thick, unlike the plains nearer to the newly abandoned city where the
need for lumber had created new-made meadows. The leaves were red and
gold, bright as fire. The days were still warm enough at their height,
but the nights were cold and getting colder. Soon it would be freezing
before morning, and soon after that-a week, ten days-it wouldn't be
thawing by midday.
"We have two and a half thousand men," Otah said. "And you're telling me
only eight can work these things?"
"They're not good for much apart from hunting big animals that need
killing fast. And there aren't many who care to do that, if they can
help it," the huntsman said. "Why learn something with no use?"
Otah squatted and took one of the bows in his hand. It was heavier than
it looked. It would be able to throw the bolts hard. Otah wondered how
close they could afford to get to the road. Too far back, and the trees
would offer as much protection to the Galts as cover for Otah's men. Too
close, and they'd be seen before the time came. It wouldn't take much
skill to hit the belly of a steam wagon if you were near enough. He
tossed the how from hand to hand as he weighed the risks.
"Go ask for volunteers," Otah said. "Ask on both sides of the road.
Anyone who says they're willing, test them. Take the twenty best."
"A man who doesn't know what he's doing with this can scrape the meat
off his legs," the huntsman said.
Otah stopped tossing the bow and turned to consider the man. The
huntsman blushed, realizing what he had just said and to whom. He took a
pose of obeisance and backed away from the two Khaiem, folding himself
in among the trees and vanishing. The Khai Cetani sighed and took a pose
of apology.
"He's a good enough man," he said, "but he forgets his place."
"He isn't wrong," Otah said. "If this were a better time to have our
orders questioned, I'd have listened to him. But then, if it were a
better time, we wouldn't be out here."
The last of the men and women fleeing Cetani had passed them five days
before, carts and wagons and sacks slung over hunched backs. For five
days, the combined forces of Cetani and Machi had haunted these woods,
sharpening their weapons and planning the attack. And growing bored and
hungry and cold. Two nights ago, Otah had ordered an end to all fires.
The smoke would give them away, and the prospect of a halfsleeping man
dropping a stray ember on the forest floor was too likely. The men
grumbled, but enough of them saw the sense of it that the edict hadn't
been ignored. Not yet.
It wouldn't be many more days, though. If the Galts didn't come, the men
would grow restive and careless, and when the time came, it would be the
battle before the Dai-kvo again, only this time, the Galts would march
into Machi. The bodies left in the streets wouldn't be of poets. They
would be the families of every man in the hidden clumps that dotted the
hills. "Their mothers, fathers, lovers, children. Everyone they knew.
Everyone that remained. That Was good for another day. Perhaps two.
"You're thinking of the frost," the Khai Cetani said. "You're worried
that it's going to conic and drop our screen of leaves before the Galts do."
Otah smiled.
"No, actually, I'd been worrying about other things entirely. "Thank you
for distracting Inc."
The Khai Cetani actually chuckled.
"I'll go and speak With my leaders," he said, clapping Otah on the
shoulder. "Keep their spirits up.-
"I'll do the same," Otah said. "It's coming. They'll he here soon."
The camps had been divided. Groups of men no larger than twenty. Only
one stayed close the road on either side. The others fanned out to the
west. When the Galts appeared at the edge of the last cleared forest,
runners would come from the watch camps, and the men would make their
way to the road. Trees already had been felled at four places along the
path-two before they reached the forest, another halfway to the hill on
which Otah now stood, and the last where the road turned a little to the
south and then west again toward Nlachi. The first time they were forced
to stop, they would expect the attack. By the fourth, Otah hoped they
would only think it another delay. The mixed coal would have their steam
wagons running hotter than thev intended. The hearhunting bows would
prick the steel chambers. In the chaos, the armies would appear, falling
on the Galts' long vulnerable flanks. If it all went well. If the plan
worked. If not, then the gods alone knew how the fight would end.
Night fell cold.'l'he wide cloudless sky seemed to pull the warmth of
the day and land up into it, and Otah, most honored and powerful man in
his city, wrapped an extra cloak around himself and settled down against
it tree, Ashua Radaani snoring gently at his side. I Ic had expected his
dreams to be troubled, but instead he found himself ice fishing, and the
fish he saw moving below the ice were also Kiyan and his children,
playing with him, tugging at the line and then darting away. A trout
that was also Kiyan in a silver-blue robe leapt from the waterwith the
logic of dreams frozen and vet unfrozen-and splashed back down to Otah's
delight when a rough hand shook him awake. Dawn was threatening, gray
and rose in the east, and Saya the blacksmith towered over him, checks
so red they seemed dark in the dim light, nose running, and a grin
showing his teeth.
""They've come, Most High."
Utah leapt up, his back and hip aching from the cold night and the
unforgiving ground. To the east, smoke rose in a wall. Coal smoke from
the Galtic wagons strung along the road from Cetani like beads on a
string. It was earlier in the day than he'd expected them, and as he
pulled on his makeshift armor of boiled leather and metal scale, his
mind leapt ahead, guessing at what tactical advantages the Galtic
captain intended by arriving with the dawn. .
None, of course. They had no way to know Otah's men were there. And
still, Otah considered how the light would strike the road, the trees,
what it would make visible and what it would hide. He could no more stop
his mind than call down the stars.
The sun found the highest reaches of the smoke first, where it had
diffused almost to nothing. Closer to the ground, the smoke was already
visibly nearer. The Gaits had passed the third log barrier while the
runners had come to him. The fourth lay in wait where Utah could see it.
The innocent forest was alive with his men, or so he hoped. From his
place at the ridge of the low hill, he saw only the dozen nearest,
crouched behind trees and stones. Utah heard somethingthe clank of metal