An Autumn War

16

"Yes," Nayiit said. "That's him."

Otah's mount whickered beneath him as he looked up at the Dal-kvo's body. It had been tied to a stake at the entrance to his high offices; the man had been dead for days. The brown-robed corpses of the poets lay at his feet, stacked like cordwood.

They had taken it all as granted. The andat, the poets, the continuity of one generation following upon another as they always had. It grew more difficult, yes. An andat would escape and for a time and the city it had left would suffer, yes. They had not conceived that everything might end. Otah looked at the slaughtered poets, and he saw the world he had known.

The morning after the battle had been tense. He had risen before dawn and paced through the camps. Several of the scouts vanished, and at first there was no way to know whether they had been captured by the Galts or killed or if they had simply taken their horses, set their eyes on the horizon, and fled. It was only when the reports began to filter back that the shape of things came clear.

The Galts had fallen hack, their steam wagons and horses making a fast march to the east, toward the village of the Dal-kvo. "There was no pursuit, no rush to find the survivors of that bloody field and finish the work they'd begun. Otah's army had been broken easily, and the Galts' contempt for them was evident in the decision that they were not worth taking the time to kill.

It was humiliating, and still Otah had found himself relieved. More of his men would die today, but only from wounds they already bore. They had given Otah a moment to rest and consider and see how deep the damage had gone.

Four hundred of his men lay dead in the mud and grass beside perhaps a third as many Galts, perhaps less. Another half thousand were wounded or missing. A few hours had cost him a third of what he had, and more than that. The men who had survived the retreat were different from the ones he had spoken to at their cook fires before the fight. 'T'hese men seemed stunned, lost, and emptied. The makeshift spears and armor that had once seemed to speak of strength and resourcefulness now seemed painfully naive. 'T'hey had come to battle armed like children and they had been killed by men. Otah found himself giving thanks to any gods that would listen for all the ones who had lived.

The scouting party left two days later. It was made of twenty horsemen and as many on foot, Otah himself at the lead. Nayiit asked permission to come, and Otah had granted it. It might not have been keeping the boy safe the way he'd promised Nlaati, but as long as Nayiit blamed himself for the carnage and defeat, it was better that he be away from the wounded and the dying. The rest of the army would stay behind in the camp, tend to the men who could be helped, ease the passing of those past hope, and, Otah guessed, slip away one by one or else in groups. He couldn't think they would follow him into battle again.

The smaller group moved faster, and the path the Galts had left was clear as a new-built road. (, burned grass, broken saplings, the damage done by thousands of disciplined feet. The wounded earth was as wide as ten men across-never more, never less. The precision was eerie. It was two days' travel before Otah saw the smoke.

They reached the village near evening. They found a ruin. Where glittering windows had been, ragged holes remained. The towers and garrets cut from the stone of the mountain were soot-stained and broken. ' 'he air smelled of burned flesh and smoke and the copper scent of spilled blood. Otah rode slowly, the clack of his mount's hooves on pavement giving order to the idiot, tuneless wind chimes. The air felt thick against his face, and the place where his heart had once been seemed to gape empty. His hands didn't tremble, he did not weep. IIis mind simply took in the details-a corpse in the street wearing brown robes made black with blood, a Galtic steam wagon with the wide metalwork on the back twisted open by some terrible force, a firekeeper's kiln overturned and ashen, an arrow splintered against stoneand then forgot them. It was unreal.

Behind him, the others followed in silence. 't'hey made their way to the grand office at the height of the village. The great hall, open to the west, caught the light of the setting sun. The white stone of the walls glowed, light where it had escaped the worst damage and a deeper, darker gold where smoke had marked it.

And in the entrance of the hall, the Dai-kvo was tied to a stake. The hopes of the Khaiem lying dead at his feet.

I could have stopped this, Otah thought. The Galts live because I spared them at Saraykeht. This is my fault.

He turned to Nayiit.

"Have him cut down," he said. "We can have them buried or burned. Anything but this."

Behind the gruesome sight squatted the remains of a great pyre. Logs as tall as a standing man had been hauled here and set to hold the flames, and had burned nearly through. The spines of ancient hooks lay stripped in the ashes of their pages and curled from the heat. Shredded ribbons that had held the codices closed shifted in the breeze. Otah touched his palm to the neck of his horse as if to steady it more than himself, then dismounted.

Smoke still rose from the fire, thin gray reeking clouds. He paced the length and breadth of the pyre. Here and there, embers still glowed. He saw more than one bone laid bare and black. Men had died here. Poets and books. Knowledge that could never be replaced. He leaned against the rough bark of a half-burned tree. There had been no battle here. This had been slaughter.

"Most High?"

Ashua Radaani was at his side. Might have been at his side for some time, for all Otah could say. The man's face was drawn, his eyes flat.

"We've taken down the Dai-kvo," he said.

"Five groups of four men," Otah said. "If you can find any lanterns still intact, use them. If not, we'll make torches from something. I can't say how deep into the mountain these hallways go, but we'll walk through the whole thing if we have to."

Radaani glanced over his shoulder at the red and swollen sun that was just now touching the horizon. The others were silhouetted against it, standing in a clot at the mouth of the hall. Radaani turned back and took a pose that suggested an alternative.

"Perhaps we might wait until morning-"

"What if there's a man still alive in there," Otah said. "Will he he alive when the sun's back? If darkness is what we have to work in, we'll work in darkness. Anyone who survived this, I want him. And hooks. Anything. If it's written, bring it to me. Bring it here."

Radaani hesitated, then fell into a pose of acceptance. Otah put his hand on the man's shoulder.

We've failed, he thought. Of course we failed. We never had a chance.

They didn't make camp, didn't cook food. The horses, nervous from the scent of death all around them, were taken hack from the village. Nayiit and his blacksmith friend Saya gleaned lanterns and torches from the wreckage. The long, terrible night began. In the flickering light, the hack halls and grand, destroyed chambers danced like things from children's stories of the deepest hells. Otah and the three men with him-Nayiit, Radaani, and a thin-faced boy whose name escaped him-called out into the darkness that they were friends. That help had arrived. Their voices grew hoarse, and only echoes answered them.

They found the dead. In the beds, in the stripped libraries, in the kitchens and alleyways, and floating facedown in the wide wooden tubs of the bathhouse. No man had been spared. "There had been no survivors. Twice Otah thought he saw a flicker of recognition in Nayiit's eyes when they found a man lying pale and bloodless, eyes closed as if in sleep. In a meeting chamber near what Otah guessed had been the Dai-kvo's private apartments, Otah found the corpse of Athai-kvo, the messenger who had come in the long-forgotten spring to warn him against training men to fight. His eyes had been gouged away. Otah found himself too numb to react. Another detail to come into his mind and leave it again. As the night's chill stole into him, Otah's fingers began to ache, his shoulders and neck growing tight as if the pain could take the place of warmth.

They fell into their rhythm of walking and shouting and not being answered until time lost its meaning. They might have been working for half a hand, they might have been working for a sunless week, and so the dawn surprised him.

One of the other searching parties had quit earlier. Someone had found a firekeeper's kiln and stoked it, and the rich smell of cracked wheat and flaxseed and fresh honey cut through the smoke and death like a sung melody above a street fight. Otah sat on an abandoned cart and cradled a bowl of the sweet gruel in his hands, the heat from the bowl soothing his palms and fingers. He didn't remember the last time he'd eaten, and though he was bone-weary, he could not bring himself to think of sleep. He feared his dreams.

Nayiit walked to him carrying a similar bowl and sat at his side. He looked older. The horrors of the past days had etched lines at the corners of his mouth. Exhaustion had blackened his eyes. Exhaustion and guilt.

"There's no one, is there?" Nayiit said.

"No. They're gone."

Nayiit nodded and looked down to the neat, carefully fitted bricks that made the road. No blade of grass pressed its way through those stony joints. It struck Otah as strangely obscene that a place of such carnage and destruction should have such well-maintained paving stones. It would be better when tree roots had lifted a few of them. Something so ruined should be a ruin. A few years, perhaps. A few years, and this would all be a wild garden dedicated to the dead. The place would be haunted, but at least it would be green.

"There weren't any children. Or women," Nayiit said. "That's something."

"There were in Yalakeht," Otah said.

"I suppose there were. And Saraykeht too."

It took a moment to realize what Nayiit meant. It was so simple to forget that the boy had a wife. Had a child. Or once had, depending on how badly things had gone in the summer cities. Otah felt himself blush.

"I'm sorry. That wasn't… Forgive my saying that."

"It's true, though. It won't change if we're more polite talking about it."

"No. No, it won't."

They were silent for a long moment. Off to their left, three of the others were laying out blankets, unwilling, it seemed, to seek shelter in the halls of the dead. Farther on, Sava the blacksmith was looking over the Galtic steam wagon with what appeared to be a professional interest. High in the robin's-egg sky, a double vee of cranes flew southward, calling to one another in high, nasal voices. Otah took two cupped fingers and lifted a mouthful of the wheat gruel to his lips. It tasted wonderful-sweet and rich and warm-and yet he didn't enjoy it so much as recognize that he should. His limbs felt heavy and awkward as wood. When Nayiit spoke, his voice was low and shaky.

"I know that I won't ever be able to make good for this. If I hadn't called the retreat-"

"This isn't your fault," Otah said. "It's the Dai-kvo's."

Nayiit reared back, his mouth making a small "o." His hands fumbled toward a pose of query, but the porcelain howl defeated him. Otah took his meaning anyway.

"Not just this one. The last Dai-kvo. "lahi, his name was. And the one before that. All of them. This is their fault. We trusted everything in the andat. Our power, our wealth, the safety of our children. Everything. We built on sand. We were stupid."

"But it worked for so long."

"It worked until it didn't," Otah said. The response came from the back of his mind, as if it had always been there, only waiting for the time to speak. "It was always certain to fail sometime. Now, or ten generations from now. What difference does it make? If we'd been able to postpone the crisis until my children had to face it, or my grandchildren, or your grandchildren-how would that have been better than us facing it now? The andat have always been an unreliable tool, and poets have always been men with all the vanity and frailty and weakness that men are born with. The Empire fell, and we built ourselves in its image and so now we've fallen too. "There's no honor in a lesson half-learned."

"Too had you hadn't said that to the I)ai-kvo."

"I did. To all three of them, one way and another. "They didn't take it to heart. And I… I didn't stay to press the point."

"Then we'll have to learn the lesson now," Nayiit said. It sounded like an attempt at resolution, perhaps even bravery. It sounded hollow as a drum.

"Someone will," Otah said. "Someone will learn by our example. And maybe the Galts burned all the hooks that would have let them teach more poets of their own. Perhaps they're already safe from our mistakes."

"That would he ironic. To come all this way and destroy the thing that you'd come for."

"Or wise. It might he wise." Otah sighed and took another mouthful of the wheat. "I'he Galts are likely almost to "Ian-Sadar by now. As long as they're heading south, we may he able to reach Machi again before they do. There's no fighting them, I think we've discovered that, but we might be able to flee. Get people to Eddensca and the Westlands before the passes all close. It's probably too late to take a fast cart for Bakta."

Nayiit shook his head.

"They aren't going south."

Otah took another mouthful. The food seemed to he seeping into his blood; he felt only half-dead with exhaustion. Then, a breath or two later, Nayiit's words found their meaning, and he frowned, put down his bowl, and took a questioning pose. Nayiit nodded down toward the low towns at the base of the mountain village.

"I was talking with one of the footmen. The Galts came up the river from Yalakeht, and they left heading North on the road to Amnat-Tan. They're likely only a day or so ahead of us. It doesn't seem like they're interested in Tan-Sadar."

"Why not?" Otah said, more than half to himself. "It's the nearest city.,,

"Marshes," a low voice said from behind them. The blacksmith, Saya, had come up behind them. "There's decent roads between here and Amnat-Tan. And then the North Road between all the winter cities. Tan-Sadar's close, Most High. But there's two different rivers find their start in the marshes between here and there, and if their wagons are like the one they've left down there, they'll need roads." The thick arms folded into a pose appropriate for an apprentice to his master. "Come and see yourself, if you'd care to."

The steam wagon was wider than a cart, its bed made of hard, oiled wood at the front, and sheeted with copper at the back. A coal furnace twice the size of a firekeeper's kiln stood around a steel boiling tank. Saya pointed out how the force of the steam drove the wheels, and how it might be controlled to turn slowly and with great force or else more swiftly. Otah remembered a model he'd seen as a boy in Saraykeht. An army of teapots, the Khai Saraykeht had called them. The world had always told them how it would be, how things would fall apart. They had all been deaf.

"It's heavy, though," Saya said. "And there's housings there at the front where you could yoke a team of oxen, but I wouldn't want to pull it through soft land."

"Why would they ever pull it?" Nayiit asked. "Why put all this into making it go on fire and then use oxen?"

"They might run out of coal," Otah said.

"They might," Saya agreed. "But more likely, they don't want to rattle it badly. All this was a rounded chamber like an egg. Built to hold the pressure in. You can see how they leaved the seams. Something cracked that egg, and that's why this is all scrap now. Anyone who was nearby when it happened… well. Anything strong enough to make a wagon this heavy move in the first place, and then load it with men or supplies, and then keep it going fast enough to be worth doing… it'd be a lot to let loose at once."

"How?" Otah said. "How did they break it?"

Saya shrugged.

"Lucky shot with a hard crossbow, maybe. Or the heat came too high. I don't know how gentle these things are. Looking at this one, though, I'd like a nice smooth meadow or a well-made road. Nothing too rutted."

"I can't believe they'd put men on this," Nayiit said. "A wagon that could kill everyone on it if it hits a had hump? Why would anyone ever do that?"

"Because the gain is worth the price," Otah said. "They think the men they lose from it are a good sacrifice for the power they get."

Otah touched the twisted metal. The egg chamber had burst open like a flower bud blooming. The petals were bright and sharp and too thick for Otah to bend hare-handed. His mind felt perfectly awake, and his head felt full. It was as if he were thinking without yet knowing what he was thinking of. He squatted and looked at the wide, blackened door of the coal furnace.

"This is made of iron," Otah said.

"Yes, Most High," Saya agreed.

"But it doesn't melt. So however hot this runs, it can't be hotter than an ironworking forge, ne? How do they measure that, would you guess?"

Saya shrugged again.

"They're likely using soft coal, Most High. Use coal out of a Galt mine, it won't matter how much they put in it, it'll only come so hot. Forging iron needs hard coal. It's why the Galts buy their steel from Eddensea."

"And how long would it take them to reach Amnat-Tan if they were using these?"

"I've no way to know, Most High," Saya said taking a pose of apology. "I've never seen one working."

Otah nodded to himself. His head almost ached, but he could feel himself putting one thing with another like seeing fish moving below glass-clear ice.

"Otah-cha?" Nayiit said. "What is it?"

Otah looked up, and was surprised to find himself grinning.

"Tell the men to rest until midday. We'll start hack to the main force after that."

Nayiit took an accepting pose. But as they walked away, Otah saw him exchange confused glances with the blacksmith. Back at their little camp, Ashua Radaani was organizing a pile of books. He took a pose of greeting, but his expression was grim. Otah stood beside him, hands pulled into the sleeves of his robes, and considered the volumes.

"Phis is everything," Radaani said. "Fourteen hooks out of the greatest library in the world."

Otah glanced at the mouth of the high offices. He tried to guess how much knowledge had been lost there, vanished from the world and never to been found again. Nayiit put a thick, dirty hand reverently on the stack before him.

"I can only read half of them," Radaani said. "The others are too old, I think. One or two from the First Empire."

"We'll take them to Maati and Cehmai," Otah said. "Maybe they'll he of use."

"We're going back to Machi?" Radaani said.

"Those who'd like to, yes. The rest will come with me to Cetani. I'm going to meet with the Khai Cetani. We'll have to hurry, though. The Gaits will he taking the long way, and sacking Amnat-Tan while they're at it. I hope that will give us the time we need."

"You have a plan, Most High?" Radaani sounded dubious.

"Not yet," Otah said. "But when I do, it'll be better than my last one. I don't expect many men to follow me. A few will suffice. If they're loyal."

"We could make for "Ian-Sadar," Radaani said. "If it's allies we need, they're closer."

"We don't, or at least not as badly as we need rough roads and an early winter."

Radaani didn't show any sign of understanding the comment, he only took a pose of acceptance.

"'T'hat does sounds more like Cetani, Most High. I'll have the men ready to go at midday."

Otah took a pose that acknowledged Radaani's words and walked hack to the cart where Saya had found him. The wheat gruel had gone cold and sticky but it was still as sweet. In his mind, he was already on his way to Cetani. The road between Cetani and Machi wasn't one he had traveled often; he had kept to the South in the years he had been a courier, and the Khaiem had always been reluctant to meet one another, preferring to send envoys and girl children to wed. Nonetheless, he had traveled it. He was still trying to recall the details when Nayiit interrupted him.

"What are we going to do in Cetani, Most High?"

The boy's face was sharp and focused. Eager. Otah saw something of what he had been at that age. He knew the answer to Nayiit's question as soon as it was spoken, but still it took him a moment to bring himself to say it.

"You aren't coming, Nayiit-cha. I need you to see those books back to Maati."

"Anyone can do that," Nayiit said. "I'll be of use to you. I've been through Cetani. I was there just weeks ago, when we were coming to Machi. I can-"

"You can't," Otah said, and took the boy's hand. His son's hand. "You called a retreat when no one had given the order. In the Old Empire, I'd have had to see you killed for that. I can't have you come now."

The surprise on Nayiit's face was heartbreaking.

"You said it wasn't my fault," he said.

"And it isn't. I would have called the retreat myself if you hadn't. What happened to our men, what happened here, to the Dai-kvo.. . none of that's yours to carry. If you'd done differently, it would have changed nothing. But there will be a next time, and I can't have someone calling commands who might do what you've done."

Nayiit stepped hack, just out of his reach. Ah, Maati, Otah thought, what kind of son have we made, you and I?

"It won't," Nayiit said. "It won't happen again."

"I know. I know it won't," Otah said, making his tone gentle to soften hard words. "Because you're going back to Machi."

Udun was a river city. It was a city of bridges, and a city of birds. Sinja had lived there briefly while recovering from a dagger wound in his thigh. He remembered the songs of the jays and the finches, the sound of the river. He remembered Kiyan's stories of growing up a wayhouse keeper's daughter-the beggars on the riverside quays who drew pictures with chalks to cover the gray stone or played the small reed flutes that never seemed to be popular anywhere else; the canals that carried as much traffic as the streets. The palaces of the Khai Udun spanned the river itself, sinking great stone stanchions down into the river like the widest bridge in the world. As a girl, Kiyan had heard stories about the ghouls that lived in the darkness under those great palaces. She had gone there in boats with her cohort in the dark of night, the way that Sinja himself had dared burial mounds at midnight with his brothers. She had kissed her first lover in the twilight beneath a bridge just North of here. He had spent so little time in I. dun, and yet he felt he knew it so well.

The wayhouse where Sinja housed his men was south of the palaces. Its walls were stone and mud and thick as the length of his arm. The shutters were a green so dark they seemed almost black. It hadn't been built to fit as many men as Sinja commanded, but the standards of a soldier were lower than those of it normal traveler. And the standards of a soldier as likely to be mistaken for the enemy by his alleged fellows as killed by the defending armsmen were lower still. The great common room was covered from one wall to the other with thin cotton bedrolls. 'T'he upper rooms, intended for four men or fewer, housed eight or ten. 'T'here had been a few men who had ventured as far as the stables, but Sinja had called them hack inside. There was a madness on Balasar Dice's men, and he didn't intend to have his own fall to it.

In the small walled garden at the hack, Sinja sat on a camp stool and drank a howl of mint tea brewed with fresh-plucked leaves. "Thyme and basil grew around him, and a small black-leaf maple gave shade. Smoke rose into the skv, dark and solid as the towers of Machi. The birds were silent or lied. The scouts he'd sent out, their uniforms clearly the colors of Galt, reported that the rivers and canals had all turned red from the blood and the fish were dying of it. Sinja wasn't sure he believed that, but it seemed to catch the flavor of the day. Certainly he wasn't going to go out and look for himself.

An ancient man, spine bent and mouth innocent of anything resembling teeth, poked his head out the wide oaken doors at the end of the garden. The red-rimmed eyes seemed uncertain. The old hands shook so badly Sinja could see the trembling from where he sat. War is no place for the old, Sinja thought. It's meant for young men who can't yet distinguish between excitement and fear. Men who haven't yet grown a conscience.

"Mani-cha," Sinja called to the wayhouse keeper. "Is there something I can do for you?"

"'There's a man conic for you, Sinja-cha. Say's he's the… ah … the general."

"Bring him here," Sinja said.

The wayhouse keeper took a pose of acknowledgment, smiled an uncertain smile, and wavered half in, half out of the doorframe.

"You'll be fine, Mani-cha. You've my protection. He's not going to have you hanged, I promise. But you might bring him a bowl of tea."

Old Mani blinked and nodded his apology before ducking back into the house. The protection wasn't a promise he could keep. He hadn't asked General Gice's permission before he'd extended it. And still, he thought the old man's chances were good.

Balasar stepped into the garden as if he knew it, as if he owned it. It wasn't arrogance. That was what made the man so odd. The general's expression was drawn and thoughtful; that at least was a good sign. Sinja put his bowl of tea on the dusty red brick pathway, stood, and made his salute. Balasar returned it, but his gaze seemed caught by the shifting branches of the maple tree.

"All's well, I hope, sir," Sinja said.

"Well enough," Balasar said. "Well enough for a bad day, anyway. And here? Have your men been… Have you lost anyone?"

"I can account for all of them. I can have them ready to go out in half a hand, if you think they're needed, sir."

Balasar shifted, looking straight into Sinja's eyes as if seeing him clearly for the first time.

"No," Balasar said. "No, it won't be called for. What resistance there still is can't last long."

Sinja nodded. Of course not. tldun had numbers and knowledge, but they weren't fighters. The raids had continued for the whole trek upriver. Hunting parties had been harassed, wells fouled, the low towns the army had passed through stripped bare of anything that might have been of use to them. And the bodies of the soldiers slain in the raids were wrapped in shrouds and ashes to join the train. Balasar Gice had left Nantani with ten thousand men, and with all the gods watching him, he'd reached tJdun with the full ten thousand, no matter if a few dozen needed carrying. Sinja tried to keep the disapproval from his face, but the general saw it there anyway, frowned, and looked away.

"What's the matter with that tree?" Balasar asked.

Sinja considered the maple. It was small-hardly taller than two men's height-and artfully cut to give shade without obstructing the view of the sky.

"Nothing, sir," he said. "It looks fine."

"The leaves are black."

"They're supposed to be," Sinja said. "If you look close, you can see it's really a very deep green, but they call it black-leaf all the same. When autumn comes, it turns a brilliant red. It's lovely, especially if the leaves haven't let go when the first snow comes."

"I'm sorry I won't be here to see it," the general said.

"Well, not the snows," Sinja said, "but you can see on the edges of those lower leaves where the red's starting."

Balasar stepped over and took a low branch in his hand. He bent it to look at the leaves, but he didn't pluck them free. Sinja gave the man credit for that. Most Galts would have ripped the leaves off to look at them. With a sigh, Balasar let the branch swing back to its place.

"Tea?" Old Mani said from the doorway. Balasar looked over his shoulder at the old man and nodded. Sinja motioned the wayhouse keeper close, took the bowl, and sipped from it before passing it on to the general. Old Mani took a pose of thanks and backed out again.

"Tasting my food and drink?" Balasar asked in the tongue of the Khaiem. There was amusement in his tone. "Surely we haven't come to the point I'd expect you to poison me."

"I didn't brew it," Sinja said. "And Old Mani knew a lot of people you killed today."

Balasar took the cup and frowned into it. He was silent for long enough that Sinja began to grow uncomfortable. When he spoke, his tone was almost confessional.

"I've come to tell you that I was wrong," Balasar said. "You were right. I should have listened."

"I'm gratified that you think so. What was I right about?"

"The bodies. The men. I should have buried them where they lay. I should have left them. Now there's vengeance in it, and it's…"

He shook his head and sat on the camp stool. Sinja leaned against the stone wall of the garden.

"War's more fun when the enemy doesn't fight back," Sinja said. "There's never been a sack as easy as Nantani. You had to know things would get harder when the Khaiem got themselves organized."

"I did," Balasar said. "But… I carry the dead. I can feel them behind me. I know that they died because of my pride."

Balasar sipped at the tea. Far away across the war, a man shouted something, but Sinja couldn't make out the language, much less the words.

"All respect, Balasar-cha. They died because they were fighting in a war," Sinja said. "It's to be expected."

"They died in my war. My men, in my war."

"I see what you mean about pride."

Balasar looked up sharply, his lips thin, his face flushing. Sinja waited, and the general forced a smile. The maple leaves tapped against each other in the shifting breeze.

"I should have kept better discipline," Balasar said. "The men came to Udun for a slaughter. There's no mercy out there today. It's going to take longer to sack the city, it's going to mean more casualties for us, and tltani and 'Ian-Sadar will know what happened. They'll know it's a fight to the last man."

"As I recall, you came to destroy the Khaiem," Sinja said. "Not to conquer them."

Balasar nodded, accepting the criticism in Sinja's tone as his due. Sinja half-expected to see the general's hands take a pose of contrition, but instead he looked into Sinja's eyes. There was no remorse there, only the hard look of a man who has claimed his own failures and steeled himself to correcting them.

"I can destroy the Khaiem without killing every fruit seller and baker's apprentice along the way," Balasar said. "I need your help to do it.

"You had something in mind."

"I want your men to carry messages to Utani and Tan-Sadar. Not to the Khaiem. The utkhaiem and merchant houses. Men who have power. Tell them that if they stand aside when we come, they won't be harmed. We want the poets, and the books, and the Khaiem."

Sinja shook his head.

"You might as well run a spear through us now," Sinja said. "We're traitors. Yes, I know we're a mercenary company, and we took service and on and on. But every man I have was born in these cities we're sacking. Waving a contract isn't going to excuse them in the eyes of the citizens. Send prisoners instead. Find a dozen men your soldiers haven't quite hacked to death and use them to carry the messages. They'll be more effective than we will anyway."

"You think they can be trusted not to simply flee?"

"Catch a man and his wife. Or a father and child. There have to be a few left out there. Bring me the hostages and I'll keep them safe. When the husbands and fathers come back, you can give them a few lengths of silver and a day's head start. It won't undo what we've done here, but having a few survivors tell tales of your honorable treatment is better than none."

Balasar sipped his tea. "l'he general's brow was furrowed.

"That's wise," he said at last. "We'll do that. I'll have my men bring the hostages to you by nightfall."

"Best not to rape them," Sinja said. "It takes something from the spirit of the thing if they're treated poorly."

"You're the one looking after them."

"And I can control the situation once they're in my care. It's before that I'm worried by."

"I'll see to it. If I give the order, it will be followed. "They're my men." Ile said it as if he were reminding himself of something more than what the words meant.

For a moment, Sinja saw a profound weariness in the Galt's pale face. It struck him for the first time how small Balasar Gice was. It was only the way he moved through the world that gave the impression of standing half a head above everyone else in the room. '['he first dusting of gray had touched his temples, but Sinja couldn't say if it was premature or late coming. "l'he breeze stirred, reeking of smoke.

"I can't tell if you hate war or love it," Sinja said.

Balasar looked up as if he'd forgotten Sinja was there. His smile was amused and bitter.

"I see the necessity of it," Balasar said. "And sometimes I forget that the point of war is the peace at the end of it."

"Is it? And here I thought it \vas gold and women."

"Those can be the same," Balasar said, ignoring the joke. "'T'here are worse things than enough money and someone to spend it on."

"And glory?"

Balasar chuckled as he stood, but there was very little of mirth in the sound. I Ic put down his bowl and his hands took a rough pose of query, as simple as a child's.

"Do you see glory in this, Sinja-cha? I only see a bad job that needs doing and a man so sure of himself, he's spent other people's lives to do it. I Iardly sounds glorious."

"l'hat depends," Sinja said, dropping into the language of the Galts. "Does it really need doing,"

"Yes. It does."

Sinja spread his hands, not a formal pose, but only a gesture that completed the argument. For a moment, something like tears seemed to glisten in the general's eyes, and he clapped Sinja on the shoulder. Without thinking, Sinja put his hand to the general's, clasping it hard, as if they were brothers or soldiers of the same cohort. As if their lives were somehow one. Far away, something boomed deep as a drum. Something falling. Ildun, falling.

"I'll get you those hostages," Balasar said. "You take care of them for me."

"Sir," Sinja said, and stood braced at attention until the general was gone and he was alone again in the garden. Sinja swallowed twice, loosening the tightness in his throat. The maple swayed, black leaves touched with red.

In a better world, he thought, I'd have followed that man to hell.

Please the gods, let him never reach Machi.