An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet)

  “Something’s gone wrong with the binding,” Otah said. Cehmai took a pose of confirmation.

  “Please,” the poet said. “Come now. Hurry.”

  Otah didn’t pause to think; he went to the stairs, lifting the hem of his robes, and dropping down three steps at a time. It was four stories from the top of the warehouse to its bottom floor. Otah felt that he could hardly have gone there faster if he’d jumped over the building’s side.

  The space was eerie; shadows seemed to hang in the corners of the huge, empty room and the distant sound of voices in pain murmured and shrieked. Great symbols were chalked on the walls, and an ugly, disjointed script in Maati’s handwriting spelled out the binding. Otah knew little enough of the old grammars, but he picked out the words for womb, seed, and corruption. Three people stood in tableau at the top of the stair that led down to the tunnels. Maati stood, his hands at his sides, his expression blank. Otah’s belly went tight as sickness as he saw that the girl at Maati’s feet was Eiah. And the thing that cradled his daughter’s head turned to look at him. After a long moment, it drew breath and spoke.

  “Otah-kya,” it said. Its voice was low and beautiful, heavy with amusement and contempt. The familiarity of it was dizzying.

  “Seedless?”

  “It isn’t,” Maati said. “It’s not him.”

  “What’s happened?” Otah asked. When Maati didn’t answer, Otah shook the man’s sleeve. “Maati. What’s going on?”

  “He’s failed,” the andat said. “And when a poet fails, he pays a price for it. Only Maati-kvo is clever. He’s found a way to make it so that failure can’t touch him. He’s found a trick.”

  “I don’t understand,” Otah said.

  “My protection,” Maati said, his voice rich with despair. “It doesn’t stop the price being paid. It only can’t kill me.”

  The andat took a pose that agreed, as a teacher might approve of a clever student. From the stairwell, Otah heard footsteps and the voice of the Khai Cetani. The first of the servant men hurried into the room, robes flapping like a flag in high wind, before he saw them and stopped dead and silent.

  “What is it doing?” Otah asked. “What’s it done?”

  “You can ask me, Most High,” Sterile said. “I have a voice.”

  Otah looked into the black, inhuman eyes. Eiah whimpered, and the thing stroked her brow gently, comforting and threatening both. Otah felt the urge to pull Eiah away from the thing, as if it were a spider or a snake.

  “What have you done to my daughter?” he asked.

  “What would you guess, Most High?” Sterile asked. “I am the reflection of a man whose son is not his son. All his life, Maati-kya has been bent double by the questions of fathers and sons. What do you imagine I would do?”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’ve soured her womb,” the andat said. “Scarred it. And I’ve done the same to every woman in the cities of the Khaiem. Machi, Chaburi-Tan, Saraykeht. All of them. Young and old, highborn and low. And I’ve gelded every Galtic man. From Kirinton to Far Galt to right here at your doorstep.”

  “Papa-kya,” Eiah said. “It hurts.”

  Otah knelt, drawing his daughter to him. Her mouth was thin with pain. The andat opened its hand, the long fingers gesturing him to take her. The Khai Cetani was at Otah’s side now, his breath heavy and his hands trembling. Otah took Eiah in his arms.

  “Your children will be theirs,” it said. “The next generation will have the Khaiem for fathers and feed from Galtic breasts, or else it will not be. Your history will be written by half-breeds, or it won’t be written.”

  “Maati,” Otah said, but his old friend only shook his head.

  “I can’t stop it,” Maati said. “It’s already happened.”

  “You should never have been a poet,” Sterile said, standing as it spoke. “You failed the tests. The strength to stand on your own, and the compassion to turn away from cruelty. Those are what the Dai-kvo asked of you.”

  “I did my best,” Maati breathed.

  “You were told,” it said and turned to Otah. “You went to him. When you were both boys, you warned him that the school wasn’t as it seemed. You told him it was a test. You gave the game away. And because he knew, he passed. He would have failed without you, and this could never have happened.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Otah said.

  “It doesn’t matter what you think,” it said. “Only what he knows. Maati-kvo made an instrument of slaughter, and he made it in fear; that makes it a failure of both his lessons. A generation of women will know him as the man who stole motherhood from them. The men of Galt will hate him for unmanning them. You, Maati Vaupathai, will be the one who took their children from them.”

  “I did …” Maati began, and his voice fell to nothing. He sat down, his legs seeming to collapse beneath him. Otah tried to speak, but his throat was dry. It was Eiah, cradled in his arms, who broke the silence.

  “Stop it,” she said. “Leave him alone. He never did anything mean to you.”

  The andat smiled. Its teeth were pale as snow and sharp.

  “He did something mean to you, Eiah-kya,” it said. “You’ll grow to know how badly he’s hurt you. It may take you years to understand. It may take a lifetime.”

  “I don’t care!” Eiah yelled. “You leave Uncle Maati alone!”

  And as if the words themselves were power, it vanished. The dark robes fell empty to the stone floor. The only sounds were Eiah’s pained breath and the moaning of the city. The Khai Cetani licked his lips and looked uneasily at Otah. Maati stared at the ground between his hands.

  “They’ll never forgive this,” Cehmai said. “The Galts will kill us to a man.”

  Otah smoothed a hand over his daughter’s brow. Confronting the andat seemed to have taken what strength she had. Her face was pale, and he could see the small twitching in her body that spoke of fresh pain. He kissed her gently where her forehead met her hair, and she put her arms around him, whimpering so softly that only he could hear it. There was blood soaking through her robe just below where the cloth widened at her hips.

  “No. They won’t. Cehmai,” Otah said, his voice seeming to come from far away. He was surprised to hear how calm he sounded. “Take Maati. Get out of the city. It won’t be safe for either of you here.”

  “It won’t be safe for us anywhere,” Cehmai said. “We could make for the Westlands when spring comes. Or Eddensea—”

  “Go now, and don’t tell me where. I don’t want the option of finding you. Do you understand?” He looked up at Cehmai’s wide, startled eyes. “I have my daughter here, and that’s bad enough. When I see my wife, I don’t want you anywhere I can find you.”

  Cehmai opened his mouth, as if to speak, and then closed it again and silently took a pose that accepted Otah’s command. Maati looked up, his eyes brimming and red. There was no begging in his expression, no plea. Only remorse and resignation. If he could have moved without disturbing Eiah, Otah would have embraced the man, comforted him as best he could. And still he would have sent Maati away. He could see that his old friend knew that. Maati’s thick hands took a formal pose of leave-taking, appropriate to the beginning of a long journey or else a funeral. Otah took one that accepted the apology he had not offered.

  “The Galts,” the Khai Cetani said. “What about the Galts?”

  Otah reached his arms under Eiah, one under her shoulder blades, the other at her knees, and lifted her into his lap. Then, straining, he stood. She was heavier than he remembered. It had been years since he had carried her. She had been smaller then, and he had been younger.

  “We’ll find the trumpeter and call the attack,” Otah said. “Listen to them. If they’re as bad as she is, they’ll barely be able to fight. We’ll drive them back out of the city if we do it now.”

  The Khai Cetani’s eyes brightened, his shoulders pulled back. With a pit dog’s grin, he took a pose that mirrored Cehmai’s. The command accepted. Otah nodded.

&n
bsp; “Hai! You!” the Khai Cetani yelled toward the servants, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Get the trumpeter. Have him sound the attack. And a blade! Find me a blade, and another for the Emperor!”

  “No,” Otah said. “Not for me. I have my daughter to see to.”

  And before anyone could make the mistake of objecting, Otah turned his back on them all, carrying Eiah to the stairway, and then down into darkness.

  What would have happened, Balasar wondered, if he had not tried?

  It had been a thing from nightmare. Balasar had moved his men like stones on a playing board, shifting them from street to street, building to building. He had kept them as sheltered as possible from the inconstant, killing rain of stones and arrows that fell from the towers. The square that he chose for the rallying point was only a few streets south of the opening where he expected to lead them down into the soft belly of the city, and difficult for the towers to reach. The snow was above his ankles now, but Balasar didn’t feel the cold. His blood was singing to him, and he could not keep from grinning. The first of the forces from the palaces was falling back to join his own, the body of his army growing thick. He paced among them, bracing his men and letting himself be seen. It was in their eyes too: the glow of the coming victory, the relief that they would have shelter from the cold. That winter would not take them.

  He formed them into ranks, reminded the captains of the tactics they’d planned for fighting in the tunnels. It was to be slow and systematic. The important thing was always to have an open airway; the locals should never be allowed to close them in and kill them with smoke or fire. There would be no hurry—the line mustn’t spread thin. Balasar could see in their faces that discipline would hold.

  A few local fighters made assaults on the square and were cut down in their turn. Brave men, and stupid. The trumpets of the enemy had sounded out, giving away their positions with their movements, their signals a cacophony of amateur coordination. The white sky was slowly growing gray—the sun setting or else the clouds growing thicker. Balasar didn’t know. He’d lost track of time’s passage. It hardly mattered. His men stood ready. His men. The army that he’d led half across the world to this last battle. He could not have been more proud of them all if they’d been his sons.

  The pain came without warning. He saw it pass through the men like wind stirring grass, and then it found Balasar himself. It was agonizing, embarrassing, humiliating. And even as he struggled to keep his feet, he knew what it meant.

  The andat had been bound. The enemy had turned some captive spirit against them. They’d been assaulted, but they were not dead. Hurt, leaning on walls with teeth clenched in pain, formations forgotten and tears steaming on their cheeks. Their cries and groans were louder than a landslide, and Balasar knew his own voice was part of it. But they were not dead. Not yet.

  “Rally!” Balasar had cried. “To me! Form up!”

  And god bless them, they had tried. Discipline had held even as they shambled, knowing as he did that this was the power they had come to destroy, loosed against them at last. Shrieking in pain, and still they made their formations. They were crippled but undefeated.

  What would have happened, he thought, if he had not tried? What would the world have become if he had listened to his tutor, all those years ago, heard the tales of the andat and the war that ripped their Empire apart, and had merely shuddered? There were monster stories enough for generations of boys, and each of them as frightening as the next. If the young Balasar Gice hadn’t taken that particular story to heart, if he had not thought This will be my work; I will make the world safe from these things, how would it have gone? Who would Little Ott have been if he hadn’t followed Balasar out to die in the desert? Who might Coal have married? What would Mayarsin have named his daughters and sons?

  He heard the attack before he saw it. There was no form to it—men waving knives and axes pouring toward them like a handful of dried peas thrown against a wall; first one, then a few, and then all the rest in a clump. Balasar called to his men, and a rough shout rose from them. It was ridiculous. He should have won. This band of desperate fools didn’t know how to fight, didn’t know how to coordinate. Half of them didn’t know how to hold their weapons without putting their own fingers at risk. Balasar should have won.

  The armies came together with a crash. The smell of blood filled the air, the sound of brawling. And more of them came, boiling up out of the ground and charging down the streets. The humiliating pain made Balasar’s every step uncertain. Every time he tried to stand at his full height, his knees threatened to give way beneath him.

  All the ghosts that had followed him, all the men he had sacrificed. All the lives he had spent because the world was his to save. They had led to this comic-opera melee. The streets were white with snow, black where the dark cobbles showed through, red with fresh-spilled blood. The men of Machi and Cetani ran through the square barking like dogs. The army of Galt, the finest fighting force the world had ever seen, tried to hold them off while half-bent in pain.

  It should have been a comedy. Nothing so ridiculous should have the right to inspire only horror.

  They will kill us all, Balasar thought. Every man among us will be dead by morning if this doesn’t stop.

  He called the retreat, and his men stumbled and shuffled to comply. Street by street, the archers held back the advancing forces with ill-aimed arrows and bolts. Footmen stumbled, weeping, and were dragged by men who would themselves stumble shortly and be dragged along in turn. The sky grew dark, the snow fell thicker. By the time Balasar reached the buildings in the south of the city that he’d ordered taken that morning, it was almost impossible to see across the width of a street. The snow had drawn a curtain across the city to hide his shame.

  The army of Machi also fell back, retreating, Balasar supposed, into their warm holes and warrens and leaving him and his men to the mercy of the night. There was little food, few fires, and a chorus throughout the black night of men weeping in pain and despair. When Balasar dragged himself away from the little fire in the cooking grate of the house in which he’d taken shelter and relieved himself out the back door, his piss was black with blood and stank of bad meat.

  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.