An Autumn War (Long Price Quartet #3)

An Autumn War (Long Price Quartet #3) Page 27

What would have happened, Balasar wondered, if he had not tried?

It had been a thing from nightmare. Balasar had moved his men like stones on a playing board, shifting them from street to street, building to building. He had kept them as sheltered as possible from the inconstant, killing rain of stones and arrows that fell from the towers. The square that he chose for the rallying point was only a few streets south of the opening where he expected to lead them down into the soft belly of the city, and difficult for the towers to reach. The snow was above his ankles now, but Balasar didn't feel the cold. His blood was singing to him, and he could not keep from grinning. The first of the forces from the palaces was falling back to join his own, the body of his army growing thick. He paced among them, bracing his men and letting himself be seen. It was in their eyes too: the glow of the coming victory, the relief that they would have shelter from the cold. That winter would not take them.

He formed them into ranks, reminded the captains of the tactics they'd planned for fighting in the tunnels. It was to be slow and systematic. The important thing was always to have an open airway; the locals should never be allowed to close them in and kill them with smoke or fire. There would he no hurry-the line mustn't spread thin. Balasar could see in their faces that discipline would hold.

A few local fighters made assaults on the square and were cut down in their turn. Brave men, and stupid. The trumpets of the enemy had sounded out, giving away their positions with their movements, their signals a cacophony of amateur coordination. The white sky was slowly growing gray-the sun setting or else the clouds growing thicker. Balasar didn't know. He'd lost track of time's passage. It hardly mattered. His men stood ready. His men. The army that he'd led half across the world to this last battle. He could not have been more proud of them all if they'd been his sons.

The pain came without warning. He saw it pass through the men like wind stirring grass, and then it found Balasar himself. It was agonizing, embarrassing, humiliating. And even as he struggled to keep his feet, he knew what it meant.

The andat had been hound. The enemy had turned some captive spirit against them. They'd been assaulted, but they were not dead. Hurt, leaning on walls with teeth clenched in pain, formations forgotten and tears steaming on their checks. Their cries and groans were louder than a landslide, and Balasar knew his own voice was part of it. But they were not dead. Not yet.

"Rally!" Balasar had cried. "To me! Form up!"

And god bless them, they had tried. Discipline had held even as they shambled, knowing as he did that this was the power they had conic to destroy, loosed against them at last. Shrieking in pain, and still they made their formations. They were crippled but undefeated.

What would have happened, he thought, if he had not tried? What would the world have become if he had listened to his tutor, all those years ago, heard the tales of the andat and the war that ripped their Empire apart, and had merely shuddered? There were monster stories enough for generations of boys, and each of them as frightening as the next. If the voting Balasar Gice hadn't taken that particular story to heart, if he had not thought This will he my work; I ZL,'il/ make the a:'or/d safe from these things, how would it have gone? Who would Little Ott have been if he hadn't followed Balasar out to die in the desert? Who might Coal have married? What would Mavarsin have named his daughters and sons?

tie heard the attack before he saw it. "There was no form to it-men waving knives and axes pouring toward them like a handful of dried peas thrown against a wall; first one, then a few, and then all the rest in a clump. Balasar called to his men, and a rough shout rose from them. It was ridiculous. He should have won. This band of desperate fools didn't know how to fight, didn't know how to coordinate. Half of them didn't know how to hold their weapons without putting their own fingers at risk. Balasar should have won.

The armies came together with a crash. The smell of blood filled the air, the sound of brawling. And more of them came, boiling up out of the ground and charging down the streets. The humiliating pain made Balasar's every step uncertain. Every time he tried to stand at his full height, his knees threatened to give way beneath him.

All the ghosts that had followed him, all the men he had sacrificed. All the lives he had spent because the world was his to save. They had led to this comic-opera melee. The streets were white with snow, black where the dark cobbles showed through, red with fresh-spilled blood. The men of Machi and Cetani ran through the square barking like dogs. The army of Galt, the finest fighting force the world had ever seen, tried to hold them off while half-bent in pain.

It should have been a comedy. Nothing so ridiculous should have the right to inspire only horror.

They will kill tis all, Balasar thought. Every man among us will be dead by morning if this doesn't stop.

He called the retreat, and his men stumbled and shuffled to comply. Street by street, the archers held hack the advancing forces with IIIaimed arrows and bolts. Footmen stumbled, weeping, and were dragged by men who would themselves stumble shortly and he dragged along in turn. "l he sky grew dark, the snow fell thicker. By the time Balasar reached the buildings in the south of the city that he'd ordered taken that morning, it was almost impossible to see across the width of a street. The snow had drawn a curtain across the city to hide his shame.

The army of \lachi also fell back, retreating, Balasar supposed, into their warm holes and warrens and leaving him and his men to the mercy of the night. There was little food, few fires, and a chorus throughout the black night of men weeping in pain and despair. When Balasar dragged himself away from the little fire in the cooking grate of the house in which he'd taken shelter and relieved himself out the hack door, his piss was black with blood and stank of bad meat.

He wondered what would have happened if he had stayed in Galt, if he had contented himself with raiding the Wcstlands and Eymond, Eddensea and Bakta. Ile wondered what would have happened if he hadn't tried.

Ile forced himself through the captured buildings until it became too painful to walk. 'i'he men looked away from him. Not in anger, but in shame. Balasar could not keep from weeping though the tears frozen on his checks. At last, lie collapsed in the corner of a teahouse, his eyes closing even as he wondered whether he would die of the cold if he stopped moving. But distantly, lie felt someone pulling a blanket over him. Some sorry, misled soldier who still thought his general worth saving.

Balasar dreamed like a man in fever and woke near dawn unrested and ill. The pain had lessened, and from the stances of the men around him he guessed he was not the only one for whom this was true. Still, too hasty a step lit his nerves with a cold fire. He was in no condition to fight. And the rough count his surviving captains brought him showed he'd lost three thousand men in a day. They had been cut down in the battle or fallen by the way during the retreat and frozen. Almost a third of his men. One in three, a ghost to follow him; sacrifices to what he had thought he alone could do. No word had conic from 1 ustin in the North. Balasar wished he hadn't let the man go.

The clouds had scattered in the night. 'l'he great vault above them was the hazy blue of a robin's egg, the black towers rising halfway to the heavens had ceased dropping their stones and arrows. Perhaps they'd run out, or there might only tie no point in it. Balasar and his men were in trouble enough.

The air that followed the snows was painfully frigid. "The men scavenged what they could to build up fires in the grates-broken chairs and tables, coal brought up from the steam wagons. "l'he fires danced and crackled, but the heat seemed to vanish a hand's span from the flame. No little fire could overcome the cold. Balasar hunched down before the teahouse fire grate all the same, and tried to think what to do now that everything had fallen apart.

They had a little food. "I'he snow could be melted for water. 'I'hey could live in these captured houses as long as they could before the natives snuck in at night to slit their throats or a true storm came and turned all their faces black with frostbite.

The only hope was to try again. They would wait for a day, perhaps two. They would hope that the andat had done its damage to them. They might all die in the attempt, but they were dead men out here anyway. Better that they die trying.

"General (;ice, sir!"

Balasar looked up from the fire, suddenly aware he'd been staring into it for what might have been half the morning. The boy framed in the doorway flapped a hand out toward the streets. When he spoke, his words were solid and white.

"I'hey've come, sir. "They're calling for you."

"Who's come?"

"The enemy, sir."

Balasar took a moment to gather himself, then rose and walked carefully to the doorway, and then out into the city. To the North, smoke rose gray and black. A thousand men, perhaps, had lined the northern side of one of the great squares. Or women. Or unclean spirits. They were all so swathed in leather and fur Balasar could hardly think of them as human. Great stone kilns burned among them, flames rising twice as tall as a man and licking at the sky. In the center of the great square, they'd brought a meeting table of black lacquer, with two chairs. Standing there in the snow and ice, it looked like a thing from a dream, as out of place as a fish swimming in air.

When he stepped into the southern edge of the square, a murmur of voices he had not noticed before stopped. He could hear the hungry crackle and roar of the kilns. He lifted his chin, scanning the enemy forces. If they had come to fight, they would not have announced themselves. And they'd have had no need of a table. The intent was clear enough.

"Go," Balasar said to the boy at his side. "Get the men. And find me a banner, if we still have one."

It took a hand and a half for the banner to be found, for someone to bring him a fresh sword and a gray cloak. Two of the drummers had survived, and heat a deep, thudding march as Balasar advanced into the square. It might he a ruse, he knew. The fur-covered men might have bows and be waiting to fill him full of arrows. Balasar held himself proudly and walked with all the certainty he could muster. He could hear his own men behind him, their voices low.

Across the square, the crowd parted, and a single man strode forward. His robes were thick and rich, black wool shot with bright threads of gold. But his head was hare and he walked with the stately grace that the Khaiem seemed to affect, even when they were pleading for their lives. The Khai reached the table just before he did.

The Khai had a strong face-long and clean-shaven. His long eyes seemed darker than their color could explain. The enemy.

"General Gice." The voice was surprisingly casual, surprisingly real, and the words spoken in Galtic. Balasar realized he'd been expecting a speech. Some declaration demanding his surrender and threatening terrible consequence should he refuse. The simple greeting touched him.

"Most High," he said in the Khai's language. The Khai took a pose of greeting that was simple enough for a foreigner to understand but subtle enough to avoid condescension. "Forgive me, but am I speaking with Machi or Cetani?"

" Cetani broke his foot in the fighting. I am Otah Mlachi."

The Khai sat, and Balasar across from him. 'T'here were dark circles under the Khai's eyes. Fatigue, Balasar thought, and something more.

"So," the Khai Machi said. "blow do we stop this?"

Balasar raised his hands in what he believed was a request for clarification. It was one of the first things he'd learned when studying the Khaiate tongue, hack when he was a boy who had only just heard of the andat.

"We have to stop this," the Khai Machi said. "How do we do it?"

"You're asking for my surrender?"

"If you'd like."

"What are your terms?"

The Khai seemed to sag back in his chair. Balasar was pricked by the sense that he'd disappointed the man.

"Surrender your arms," the Khai said. "All of them. Swear to return to (salt and not attack any of the cities of the Khaiem again. Return what you've taken from us. Free the people you've enslaved."

"I won't negotiate for the other cities," Balasar began, but the Khai shook his head.

"I am the Emperor of all the cities," the man said. "We end it all here. All of it."

Balasar shrugged.

"All right, then. Emperor it is. Here are my terms. Surrender the poets, their library, the andat, yourself and your family, the Khai Cetani and his family, and we'll spare the rest."

"I've heard those terms before," the Emperor said. "So that takes us hack to where we started, doesn't it? How do we stop this?"

"As long as you have the andat, we can't," Balasar said. "As long as you can hold yourselves above the world and better than it, the threat you pose is too great to let you go on. If I die-if every man I have dies-and we can stop those things from being in the world, it's worth the price. So how do we stop it? We don't, Most High. You slaughter its for our impudence, and then pray to your gods that you can hold on to the power that protects you. Because when it slips, it'll he your turn with the executioner."

"I don't have an andat," the Emperor said. "We failed."

"But ..."

The Khai made a weary gesture that seemed to encompass the city, the plains, the sky. Everything.

"What happened to your men, happened to every Galtic man in the world. And it happened to our women. My wife. My daughter. Everyone else's wives and daughters in all the cities of the Khaiem. It was the price of failing the binding. You'll never father another child. My daughter will never hear one. And the same is true for both our nations. But I don't have an andat."

Balasar blinked. He had had more to say, but the words seemed suddenly empty. The Emperor waited, his eyes on Balasar.

"Ah," Balasar managed. "Well."

"So I'll ask you again. How do we stop this?"

Far above, a crow cawed in the chill air. The fire kilns roared in their mindless voices. The world looked sharp and clear and strange, as if Balasar were seeing the city for the first time.

"I don't know," he said. ""I'he poet?"

"'I'hev've fled. For fear that I would kill them. Or that one of my people would. Or one of yours. I don't have them, so I can't give them over to you. But I have their books. The libraries of Machi and Cetani, and what we salvaged from the I)ai-kvo. Give me your weapons. Give me your promise that you'll go back to Galt and not make war against us again. I'll burn the books and try to keep us all from starving next spring."

"I can't promise you what the Council will do. Especially once ... if..."

"Promise me you won't. You and your men. I'll worry about the others later."

There was strength in the man's voice. And sorrow. Balasar thought of all the things he knew of this man, all the things Sinja had told him. A seafront laborer, a sailor, a courier, an assistant midwife. And now a man who negotiated the fate of the world over a meeting table in a snow-packed square while thousands of soldiers who'd spent the previous day trying to kill one another looked on. He was unremarkableexhausted, grieving, determined. He could have been anyone.

"I'll need to talk to my men," Balasar said.

"Of course."

"I'll have an answer for you by sundown."

"If you have it by midday, we can get you someplace warm before night."

"Midday, then."

They rose together, Balasar taking a pose of respect, and the Emperor Otah Machi returning it.

"General," Otah said as Balasar began to turn away. His voice was gray as ashes. "One thing. You came because you believed the andat were too powerful, and the poet's hearts were too weak. You weren't wrong. The man who did this was a friend of mine. He's a good man. Good men shouldn't be able to make mistakes with prices this high."

Balasar nodded and walked hack across the square. The drummers matched the pace of his steps. The last of the hooks burned, the last of the poets fled into the wilderness, most likely to die, and if not then to live outcast for their crimes. The andat gone from the world. It was hard to think it. All his life he had aimed for that end, and still the idea was too large. His captains crowded around him as he drew near. "Their faces were ashen and excited and fearful. Questions battered at him like moths at a lantern.

"'Ieil the men," Balasar began, and they quieted. Balasar hesitated. "Tell the men to disarm. We'll bring the weapons here. By midday."

"There was a moment of profound silence, and then one of the junior captains spoke.

"How should we explain the surrender, sir?"

Balasar looked at the man, at all his men. For the first time in his memory, there seemed to be no ghosts at his back. He forced himself not to smile.

"Tell them we won."