Seasons of War

by Daniel Abraham

  He’d spent too much time with Heshai’s binding. Removing-the-Part-That-Continues had been made for the cotton trade - pulling seeds from the fiber and speeding it on its way to the spinners and the weavers and feeding all of the needle trades. But there was no reason for Maati to be restricted by that. He only needed a way to break Galt. To starve them. To see that no other generation of Galtic children ever saw the world.

  It wasn’t Seedless he needed. It was only Sterile. And there were any number of ways to say that.

  He sank lower into the water as the sense of relief and peace consumed him. Destroying-the-Part-That-Continues, he thought as the little waves touched his lips. Shattering-the-Part-That-Continues. Crushing it. Rotting it. Corroding it.

  Corrupting it.

  In his mind, Galt died. And he, Maati Vaupathai, killed it. What, he asked himself, was victory in a single battle compared with that? Otah had saved the city. Maati saw now how he could save everything.

  21

  Sinja woke, stiff with cold, to the sound of chopping.

  Outside the tent, someone with a hand axe was breaking the ice at the top of the barrels. It was still dark, but morning was always dark these days. He kicked off his blankets and rose. The undyed wool of his inner robes held a bit of the heat as he pulled on first one outer robe and then another with a wide leather cloak over the top that creaked when he fastened the wide bone broochwork.

  Outside his tent, the army was already breaking camp. Columns of smoke and steam rose from the wagons. Horses snorted, their breath pluming white in the light of a falling moon. In the southeast, the dawn was still only a lighter shade of black. Sinja walked to the cook fire and squatted down beside it, a bowl of barley gruel sweetened with wine-packed prunes in his hands. The heat of it was better than the taste. Wine could do strange things to prunes.

  The army had been marching for two and a half weeks. At a guess, there were another three before they reached Machi. If there was no storm, Sinja guessed they would lose a thousand men to frostbite, most of those in the last ten days. He squinted into the dark, implacable sky and watched the faintest stars begin to fade. There would still be over nine thousand men. And every man among them would know that this battle wasn’t for money or glory. Or even for love of the general. If by some miracle Otah turned the Galts back from the city, they would die scattered in the frozen plains of the North.

  This battle would be the only time in the whole benighted war that the Galts would go in knowing they were fighting for their lives.

  ‘You want more?’ the cook asked, and Sinja shook his head. Around him, the members of his personal guard were moving at last. Sinja didn’t help them break down the camp. He’d left most of the company behind in Tan-Sadar. They were, after all, on a deadly stupid march that, with luck, would end with them sacking their own homes. It wasn’t duty that could be asked of a green recruit of his first campaign. Sinja had taken time handpicking this dozen to accompany him. There wasn’t a man among them he liked.

  The last tent was folded, poles bound together with their leather thongs, and put on the steam wagon. The fires were all stamped out, and the sun made its tardy appearance. Sinja wrapped the leather cloak closer around his shoulders and sighed. This was a younger man’s game. If he’d been as wise as the average rat, he’d be someplace warm and close now, with a good mulled wine and a plate of venison in mint sauce. The call sounded, and he began the walk north. Cold numbed his face and made his ears ache. The air smelled of dust and smoke and horse dung - the miasma of the moving army. Sinja kept his eyes to the horizon, but the only clouds were the high white lace that did little but leach blue from the sky; there was no storm coming today. And still the dusting of snow that had fallen in the last weeks hadn’t melted and wouldn’t before spring. The world was pale except where a stone or patch of ground stood free of snow. There it was black.

  He put one foot in front of the other, his mind growing empty with the rhythm. His muscles slowly warmed. The pain retreated from his ears. With enough effort, the air became almost comfortable. The sun rose quickly behind him, as if in a hurry to finish its day’s passage and return the world to darkness.

  When he paused to relieve himself on a tree - his piss steaming in its puddle - he took off the leather cloak. If he got too warm, he’d start to sweat. Soaking through his inner robes was an invitation to death. He wondered how many of Balasar’s men knew that. With his sad luck, all of them.

  They wouldn’t see a low town today. They had overrun one yesterday - the locals surprised to find themselves surrounded by horsemen intent on keeping any word from slipping out to the North. There would be another town in a day or two. If Sinja was lucky, it might mean fresh meat for dinner. The rations set aside by the townsmen to see them through the winter might feed the army for as much as half a day.

  They paused at midday, the cooks using the furnaces of the steam wagons to warm the bread and boil water for tea. Sinja wasn’t hungry but he ate anyway. The tea was good at least. Overbrewed and bitter, but warm. He sat on the broad back of a steam wagon, and was preparing himself for the second push of the day and estimating how many miles they had covered since morning when the general arrived.

  Balasar rode a huge black horse, its tack worked with silver. As small as the man was, he still managed to look like something from a painting.

  ‘Sinja-cha,’ Balasar Gice said in the tongue of the Khaiem. ‘I was hoping to find you here.’

  Sinja took a pose of respect and welcome.

  ‘I’d say winter’s come,’ the general said.

  ‘No, Balasar-cha. If this was real winter, you could tell because we’d all be dead by now.’

  Balasar’s eyes went harder, but his wry smile didn’t fade. It wasn’t anger that made him what he was. It was determination. Sinja found himself unsurprised. Anger was too weak and uncertain to have seen them all this far.

  ‘I’d have you ride with us,’ the general said.

  ‘I’m not sure Eustin-cha would enjoy that,’ Sinja said, then switched to speaking in Galtic. ‘But if it’s what you’d like, sir, I’m pleased to do it.’

  ‘You have a horse?’

  ‘Several. I’ve been having them walked. I’ve got good enough fighters among my men, but I can’t speak all that highly of them as grooms. A horse with a good lather up in this climate and with these boys to care for it is going to be tomorrow night’s dinner.’

  ‘I have a servant or two I could spare,’ Balasar said, frowning. Sinja took a pose that both thanked and refused.

  ‘I’d take the loan of one of your horses, if you have one ready to ride. Otherwise, I’ll need to get one of mine.’

  ‘I’ll have one sent,’ Balasar said. Sinja saluted, and the general made his way back to the main body of the column. Sinja had just washed down the last of the bread with the dregs of his tea when a servant arrived with a saddled brown mare and orders to hand it over to him. Sinja rode slowly past the soldiers, grim-faced and uncomfortable, preparing for their trek or else already marching. Balasar rode just after the vanguard with Eustin and whichever of his captains he chose to speak with. Sinja fell in beside the general and made his salute. Balasar returned it seriously. Eustin only nodded.

  ‘You served the Khai Machi,’ Balasar said.

  ‘Since before he was the Khai, in fact,’ Sinja said.

  ‘What can you tell me about him?’

  ‘He has a good wife,’ Sinja said. Eustin actually smiled at the joke, but Balasar’s head tilted a degree.

  ‘Only one wife?’ he asked. ‘That’s odd for the Khaiem, isn’t it?’

  ‘And only one son. It is odd,’ Sinja said. ‘But he’s an odd man for a Khai. He spent his boyhood working as a laborer and traveling through the eastern islands and the cities. He didn’t kill his family to take the chair. He’s been considered something of an embarrassment by the utkhaiem, he’s upset the Daikvo, and I think he’s looked on his position as a burden.’

  ‘He’s a poo
r leader then?’

  ‘He’s better than they deserve. Most of the Khaiem actually like the job.’

  Balasar smiled and Eustin frowned. They understood.

  ‘He hasn’t posted scouts,’ Eustin pointed out. ‘He can’t be much of a war leader.’

  ‘No one would post scouts this late in the season,’ Sinja said. ‘You might as well fault him for not keeping a watch on the moon in case we launched an attack from there.’

  ‘And how was it that a son of the Khaiem found himself working as a laborer?’ Balasar asked, eager, it seemed, to change the subject.

  As he swayed gently on the horse, Sinja told the story of Otah Machi. How he had walked away from the Dai-kvo to take a false name as a petty laborer. The years in Saraykeht, and then in the eastern islands. How he had taken part in the gentleman’s trade, met the woman who would be his wife, and then been caught up in a plot for his father’s chair. The uncertain first year of his rule. The plague that had struck the winter cities, and how he had struggled with it. The tensions when he had refused marriage to the daughter of the Khai Utani. Reluctantly, Sinja even told of his own small drama, and its resolution. He ended with the formation of the small militia, and its being sent away to the west, and to Balasar’s service.

  Balasar listened through it all, probing now and again with questions or comments or requests for Sinja to amplify on some point or aspect of the Khai Machi. Behind them, the sun slid down toward the horizon. The air began to cool, and Sinja pulled his leather cloak back over his shoulders. Dark would be upon them soon, and the moon had still not risen. Sinja expected the meeting to come to its close when they stopped to make camp, but Balasar kept him near, pressing for more detail and explanation.

  Sinja knew better than to dissemble. He was here because he had played well up to this point, but if his loyalty to the Galts was ever going to break, it would be soon and all three men knew it. If he held back, hesitated, or gave information that seemed intended to mislead, he would fall from Balasar’s grace. So he told his story as clearly and truthfully as he could. There wasn’t a great deal that was likely to be of use to the general anyway. Sinja had, after all, never seen Otah lead an army. If he’d been asked to guess how such an effort would end, he’d have been proved wrong already.

  They ate their evening meal in Balasar’s tent of thick hide beside a brazier of glowing coals that made the potato-and-salt-pork soup taste smoky. When at last Sinja found himself without more to say, the questions ended. Balasar sighed deeply.

  ‘He sounds like a good man,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I won’t get to meet him.’

  ‘I’m sure he’d say the same,’ Sinja said.

  ‘Will the utkhaiem turn against him? If we make the same offers we made in Utani and Tan-Sadar, can we avoid the fighting?’

  ‘After he beat your men? It’s not a wager I’d take.’

  Balasar’s eyes narrowed, and Sinja felt his throat go a bit tighter, half-convinced he’d said something wrong. But Balasar only yawned, and the moment passed.

  ‘How would you expect him to defend his city?’ Eustin asked, breaking a stick of bread. ‘Will he come out to meet us, or hide and make us dig him out?’

  ‘Dig, I’d expect. He knows the streets and the tunnels. He knows his men will break if he puts them in the field. And he’ll likely put men in the towers to drop rocks on us as we pass. Taking Machi is going to be unpleasant. Assuming we get there.’

  ‘You still have doubts?’ Balasar asked.

  ‘I’ve never had doubts. One bad storm, and we’re all dead men. I’m as certain of that as I ever was.’

  ‘And you still chose to come with us.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Why?’

  Sinja looked at the burning coals. The deep orange glow and the white dust of ash. Why exactly he had come was a question he’d asked himself more than once since they’d left Tan-Sadar. He could say it was the contract, but that wasn’t the truth and all three of them knew it. He flexed his fingers, feeling the ache in his knuckles.

  ‘There’s something I want there,’ he said.

  ‘You’d like to be the new Khai Machi?’

  ‘In a way,’ Sinja said. ‘Something I’d ask from you instead of my share of the spoils, at least.’

  Balasar nodded, already knowing what Sinja was driving toward. ‘The Lady Kiyan,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want her raped or killed,’ Sinja said. ‘When the city falls, I’d like her handed over to me. I’ll see she doesn’t do anything stupid or destructive.’

  ‘Her husband and children,’ Eustin said. ‘We will have to kill them.’

  ‘I know it,’ Sinja said, ‘but she’s not from a high family. She’s got no standing aside from her marriage. She won’t pose a threat.’

  ‘And for her sake, you’d betray the Khai?’ Balasar asked.

  Sinja smiled. This question, at least, he could answer honestly and without fear.

  ‘For her sake, sir, I’d betray the gods.’

  Balasar looked at Eustin, his eyebrows rising as if asking an unvoiced question. Eustin considered Sinja for a long moment, then shrugged. Grunting, Balasar shifted and pulled a wooden box from under his cot. He took a stoppered flask from it - good Nantani porcelain - and three small drinking bowls. With growing unease, Sinja waited as Balasar poured out water-clear rice wine in silence, then handed one bowl to Eustin, the next to him.

  ‘I have a favor to ask of you as well,’ Balasar said.

  Sinja drank. The wine was rich and clean and made his chest bloom with warmth, but not so much he lost the tightness in his throat and between his shoulders.

  ‘We can go in,’ Eustin said. ‘Waves of us. Small numbers, one after the other, until we’ve dug out every nook and cranny in the city. But we’ll lose men. A lot of them.’

  ‘Most,’ Balasar said. ‘We’d win. I’m sure of that. But it would take half of my men.’

  ‘That’s bad,’ Sinja said. ‘But there is another plan here, isn’t there?’

  Balasar nodded.

  ‘We can send a man in who can tell us what the defenses are. Who can send word or sign. If we’re lucky, perhaps even a man who can help with planning the defense. And, in return, take the woman he wants.’

  Sinja felt his mind start to spin. The rice wine made it a bit harder to think, but a bit easier to grin. It was ridiculous, except that it made sense. He should have anticipated this. He should have known.

  ‘You want to send me in? As a spy?’

  ‘Take a couple good horses in the morning, and ride hard for the city,’ Eustin said. ‘You’ll arrive a few days ahead of us. You were the Khai’s advisor before. He’ll listen to you, or at least let you listen to him. When the time comes for the attack, you guide us.’

  The captain made a small gesture with one hand, as if what he’d said was simple. Go into Machi, betray Otah and everyone else he’d known this last decade. If I turn against the general, Sinja thought, it’ll be a bad death when these men find me.

  ‘It will be faster this way,’ Balasar said. ‘Fewer people will die on both sides. And, because you ask, the woman is yours. Safe and unharmed if I can do it.’

  ‘I have your word on that?’ Sinja asked.

  Balasar took a pose that accepted an oath. It wasn’t quite the right vocabulary, but it carried the meaning. Sinja felt unpleasantly like he was looking down over a cliff. His head swam a little, and the tightness in his body fell to knotting his gut. He held out his bowl and Balasar refilled it.

  ‘I’ll understand if it’s too much,’ Balasar said, his voice soft. ‘It will make things easier for both sides and it won’t change the way the battle falls, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a terrible thing to ask of you. Take a few days to sit with it if you’d like.’

  ‘No,’ Sinja said. ‘I don’t need time. I’ll do the thing.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Eustin asked.

  Sinja drained his cup in a gulp. He could feel the flush starting to grow in his
neck and cheeks, the nausea starting in his belly and the back of his throat. It was strong wine and a bad night coming.

  ‘It needs doing, and it’s the price I asked,’ Sinja said. ‘So I’ll do it.’

  Cehmai sat forward in his chair. The white marble walls of their workspace glowed with candlelight, but Maati didn’t find the brightness reassuring. He was sitting as quietly as he could manage on a red and violet embroidered cushion, waiting. Cehmai lifted one of the wide yellow pages, paused, and turned it over. Maati saw the younger poet’s lips moving as he shaped some phrase from the papers. Maati restrained himself from asking which. Interruptions wouldn’t make this go any faster.