“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 back, 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 Udun, 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 a 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. The upper rooms, intended for four men or fewer, housed eight or ten. There had been a few men who had ventured as far as the stables, but Sinja had called them back inside. There was a madness on Balasar Gice’s men, and he didn’t intend to have his own fall to it.
In the small walled garden at the back, Sinja sat on a camp stool and drank a bowl 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 sky, dark and solid as the towers of Machi. The birds were silent or fled. 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 aman come 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. Udun 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 Udun 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 Utani and Tan-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. The 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.” He 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. The first dusting of gray had touched his temples, but Sinja couldn’t say if it was premature or late coming. The 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 was gold and women.”
“Those can be the same,” Balasar said, ignoring the joke. “There 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. He 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. Hardly sounds glorious.”
“That 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. Udun, 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.
The watchmen Kiyan had placed at the tops of the towers began ringing their bells just as the sun touched the top of the mountains to the west. Traffic stopped in the streets below and in the palace corridors. All eyes looked up, straining to see the color of the banners draped from the high, distant windows. Yellow would mean that a Galtic army had come at last, that their doom had come upon them. Red meant that the Khai had returned. So far above the city, colors were difficult to make out. At least to Maati’s eyes, the first movement of the great signal cloth was only movement—the banners flew. It was the space of five fast, shaky breaths before he made out the red. Otah Machi had returned.
A crowd formed at the edge of the city as the first wagons came over the bridge. The women and children and old men of Machi come to greet the militia that had gone out to save the Dai-kvo. The Dai-kvo and the city and the world. Maati pushed his way in, elbowing people aside and taking more than one sharp rebuttal in his own ribs. The horses that pulled the wagons were blown. The men who rode them were gray-pale in the face and bloodied. The few who still walked, shambled. A ragged cheer rose from the crowd and then slunk away. A girl in a gray robe of cheap wool stepped out from the edge of the crowd, moving toward the soldiers. From where he stood trapped in the press of bodies, Maati could see the girl’s head as it turned, searching the coming train of men for some particular man. Even before the first soldier reached her, Maati saw how small the group was, how many men were missing.
“Nayiit!” he shouted, hoping that his boy would hear him. “Nayiit! Over here!”
His voice was drowned. The citizens of Machi surged forward like an attack. Some of the men crossing the bridge drew back from them as if in fear, and then there was only one
surging, swirling mass of people. There was no order, no control. One of the first wagons was pushed sideways from the road, the horses whinnying their protest but too tired to bolt. A man younger than Nayiit with a badly cut arm and a bruise on his face stumbled almost into Maati’s arms.
“What happened?” Maati demanded of the boy. “Where’s the Khai? Have you seen Nayiit Chokavi?” A blank stare was the only reply.
The chaos seemed to go on for a day, though it wasn’t really more than half a hand. Then a loud, cursing voice rose over the tumult, clearing the way for the wagons. There were hurt men. Men who had to see physicians. Men who were dying. Men who were dead. The people stood aside and let the wagons pass. The sounds of weeping and hard wheels on paving stones were the only music. Maati felt breathless with dread.
As he pushed back into the city, following in the path the wagons had opened, he heard bits and snatches from the people he passed. The Khai had taken the utkhaiem and ridden for Cetani. The Galts weren’t far behind. The Dai-kvo was dead. The village of the Dai-kvo was burned. There had been a blood-soaked farce of a battle. As many men were dead as still standing.
Rumor, Maati told himself. Everything is rumor and speculation until I hear it from Nayiit. Or Otah-kvo. But his chest was tight and his hands balled in fists so tight they ached when, out of breath and ears ringing, he made his way back to the library. A man in a travel-stained robe squatted beside his door, a tarp-covered crate on the ground at his side.
Nayiit. It was Nayiit. Maati found the strength to embrace his boy, and allowed himself at last to weep. He felt Nayiit’s arms around him, felt the boy soften in their shared grief, and then pull away. Maati forced himself to step back. Nayiit’s expression was grim.
“Come in,” Maati said. “Then tell me.”
It was bad. The Galts were not on Machi’s door and Otah-kvo lived, but these were the only bright points in Nayiit’s long, quiet recitation. They sat in the dimming front room, shutters closed and candles unlit, while Nayiit told the tale. Maati clasped his hands together, squeezing his knuckles until they ached. The Dai-kvo was dead. The men whom Maati had known in the long years he had lived in the village were memories now. He found himself trying to remember their names, their faces. There were fewer fresh to his mind than he would have thought—the firekeeper whose kiln had been at the corner nearest Maati’s cell, the old man who’d run the bathhouse, a few others. They were gone, fallen into the forgetfulness of history. The records of their names had been burned.
An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet) Page 28