An Autumn War (The Long Price Quartet)

by Daniel Abraham

  There were other fires as well: pillars of black, rolling smoke that rose into the air like filthy clouds. The doors he passed as he walked down to the seafront were broken and splintered. The shutters at the windows clacked open and closed in the breeze. Often they passed wide swaths of half-dry blood on the ground or smeared on the rough white walls.

  The city had been home to over a hundred thousand people. It had fallen in a morning.

  Balasar had sent three forces in through the wide streets to the Khai’s palace, the poet’s house, the libraries. When those three things were destroyed, the signal went out—brass horns blaring the sack. When the signal reached the remaining forces, it was a storm of chaos. Some men ran for the inner parts of the city, hoping to find richer pickings. Others grabbed the first mercantile house they saw and took whatever was there to find—goods, gold, women. For the time it took the sun to travel the width of a man’s hand, Nantani was a scene from the old stories of hell as the soldiery took what they could for themselves.

  And then the second call came, and the looting stopped. Those few who were so maddened by greed or lust that they ignored the call were taken to their captains, relieved of what wealth they had grabbed, and then a fifth of them killed as an example to others. This was an army of discipline, and the free-for-all was over. Now the studied, considered dismantling of the city began.

  Quarter by quarter, street by street, the armies of Galt stripped the houses and basements, outbuildings and kitchens and coal stores. Sinja’s own men led each force, calling out in breaking voices that Nantani had fallen, that her people were permanently indentured to Galt, their belongings forfeit. And all the wealth of the city was stripped down, put on carts and wagons, and pulled to a great pile at the seafront. Some men fought and were killed. Some fled and were hunted down or ignored, at the whim of the soldiers who found them. And the great blackening dome of jade sang out its grief and mourning.

  Sinja caught sight of the pavilion erected by the growing pile of treasure. The banners of Galt and Gice hung from the bar that topped the fluttering canvas. Sinja and the soldiers Balasar Gice had sent to collect him strode to it. At the seafront, ships stood ready to receive what had once been Nantani, and was now the fortune of Galt. Balasar stood at a writing desk, consulting with a clerk over a ledger. The general still wore his armor—embroidered silk as thick as three fingers together.

  Sinja had seen its like before. Armor that would stop a spear or a sword cut, but weighed likely half as much as the man who wore it. And still when Balasar caught sight of them and walked forward, hand outstretched to Sinja, there was no weariness in him.

  “Captain Ajutani,” Balasar said, his hand clasping Sinja’s, “come sit with me.”

  Sinja took a pose appropriate for a guard to his commander. It wasn’t quite the appropriate thing, but it came near enough for the general to take its sense. Sinja walked behind the man to a low table where a bottle of wine stood open, two perfect porcelain wine bowls glowing white at its side. Balasar waved the attendant away and poured the wine himself. Sinja accepted a bowl and sat across from him.

  “It was nicely done,” Sinja said, gesturing with his free hand toward the city. “Well-managed and quick.”

  Balasar looked up, almost as if noticing the streets and warehouses for the first time. Sinja thought a hint of a smile touched the general’s lips, but it was gone as soon as it came. The wine was rich and left Sinja’s mouth feeling almost clean.

  “It was competent,” Balasar agreed. “But it can’t have been easy. For you and your men.”

  “I didn’t lose one of them,” Sinja said. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a campaign start where we took a city and didn’t lose anyone.”

  “This is a different sort of war than the usual,” Balasar said. And there, in the pale eyes, Sinja saw the ghosts. The general wasn’t at ease, however casual he chose to be with his wine. It was an interesting fact, and Sinja put it at the back of his mind.

  “I wanted to ask after your men.”

  “Have there been complaints?”

  “Not at all. Every report suggests that they did their work admirably. But this wasn’t the adventure they expected.”

  “They expected the women they raped to look less like their sisters, that’s truth,” Sinja said. “And honestly, I expect we’ll lose some. I don’t know how it is in Galt, sir, but when I’ve taken a green company into battle the first time, we always lose some.”

  “Inexperience,” Balasar said, agreeing.

  “No, sir. I don’t mean the enemy spits a few, though that’s usually true as well. I mean there are always a few who came into the work with epics in their heads. Great battles, honor, glory. All that pig shit. Once they see what a battlefield or a sacked town really looks like, they wake up. Half these boys are still licking off the caul. Some of them will think better and sneak off.”

  “And how do you plan to address the problem?”

  “Let them go,” Sinja said and shrugged. “We haven’t seen a fight yet, but before this is finished, we will. When it happens I’d rather have twenty soldiers than thirty men looking for a reason to retreat.”

  The general frowned, but he also nodded. At the edge of the pier, half a hundred seagulls took to the air at once, their cries louder than the waves. They wheeled once over the ships and then settled again, just where they had been.

  “Unless you have a different opinion, sir,” Sinja said.

  “Do this,” Balasar said, looking up from under his brow. “Go to them. Explain to them that I will never turn against my men. But if they leave me…if they leave my service, they aren’t my men any longer. And if I find them again, I won’t be lenient.”

  Sinja scratched his chin, the stubble just growing in, and felt a smile growing in his mind.

  “I can see that they understand, sir,” he said. “And it might stop some of the ones who’d choose to hang up their swords. But if there’s someone you feel isn’t loyal, one of my men that you think isn’t yours, I’d recommend you kill him now. There’s no room on a campaign like this for someone who’ll take up arms against the man that pays his wage.”

  Balasar nodded, leaning back in his chair.

  “I think we understand each other,” he said.

  “Let’s be certain,” Sinja said, and put his hands open and palms-down on the table between them. “I’m a mercenary, and to judge by that pile of silk and cedar chests you’re about to ship back to Galt, you’re the man who’s got the money to pay my contract. If I’ve given you reason to think there’s more happening than that, I’d rather we cleared it up now.”

  Balasar chuckled. It was a warm sound. That was good.

  “Are you ever subtle?” Balasar asked.

  “If I’m paid to be,” Sinja said. “I’ve had a bad experience working for someone who thought I might look better with a knife-shaped hole in my belly, sir, and I’d rather not repeat it. Have I done something to make you question my intentions?”

  Balasar considered him. Sinja met his gaze.

  “Yes,” Balasar said. “You have. But it’s nothing I would be comfortable hanging you for. Not yet at least. The poet, when you killed him. He addressed you in the familiar. Sinja-kya.”

  “Men begging for their lives sometimes develop an inaccurate opinion of how close they are to the men holding the blades,” Sinja said, and the general had the good manners to blush. “I understand your position, sir. I’ve been living under the Khaiem for a long time now. You don’t know my history, and if you did, it wouldn’t help you. I’ve broken contracts before, and I won’t lie about it. But I would appreciate it if we could treat each other professionally on this.”

  Balasar sighed.

  “You’ve managed to shame me, Captain Ajutani.”

  “I won’t brag about that if you’ll agree to be certain you’ve a decent cause to kill me before taking action,” Sinja said.

  “Agreed,” Balasar said. “But your men? I meant what I said about
them.”

  “I’ll be sure they understand,” Sinja said, then swigged down the last of his wine, took a pose appropriate to taking leave of a superior, and walked back into the streets of the fallen city, hoping that it wouldn’t be clear from his stride that his knees felt loose. Not that a sane measure of fear could be held against him, but there was pride to consider. And someone was watching him. He could be damned sure of that. So he walked straight and calm through the streets and the smoke and the wailing of the survivors until he reached the camp outside the last trailing building of Nantani. The tents were far from empty—the thugs and free armsmen of Machi didn’t all have a stomach for looting Nantani—but he didn’t speak to his men until just after nightfall.

  They had a fire burning, though the summer night wasn’t cold. The light of it made the tents glow gold and red. The men were quiet. The boasting and swaggering that the Galts were doing didn’t have a place here. It would have if the burning city had been made from gray Westlands stone. Sinja stood at the front on a plank set up on chairs in a makeshift dais. He wanted them to see him. The scouts he’d sent out to assure that the conversation was private returned and took a confirming pose. If General Gice had set a watch over him, they’d gone to their own camps or else come from within his own company. He’d done what he could about the first, and the second there was no protection for. He raised his hands.

  “So most of what we’ve done since the spring opened has been walk,” he said. “Well, we’re in summer now, and you’ve seen what war looks like. It’s not the war I expected, that’s truth. But it’s the one we’ve got, and you can all thank the gods that we’re on the side most likely to win. But don’t think that because this went well, this is over with. It’s a long walk still ahead of us.”

  He sighed and shifted his weight, the plank wobbling a little under his feet. A log in the fire popped, firing sparks up into the darkness like an omen.

  “There are a few of you right now who are thinking of leaving. Don’t…Quiet now! All of you! Don’t lie to yourselves about it and don’t lie to me. This is the first taste of war most of you’ve seen. And some of you might have had family or friends in Nantani. I did. But here’s what I have to say to you: Don’t do it. Right now it looks like our friends the Galts can’t be stopped. All the gods know there’s not a fighting force anywhere in the cities that could face them, that’s truth. But there’s worse things for an army to face than another army. Look at the size of this force, the simple number of men. It can’t carry the food it needs with it. It can’t haul that much water. We have to rely on the land we’re covering. The low towns, the cities. The game we can hunt, the trees and coal we can feed into those traveling kilns of theirs. The water we can get from the rivers.

  “If the cities North of here can organize—if they can burn the food and the trees so we have to spend more of our time finding supplies, if they foul the wells so that we can’t move far from the rivers, if they get small, fast bands together to harass our hunting parties and scouts—we could still be in for hell’s own fight. We took Nantani by surprise. That won’t happen twice. And that’s why I need every man among you here, keeping that from happening. And besides that, any of you that leave, the general’s going to hunt down like low-town dogs and slit your bellies for you.”

  Sinja paused, looking out at the earnest, despairing faces of the boys he’d led from Machi. He felt old. He rarely felt old, but now he did.

  “Don’t be stupid,” he said, and got down from the plank.

  The men raised a late and halfhearted cheer. Sinja waved it away and headed back to his tent. Overhead, the stars shone where the smoke didn’t obscure them. The cooks had made chicken and pepper rice. Stinging flies were out, and, to Sinja’s mild disgust, Nantani seemed to be a haven for grass ticks. He spent a quiet, reflective time plucking the insects out of his skin and cracking them with his thumbnails. It was near midnight when he heard the roaring crash, thunder rolling suddenly from the ruined city, and then silence. The dome had fallen, then.

  How many of his men would know what the sound had meant, he wondered. And how many would understand that he’d given them all the strategy for slowing the Galts, point by point by point. And how many would have snuck away to the North by morning, thinking they were being clever. But he could tell the general he’d done as he was told, and no man present would be able to say otherwise. So maybe he could lull the general back into trusting him for a while longer at least. And maybe Kiyan’s husband would find a good way to make use of the time Sinja won for him.

  “Ah, Kiyan-kya,” he said to the night and the northern stars, “look what you’ve done. You’ve made me into a politician.”

  “MOST HIGH,” Ashua Radaani said, taking a pose that was an apology and a refusal, “this is…this is folly. I understand that the poets are concerned, but you have to see that we have nothing that supports their suspicion. We’re in summer. It’s only a few weeks before we have to harvest the spring crops and plant for autumn. The men you’re asking for…we can’t just send away our laborers.”

  Otah frowned. It was not a response his father would have gotten. The other Khaiem would have raised a hand, made a speech, perhaps only shifted hands into a pose asking for the speaker to repeat himself. The men and horses and wagons of grain and cheese and salt-packed meats would simply have appeared. But not for Otah Machi, the upstart who had not won his chair, who had married a wayhouse keeper and produced only one son and that one sickly. He felt the urgency like a hand pressing at his back, but he forced himself to remain calm. He wouldn’t have what he wanted by blustering now. He smiled sweetly at the round, soft man with his glittering rings and calculating eyes.

  “Your huntsmen, then,” Otah said. “Bring your huntsmen. And come yourself. Ride with me, Ashua-cha, and we’ll go see whether there’s any truth to this thing. If not, you can bear witness yourself, and reassure the court.”

  The young man’s lips twisted into a half-smile.

  “Your offer is kind, Most High,” he said. “My huntsmen are yours. I will consult with my overseer. If my house can spare me, I would be honored to ride at your side.”

  “It would please me, Ashua-cha,” Otah said. “I leave in two days, and I look forward to your company.”

  “I will do all I can.”

  They finished the audience with the common pleasantries, and a servant girl showed the man out. Otah called for a bowl of tea and used the time to consider where he stood. If Radaani sent him a dozen huntsmen, that took the total to almost three hundred men. House Siyanti had offered up its couriers to act as scouts. None of the families of the utkhaiem had refused him; Daikani and old Kamau had even given him what he asked. The others dragged their feet, begged his forgiveness, compromised. If Radaani had backed him, the others would have fallen in line.

  And if he had thought Radaani was likely to, he’d have met with him first instead of last.

  It was the price, he supposed, of having played the game so poorly up to now. Had he been the man they expected him to be all these years—had he embraced the role he’d accepted and fathered a dozen sons on as many wives and assured the ritual bloodbath that marked the change of generations—they would have been more responsive now. But his own actions had called the forms of court into question, and now that he needed the traditions, he half-regretted having spent years defying them.

  The tea came in a bowl of worked silver carried on a pillow. The servant, a man perhaps twenty years older than Otah himself with a long, well-kept beard and one clouded eye, presented it to him with a grace born of long practice. This man had done much the same before Otah’s father, and perhaps his grandfather. The presentation of this bowl of tea might be the study and center of this man’s life. The thought made the tea taste worse, but Otah took as warm a pose of thanks as would be permitted between the Khai Machi and a servant, however faithful.

  Otah rose, gesturing to the doorway. One of his half-hundred attendants rushed forward, robes flo
wing like water over stones.

  “I’ll see him now,” Otah said. “In the gardens. And see we aren’t disturbed.”

  The sky was gray and ivory, the breeze from the south warm as breath and nearly as gentle. The cherry trees stood green—the pink of the blossoms gone, the crimson of the fruit not yet arrived. The thicker blossoms of high summer had begun to unfurl, rose and iris and sun poppy. The air was thick with the scent. Otah walked down the path, white gravel fine as salt crunching like snow under his feet. He found Maati sitting on the lip of a stone pool, gazing up at the great fountain. Twice as high as a man, the gods of order stood arrayed in bas-relief shaped from a single sheet of bronze. The dragons of chaos lay cowed beneath their greened feet. Water sluiced down the wall, clear until it touched the brows and exultant, upraised faces of the gods, and there it splattered white. Otah sat beside his old friend and considered.

  “The dragon’s not defeated,” Maati said. “Look. You see the third head from the left? It’s about to bite that woman’s calf. And the man on the end? The one who’s looking down? He’s lost his balance.”

  “I hadn’t noticed,” Otah said.

  “You should have another one made with the dragons on top. Just to remind people that it’s never over. Even when you think it’s done, there’s something waiting to surprise you.”

  Otah nodded, dipping his fingers into the dancing ripples of the pool. Gold and white koi darted toward his fingertips and then as quickly away.

  “I understand if you’re angry with me,” Otah said. “But I didn’t ask him. Nayiit came to me. He volunteered.”

  “Yes. Liat told me.”

  “He’s spent half a season in the Dai-kvo’s village. He knows it better than anyone but you or Cehmai.”

  Maati looked up. There was a darkness in his expression.

  “You’re right,” Maati said. “If this is the Galts and they’ve freed the andat, then protecting the Dai-kvo is critical. But it would be faster to send for him to come to us. We can build defenses here, train men. Prepare.”