Autumn War lpq-3 Page 37

  Nlaati went to the cushion in the middle of the room, lowered himself with a grunt, and considered. The wall before him looked more like the scrihhlings of low-town vandals than a poet's lifework. But the words and phrases, the images and metaphors all shone brighter in his mind than the lanterns could account for. Cehmai passed before him briefly, laying robes of blue shot with black on the floor where, with luck, the next hands to hold them wouldn't be human.

  laati glanced over his shoulder. Eiah was sitting against the back wall, her hands held in fists even with her heart. I Ic smiled at her. Reassuringly, he hoped. And then he turned to the words he had written, took five deep breaths to clear his mind, and began to chant.

  Otah stood on the roof and looked down on Niachi as if it were a map. The great streets were marked by the lines of rooftops. Only those streets that led directly to house Siyanti's warehouses were at an angle that permitted him to see the black cobbles turning white beneath the snow. To the south, the army of the Galts was marching forward. The trumpet calls from the high towers told him that much. "I'hey had worked out short signals for some eventualities-short melodies that signaled some part of the plans he had worked with Sinja and Ashua Radaani and the others. But in addition there was a code that let him phrase questions as if they were spoken words, and hear answers in the replies from the towers far above.

  The trumpeter was a young man with a vast barrel chest and lips blue with cold. Whenever Otah had the man blow, the wide brass hell of the trumpet seemed as if it would deafen them all. And yet the responses were sometimes nearly too faint to hear. 'l'imes like now.

  "What's he saying?" the Khai Cetani asked, and (bah held tip a hand to stop him, straining to hear the last trailing notes.

  "The Galts are taking the bridge," Otah said. "I don't think they trust the ice."

  "That'll mean they're longer reaching us," the Khai Cetani said. "That's good. If we can keep them out of the warmth until sundown

  …"

  Otah took a pose of agreement, but didn't truly believe it. If they were able to trap the Galts above ground when night came, the invaders would take over the houses and burn whatever they could break small enough to fit in the fire grates. If the cold air moved in-a storm or the frigid winds that ended the gentle snows of autumn-then the Galts would be in trouble, but the snow graying the distance now wasn't prelude to a storm. Otah didn't say it, but he couldn't imagine keeping an army so close and still at bay long enough for the weather to change. The Galts would he defeated here in the streets, or they wouldn't he defeated.

  Ile paced the length of the rooftop, his eyes tracing the routes that he had hoped to guide them toward the palaces and the forges. Behind him, his servants shivered from the cold and the need to remain respectfully still. The great iron fire grate that they'd hauled up and loaded with logs was burning merrily, but somehow the heat from it seemed to go out no more than a foot or two from the flames. The Khai Cetani stood near it, and the trumpeter. Otah couldn't imagine standing still. Not now.

  The southern reaches of the city were essentially Galtic already; there was no way to make them safe against the coming army. The battle would he nearer the center, in the shadows of the towers, in the narrower ways where Otah's men could appear all along the Galtic line at once as they had in the forest. Another trumpet call came. The Galts had finished crossing the river. The march had begun on Nlachi itself.

  I should he down there, Otah thought. I should get a sword or an axe and go down there.

  It was an idiotic idea, and he knew it. One more blade or how in the streets wouldn't matter now, and getting himself killed would achieve nothing.

  Trumpets sounded-half a dozen of them at once. And Galtic drums. Everyone sending signals, none of them listening. Otah squatted at the roof's edge with his eyes closed, trying to make out one message from another. Frustration built in his spine and neck. Something was happening-several things, and all at the same moment, and he couldn't hear what they were.

  "Most high!" one the servants called. "There!"

  Otah and the Khai Cctani both looked to where the servant boy was pointing. A runner dashed along a roofline, down near the great, wide streets that led toward the forges. A great pillar of smoke was rising from the south. Something there, then. Otah felt the first small surge of hope; it was near where he had hoped the (; alts would go. The trumpets were calling again, fewer of them. Otah found himself better able to make sense of them. 'l'he Galts seemed to be moving in three directions at once-sweeping and holding the southern buildings, and then two large forces moving as Otah had hoped they would.

  "Call to the towers," Otah said. "lull them to begin."

  The trumpeter took a great breath and blared out the melody they had set for the towers, and then the rising trill that was their signal to begin raining stones and arrows into the streets. It was less than a breath before Otah thought he saw something fly from the open sky doors far above them, plummeting toward the ground. The snow was tricky, though. It might only have been his imagination.

  Otah felt himself trying to stretch out his will across the city, to inhabit it like a ghost, to become it. Time slowed to a terrible crawlyears seeming to pass between the short announcing blasts of the trumpets as they reported the Galts' progress. Muffled by the snow, there also came the sound of distant voices raised in anger. Otah's belly knotted. That wasn't right. "There shouldn't be any fighting yet. Unless the Galts had found his men while they were sill in hiding. He almost signaled his trumpeter to sound the order to report, but the more the signals were used, the better the Galts would be able to find the trumpeters.

  "You," Otah said, pointing at one of the half-frozen servants. "Send a runner to the east. I need to know what's happening there."

  The man took a pose of acknowledgment and walked quickly and awkwardly hack toward the stairs. Otah tapped his hand against the stone lip of the roof, already impatient for the word to come hack to him. His feet and face were numb. The snowfall seemed to be thickening, the world a darker gray though the unseen sun was still likely six or seven hands above the southern horizon.

  From the west, the drums of Galt thundered, then were silent. Then thundered again. Otah heard the sudden sharp call-thousands of voices at once in a wild call that ended sharply. A boast. We are vast as the ocean and disciplined. We are soldiers. We have come to kill you. Fear us.

  And he did.

  "Signal the palace forces to take their places," Otah said.

  The trumpeter sang out the call, the wide bell of the trumpet playing over the western rooftops like a priest offering blessing to a crowd. The man was weeping, Otah saw. Tears streaking down his cheeks and into his heard. A terrible, rending crash came from the forges. Otah turned to peer through the rising smoke and the falling snow. He expected to see one of the great copper roofs sitting at an angle, but nothing seemed to have changed. The sound was a mystery.

  "I can't stand this," Otah said, stalking back to the Khai Cetani and the servants. There was snow gathering on the servants' shoulders. "I don't know what's happening. I can't command a battle blind and guessing. Where are the runners?"

  The eldest of the servants took a pose of apology.

  "Then go find out," Otah said.

  But Otah felt in his bones what the runners would tell him. Before the signals came-trumpets struggling through the muffling snow. Before the Galtic drums broke out in their manic pounding. Nine thousand veterans led by the greatest general in Galt were pouring into his city and facing blacksmiths and vegetable carters, laborers and warehouse guards.

  He was losing.

  24

  Balasar trotted through the streets, his shield held above his head. Despite what Sinja had said, the great towers of Machi commanded the streets around them fairly well. 'T'hroughout the day, stones and bricks peppered his men, sailing down from the sky with the force of boulders hurled by siege engines. Arrows sometimes came down as well, their points shattering against the ground where they
struck despite the slowly growing cushion of snow. Ile ducked into another doorway when he came to it. Five of his own men were waiting, and the bodies of ten or so of the enemy. It was a slow process, spreading out and then moving down not only the streets that were the fastest path to the tunnels, but also two or three to each side. The Khai Machi had learned a trick, and he'd used it against Coal. But he didn't have a second strategy, and so Balasar knew where to find the waiting forcesjust back from where they'd he seen, waiting to attack on all sides at once. Instead, Balasar was killing them by handfuls. It was a had way to fight-bloody, slow, painful, and unnecessary.

  But it was better than losing.

  "General Gice, sir," the captain said as all the men saluted him. Balasar raised his hand. his arm ached from holding the raised shield. "We're, making progress, sir."

  "Good," Balasar said. "What have we found?"

  "All the smaller passages are blocked off, sir. Collapsed or filled with rubble so deep we can't tell how long it would take to dig them out. And they're narrow, sir. Two men together at most."

  "We wouldn't want those anyway," Balasar said. "Better we keep for the objectives. And casualties?"

  " NN'e're estimating five hundred of the enemy dead, sir. But that's rough."

  "And our men?"

  "perhaps half that," the captain said.

  "So many?"

  "They aren't good fighters, sir, but they're committed.'

  Balasar sighed, his mind shifting. If he assumed the force pushing toward the palaces was having similar luck, that meant something like fifteen hundred dead since he'd walked into the city. More, if there was resistance in the south. This wasn't a battle, only slow, ugly slaughter. He went to the doorway, peering out down the street. Etc could hear the sounds of fighting-men's voices, the clash of metal on metal. A hundred small outbursts that became a constant roar, like raindrops falling on a pond.

  "Get the drummer," he said. "We'll make a push for it. Scatter the enemy, take the entrance to the tunnels and then get runners to the others."

  "The men we're seeing, sir. They're able-bodied. And decent fighters, some of them."

  "They wanted to do this on the surface," l3alasar said. "The tunnels will he their second string. It won't be as bad once we're in there. If they're smart, they'll see there's no point going on."

  The captain saluted without answering. Balasar was willing to take that as agreement.

  It took perhaps half a hand to gather a force of men together. Two hundred soldiers would press forward and take the forges, where Sinja had said the paths down would be open. They were only another street down. "There wasn't a line of defenders to crush, so the horsemen were less useful. They could still move fast, and men on foot who entered the streets wouldn't be able to attack them easily. Footmen with archers interspersed between them ducking fast from doorway to doorway was the best plan.

  Etc explained it all to the group leaders, watching the men's faces as he asked them to run through the rain of stones and arrows. Two hundred men to move forward, to take control of the forges and then hold the position against anything that came up out of it until the rest of their force could join them. Balasar would lead them. Not one of them hesitated or voiced objection.

  "If we live until sunset," he said, "we'll see the end of this. Now take formation."

  The drum throbbed, the captains and group leaders scrambled to the places where their men stood waiting. A few bricks detonated on the street in their wake, but no one had stayed out long enough to be in danger from them. Balasar squatted in his chosen doorway, rubbing his shoulder. The air was numbing cold, and the great dark towers rose around them, higher than the crows that wheeled and called, excited, he guessed, by the smells of blood and carrion.

  It struck him how beautiful the city was. Austere and close-packed, with thick-walled buildings and heavy shutters. The brightness of snow and the glittering icicles that hung from the eaves set off the darkness of stone and echoed the vast blank sky. It was a city without colordark and light with hardly even gray in between-and Balasar found himself moved by it. He took a deep breath, watching the cloud of it that formed when he exhaled. The drummer at his side licked his lips.

  "Go," Balasar said.

  The deep rattle sounded, echoing between the high walls of the houses, and then the press was on, and Balasar launched himself into it, shield high, shoulder cramping. He made it almost halfway to the shelter of the forges and their great copper roofs before the arrows could drop the distance of the towers. Five men fell around him as he ran that last stretch and found himself in a tangle of heat and shouting and swinging blades. One last group of the enemy had stayed hidden here to defy him, to stand guard against them. Balasar shouted and moved forward with the surge of his men. In the field, there would have been formation, rules, order. This was only melee, and Balasar found himself hewing and hacking with his blood singing and alive. It was an idiotic place for a general to be, throwing himself in the face of a desperate enemy, but Balasar felt the joy of it washing away his better sense. A man with a spear fashioned from an old rake poked at him, and he batted the attack away and swung hard, cutting the man down. Three of the locals had formed a knot, fighting with their backs together. Balasar's men overwhelmed them.

  And then it was finished. As suddenly as it had begun, the fight ended. The bodies of the enemy lay at their feet, along with a few of their own. Not many. Steam rose from the corpses of friend and foe alike. But they'd reached the tunnels. One last push, down deep into the belly of the city, and it would be over. The war. The andat. Everything. He felt himself smiling like a wolf. His shoulder and arm no longer hurt.

  "General! Sir! It's blocked!"

  "What?"

  One of his captains came forward, gore soaking his tunic from elbow to knee, his expression dismayed.

  "It can't he," Balasar said, striding forward. But the captain turned and led him. And there it was. A great gateway of stone, a sloping ramp leading down wide enough for four carts abreast to travel into it. And as he came forward, his hoots slipping where the fight had churned the snow to slush, he saw it was true. The shadows beneath the gateway were filled with stones, cut and rough, large as boulders and small as fists. Something glittered among them. Shattered glass and sharp, awkward scraps of metal. Clearing this would take days.

  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 harrd for the North. Even as he heard the distant 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 o
nly 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.