Seasons of War

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 be 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 Machi itself.
    I should be 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 bow 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 of the servants called. ‘There!’
    Otah and the Khai Cetani 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 Galts would go. The trumpets were calling again, fewer of them. Otah found himself better able to make sense of them. The 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. ‘Tell 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 crawl - years 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 still 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 back toward the stairs. Otah tapped his hand against the stone lip of the roof, already impatient for the word to come back 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 beard. 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,’