Seasons of War

Sinja said.
    ‘It wouldn’t have changed things. One more sword - even yours - wouldn’t have changed the way this battle falls.’
    ‘That’s why I came back,’ Sinja said.
    ‘I’m glad you did,’ Balasar said. ‘I’ve been proud to ride with you.’
    Sinja gave his thanks and took his leave. Balasar wrote out orders for the guard to accompany Sinja and other ones to deliver to Eustin. Then he turned to the maps of Machi. Truly there was little choice. The poets lived. Another night in the cold would mean losing more men. Balasar sat for a long moment, quietly asking God to let this day end well; then he walked out into the late-morning sun and gave the call to formation.
    It was time.

23
    L iat had expected panic - in herself and in the city.
    Instead there was a strange, tense calm. Wherever she went, she was greeted with civility and even pleasure. There were smiles and even laughter, and a sense of purpose in the face of doom. In the interminable night, she had been invited to join in three suppers, as many breakfasts, and bowls of tea without number. She had seen the highest of the utkhaiem sitting with metalsmiths and common armsmen. She had heard one of the famed choirs of Machi softly singing its Candles Night hymns. The rules of society had been suspended, and the human solidarity beneath it moved her to weep.
    She and Kiyan had taken the news first to the Khai Cetani and the captains of the battle that had once turned the Galts aside. When the plans had come from Otah’s small Council - where to place men, how to resist the Galts as they tried to overrun the city - the Khai Cetani had emerged with the duties of arming and armoring the men who could fight. As the underground city was emptied of anything that could be used as a weapon - hunting arrows, kitchen knives, even lengths of leather and string cut from beds and fashioned into slings - Liat had seen children too young to fight and men and women too old or frail or ill packed into side galleries, the farthest from the fighting. Cots lined the walls, piled with blankets. In some places, there were thick doors that could be closed and pegged from the inside. Though if the Galts ever came this far, it would hardly matter how difficult it was to open the doors. Everything would already be lost.
    Kiyan had made the physicians her personal duty - preparing one of the higher galleries for the care of the wounded and dying who would be coming back before the day’s end. They’d managed seventy beds and scavenged piles of cloth high as a man’s waist, ready to pack wounds. Bottles of distilled wine stood ready to ease pain and clean cuts. A firekeeper’s kiln, cauterizing irons already glowing in its maw, had been pulled in and the air was rich with the scent of poppy milk cooking to the black sludge that would take away pain at one spoonful and grant mercy with two. Liat walked between the empty beds, imagining them as they would shortly be - canvas soaked with gore. And still the panic didn’t come.
    By the entrance, one of the physicians was talking in a calm voice to twenty or so girls and boys no older than Eiah, too young to fight, but old enough to help care for the wounded. Kiyan was nowhere to be found, and Liat wasn’t sure whether she was pleased or dismayed.
    She sat on one of the beds and let her eyes close. She had not slept all the long night. She wouldn’t sleep until the battle was ended. Which meant, of course, that she might never sleep again. The thought carried a sense of unreality that was, she thought, the essential mood of the city. This couldn’t be happening. People went about the things that needed doing with a numb surprise that hell had bloomed up in the world. The men in their improvised leather armor and sharpened fire irons could no more fathom that there would be no tomorrow for them than Liat could. And so they were capable of walking, of speaking, of eating food. If they had been given time to understand, the Galts wouldn’t have faced half the fight that was before them now.
    ‘Mama-kya!’ a man’s voice said close at hand. Nayiit’s. Liat’s eyes flew open.
    He stood in the aisle between beds, his eyes wide. Danat, pale-skinned and frightened, clung to her boy’s robes.
    ‘What are you doing still here?’ Liat said.
    ‘Eiah,’ Nayiit said. ‘I can’t find Eiah. She was in her rooms, getting dressed, but when I came back with Danat-cha, she was gone. She isn’t at the cart. I thought she