to speak of their habits and insights. Slowly they made their plans:
What to do when the scouts first brought news of the Galts. Who should
command the wedges of archers and crossbowmen, who the footmen, who the
horsemen. How they should protect their flanks, how to pull hack the
archers when the time came near for the others to engage. 'T'heir
fingers sketched lines and movements on the floor, their voices rose,
became heated, and grew calm again. The moon had traveled the width of
six hands together before Otah declared the work finished. Orders were
written, shifting men to different commands, specifying the shouted
signals that would coordinate the battle, putting the next few uncertain
days into the order they imagined for them. When the captains bowed and
took their poses of farewell, the clouds had appeared and the first
ticking raindrops were striking the canvas. Otah lay on his cot wrapped
in blankets of soft wool, listening to the rain, and running through all
that they had said. If it worked as they had planned, perhaps all would
be well. In the darkness with his belly full of wine and his mind full
of the confident words of his men, he could almost think there was hope.
Dawn was a brightening of clouds, east as gray as west. They struck
camp, loaded their wagons, and once again made for the I)ai-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 he 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 hack, 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.
""I'he 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," Naylit said.
"I understand that. But it's what I've decided."
Nayiit's nostrils flared, and his cheeks pinked. Utah 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. Utah 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 Utah 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 I)anat
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. 'T'heir 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 I)ai-kvo's village was behind them.
He wondered if he had come too late. Perhaps the Galts had sacked the
village and slaughtered the Uai-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
[)ai-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. Hearus, the
wordless cry had said, and die.
Utah 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.