Seasons of War

by Abraham Daniel

  The scouts were the first to recover some sense of purpose. The couriers of the trading houses rode back and forth, reporting the movements of the Galts now that the battle was finished. They had scoured the field, caring for their own men and killing the ones Otah had left behind. Then, with professional efficiency, they had made their camp and prepared their dinner. It was clear that the Galts considered the conflict ended. They had won. It was over.

  As darkness fell, Otah made his way through the camps, stopped at what cook fires there were. No one greeted him with violence, but he saw anger in some eyes and sorrow in others. By far the most common expression was an emptiness and disbelief. When at last he sat on his cot - set under the spreading limbs of a shade tree in lieu of his tent - he knew that however many men he had lost on the battlefield, twice as many would have deserted by morning. Otah laid an arm over his eyes, his body heavy with exhaustion, but totally unable to sleep.

  In the long, dreadful march to this battle, not one man had turned back. At the time, it had warmed Otah’s heart. Now he wanted them all to flee. Go back to their wives and their children and their parents. Go back to where it was safe and forget this mad attempt to stop the world from crumbling. Except he couldn’t imagine where safety might be. The Dai-kvo would fall if he hadn’t already. The cities of the Khaiem would fall. Machi would fall. For years, he had had the power to command the death of Galt. Stone-Made-Soft could have ruined their cities, sunk their lands below the waves. All of this could have been stopped once, if he had known and had the will. And now it was too late.

  ‘Most High?’

  Otah raised his arm, sat up. Nayiit stood in the shadows of the tree. Otah knew him by his silhouette.

  ‘Nayiit-kya,’ Otah said, realizing it was the first he’d seen Liat’s son since the battle. Nayiit hadn’t even crossed his mind. He wondered what that said about him. Nothing good. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine. A little bruised on the arm and shoulder, but . . . but fine.’

  In the dim, Otah saw that Nayiit held something before him. A greasy scent of roast lamb came to him.

  ‘I can’t eat,’ Otah said as the boy came closer. ‘Thank you, but . . . give it to the men. Give it to the injured men.’

  ‘Your attendant said you didn’t eat in the morning either,’ Nayiit said. ‘It won’t help them if you collapse. It won’t bring them back.’

  Otah felt a surge of cold anger at the words, but bit back his retort. He nodded to the edge of the cot.

  ‘Leave it there,’ he said.

  Nayiit hesitated, but then moved forward and placed the bowl on the cot. He stepped back, but he did not walk away. As Otah’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, Nayiit’s face took on dim features. Otah wasn’t surprised to see that the boy was weeping. Nayiit was older now than Otah had been when he’d fathered him on Liat. Older now than Otah had been when he’d first killed a man with his hands.

  ‘I’m sorry, Most High,’ Nayiit said.

  ‘So am I,’ Otah said. The scent of lamb was thick and rich. Enticing and mildly nauseating both.

  ‘It was my fault,’ Nayiit said, voice thickened by a tight throat. ‘This, all of this, is my fault.’

  ‘No,’ Otah began. ‘You can’t—’

  ‘I saw them killing each other. I saw how many there were, and I broke,’ Nayiit said, and his hands took a pose of profound contrition. ‘I’m the one who called the retreat.’

  ‘I know,’ Otah said.

  15

  Liat had been nursing her headache since she’d woken that morning; as the day progressed, it had drawn a line from the back of her eyes to her temples that throbbed when she moved too quickly. She had given up shaking her head. Instead, she pressed her fingers into the fine-grained wood of the table and tried to will her frustration into it. Kiyan, seated across from her, was saying something in a reasonable, measured tone that entirely missed her point. Liat took a pose that asked permission to speak, and then didn’t wait for Kiyan to answer her.

  ‘It isn’t the men,’ Liat said. ‘He could have taken twice what he did, and we’d be able to do what’s needed. It’s that he took all the horses.’

  Kiyan’s fox-sharp face tightened. Her dark eyes flickered down toward the maps and diagrams spread out between them. The farm-lands and low towns that surrounded Machi were listed with the weight of grain and meat and vegetables that had come from each in the last five years. Liat’s small, neat script covered paper after paper, black ink on the butter-yellow pages noting acres to be harvested and plowed, the number of hands and hooves required by each.

  The breeze from the unshuttered windows lifted the pages but didn’t disarray them, like invisible fingers checking the corners for some particular mark.

  ‘Show me again,’ Kiyan said, and the weariness in her voice was almost enough to disarm Liat’s annoyance. Almost, but not entirely. With a sigh, she stood. The line behind her eyes throbbed.

  ‘This is the number of horses we’d need to plow the eastern farmsteads here and here and here,’ Liat said, tapping the maps as she did so. ‘We have half that number. We can get up to nearly the right level if we take the mules from the wheat mills.’

  Kiyan looked over the numbers, her fingertips touching the sums and moving on. Her gaze was focused, a single vertical line between her brows.

  ‘How short is the second planting now?’ Kiyan asked.

  ‘The west and south are nearly complete, but they started late. The eastern farmsteads . . . not more than a quarter.’

  Kiyan leaned back. Otah’s wife looked nearly as worn as Liat felt. The gray in her hair seemed more pronounced, her flesh paler and thinner. Liat found herself wondering if Kiyan had made a practice of painting her face and dyeing her hair that, in the crisis, she had let fall away, or if the task they had set themselves was simply sucking the life out of them both.

  ‘It’s too late,’ Kiyan said. ‘With the time it would take to get the mules, put them to yoke, and plow the fields, we’d be harvesting snowdrifts.’

  ‘Is there something else we could plant?’ Liat asked. ‘Something we have time to grow before winter? Potatoes? Turnips?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Kiyan said. ‘How long does it take to grow turnips this far north?’

  Liat closed her eyes. Two educated, serious, competent women should be able to run a city. Should be able to shoulder the burden of the world and forget that one stood to lose a husband, the other a son. Should be able to ignore the constant fear that soldiers of a Galtic army might appear any day on the horizon prepared to destroy the city. It should be within their power, and yet they were blocked by idiot questions like whether turnips take longer to grow than potatoes. She took a deep breath and slowly let it out, willing the tension in her jaw to lessen, the pain behind her eyes to recede.

  ‘I’ll find out,’ Liat said. ‘But will you give the order to the mills? They won’t be happy to stop their work.’

  ‘I’ll give them the option of loaning the Khai their animals or pulling the plows themselves,’ Kiyan said. ‘If we have to spend the winter grinding wheat for our bread, it’s a small price for not starving.’

  ‘It’s going to be a thin spring regardless,’ Liat said.

  Kiyan took the papers that Liat had drawn up. She didn’t speak, but the set of her mouth agreed.

  ‘We’ll do our best,’ Kiyan said.

  The banquet had gone splendidly. The women of the utkhaiem - wives and mothers, daughters and aunts - had heard Kiyan’s words and taken to them as if she were a priest before the faithful. Liat had seen the light in their eyes, the sense of hope. For all their fine robes and lives of court scandal and gossip, each of these women was as grateful as Liat had been for the chance of something to do.

  The food and fuel, Kiyan had kept for herself. Other people had been tasked with seeing to the wool, to arranging the movement of the summer belongings into the storage of the high towers, the preparation of the lower city - the tunnels below Machi. Liat ha
d volunteered to act as Kiyan’s messenger and go-between in the management of the farms and crops, gathering the food that would see them through the winter. Being the lover of a poet - even a poet who had never bound one of the andat - apparently lent her enough status in court to make her interesting. And as the rumors began to spread that Cehmai and Maati were keeping long hours together in the library and the poet’s house, that they were preparing a fresh binding, Liat found herself more and more in demand. In recent days it had even begun to interfere with her work.

  She had let herself spend time in lush gardens and high-domed dining halls, telling what stories she knew of Maati’s work and intentions - what parts of it he’d said would be safe to tell. The women were so hungry for good news, for hope, that Liat couldn’t refuse them. After telling the stories often enough, even she began to take hope from them herself. But tea and sweet bread and gossip took time, and they took attention, and she had let it go too far. The second wheat crop would be short, and no amount of pleasant high-city chatter now would fill bellies in the spring. Assuming they lived. If the Galts appeared tomorrow, it would hardly matter what she’d done or failed to do.

  ‘There’s going to be enough food,’ Kiyan said softly. ‘We may wind up killing more of the livestock and eating the grain ourselves, but even if half the crop failed, we’d have enough to see us through to the early harvest.’

  ‘Still,’ Liat said. ‘It would have been good to have more.’

  Kiyan took a pose that both agreed with Liat and dismissed the matter. Liat responded with one appropriate for taking leave of a superior. It was a nuance that seemed to trouble Kiyan, because she leaned forward, her fingertips touching Liat’s arm.

  ‘Are you well?’ Kiyan asked.

  ‘Fine,’ Liat said. ‘It’s just my head has been tender. It’s often like that when the Khai Saraykeht changes the tax laws again or the cotton crops fail. It fades when the troubles pass.’

  Kiyan nodded, but didn’t pull back her hand.

  ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ Kiyan asked.

  ‘Tell me that Otah’s come back with Nayiit, the Galts all conquered and the world back the way it was.’

  ‘Yes,’ Kiyan said. Her eyes lost their focus and her hand slipped back to her side of the table. Liat regretted being so glib, regretted letting the moment’s compassion fade. ‘Yes, it would be pretty to think so.’

  Liat took her leave. The palaces were alive with servants and slaves, the messengers of the merchant houses and the utkhaiem keeping the life of the court active. Liat walked through the wide halls with their distant tiled ceilings and down staircases of marble wide enough for twenty men to walk abreast. Sweet perfumes filled the air, though their scents brought her no comfort. The world was as bright as it had been before she’d come to Machi, the voices lifted in song as merry and sweet. It was only a trick of her mind that dulled the colors and broke the harmonies. It was only the thought of her boy lying dead in some green and distant field and the dull pain behind her eyes.

  When she reached the physicians, she found the man she sought speaking with Eiah. A young man lay naked on the wide slate table beside the pair. His face was pale and damp with sweat; his eyes were closed. His nearer leg was purple with bruises and gashed at the side. The physician - a man no older than Liat, but bald apart from a long gray fringe of hair - was gesturing at the young man’s leg, and Eiah was leaning in toward him, as if the words were water she was thirsty for. Liat walked to them softly, partly from the pain in her head, partly from the hope of overhearing their discussion without changing it.

  ‘There’s a fever in the flesh,’ the physician said. ‘That’s to be expected. But the muscle.’

  Eiah considered the leg, more fascinated, Liat noticed, with the raw wounds than with the man’s flaccid sex.

  ‘It’s stretched,’ Eiah said. ‘So there’s still a connection to stretch it. He’ll be able to walk.’

  The physician dropped the blanket and tapped the boy’s shoulder.

  ‘You hear that, Tamiya? The Khai’s daughter says you’ll be able to walk again.’

  The boy’s eyes fluttered open, and he managed a thin smile.

  ‘You’re correct, Eiah-cha. The tendon’s injured, but not snapped. He won’t be able to walk for several weeks. The greatest danger now is that the wound where the skin popped open may become septic. We’ll have to clean it out and bandage it. But first, perhaps we have a fresh patient?’

  Liat found herself disconcerted to move from observer to observed so quickly. The physician’s smile was distant and professional as a butcher selling lamb, but Eiah’s grin was giddy. Liat took a pose that asked forbearance.

  ‘I didn’t mean to intrude,’ she said. ‘It’s only that my head has been troubling me. It aches badly, and I was wondering whether . . .’

  ‘Come, sit down, Liat-kya,’ Eiah cried, grabbing Liat’s hand and pulling her to a low wooden seat. ‘Loya-cha can fix anything.’

  ‘I can’t fix everything,’ the physician said, his smile softening a degree - he was speaking now not only to a patient, but a friend of his eager student and a fellow adult. ‘But I may be able to ease the worst of it. Tell me when I’ve touched the places that hurt the worst.’

  Gently, the man’s fingers swept over Liat’s face, her temples, touching here and there as gently as a feather against her skin. He seemed pleased and satisfied with her answers; then he took her pulse on both wrists and considered her tongue and eyes.

  ‘Yes, I believe I can be of service, Liat-cha. Eiah, you saw what I did?’

  Eiah took a pose of agreement. It was strange to see a girl so young and with such wealth and power look so attentive, to see her care so clearly what a man who was merely an honored servant could teach her. Liat’s heart went out to the girl.

  ‘Make your own measures, then,’ the man said. ‘I have a powder I’ll mix for the patient, and we can discuss what you think while we clean the gravel out of our friend Tamiya.’

  Eiah’s touch was harder, less assured. Where the physician had hardly seemed present, Eiah gave the impression of grabbing for something even when pressing with the tips of her fingers. It was an eagerness Liat herself had felt once, many years ago.

  ‘You seem to be doing very well here,’ Liat said, her voice gentle.

  ‘I know,’ the girl said. ‘Loya-cha’s very smart, and he said I could keep coming here until Mama-kya or the Khai said different. Can I see your tongue, please?’

  Liat let the examination be repeated, then when it was finished said, ‘You must be pleased to have found something you enjoy doing.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Eiah said. ‘I’d still rather be married, but this is almost as good. And maybe Papa-kya can find someone to marry me who’ll let me take part in the physicians’ house. I’ll probably be married to one of the Khaiem, after all, and Mama-kya’s running the whole city now. Everyone says so.’

  ‘It may be different later, though,’ Liat said, trying to imagine a Khai allowing his wife to take a tradesman’s work as a hobby.

  ‘There may not be any Khaiem, you mean,’ Eiah said. ‘The Galts may kill them all.’

  ‘Of course they won’t,’ Liat said, but the girl’s eyes met hers and Liat faltered. There was so much of Otah’s cool distance in a face that seemed too young to look on the world so dispassionately. She was like her father, prepared to pass judgment on the gods themselves if the situation called her to do it. Comfortable lies had no place with her. Liat looked down. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Perhaps there won’t be.’

  ‘Here, now,’ the physician said. ‘Take this with you, Liat-cha. Pour it into a bowl of water and once it’s dissolved, drink the whole thing. It will be bitter, so drink it fast. You’ll likely want to lie down for a hand or two afterward, to let it work. But it should do what needs doing.’

  Liat took the paper packet and slipped it into her sleeve before taking a pose of gratitude.

  ‘We should have a lunch in the g
ardens again,’ Eiah said. ‘You and Uncle Maati and me. Loya-cha would come too, except he’s a servant.’

  Liat felt herself blush, but the physician’s wry smile told her it was not the first such pronouncement he’d been subjected to.

  ‘Perhaps you should wait for another day,’ he said. ‘Liat-cha had a headache, remember.’

  ‘I know that,’ Eiah said impatiently. ‘I meant tomorrow.’