor, forming a great stone pedestal for Sakarpus and her wandering walls.
Several times, Sorweel leaned forward to peer between the embrasures, only to
push himself back, dizzied by the sheer drop: a plane of pocked brick that
dropped to sloping foundations that hung over grass-and-thistle-choked cliffs.
It seemed impossible that any might assail them. Who could overcome such
towers? Such walls?
     
    When he stared down their length,
with the iron-horned crenelations and lines of bovine skulls set into the
masonry, a mixture of pride and awe swelled through him. The Lords of the
Plains, draped in the ancient armour of their fathers, crowded by the
longshields of their clans. The batteries of archers hunched over their bows,
struggling to keep the strings dry. Everywhere he looked, he saw his father's
people—his people—manning the heights,