Seasons of War

by Daniel Abraham

  Dawn was a brightening of clouds, east as gray as west. They struck camp, loaded their wagons, and once again made for the Dai-kvo. The flow of refugees seemed to have stopped. No new faces appeared before them - no horses, no men on foot. Perhaps the rain and mud had stopped them. Perhaps something else. Otah rode near the vanguard, the scouts arriving, riding for a time at his side, and then departing again. It was midmorning and the sun was still hidden behind the low gray ceiling of the world when Nayiit rode up on a thin, skittish horse. Otah motioned him to ride near to his side.

  ‘I’m told I’m to be a messenger,’ Nayiit said. There was a controlled anger in his voice. ‘I’ve drilled with the footmen. I have a sword.’

  ‘You have a horse too.’

  ‘It was given to me with the news,’ Nayiit said. ‘Have I done something to displease you, Most High?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Otah said. ‘Why would you think you had?’

  ‘Why am I not permitted to fight?’

  Otah leaned back, and his mount, reading the shift of his weight, slowed. His back ached and the raw places on his thighs were only half healed. The rain had soaked his robes, so that even the oiled cloth against his skin felt clammy and cold. The rain that pressed Nayiit’s hair close against his neck also tapped against Otah’s squinting eyes.

  ‘How are you not permitted to fight?’ Otah said.

  ‘The men who are making the charge,’ Nayiit said. ‘The men I’ve been traveling with. That I’ve trained with. I want to be with them when the time comes.’

  ‘And I want you to be with me, and with them,’ Otah said. ‘I want you to be the bridge between us.’

  ‘I would prefer not to,’ Nayiit said.

  ‘I understand that. But it’s what I’ve decided.’

  Nayiit’s nostrils flared, and his cheeks pinked. Otah took a pose that thanked the boy and dismissed him. Nayiit wheeled his mount and rode away, kicking up mud as he did. In the distance, the meadows began to rise. They were coming to the Dai-kvo from the north and west, up the long, gentle slope of the mountains rather than the cliffs and crags from which the village was carved. Otah had never come this way before. For all his discomfort and the dread in his belly, this gray-green world was lovely. He tried not to think of Nayiit or of the men whom his boy had asked permission to die with. We are his fathers, Maati had said, and Otah had agreed. He wondered if the others would also see Nayiit’s duty as a protection of him. He wondered if they would guess that Danat wasn’t his only son. He hoped that they would all live long enough for such problems to matter.

  The scout came just before midday. He’d seen a rider in Galtic colors. He’d been seen as well. Otah accepted the information and set the couriers to ride closer and in teams. He felt his belly tighten and wondered how far from its main force the Galts would send their riders. That was the distance between him and his first battle. His first war.

  It was near evening when the two armies found each other. The scouts had given warning, and still, as Otah topped the rise, the sight of them was astounding. The army of Galt stood still at the far end of the long, shallow valley, silent as ghosts in the gray rain. Their banners should have been green and gold, but in the wet and with the distance, they seemed merely black. Otah paused, trying to guess how many men faced him. Perhaps half again his own. Perhaps a little less. And they were here, waiting for him. The Dai-kvo’s village was behind them.

  He wondered if he had come too late. Perhaps the Galts had sacked the village and slaughtered the Dai-kvo. Perhaps they had had word of Otah’s coming and bypassed the prize to reach him here, before his men could take cover in the buildings and palaces of mountain. Perhaps the Galts had divided, and the men facing him were what he had spared the Dai-kvo. There was no way to know the situation, and only one course available to him, whatever the truth.

  ‘Call the formation,’ Otah said, and the shouts and calls flowed out behind him, the slap of leather and metal. The army of Machi took its place - archers and footmen and horsemen. All exhausted by their day’s ride, all facing a real enemy for the first time. From across the valley, a sound came, sharp as cracking thunder - thousands of voices raised as one. And then, just as suddenly, silence. Otah ran his hand over the thick leather straps of the reins and forced himself to think.

  In the soft quarter of Saraykeht, Otah had seen showfighters pout and preen before the blows came. He had seen them flex their muscles and beat their own faces until there was blood on their lips. It had been a show for the men and women who had come to partake of brutality as entertainment, but it had also been the start of the fight. A display to unnerve the enemy, to sow fear. This was no different. A thousand men who could speak in one voice could fight as one. They were not men, they were a swarm; a single mind with thousands of bodies. Hear us, the wordless cry had said, and die.

  Otah looked at the darkening sky, the misty rain. He thought of all the histories he had read, the accounts of battles lost and won in ancient days before the poets and their andat. Of the struggles in the low cities of the world. He raised his hands, and the messengers, Nayiit among them, came to his side.

  ‘Tell the men to make camp,’ he said.

  The silence was utter.

  ‘Most High?’ Nayiit said.

  ‘They won’t begin a battle now that they’d have to finish in darkness. This is all show and bluster. Tell the men to set their tents and build what cook fires we can in all this wet. Put them here where those bastards can see the light of them. Tell the men to rest and eat and drink, and we’ll set up a pavilion and have songs before we sleep. Let the Galts see how frightened we are.’

  The messengers took poses that accepted the order and turned their mounts. Otah caught Nayiit’s gaze, and the boy hesitated. When the others had gone, Otah spoke again.

  ‘Also find the scouts and have them set a watch. In case I’m wrong.’

  He saw Nayiit draw breath, but he only took the accepting pose and rode away.

  The night was long and unpleasant. The rain had stopped; the clouds thinned and vanished, letting the heat of the ground fly out into the cold, uncaring sky. Otah passed among the fires, accepting the oaths and salutes of his men. He felt his title and dignity on his shoulders like a cloak. He would have liked to smile and be charming, to ease his fears with companionship and wine, just as his men did. It would have been no favor to them, though, so he held back and played the Khai for another night. No attack came, and between the half candle and the three-quarter mark, Otah actually fell asleep. He dreamed of nothing in particular - a bird that flew upside down, a river he recalled from childhood, Danat’s voice in an adjacent room singing words Otah could not later recall. He woke in darkness to the scent of frying pork and the sound of voices.

  He pulled on his robes and boots and stepped out into the chill of the morning. The cook fires were lit again or had never been put out. And across the valley, the Galt army had lit its own, glittering like orange and yellow stars fallen to earth. His attendant rushed up, blinking sleep from his eyes.

  ‘Most High,’ the boy said, falling into a pose of abject apology. ‘I had thought to let you sleep. Your breakfast is nearly ready—’

  ‘Bring it to my tent,’ Otah said. ‘I’ll be back for it.’

  He walked to the edge of the camp where the firelight would not spoil his night vision and looked out into the darkness. In the east, the sky had become a paler blackness, the deep gray of charcoal. The stars had not gone out, but they were dimmed. In the trees that lined the valley, birds were beginning their songs. A strange tense peace came over him. His disquiet seemed to fade, and the dawn, gray then cool yellow and rose and serene blue that filled the wide bowl of the sky above him, was beautiful and calm. Whatever happened here in this valley, the sun would rise upon it again tomorrow. The birds would call to one another. Summer would retreat, autumn would come. The lives of men and nations were not the highest stakes to play for. He pulled his hands into his sleeves and turned back to the cam
p. At his tent, his messengers awaited him, including Nayiit.

  ‘Call the formation,’ Otah said. ‘It’s time.’

  The messengers scattered, and it seemed fewer than a dozen breaths before the air was filled with the sounds of metal against metal, shouts and commands as his army pulled itself to the ready.

  ‘Your food, Most High,’ the attendant said, and Otah waved the man away.

  By the time Otah’s footmen and horsemen had taken their places between and just behind the wedges of archers, it was bright enough to see the banners and glittering mail of the Galts. Otah’s mount seemed to sense the impending violence, dancing uncomfortably as Otah rode back and forth behind his men, watching and waiting and preparing to call out his commands. From across the valley, the shout and silence came again as it had the night before. Then twice more.

  ‘Call the archers to ready!’ Otah called out, and like whisperers in court relaying the words to lower men waiting in the halls, his words echoed in a dozen voices. He saw his archers lift their bows and shift in their formations. A long shout, rolling like thunder, came from across the valley. The Galts were moving forward. ‘Call the march! And be prepared to loose arrows!’

  As they had drilled, his men moved forward, archers to the front, footmen between them with their makeshift shields and motley assortment of swords and spears and threshing flails. Horsemen in the colors of the great houses of the utkhaiem trotted at the sides, ready to wheel and protect the flanks. At a walk, three thousand men moved forward across the still-wet grass and patches of ankle-deep mud. And perhaps half again as many Galts came toward them, shouting.

  In the old books and histories, the flights of enemy arrows had been compared to smoke rising from a great pyre or clouds blotting out the sun. In fact, when the first volley struck, it was nothing like that. Otah didn’t see the arrows and bolts in the air. He saw them begin to appear, heads buried deep in the ground, fletching green and white in the sunlight, like some strange flower that had sprung up from the meadow grass. Then a man screamed, and another.

  ‘Loose arrows!’ Otah called. ‘Give it back to them! Loose arrows!’

  Now that he knew to look, he could see the thin, dark shafts. They rose up from the Galtic mass, slowly as if they were floating. His own archers let fly, and it seemed that the arrows should collide in the air, but then slipped past each other, two flocks of birds mingling and parting again. More men screamed.

  Otah’s horse twitched and sidestepped, nervous with the sounds and the scent of blood. Otah felt his own heart beating fast, sweat on his back and neck though the morning was still cool. His mind spun, judging how many men he was losing with each volley, straining to see how many Galts seemed to fall. They seemed to be getting more volleys off than his men. Perhaps the Galts had more archers than he did. If that was true, the longer he waited for his footmen to engage, the more he would lose. But then perhaps the Galts were simply better practiced at slaughter.

  ‘Call the attack!’ Otah yelled. He looked for his messengers, but only two of them were in earshot, and neither was Nayiit. Otah gestured to the nearest of them. ‘Call the attack!’

  The charge was ragged, but it was not hesitant. He could hear it when the footmen got word - a loud whooping yell that seemed to have no particular start nor any end. One man’s voice took up where another paused for breath. Otah cantered forward. His horsemen were streaming forward as well now, careful not to outstrip the footmen by too great a distance, and Otah saw the Galtic archers falling back, their own soldiers coming to the fore.

  The two sides met with a sound like buildings falling. Shouts and screams mingled, and any nuanced plan was gone. Otah’s urge to rush forward was as much the desire to see more clearly what was happening as to defend the men he’d brought. His archers drew and fired sporadically until he called them to stop. There was no way to see who the arrows struck.

  The mass of men in the valley writhed. Once a great surge on Otah’s left seemed to press into the Galtic ranks, but it was pushed back. He heard drums and trumpet calls. That’s a good idea, Otah thought. Drums and trumpets.

  The shouting seemed to go on forever. The sun slowly rose in its arc as the men engaged, pulled back, and rushed at one another again. And with every passing breath, Otah saw more of his men fall. More of his men than of the Galts. He forced his mount nearer. He couldn’t judge how many he’d lost. The bodies in the mud might have been anyone.

  A sudden upsurge in the noise of the battle caught him. His footmen were roaring and surging forward, the center of the enemy’s line giving way. ‘Call them to stand!’ Otah shouted, his voice hoarse and fading. ‘Stand!’

  But if they heard the call, the footmen didn’t heed it. They pressed forward, into the gap in the Galtic line. A trumpet blared three times, and the signal given, the Galtic horsemen that had held to the rear, left and right both, turned to the center and drove into Otah’s men from either side. It had been a trap, and a simple one, and they had stepped in it. Call the retreat, Otah thought wildly, I have to call the retreat. And then from the right, he heard the retreat called.

  Someone had panicked; someone had given the order before he could. His horsemen turned, unwilling, it seemed, to leave the footmen behind. A few footmen broke, and then a few more, and then, as if coming loose, Otah’s army turned its backs to the Galts and ran. Otah saw some horsemen trying to draw off the pursuing Galts, but most were flying back in retreat themselves. Otah spun his horse and saw, back on the field, the remnants of his wedges of archers fleeing as well.

  ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘Not you! Stop where you are!’

  No one heard him. He was a leaf in a storm now, command gone, hope gone, his men being slaughtered like winter pork. Otah dug his heels into his mount’s sides, leaned low, and shot off in pursuit of the archers. It was folly riding fast over mud-slick ground, but Otah willed himself forward. The fleeing archers looked back over their shoulders at the sound of his hooves, and had the naïveté to look relieved that it was him. He rode through the nearest wedge, knocking several to the ground, then pulled up before them and pointed back at the men behind them.

  ‘Loose your arrows,’ Otah croaked. ‘It’s the only chance they have! Loose arrows!’

  The archers stood stunned, their wide confused faces made Otah think of sheep confronted by an unexpected cliff. He had brought farmers and smiths onto a battlefield. He had led men who had never known more violence than brawling drunk outside a comfort house to fight soldiers. Otah dropped from his horse, took a bow and quiver from the nearest man, and aimed high. He never saw where his arrow went, but the bowmen at least began to understand. One by one, and then in handfuls, they began to send their arrows and bolts up over the retreating men and into the charging Galts.

  ‘They’ll kill us!’ a boy shrieked. ‘There’s a thousand of them!’

  ‘Kill the first twenty,’ Otah said. ‘Then let the ones still standing argue about who’ll lead the next charge.’

  Behind them, the other fleeing archers had paused. As the first of the fleeing horsemen passed, Otah caught sight of Ashua Radaani and raised his hands in a pose that called the man to a halt. There was blood on Radaani’s face and arms, and his eyes were wide with shock. Otah strode to him.

  ‘Go to the other archers. Tell them that once the men have reached us here, they’re to start loosing arrows. We’ll come back with the men.’

  ‘You should come now, Most High,’ Radaani said. ‘I can carry you.’

  ‘I have a horse,’ Otah said, though he realized he couldn’t say what had become of his mount. ‘Go. Just go!’

  The Galtic charge thinned as they drew into range of the arrows. Otah saw two men fall. And then, almost miraculously, the Galts began to pull back. Otah’s footmen came past him, muddy and bleeding and weeping and pale with shock. Some carried wounded men with them. Some, Otah suspected, carried men already dead. The last, or nearly the last, approached, and Otah turned, gesturing to the archers, and they all wal
ked back together. The few Galts that pressed on were dissuaded by fresh arrows. Ashua had reached the other wedge. Thank the gods for that, at least.

  The army of Machi, three thousand strong that morning, found itself milling about, confused and without structure as the evening sun lengthened their shadows. They had fled back past the northern lip of the valley where they had made camp the night before onto green grass already tramped flat by their passage. Some supply wagons and tents and fresh water had been caught up in the retreat, but more was strewn over the ground behind them. The wounded were lined up on hillsides and cared for as best the physicians could. Many of the wounds were mild, but there were also many who would not live the night.