An Autumn War (29 page)

"Everything," Maati said. "Times like these remake men. They change what we are. Otah's trying to become the man we need him to he."

"I suppose that's true," Cehmai said. "I just don't want this all to be happening, so I forget, somehow, that it is. I keep thinking it's all a sour dream and I'll wake out of it and stumble down to play a game of stones against StoneMade-Soft. That that will be the worst thing I have to face. And not ..."

Cehmai gestured, his hands wide, including the house and the palaces and the city and the world.

"And not the end of civilization?" Maati suggested.

"Something like that."

Nlaati sighed.

"You know," he said, "when we were young, the man who was Daikvo then chose Otah to come train as a poet. He refused, but I think he would have been good. He has it in him to do whatever needs doing."

Killing a man, taking a throne, marching an army to its death, Nlaati thought but did not say. Whatever needs doing.

"I hope the price he pays is smaller than ours," Cehmai said.

"I doubt it will he."

Chapter 14

Balasar had not been raised to put faith in augury. His father had always said that any god that could create the world and the stars should he able to put together a few well-formed sentences if there was something that needed saying; Balasar had accepted this wisdom in the uncritical way of a boy emulating the man he most admires. And still, the dream came to him on the night before he had word of the hunting party.

It was far from the first time he had dreamt of the desert. Ile felt again the merciless heat, the pain of the satchel cutting into his shoulder. The hooks he had home then had become ashes in the dream as they had in life, but the weight was no less. And behind him were not only Coal and Eustin. All of them followed him-Bes, NIayarsin, Little Ott, and the others. The dead followed him, and he knew they were no longer his allies or his enemies. They came to keep watch over him, to see what work he wrought with their blood. They were his judges. As always before, he could not speak. His throat was knotted. Ile could not turn to see the dead; he only felt them.

But there seemed more now-not only the men he had left in the desert, but others as well. Some of them were soldiers, some of them simple men, all of them padding behind him, waiting to see him justify their sacrifices and his own pride. The host behind him had grown.

He woke in his tent, his mouth dry and sticky. Dawn had not yet come. He drank from the water flask by his bed, then pulled on a shirt and simple trousers and went out to relieve himself among the bushes. The army was still asleep or else just beginning to stir. The air was warm and humid so near the river. Balasar breathed deep and slow. lie had the sense that the world itself-trees, grasses, moon-silvered clouds-was heavy with anticipation. It would he two weeks before they would come within sight of the river city Udun. By month's end another poet would be dead, another library burned, another city fallen.

"Thus far, the campaign had proved as simple as he had hoped, though slower. He had lost almost no men in Nantani. The low towns that his army had come across in their journey to the North had emptied before them; men, women, children, animals-all had scattered before them like autumn leaves before a windstorm. The only miscalculation he had made was in how long to rely on the steam wagons. Two boilers had blown on the rough terrain before Balasar had called to let them cool and be pulled. Five men had died outright, another fifteen had been scalded too badly to continue. Balasar had sent them back to Nantani. "There had been less food captured than he had hoped; the residents of the low towns had put anything they thought might be of use to Balasar and his men to fire before they fled. But the land was rich with game fowl and deer, and his supplies were sufficient to reach the next cities.

As dawn touched the eastern skyline, Balasar put on his uniform and walked among the men. 'l'he morning's cook fires smoked, filling the air with the scents of burning grass and wood and coal filched from the steam wagons, hot grease and wheat cakes and kafe. Captains and footmen, archers and carters, Balasar greeted them all with a smile and considered them with approving nods or small frowns. When a man lifted half a wheat cake to him, Balasar took it with thanks and squatted down beside the cook to blow it cool and cat it. Every man he met, he had made rich. Every man in the camp would stand before him on the battle lines, and only a few, he hoped, would walk behind him in his dream.

Sinja Ajutani's camp was enfolded within the greater army's but still separate from it, like the Baktan Quarter in Acton. A city within a city, a camp within a camp. The greeting he found here was less warm. The respect he saw in these dark, almond eyes was touched with fear. Perhaps hatred. But no mistake, it was still respect.

Sinja himself was sitting on a fallen log, shirtless, with a bit of silver mirror in one hand and a blade in the other. He looked tip as Balasar came close, made his salute, and returned to shaving. Balasar sat beside him.

"We break camp soon," Balasar said. "I'll want ten of your men to ride with the scouting parties today."

"Expecting to find people to question?" Sinja asked. There was no rancor in his voice.

"'T'his close to the river, I can hope so."

"They'll know we're coming. Refugees move faster than armies. The first news of Nantani likely reached them two, maybe three weeks ago.

"Then perhaps they'll send someone here to speak for them," Balasar said. Sinja seemed to consider this as he pressed the blade against his own throat. There were scars on the man's arms and chest-long raised lines of white.

"Would you prefer I ride with the scouts, or stay close to the camp and wait for an emissary?"

"Close to camp," Balasar said. "The men you choose for scouting should speak my language well, though. I don't want to miss anything that would help us do this cleanly."

"Agreed," Sinja said, and put the knife to his own throat again. Before Balasar could go on, he heard his own name called out. A boy no older than fourteen summers wearing the colors of the second legion came barreling into the camp. His face was flushed from running, his breath short. Balasar stood and accepted the boy's salute. In the corner of his eye, he saw Sinja put away knife and mirror and reach for his shirt.

"General Gice, sir," the boy said between gasps. "Captain Tevor sent me. We've lost one of the hunting parties, sir."

"Well, they'll have to catch up with us as best they can," Balasar said. "We don't have time for searching."

"No, Sir. They aren't missing, sir. They're killed."

Balasar felt a grotesque recognition. The other men in his dream. This was where they'd come from.

"Show me," he said.

The trap had been sprung in a clearing at the end of a game trail. Crossbow bolts had taken half a dozen of the men. The others were marked with sword and axe blows. Their armor and robes had been stripped from them. "Their weapons were gone. Balasar stepped through the low grass cropped by deer and considered each face.

The songs and epics told of warriors dying with lips curled in battle cry, but every dead man Balasar had ever seen looked at peace. However badly they had died, their bodies surrendered at the end, and the calm he saw in those dead eyes seemed to say that their work was done now. Like a man playing at tiles who has turned his mark and now sat back to ask Balasar what he would do to match it.

"Are there no other bodies?" he asked.

Captain "Ievor, at his elbow, shook his great woolly head.

"There's signs that our boys did them harm, sir, but they took their dead with them. It wasn't all fast, sir. This one here, there's burn marks on him, and you can see on his wrists where they bound him tip. Asked him what he knew, I expect."

Sinja knelt, touching the dead man's wounds as if making sure they were real.

"I have a priest in my company," Captain "Icvor said. "One of the archers. I can have him say a few words. We'll bury them here and catch up with the main body tomorrow, sir."

"They're coming with us," Balasar said.

"Sir?"

"Bring a pallet and a horse. I want these bodies pulled through the camp. I want every man in the army to see them. Then wrap them in shrouds and pack them in ashes. We'll bury them in the ruins of Udun with the Khai's skull to mark their place."

Captain "Icvor made his salute, and it wasn't Balasar's imagination that put the tear in the old man's eye. As "I'evor barked out the orders to the men who had come with them, Sinja stood and brushed his palms against each other. A smear of old blood darkened the back of the captain's hand. Balasar read the disapproval in the passionless eyes, but neither man spoke.

The effect on the men was unmistakable. The sense of gloating, of leisure, vanished. The tents were pitched, the wagons loaded and ready, the soldiers straining against time itself to close the distance between where they now stood and Udun. "Three of his captains asked permission to send out parties. Hunting parties still, but only in part searching for game. Balasar gave each of them his blessing. The dream of the desert didn't return, but he had no doubt that it would.

In the days that followed, he felt keenly the loss of Eustin. Somewhere to the west, Pathal was falling or had fallen. The school with its young poets was burning, or would burn. And through those conflagrations, Eustin rode. Balasar spent his days riding among his men, talking, planning, setting the example he wished them all to follow, and he felt the absence of Eustin's dry pessimism and distrust. The fervor he saw here was a different beast. The men here looked to him as something besides a man. They had never seen him weep over Little Ott's body or call out into the dry, malign desert air for Kellem. To this army, he was General Gice. They might be prepared to kill or die at his word, but they did not know him. It was, he supposed, the difference between faith and loyalty. He found faith isolating. And it was in this sense of being alone among many that the messenger from Sinja Ajutani found him.

The day's travel was done, and they had made good time again. His outriders had made contact with local forces twice-farm boys with rabbit bows and sewn leather armor-and had done well each time. The wells in the low towns had been fouled, but the river ran clean enough. Another two days, three at the most, and they would reach iidun. In the meantime, the sunset was beautiful and birdsong filled the evening air. Balasar rested beneath the wide, thick branches of a cottonwood, Hat bread and chicken still hot from the fires on a metal field plate by his side, their scents mixing with those of the rich earth and the river's damp. The man standing before him, hands flat at his sides, looked no more than seventeen summers, but Balasar knew himself a poor judge of ages among these people. He might have been fifteen, he might have been twenty. When he spoke, his Galtic was heavily inflected.

"General Gice," the boy said. "Captain Ajutani would like a word with you, if it is acceptable to your will."

Balasar sat forward.

"He could come himself," Balasar said. "He has before. Why not now?"

The messenger boy's lips went tight, his dark eyes fixed straight ahead. It was anger the boy was controlling.

"Something's happened," Balasar said. "Something's happened to one of yours."

"Sir," the boy said.

Balasar took a regretful look at the chicken, then rose to his feet.

""lake me to Captain Ajutani," Balasar said.

Their path ended at the medical tent. The messenger waited outside when Balasar ducked through the Hap and entered. The thick canvas reeked with concentrated vinegar and pine pitch. The medic stood over a low cot where a man lay naked and bloody. One of Sinja's men. The captain himself stood against the tent's center pole, arms folded. Balasar stepped forward, taking in the patient's wounds with a practiced eye. Two parallel cuts on the ribs, shallow but long. Cuts on the hands and arms where the bov had tried to ward off the blades. Skinned knuckles where he'd struck out at someone. Balasar caught the medic's eye and nodded to the man.

"No broken bones, sir," the medic said. "One finger needed sewing, and there'll be scars, but so long as we keep the wounds from festering, he should be fine."

"What happened?" Balasar asked.

"I found him by the river," Sinja said. "I brought him here."

Balasar heard the coolness in Sinja's voice, judged the tension in his face and shoulders. Ile steeled himself.

"Come, then," Balasar said as he lifted open the tent's wide flap, "eat with me and you can tell me what happened."

"No need, General. It's a short enough story. Coya here can't speak Galtic. There's been footmen from the fourth legion following him for days now. At first it was just mocking, and I didn't think it worth con„ cern.

"You have names? Proof that they did this?"

"They're bragging about it, sir," Sinja said.

Sinja looked down at the wounded man. The boy looked up at him. The dark eyes were calm, perhaps defiant. Balasar sighed and knelt beside the low cot.

"Coya-cha?" he said in the boy's own language. "I want you to rest. I'll see the men who did this disciplined."

The wounded hands took a pose that declined the offer.

"It isn't a favor to you," Balasar said. "My men don't treat one another this way. As long as you march with me, you are my soldier, whatever tongues you speak. I'll be sure they understand it's my wrath they're feeling, and not yours."

"Your dead men are the problem, sir," Sinja said, switching the conversation back to Galtic.

The medic coughed once, then discreetly stepped to the far side of the tent. Balasar folded his hands and nodded to Sinja that he should continue. The mercenary sucked his teeth and spat.

"Your men are angry. Having those shrouds along is like putting a burr under their saddles. They're calling my men things they didn't when this campaign began. And they act as if it were harmless and in fun, but it isn't."

"I'll see your men aren't attacked again, Sinja. You have my word on it."