Seasons of War (57 page)
Authors: Daniel Abraham
He wondered what would have happened if he had stayed in Galt, if he had contented himself with raiding the Westlands and Eymond, Eddensea and Bakta. He wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t tried.
He forced himself through the captured buildings until it became too painful to walk. The men looked away from him. Not in anger, but in shame. Balasar could not keep from weeping though the tears froze on his cheeks. At last, he collapsed in the corner of a teahouse, his eyes closing even as he wondered whether he would die of the cold if he stopped moving. But distantly, he felt someone pulling a blanket over him. Some sorry, misled soldier who still thought his general worth saving.
Balasar dreamed like a man in fever and woke near dawn unrested and ill. The pain had lessened, and from the stances of the men around him he guessed he was not the only one for whom this was true. Still, too hasty a step lit his nerves with a cold fire. He was in no condition to fight. And the rough count his surviving captains brought him showed he’d lost three thousand men in a day. They had been cut down in the battle or fallen by the way during the retreat and frozen. Almost a third of his men. One in three, a ghost to follow him; sacrifices to what he had thought he alone could do. No word had come from Eustin in the North. Balasar wished he hadn’t let the man go.
The clouds had scattered in the night. The great vault above them was the hazy blue of a robin’s egg, the black towers rising halfway to the heavens had ceased dropping their stones and arrows. Perhaps they’d run out, or there might only be no point in it. Balasar and his men were in trouble enough.
The air that followed the snows was painfully frigid. The men scavenged what they could to build up fires in the grates - broken chairs and tables, coal brought up from the steam wagons. The fires danced and crackled, but the heat seemed to vanish a hand’s span from the flame. No little fire could overcome the cold. Balasar hunched down before the teahouse fire grate all the same, and tried to think what to do now that everything had fallen apart.
They had a little food. The snow could be melted for water. They could live in these captured houses as long as they could before the natives snuck in at night to slit their throats or a true storm came and turned all their faces black with frostbite.
The only hope was to try again. They would wait for a day, perhaps two. They would hope that the andat had done its damage to them. They might all die in the attempt, but they were dead men out here anyway. Better that they die trying.
‘General Gice, sir!’
Balasar looked up from the fire, suddenly aware he’d been staring into it for what might have been half the morning. The boy framed in the doorway flapped a hand out toward the streets. When he spoke, his words were solid and white.
‘They’ve come, sir. They’re calling for you.’
‘Who’s come?’
‘The enemy, sir.’
Balasar took a moment to gather himself, then rose and walked carefully to the doorway, and then out into the city. To the north, smoke rose gray and black. A thousand men, perhaps, had lined the northern side of one of the great squares. Or women. Or unclean spirits. They were all so swathed in leather and fur Balasar could hardly think of them as human. Great stone kilns burned among them, flames rising twice as tall as a man and licking at the sky. In the center of the great square, they’d brought a meeting table of black lacquer, with two chairs. Standing there in the snow and ice, it looked like a thing from a dream, as out of place as a fish swimming in air.
When he stepped into the southern edge of the square, a murmur of voices he had not noticed before stopped. He could hear the hungry crackle and roar of the kilns. He lifted his chin, scanning the enemy forces. If they had come to fight, they would not have announced themselves. And they’d have had no need of a table. The intent was clear enough.
‘Go,’ Balasar said to the boy at his side. ‘Get the men. And find me a banner, if we still have one.’
It took a hand and a half for the banner to be found, for someone to bring him a fresh sword and a gray cloak. Two of the drummers had survived, and beat a deep, thudding march as Balasar advanced into the square. It might be a ruse, he knew. The fur-covered men might have bows and be waiting to fill him full of arrows. Balasar held himself proudly and walked with all the certainty he could muster. He could hear his own men behind him, their voices low.
Across the square, the crowd parted, and a single man strode forward. His robes were thick and rich, black wool shot with bright threads of gold. But his head was bare and he walked with the stately grace that the Khaiem seemed to affect, even when they were pleading for their lives. The Khai reached the table just before he did.
The Khai had a strong face - long and clean-shaven. His long eyes seemed darker than their color could explain. The enemy.
‘General Gice.’ The voice was surprisingly casual, surprisingly real, and the words spoken in Galtic. Balasar realized he’d been expecting a speech. Some declaration demanding his surrender and threatening terrible consequence should he refuse. The simple greeting touched him.
‘Most High,’ he said in the Khai’s language. The Khai took a pose of greeting that was simple enough for a foreigner to understand but subtle enough to avoid condescension. ‘Forgive me, but am I speaking with Machi or Cetani?’
‘Cetani broke his foot in the fighting. I am Otah Machi.’
The Khai sat, and Balasar sat across from him. There were dark circles under the Khai’s eyes. Fatigue, Balasar thought, and something more.
‘So,’ the Khai Machi said. ‘How do we stop this?’
Balasar raised his hands in what he believed was a request for clarification. It was one of the first things he’d learned when studying the Khaiate tongue, back when he was a boy who had only just heard of the andat.
‘We have to stop this,’ the Khai Machi said. ‘How do we do it?’
‘You’re asking for my surrender?’
‘If you’d like.’
‘What are your terms?’
The Khai seemed to sag back in his chair. Balasar was pricked by the sense that he’d disappointed the man.
‘Surrender your arms,’ the Khai said. ‘All of them. Swear to return to Galt and not attack any of the cities of the Khaiem again. Return what you’ve taken from us. Free the people you’ve enslaved.’
‘I won’t negotiate for the other cities,’ Balasar began, but the Khai shook his head.
‘I am the Emperor of all the cities,’ the man said. ‘We end it all here. All of it.’
Balasar shrugged.
‘All right, then. Emperor it is. Here are my terms. Surrender the poets, their library, the andat, yourself and your family, the Khai Cetani and his family, and we’ll spare the rest.’
‘I’ve heard those terms before,’ the Emperor said. ‘So that takes us back to where we started, doesn’t it? How do we stop this?’
‘As long as you have the andat, we can’t,’ Balasar said. ‘As long as you can hold yourselves above the world and better than it, the threat you pose is too great to let you go on. If I die - if every man I have dies - and we can stop those things from being in the world, it’s worth the price. So how do we stop it? We don’t, Most High. You slaughter us for our impudence, and then pray to your gods that you can hold on to the power that protects you. Because when it slips, it’ll be your turn with the executioner.’
‘I don’t have an andat,’ the Emperor said. ‘We failed.’
‘But . . .’
The Khai made a weary gesture that seemed to encompass the city, the plains, the sky. Everything.
‘What happened to your men, happened to every Galtic man in the world. And it happened to our women. My wife. My daughter. Everyone else’s wives and daughters in all the cities of the Khaiem. It was the price of failing the binding. You’ll never father another child. My daughter will never bear one. And the same is true for both our nations. But I don’t have an andat.’
Balasar blinked. He had had more to say, but the words seemed suddenly empty. The Emperor waited, his eyes on Balasar.
‘Ah,’ Balasar managed. ‘Well.’
‘So I’ll ask you again. How do we stop this?’
Far above, a crow cawed in the chill air. The fire kilns roared in their mindless voices. The world looked sharp and clear and strange, as if Balasar were seeing the city for the first time.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The poet?’
‘They’ve fled. For fear that I would kill them. Or that one of my people would. Or one of yours. I don’t have them, so I can’t give them over to you. But I have their books. The libraries of Machi and Cetani, and what we salvaged from the Dai-kvo. Give me your weapons. Give me your promise that you’ll go back to Galt and not make war against us again. I’ll burn the books and try to keep us all from starving next spring.’
‘I can’t promise you what the Council will do. Especially once . . . if . . .’
‘Promise me
you
won’t. You and your men. I’ll worry about the others later.’
you
won’t. You and your men. I’ll worry about the others later.’
There was strength in the man’s voice. And sorrow. Balasar thought of all the things he knew of this man, all the things Sinja had told him. A seafront laborer, a sailor, a courier, an assistant midwife. And now a man who negotiated the fate of the world over a meeting table in a snow-packed square while thousands of soldiers who’d spent the previous day trying to kill one another looked on. He was unremarkable - exhausted, grieving, determined. He could have been anyone.
‘I’ll need to talk to my men,’ Balasar said.
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll have an answer for you by sundown.’
‘If you have it by midday, we can get you someplace warm before night.’
‘Midday, then.’
They rose together, Balasar taking a pose of respect, and the Emperor Otah Machi returning it.
‘General,’ Otah said as Balasar began to turn away. His voice was gray as ashes. ‘One thing. You came because you believed the andat were too powerful, and the poet’s hearts were too weak. You weren’t wrong. The man who did this was a friend of mine. He’s a good man. Good men shouldn’t be able to make mistakes with prices this high.’
Balasar nodded and walked back across the square. The drummers matched the pace of his steps. The last of the books burned, the last of the poets fled into the wilderness, most likely to die, and if not then to live outcast for their crimes. The andat gone from the world. It was hard to think it. All his life he had aimed for that end, and still the idea was too large. His captains crowded around him as he drew near. Their faces were ashen and excited and fearful. Questions battered at him like moths at a lantern.
‘Tell the men,’ Balasar began, and they quieted. Balasar hesitated. ‘Tell the men to disarm. We’ll bring the weapons here. By midday.’
There was a moment of profound silence, and then one of the junior captains spoke.
‘How should we explain the surrender, sir?’
Balasar looked at the man, at all his men. For the first time in his memory, there seemed to be no ghosts at his back. He forced himself not to smile.
‘Tell them we won.’
27
T
he mine was ancient - one of the first to be dug when Machi had been a new city, the last Empire still unfallen. Its passages honeycombed the rock, twisting and swirling to follow veins of ore gone since long before Maati’s great-grandfather was born. Together, Maati and Cehmai had been raiding the bolt-hole that Otah had prepared for them and for his own children. It had been well stocked: dried meat and fruit, thick crackers, nuts and seeds. All of it was kept safe in thick clay jars with wax seals. They also took the wood and coal that had been set by. It would have been easier to stay there - to sleep in the beds that had been laid out, to light the lanterns set in the stone walls. But then they might have been found, and without discussing it, they had agreed to flee farther away from the city and the people they had known. Cehmai knew the tunnels well enough to find a new hiding place where the ventilation was good. They weren’t in danger of the fire igniting the mine air, as had sometimes happened. Or of the flames suffocating them.
he mine was ancient - one of the first to be dug when Machi had been a new city, the last Empire still unfallen. Its passages honeycombed the rock, twisting and swirling to follow veins of ore gone since long before Maati’s great-grandfather was born. Together, Maati and Cehmai had been raiding the bolt-hole that Otah had prepared for them and for his own children. It had been well stocked: dried meat and fruit, thick crackers, nuts and seeds. All of it was kept safe in thick clay jars with wax seals. They also took the wood and coal that had been set by. It would have been easier to stay there - to sleep in the beds that had been laid out, to light the lanterns set in the stone walls. But then they might have been found, and without discussing it, they had agreed to flee farther away from the city and the people they had known. Cehmai knew the tunnels well enough to find a new hiding place where the ventilation was good. They weren’t in danger of the fire igniting the mine air, as had sometimes happened. Or of the flames suffocating them.
The only thing they didn’t have in quantity was water; that, they could harvest. Maati or Cehmai could take one of the mine sleds out, fill it with snow, and haul it down into the earth. A trip every day or two was sufficient. They took turns sitting at the brazier, scooping handful after handful of snow into the flat iron pans, watching the perfect white collapse on itself and vanish into the black of the iron.
‘We did what we could,’ Maati said. ‘It isn’t as if we could have done anything differently.’
‘I know,’ Cehmai said, settling deeper into his cloak.
The rough stone walls didn’t make their voices echo so much as sound hollow.
‘I couldn’t just let the Galts roll through the city. I had to try,’ Maati said.
‘We all agreed,’ Cehmai said. ‘It was a decision we all reached together. It’s not your fault. Let it go.’
It was the conversation Maati always returned to in the handful of days they’d spent in hiding. He couldn’t help it. He could start with plans for the spring - taking gold and gems from the bolt-hole and marching off to Eddensea or the Westlands. He could start with speculations on what was happening in Machi or reminiscences of his childhood, or what sort of drum fit best with which type of court dance. He could begin anywhere, and he found himself always coming back to the same series of justifications, and Cehmai agreeing by rote with each of them. The dark season spread out before them - only one another for company and only one conversation spoken over and over, its variations meaningless. Maati took another handful of snow and dropped it into the iron melting pan.
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