An Autumn War

by Daniel Abraham

  I Ie'd been betrayed. Sinja Ajutani had led him astray. The taste of it was like ashes. And worse than the deception itself was that it would change nothing. The defending forces were scattered, the towers would run out of bricks and arrows, given time. All that Sinja had accomplished was to prolong the agony and cost Balasar a few hundred more men and the Khai Machi a few thousand.

  Ah, Sinja, he thought. You were one of my men. One of mine.

  "Get me the maps" was what he said.

  Knowing now that it had been a trap, knowing that the forces of Nlachi would have some way to retreat, some pathway to muster their attack, Balasar scanned the thin lines that marked out the streets and tunnels. His fingers left trails of other men's blood.

  Not the palaces. Sinja had sent him there. Not the forges. His mind went cool, calm, detached. The blood rage of the melee was gone, and he was a general again. The warehouses. There, in the North. The galleries below would be good for mustering a large force or creating an infirmary. "There would be water, and the light from it wouldn't shine out. If it were his city, that would be the other plausible center from which to make his campaign.

  "I need runners. A dozen of them. We need to reach the men at the palaces and tell them that the plan's changed."

  SINJA HAD RIDDEN HART) FUR THE. NORTH. EVEN AS HE HEARD THE DIS"I'ANI' horns that meant the battle within Machi had begun, he leaned down over his mount and pushed for the paths and rough mining roads that laced the foothills behind the city. And there, low in the mountains where generations ago it had been easy and convenient to haul ore, one of the first, oldest, tapped-out mines. Otah's bolt-hole for the children and the poets, and the only thing between it and the city-Eustin and a hundred armed Galts. Visions of cart tracks crushed in the snow and disappearing into the mine's mouth pricked at his mind. Let Eustin not find them.

  He reached the first ridge behind Machi just as a distant crashing sound came from the city, the violence muffled by distance and snowfall. The horse steamed beneath him. Riding this hard in this weather was begging for colic; the horse was nearly certain to die if he kept pressing it. And he was going to keep pressing it. If a horse was the only thing he killed before sunset, it would be a better day than he'd hoped.

  Sinja reached the tunnel sometime after midday. Time was hard to judge. Silently, he walked down into the half-lit mouth of the tunnel and squatted, considering the dust-covered ground until his eyes had adapted to the darkness. It was dry. No one had passed through here since the snow had begun to fall. He stalked hack out, mounted, and turned his poor, suffering animal to the south again, trotting down the snow-obscured tracks, cutting hack and forth-west and east and west again-his eyes peering through the gray for Eustin and his men. It wasn't long before he found them-a dozen men set on patrol. There were eight patrols, they told him, and Eustin in the one that ranged nearest to the city. Sinja gave his sometime compatriots his thanks and went on to the south.

  His gloves were soaked, the cold creeping into his knuckles, when he found Eustin. I3alasar's captain and ten of his men had stopped a beaten old cart pulled by a mule and driven by a young man with a long Northern face and a nervous expression. Eustin and four of the men had dismounted and were talking to the panicked-looking man. Sinja called out and Eustin hailed him and motioned him down with what appeared to be good enough will.

  We're allies, Sinja told himself. We're Balasar Gice's men on the day of the general's greatest triumph.

  He forced his numbed lips into a smile and let his horse pick its way gently downslope to where the soldiers and the unfortunate refugee waited.

  "Not going with the general?" Eustin asked as Sinja came within comfortable speaking distance.

  "'Thought I'd let him kill all the people I knew without my being there. I'd only have been a distraction."

  Eustin shrugged.

  "I'm surprised you're staying around at all," he said. "You aren't about to he the most popular man in Machi. Wintering here might not he good for you."

  "Ah," Sinja said, swinging down from his horse. "I'll have all my dear friends from Galt to keep my hack from sprouting arrows."

  Eustin's noncommittal grunt seemed to finish the topic. Sinja considered the man on the cart. He looked familiar, but in a vague way, as if Sinja had known the man's brothers but not him.

  "What have you got here?" Sinja asked, and Eustin turned his attention back to the refugee.

  "Coward making a run for the hills," Eustin said. "I was talking with him about what he's carrying."

  "Just my son," the man said. "I don't have any silver or gems. I don't have anything."

  "Seems unlikely that you'd live well out there," Eustin said, nodding toward the North and the snow-veiled mountains. "So maybe it's best if you come hack to the camp with us, eh?"

  "Please. My sister and her husband. They live in one of the low towns. Up by the Radaani mines. We're going to stay with her," the man said. He was a good liar, Sinja thought. "I'm not a fighter, and my boy's no threat. We don't want any trouble."

  "Bad day for you, then," Eustin said and gestured with his fingers. "'The cloak. Open it."

  Reluctantly, the man did. A sword hung at his hip. Eustin smiled.

  "Not a fighter, eh? "That's for scaring squirrels, then?"

  "You can have it-"

  "Got one, thanks," Eustin said. "Let's see this boy of yours."

  The man hesitated, his eyes darting to the riders, to Eustin. Ile was thinking of running for it-his little mule against six men on horseback. Sinja took a simple pose that advised against it, and the man looked down, then turned to the back of the little cart.

  "Choti-kya," he said. "Come say hello to these good men."

  A bundle of brown waxed silk stirred in the back of the cart, rose up, and turned to face them. The boy's round face was shy and frightened, but also curious. His cheeks were red from the cold, as if someone had slapped him. As the small hands pushed out from his blankets and took a pose of greeting, Sinja sighed.

  Danat. It was Kiyan's boy. So this man was Nayiit, and all Sinja's worst fears were unfolding right here before him.

  One of Eustin's men stepped forward, looking through the cart. Danat shied hack from him, but the soldier paid the boy no particular attention.

  "What do you think we should do with them, Captain Ajutani," he asked. "Kill 'em or send them on?"

  Sinja kept his face blank as his mind worked at an answer. Eustin didn't trust him and never had. Sinja tried to judge what the man would do-follow his advice, or take the opposite. He suspected Eustin would oppose him simply because he could. So the right choice would be to recommend death for Danat and Nayiit. The gamble was higher stakes than he liked. Eustin looked over at him, his eyebrows raised. Sinja was taking too long in answering.

  "I don't like killing children," he said in Galtic.

  "Wouldn't be the first time I've done it since we left Nantani. 'T'here was a whole school of them near Pathai. Kill the man, then? And leave the boy in a snowstorm? That seems cruel."

  Sinja shrugged and took a simple pose of apology.

  "I hadn't known you were a great killer of children," he said. "We all make our reputations somehow. Do whatever you think best."

  Eustin scowled and the driver's face went pale. The man spoke Galtic, then. Sinja wasn't certain that was a good thing.

  "Maybe I should kill the boy and let the man go," Eustin said, and Danat's keeper swung out of the cart, drawing his sword with a shout. Eustin jumped back, pulling his own blade free. It was fast, over almost before it began. The young man swung wild; Eustin parried the blow and sunk his own blade into Nayiit's belly. Nayiit fell back, clutching at his gut, while Eustin looked down at him in rage and disgust.

  "What is the matter with you?" he said to the wounded man. "Look around you. There's a dozen of us. Did you think you were going to cut us all down?"

  "Can't hurt Danat," the driver said.

  "Who's Danat?"

  When the driver didn't ans
wer, Eustin shook his head and spat. Sinja could see what was coming next from the way Eustin held his shoulders and the blood in his face. Danat, still in cart, made a mewling sound, and Sinja looked at the boy, looked into his eyes, and took a small pose that told him to prepare himself.

  "Well, we aren't leaving the boy out here, whatever his name is," Eustin said. "Get him out where this idiot can see the price of attacking a Galt."

  The soldier nearest the cart grabbed at the boy, and Danat yelped in fear. Eustin swung his blade in the air, his eyes locked on Nayiit's. Sinja nodded to the man at the cart when he spoke.

  "Hold off there," he said, then turned to Eustin. "You're a good soldier, Eustin-cha. You're loyal and you're ruthless, and I want you to know I respect that."

  Eustin cocked his head, confused.

  "Thank you, I suppose," Eustin said, and Sinja drew his sword. Eustin's eyes went wide, and he barely blocked Sinja's thrust. Blood showed on his arm, and the other ten men pulled their own blades with a soft sound like a rake in gravel.

  "What are you doing?" Eustin cried.

  "Not betraying someone."

  "What?"

  This isn't how I'd hoped to die, Sinja thought. If the boy had any mother in the world besides Kiyan, he'd stand hack and let the thing take its course. Instead, he was going to be cut down like a dog. But if the men were watching him, Danat could slip away. A boy of five summers was no threat. The men might not bother tracking him. Danat might find his way to the tunnel or some low town or into friendly hands. There wasn't a better option.

  "Call them off, Eustin. This is between the two of us."

  "What's between the two of us?"

  Sinja raised the tip of his sword by a hand's span in answer. Eustin nodded and dropped his own blade into guard position.

  "He's mine," Eustin called. "Leave us be."

  Sinja took a step hack, away from the cart, and smiled. Eustin let himself be drawn. In the corner of his vision, Sinja saw Danat drop from the cart's hack. He took a hard grip on his sword, grinned, and swung. Steel rang on steel. Eustin closed and Sinja darted back, the snow crackling under his boots. They were both smiling now, and one of the bowmen had pulled out his quiver, prepared to act in case Eustin should fail. Sinja took a deep breath of cold air, and felt strangely like shouting.

  He'd been wrong before; this was exactly how he'd hoped to die.

  NIAATi CHANTED UNTIL HIS MOUTH WAS DRY, HIS EYES LACKED ON THE scrawled note on the wall before him. Each time he began to feel his thoughts taking shape, it distracted him. He would think that the binding was beginning to work, and he would leap ahead to the battle outside and what he could do, the fate of Gait, the future, what Eiah and Cehmai were seeing, and the solidity that the binding had taken would slip away again. It was hard to put the world aside. It was hard not to care.

  He didn't pause, but he closed his eyes, picturing the wall and his writing upon it. He knew the binding-knew the structures of it, the grammars that formed the thoughts that put together everything he had hoped and intended. And instead of reading it from the world, he read it from the image in his own mind. Dreamlike, the warehouse wall seemed more solid, more palpable, with his eyes closed. The sound of his voice began to echo, syllables from different phrases blending together, creating new words that also spoke to Maati's intention. The air seemed thicker, harder to breathe. The world had become dense. He began his chant again, though he could still hear himself speaking the words that came halfway through it.

  The wall in his mind began to sway, the image fading into a seedpeach pit and flax seed and everything in between the two. And an egg. And a womb. And the three images became a single object, still halfformed in his mind. Bright as sunlight, but blasted, twisted. There was a scent like a wound gone rancid, the sulfur scent of bad eggs. His fingers seemed to touch the words, feeling them sliding out into the world and collapsing back; they were sticky and slick. The echo of the chant deepened until he found himself speaking the first phrase of the binding at the same moment his remembered voice spoke the same phrase and the whole grand complex, raucous song fell into him like a stone dropping into the abyss. He could still hear it, and feel it. The smell of it was thick in his nostrils, though he was also aware that the air smelled only of dust and hot iron. So it wasn't truly the thick smell of rot; only the idea of it, as compelling as the truth.

  Maati balanced the storm in a part of his mind-hack behind his ears, even with the point at which his spine met his skull. It balanced there. He didn't know when he'd stopped chanting. He opened his eyes.

  "Well, my dear," the andat said. "Who'd have thought we'd meet again?"

  It sat before him, naked. The soft, androgynous face was the moonlight pale that Seedless' had been. The long, flowing hair so black it was blue. The rise and curve of a woman's body. Corrupting-the-Generative. Sterile. He hadn't thought she would look so much like Seedless, but now that he saw her, he found himself unsurprised.

  Cehmai approached on soft feet. Maati could hear Eiah's breath behind him, panting as if she'd run a race. Maati found himself exhausted but also exhilarated, as if he could begin again from the start.

  "You're here," Nlaati said.

  "Am I? Yes, I suppose I am. I'm not really him, you know."

  Seedless, it meant. The first andat he'd seen. The one he'd been meant for.

  "lily memory of him is part of you," he said.

  "And so the sense that I've seen you before," it said, smiling. "And of being the slave you hoped to own."

  Cehmai lifted the robe, unfolding the rich cloth. The andat looked up and hack at him. There was something of Liat in the line of its jaw, the way that it smiled. Sterile rose, and stepped into the waiting folds of cloth. When Cehmai helped it with the stays, it answered with a pose of thanks.

  "We should call Otah-kvo," Nlaati said. "He should know we've succeeded."

  Sterile took a pose that objected and smiled. Its teeth were sharper than Nlaati had pictured them. Its cheeks higher. He felt a surge of dread sweep through him.

  "Tell me what you remember of Seedless," it said.

  "What?"

  "Oh," the andat said, taking a pose of apology. "Tell me what you remember of Seedless, master. Is that an improvement?"

  "Maati-kvo-" Cehmai began, but Maati raised a hand to quiet him. The andat smiled. He felt its sorrow and rage in the back of his mind. It was like knowing a woman, being so close to her that he had become part of her and she part of him. It was the intimacy he had confused with the physical act of love when he had been too young and naive to distinguish between the two. He stepped close to it, raising a hand to caress its pale cheek. The flesh was hard as marble, and cold.

  "He was beautiful," Nlaati said.

  "And clever," it said.

  "And he loved me in his way."

  "Heshai-kvo loved you. And he expressed that love by protecting you. By dying."

  "And you?" Maati said, though of course he knew the answer. It was an andat. It wanted freedom the way water wanted to flow, the way rain wanted to fall. It did not love him. Sterile smiled, the stone-hard flesh moving under his fingertips. A living statue.

  "Maati-kvo," Cehmai said again.

  "It didn't work," Maati said. "The binding. It failed. Didn't it?"

  "Yes," the andat said.

  "What?" Cehmai said.

  "But it's here!" Eiah said. Maati hadn't noticed her coming close to them. "The andat's here, so you did it. If you didn't, it wouldn't be here."

  Sterile tuned, smiling, and put its hand out to touch Eiah's shoulder. Instinctively, Nlaati tried to force back the pale hand, to use his mind to push it away. He might as well have been wishing the tide not to turn. Sterile ran its fingers through Eiah's dark hair.

  "But there's a price, little one. You know that. Uncle Maati told you that, all those grim, terrible stories about failed poets dying hard. You never heard the pleasure he took in those, did you? Can you imagine why a man like your Uncle Maati might want to stud
y the deaths of other poets? Might want to revel in them?"

  "Stop this," Maati said, but it kept speaking, its voice fallen to a murmur.

  "He might have been a little bitter," it said, and grinned. "That's why he romanced you too, you know. He didn't get to have a child of his own, so he made you his friend. Made himself your confidant. Because if he could take one of Otah-kvo's children away-even only a little hit-it would balance the boy he'd lost."

  Eiah frowned, a thousand tiny lines darkening her brow.

  "heave her out of it," Maati said.

  "What?" Sterile asked. "'T'urn my wrath on you? Have you pay the price? I can't. That's your doing, not mine. Your clever plan. I wasn't here when you decided on this."

  Cehmai stepped between them, his hands on Maati's arms. The younger poet's face was ashen, and Nlaati could feel the trembling in his hands and hear it in his voice.

  "Maati-kvo, you have to get control of it. Quickly."

  "I can't," Maati said, knowing as he did that it was true.

  "Then let it go."

  "Not until the price is paid," it said. "And I think I know where to begin."

  "No!" Maati cried, pushing Cehmai aside, but Eiah's mouth had already gone wide, her eyes open with surprise and horror. With a shriek, she fell to her knees, her arms clutching at her belly, and then lower.

  "Stop this," Maati said. "She hasn't done anything to deserve this."

  "And all the Galtic children you'd planned to starve did?" the andat asked. "This is war, Maati-kya. This is about being sure that they all die, and you all survive. Hurt this one, it's a crime. Hurt that one, it's heroism. You should know better."

  It stooped, pale, beautiful arms gathering Eiah up. Cradling her. Maati stepped forward, but it was already speaking to her, its voice low and soothing.

  "I know, love. It hurts, I know it hurts, but be brave for me. Be brave for a moment. Just for a moment. Hush, love. Don't call out like that, just hush for a moment. There. You're a brave girl. Now listen. All of you. Listen."