Seasons Of War Part 26

'Thank you, Nayiit-kya,' Kiyan said. She looked over to Liat, and her eyes were guarded. They both knew what had happened here. Liat carefully took a pose of thanks, unsure as she did what precisely she meant by it.

The library of Cetani was much smaller than Machi's. Perhaps a third as many books and codices, not more than half as many scrolls. They arrived on Maati's doorway in sacks and baskets, crates and wooden boxes. A letter accompanied them, hardly more than a terse note with Otah's seal on it, telling him that there was no living poet to ask what texts would be of use, that as a result he'd sent everything, and expressing hope that these might help. There was no mention of the Galts or the Dai-kvo or the dead. Otah seemed to a.s.sume that Maati would understand how dire the situation was, how much depended on him and on Cehmai.

He was right. Maati understood.

He'd left Cehmai in the library, looking over their new acquisitions, while he sat in the main room of his apartments, marking out grammars and forms. How Heshai had bound Seedless, what he would have done differently in retrospect, and the variations that Maati could make - different words and structures, images and metaphors that would serve the same purpose without coming too near the original. His knuckles ached, and his mind felt woolly. It was hard to say how far into the work they'd come. Perhaps as much as a third. Perhaps less. The hardest part would come at the end; once the binding was mapped out and drafted, there was the careful process of going through, image by image, and checking to see that there were no ambiguities, no unintended meanings, no contradictions where the power of the andat might loop back upon itself and break his hold and himself.

Outside, the wind was blowing cold as it had since the middle morning. The city of tents that had sprung up at Machi's feet would be an unpleasant place tonight. Liat had been entirely absent these last four days, helping to find Cetani a place within Machi. It was just as well, he supposed. If she were here, he'd only want to talk with her. Speak with her. He'd want to hold her. Enough time for those little pleasures when Seedless was bound and the world was set right. Whatever that meant anymore.

The scratch at his door was an annoyance and a relief both. He called out his permission, and the door swung open. Nayiit ducked into the room, an apologetic smile on his face. Behind him, a small figure waddled - Danat wrapped in robes and cloaks until he seemed almost as wide as tall. Maati rose, his back and knees protesting from having been too long in one position.

'I'm sorry, Father,' Nayiit said. 'I told Danat-cha that you might be busy . . .'

'Nothing that can't wait a hand or two,' Maati said, waving them in. 'It might be best, really, if I step away from it all. After a while, it all starts looking the same.'

Nayiit chuckled and took a pose that expressed his sympathy. Danat, red-cheeked, s.h.i.+fted his gaze shyly from one man to the other. Maati nodded a question to Nayiit.

'Danat wanted to ask you something,' Nayiit said, and squatted down so that his eyes were on a level with the child's. His smile was gentle, encouraging. A favorite uncle helping his nephew over some simple childhood fear. Maati felt the sudden powerful regret that he had never met Nayiit's wife, never seen his child. 'Go ahead, Danat-kya. We came so that you could ask, and Maati-cha's here. Do it like we practiced.'

Danat turned to Maati, blus.h.i.+ng furiously, and took a pose of respect made awkward by the thickness of cloth around his small arms; then he began pulling books out from beneath his robes and placing them one by one in a neat pile before Maati. When the last of them had appeared, Danat shot a glance at Nayiit who answered with an approving pose.

'Excuse me, Maati-cha,' Danat said, his face screwed into a knot of concentration, his words choppy from being rehea.r.s.ed. 'Papa-kya's still not back. And I've finished all these. I wondered . . .'

The words fell to a mumble. Maati smiled and shook his head.

'You'll have to speak louder,' Nayiit said. 'He can't hear you.'

'I wondered if you had any others I could read,' the boy said, staring at his own feet as if he'd asked for the moon on a ribbon and feared to be mocked for it.

Behind him, where the boy couldn't see, Nayiit grinned. This is who he would be, Maati thought. This is the kind of father my boy would be.

'Well,' he said aloud. 'We might be able to find something. Come with me.'

He led them out and along the gravel path to the library's entrance. The air had a bite to it. He could feel the color coming to his own cheeks. When he'd been young, a child-poet younger than Nayiit, he'd spent his terrible winter in Saraykeht with Seedless and Otah and Liat. In the summer cities, this chill would have been the depth of winter. In the North, it was only the first breath of autumn.

Cehmai looked up when they came in, a scroll case of shattered silk in his hand. A smear of dust marked his cheek like ashes. Boxes and crates lay about the main room, stacked man-high. One of the couches was piled with scrolls that hadn't been looked over, two others with the ones that had. The air was thick with the smells of dust and parchment and old binder's paste. Danat stood in the doorway, his eyes wide, his mouth open. Nayiit stepped around him and drew the boy in, sliding the doors closed behind them. Cehmai nodded his question.

'Danat was asking if we had any other books,' Maati said.

'You have all of them,' the boy said, awe in his voice.

Maati chuckled, and then felt the mirth and simple pleasure fade. The shelves and crates, boxes and piled volumes surrounded them.

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, we have all of them.'

19.

'How many do we have?' Otah asked.

The bows had been made for killing bears. Each one stood taller than a man, the bow itself made of ash and horn, the drawstring of wire. It took a man sitting down and using both legs to draw it back. The arrows were blackened oak shafts as long as short spears. The tips - usually a wide, crossed head like twined knives - had been replaced by hard steel points made to punch through metal. The chief huntsman of the Khai Cetani nudged one with his toe, spat, and looked out through the trees toward the road below them.

'Two dozen,' he said. His voice had a Western drawl. 'Sixty shafts, more or less.'

'More or less?' the Khai Cetani demanded.

'We're fas.h.i.+oning more, Most High,' the huntsman said.

'How many men do we have who can use them?' Otah asked. 'It won't matter if we have a thousand bows if there's only five men who can aim them.'

'Bear hunters are rare,' the huntsman said. 'There aren't any old ones.'

'How many?'

'Eight who are good. Twice that who know how the bow works. With practice . . .'

The Khai Cetani frowned deeply, and turned to Otah. Otah chewed at the inside of his lip and looked down and to the east. The trees here were thick, unlike the plains nearer to the newly abandoned city where the need for lumber had created new-made meadows. The leaves were red and gold, bright as fire. The days were still warm enough at their height, but the nights were cold and getting colder. Soon it would be freezing before morning, and soon after that - a week, ten days - it wouldn't be thawing by midday.

'We have two and a half thousand men,' Otah said. 'And you're telling me only eight can work these things?'

'They're not good for much apart from hunting big animals that need killing fast. And there aren't many who care to do that, if they can help it,' the huntsman said. 'Why learn something with no use?'

Otah squatted and took one of the bows in his hand. It was heavier than it looked. It would be able to throw the bolts hard. Otah wondered how close they could afford to get to the road. Too far back, and the trees would offer as much protection to the Galts as cover for Otah's men. Too close, and they'd be seen before the time came. It wouldn't take much skill to hit the belly of a steam wagon if you were near enough. He tossed the bow from hand to hand as he weighed the risks.

'Go ask for volunteers,' Otah said. 'Ask on both sides of the road. Anyone who says they're willing, test them. Take the twenty best.'

'A man who doesn't know what he's doing with this can sc.r.a.pe the meat off his legs,' the huntsman said.

Otah stopped tossing the bow and turned to consider the man. The huntsman blushed, realizing what he had just said and to whom. He took a pose of obeisance and backed away from the two Khaiem, folding himself in among the trees and vanis.h.i.+ng. The Khai Cetani sighed and took a pose of apology.

'He's a good enough man,' he said, 'but he forgets his place.'

'He isn't wrong,' Otah said. 'If this were a better time to have our orders questioned, I'd have listened to him. But then, if it were a better time, we wouldn't be out here.'

The last of the men and women fleeing Cetani had pa.s.sed them five days before, carts and wagons and sacks slung over hunched backs. For five days, the combined forces of Cetani and Machi had haunted these woods, sharpening their weapons and planning the attack. And growing bored and hungry and cold. Two nights ago, Otah had ordered an end to all fires. The smoke would give them away, and the prospect of a half-sleeping man dropping a stray ember on the forest floor was too likely. The men grumbled, but enough of them saw the sense of it that the edict hadn't been ignored. Not yet.

It wouldn't be many more days, though. If the Galts didn't come, the men would grow restive and careless, and when the time came, it would be the battle before the Dai-kvo again, only this time, the Galts would march into Machi. The bodies left in the streets wouldn't be of poets. They would be the families of every man in the hidden clumps that dotted the hills. Their mothers, fathers, lovers, children. Everyone they knew. Everyone that remained. That was good for another day. Perhaps two.

'You're thinking of the frost,' the Khai Cetani said. 'You're worried that it's going to come and drop our screen of leaves before the Galts do.'

Otah smiled.

'No, actually, I'd been worrying about other things entirely. Thank you for distracting me.'

The Khai Cetani actually chuckled.

'I'll go and speak with my leaders,' he said, clapping Otah on the shoulder. 'Keep their spirits up.'

'I'll do the same,' Otah said. 'It's coming. They'll be here soon.'

The camps had been divided. Groups of men no larger than twenty. Only one stayed close to the road on either side. The others fanned out to the west. When the Galts appeared at the edge of the last cleared forest, runners would come from the watch camps, and the men would make their way to the road. Trees already had been felled at four places along the path - two before they reached the forest, another halfway to the hill on which Otah now stood, and the last where the road turned a little to the south and then west again toward Machi. The first time they were forced to stop, they would expect the attack. By the fourth, Otah hoped they would only think it another delay. The mixed coal would have their steam wagons running hotter than they intended. The bear-hunting bows would p.r.i.c.k the steel chambers. In the chaos, the armies would appear, falling on the Galts' long vulnerable flanks. If it all went well. If the plan worked. If not, then the G.o.ds alone knew how the fight would end.

Night fell cold. The wide cloudless sky seemed to pull the warmth of the day and land up into it, and Otah, most honored and powerful man in his city, wrapped an extra cloak around himself and settled down against a tree, Ashua Radaani snoring gently at his side. He had expected his dreams to be troubled, but instead he found himself ice fis.h.i.+ng, and the fish he saw moving below the ice were also Kiyan and his children, playing with him, tugging at the line and then darting away. A trout that was also Kiyan in a silver-blue robe leapt from the water - with the logic of dreams frozen and yet unfrozen - and splashed back down to Otah's delight when a rough hand shook him awake. Dawn was threatening, gray and rose in the east, and Saya the blacksmith towered over him, cheeks so red they seemed dark in the dim light, nose running, and a grin showing his teeth.

'They've come, Most High.'

Otah leapt up, his back and hip aching from the cold night and the unforgiving ground. To the east, smoke rose in a wall. Coal smoke from the Galtic wagons strung along the road from Cetani like beads on a string. It was earlier in the day than he'd expected them, and as he pulled on his makes.h.i.+ft armor of boiled leather and metal scale, his mind leapt ahead, guessing at what tactical advantages the Galtic captain intended by arriving with the dawn.

None, of course. They had no way to know Otah's men were there. And still, Otah considered how the light would strike the road, the trees, what it would make visible and what it would hide. He could no more stop his mind than call down the stars.

The sun found the highest reaches of the smoke first, where it had diffused almost to nothing. Closer to the ground, the smoke was already visibly nearer. The Galts had pa.s.sed the third log barrier while the runners had come to him. The fourth lay in wait where Otah could see it. The innocent forest was alive with his men, or so he hoped. From his place at the ridge of the low hill, he saw only the dozen nearest, crouched behind trees and stones. Otah heard something - the clank of metal or the sound of a raised voice. He willed them to be silent, fear and anger at the sound almost enough to make his teeth ache until he heard it again and realized it was the first of the Galts.

The bear hunter appeared at his side. He held three of the spearlike bolts and the great bow. Saya the blacksmith scampered up with another, its steel heads only just fastened to it. Men appeared on the road below them.

'The horn. Where's the horn?' Otah said, a sudden fear arcing through him. If he had learned the lesson of drums and horns from the Galts only to misplace the signal at the critical moment . . . But the bra.s.s horn was at his hip, where it had been since they'd set their trap. He took the cold metal in his hands, brus.h.i.+ng dirt from the mouthpiece.

'They look a bit rough around the edges, eh?' Saya whispered, pointing at the road with his chin. 'Amnat-Tan must have done them some hurt.'

Otah looked at the Galtic soldiers. There were perhaps a hundred that he could see on this small curve of road. He tried to recall what the men he had faced outside the Dai-kvo's village had looked like; how they had walked, how they had held themselves. He couldn't. The memory was only of the battle, and of his men, dying. Saya took a pose of farewell and slunk away, down toward the trees where the battle would soon begin.

The first of the steam wagons came into sight. He could hear it clacking like a loom. The wide belly at its back glowed gold in the rising sun. It was piled with sacks and boxes. Tents, perhaps, or food. Coal for the furnaces. The packs that soldiers would have worn on their shoulders. The wreckage he had seen at the Dai-kvo's village had let him understand what these things were, but seeing one move - wheels turning at the speed of a team at fast trot, and yet without a horse near - was no less strange than his dreams. For a moment, he felt something like awe at the mind who had conceived it. The first of the soldiers below him saw the fallen log and called out - a long musical note that might have been a word or only a signal. The sound of the steam wagon changed, and it slowed, jittered once, and came to a halt. The long call came again and again as it receded down the road like whisperers at court pa.s.sing the words of the Khai to distant galleries. The Galts came together, conferring. At Otah's side, the bear hunter sat back, bracing the curve of the bow against the soles of his feet. He took one of the bolts, steadying it between his fists as, two-handed, he drew back the wire. The bow creaked.

'Wait,' Otah said.

A man came forward, past the steam wagon. He wore a gray tunic marked with the Galtic Tree. His hair was dark as Otah's own, his skin dark and leathern. The crowd of men at the fallen trees turned to face him, their bodies taking att.i.tudes of respect. Otah felt something s.h.i.+ft in his belly.

'Him,' Otah said.

'Most High?' the huntsman said, strain in his voice.

'Can you hit the man in gray from here?'

The huntsman strained his neck, turned his body and his bow.

'Hard. Shot,' he grunted.

'Can you do it?'

The huntsman was silent for half a breath.

'Yes,' he said.

'Then do. Do it now.'

The wire made a low thrum and the huntsman did something fast with his ankles that caught the bow before it could fall. He was already bending back again when the huge arrow struck. It took the gray man in the side, just below his ribs, and he collapsed without crying out. Otah fumbled with his horn, raising it to his lips. The note he blew filled his ears, so that he only knew the Galts below him were calling out to each other by the movement of their jaws and their drawn swords and axes.

The second bolt flew at the steam wagon as the soldiers fell back. It struck the belly of the steam wagon with a low clank and fell useless to the ground. A horn answering Otah's own called, and something terrible and sudden and louder than anything Otah had ever heard before drowned it out. A great cloud gouted up into the sky from perhaps three hundred yards back in the Galtic column, and then the huntsman at his side loosed the third bolt, and Otah was deafened.

The cloud of steam and smoke boiled up toward him, and Otah found himself coughing in the thick, hot air. The huntsman loosed one last bolt into the murk, stood, drew two daggers, and bounded down toward the road. Otah stepped forward. He was aware of sounds, though they were m.u.f.fled by the ringing in his ears - screams, a trumpet blast, a distant report as another steam wagon met its end. The road came clear to him slowly as the mist thinned. The cart had tipped on its side, spilling its cargo and its men. Perhaps a dozen men lay on the sodden ground, their flesh seared red as a boiled lobster. Many still stood to fight, but they seemed half-stunned, and his own men were cutting them down with a savage glee. The furnace had cracked open, strewing burning coal across the paving stones. The leaves on the nearest trees, damp from the steam, seemed brighter and more vibrant than before. Two more steam wagons burst, the sound like doubled thunder. Otah cried out, rallying his men to his side, as he moved down to the road and the battle.

The first skirmish, here at the head of the column, was the critical one. The way forward had to be blocked. If they could push the Galts back here, they could drive them into their own men, confuse their formations, keep their balance off. Or so they'd planned, so he hoped. And as he came down the hill, it seemed possible. The Galts were wide-eyed with surprise, confused, afraid. Otah shouted and waved an axe, but there was no one there to threaten with it. It had already happened. The Galts were pulling back.

A bodyguard formed around him as he walked down the road, soldiers falling in around him and marching back toward Cetani, cutting down Galts as they went. In the distance, a horn sounded the call for hors.e.m.e.n to attack. Small formations of Galts - two or three score at most - held the road's center, confused, surrounded, and unable to retreat. A few ran to the trees for cover, only to find the forest alive with enemy blades. The rest fell to arrows and stones. Some engineer had made sense of Otah's trick, and great white plumes of steam rose into the sky as the wagons spent their pressure. The air reeked of blood and hot metal and smoke; it tasted rank. Twice, a wave of Galts swung toward Otah and his steadily increasing guard, only to be thrown back. The Galt army was in disarray, surrounded, confused. Hors.e.m.e.n in the colors of the high families of Machi and Cetani raised their swords in salute when they saw Otah.

He walked over the dead and the dying, past steam wagons that had burst open or been spared, horses that lay dead or flailed and screamed as they died. The sun was almost at the top of its arc, the whole morning gone, when Otah reached the last of the wagons, his bodyguard now nearly the size of his entire force. They had followed him, pinching down on the Galts as he'd moved forward. The plains before them stretched out to Machi, stands of Galtic archers holding positions to cover the retreat. Otah raised his horn to his lips and called the halt. Others horns called the acknowledgment. The battle was ended. The Galts had come this far and would come no farther. Otah felt himself sag.

From the south, he saw a movement among the men like wind stirring tall gra.s.s. The Khai Cetani came barreling forward, a wide grin on his face, blood soaking the ornate silk sleeves of his robes. Otah found himself grinning back. He took a pose of congratulations, but the Khai Cetani whooped and wrapped his arms around Otah's waist, lifting him like Otah was a child in his father's arms.

'You've done it!' the Khai Cetani shouted. 'You've beaten the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!'

We have, Otah tried to say, but he was being lifted upon the shoulders of his men. A roar pa.s.sed through the a.s.sembled men - a thousand throats opening as one. Otah let himself smile, let the relief wash over him. The Galtic army was broken. They would not reach Machi before winter came. He had done it.

They carried him back and forth before the men, the shouts and salutes following him like a windstorm. As he came back to the main road, he was amazed to see the Khai Cetani - all decorum and rank forgotten - dancing arm in arm with common laborers and huntsmen. The Khai Cetani caught sight of him, raised a blade in salute, and called out words that Otah couldn't hear. The men around him abandoned their dance, and drew their own blades, taking up the call, and Otah felt his throat close as he understood the words, as he heard them repeated, moving out through the men like a ripple in a pond.

To the Emperor.

Balasar stood in the great square of Tan-Sadar. The sky was white and chill, and the trees that stood in the eastern corners were nearly bare of leaves. A good day, Balasar thought, for endings. The representatives of the utkhaiem stood beneath square-framed colonnades, staring out at him and his company two hundred strong and in their most imposing array of arms and armor and at the Khai Tan-Sadar, bound and kneeling on the brickwork at Balasar's feet. The poet of the city had burned to death among his books on the day Balasar had entered the city, but the disposition of the Khai was less important. A few days waiting in the public jail where men and women pa.s.sing by could see him languis.h.i.+ng posed no particular threat to the world, and the campaign that was now behind him had left Balasar tired.

'Do you have anything you want to say?' Balasar asked in the Khai's own language.

He was a younger man than Balasar had expected. Perhaps no more than thirty summers. It seemed young to have the responsibility of a city upon him or to be slaughtered in front of the n.o.bles who had betrayed him to a conqueror. The Khai shook his head once, a curt and elegant motion.

'If you swear to serve the High Council of Galt, I'll cut your bonds and we can both walk out of here,' Balasar said. 'I'll have to keep you prisoner, of course. I can't leave you free to gather up an army. But there are worse things than living under guard.'

The Khai almost smiled.

'There are also worse things than dying,' he said.

Balasar sighed. It was a shame. But the man had made his decision. Balasar raised his hand, and the drums and trumpets called out. The execution proceeded. When the soldier held up the Khai's head for the crowd to see, a shudder seemed to run through them, but the faces that Balasar saw looking out at him seemed bright and excited.

They know they won't die, he thought. If I'm not killing them, it all becomes another court spectacle. They'll be talking about it in their bathhouses and winter gardens, vying for money and power now that the city's fallen. Half of them will be wearing tunics with the Galtic Tree on it come spring.

He looked down at the body of the man he'd had killed and briefly felt the impulse to put Tan-Sadar to the torch. Instead, he turned and walked away, going back to the palaces he had taken for himself and for his men.

Eight thousand remained to him. Several hundred had been lost in battle or to the raids that had slowed his travel since Nantani. The rest he had left in conquered Utani. There was little enough left of Udun that he hadn't bothered leaving men to occupy the city. There was no call to leave people there to guard ashes.

Utani had offered only token resistance and been for the most part spared. Tan-Sadar had very nearly set the musicians to playing and lined the roads with dancing girls. That wasn't true, but as Balasar stalked back through the great vaulted hall of the Khai's palace, his steps echoing off the blue and gold tilework high above him, his disgust with the place made it seem that way. They hadn't fought, and while that might have been wise, it wasn't something to celebrate. The only ones who had spines had been the poet and the Khai. Well, and the Khai's wives and children, whom he'd had killed. So perhaps he wasn't really in the best position to speak about what was honorable and n.o.ble after all.

'Darkness has come on as usual, sir?'

Balasar looked up. Eustin stood in salute at the foot of a wide flight of stairs. His tunic was stained, his chin unshaven, and even from five paces away, he stank of horses. Balasar restrained himself from rus.h.i.+ng over and embracing the man.

'The darkness?' Balasar asked through his grin.