Seasons of War

tried to think how old he’d been when he saw his first man die by violence. Older than this.
    Danat’s shocked, empty eyes turned to him, and the child took a step back, as if to flee. Sinja only looked at him, waiting, until the boy’s weight shifted forward again. Then Sinja raised his sword, pommel to the sky, blade toward the ground in a mercenary’s salute.
    ‘Welcome to the world, Danat-cha,’ Sinja said. ‘I wish it were a better place.’
    The boy didn’t speak, but slowly his hands rose to take a pose that accepted the greeting. It was the training of some court nurse. Nothing more than that. And still, Sinja thought he saw a sorrow in the child’s eyes and a depth of understanding greater than anyone so small should have to bear. Sinja sheathed his sword.
    ‘Come on, now,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you someplace warm and dry. If I save you from the Galts and then let a fever kill you, Kiyan will have me flayed alive. I know a tunnel not far from here that should suffice.’
     
    The runners came at last, staggering up the stairs from the streets below, and every report echoed the trumpet calls. The Galts had aimed for the tunnels that Sinja had directed them toward, but come in wider than Otah had planned. There would be no grand ambush from the windows and alleyways, only a long, bloody struggle. One small slaughter after another as the Galts pushed their way through the city, looking for a way down.
    Otah stared out at the city, watching the tiny dots of stones drift down from the towers, hearing the clatter of men and horses echoing against the high stone walls. He wondered how long it would take ten thousand men to kill two full cities. He should have met them on the plain. He could have armed everyone; man, woman, and child. Able or infirm. They could have swarmed over them, ten and fifteen for every Galt. He sighed. He could as well have tossed babies on their swords in hopes of slowing their advance. The Galts would have slaughtered them on the plain or in the city. He’d tried his trick, and he’d failed. There was nothing to gain from regretting the strategies he hadn’t chosen.
    What he wanted now was a sword and someone to swing it at. He wanted to be part of the fight if only to keep from feeling so powerless.
    ‘Another runner,’ the Khai Cetani said, taking a pose that commanded Otah’s attention. ‘From the palaces.’
    Otah nodded and stepped back from the roof edge. The runner was a pale-skinned boy with a constellation of moles across his nose and cheeks. Otah could see him try not to pant as the two Khaiem drew near. He took a pose of obeisance.
    ‘What’s happening?’ Otah demanded.
    ‘The Galts, Most High. They’re sending messengers. They’re abandoning the palace. It looks as if they’re forming a single group.’
    ‘Where?’
    ‘The old market square,’ he said.
    Three streets south of the main entrance to the tunnels. So they knew. Otah felt his belly sink. He waved the trumpeter over. The man was exhausted; Otah could see it in the flesh below his eyes and in the angle of his shoulders. His lips were cracked and bloody from the cold and his work. Otah put a hand on the man’s shoulder.
    ‘One last time,’ he said. ‘Call them all to fall back to the tunnel’s entrance. There’s nothing more we can do on the surface.’
    The trumpeter took an acknowledging pose and walked away, warming the instrument’s mouthpiece with his hand before lifting it to his bruised mouth. Otah waited as the melody sang out in the snowy air, listened to the echoes of it fade and be replaced by acknowledging calls.
    ‘We should surrender,’ Otah said. The Khai Cetani blinked at him. Beneath the red ice-pinched cheeks, the man grew pale. Otah pressed on. ‘We’re going to lose, Most High. We don’t have soldiers to stop them. All we’ll gain is a few more hours. And we’ll pay for it with lives that don’t need to end today.’
    ‘We were planning to spend those lives before,’ the Khai Cetani said, though Otah could see in the man’s eyes that he knew the argument was sound. They were two dead men, fathers of dead families, the last of their kind in the world. ‘We always knew there would be deaths.’
    ‘That was when we had hope,’ Otah said.
    One of the servants cried out and fell to her knees. Otah turned to her, thinking first that she had overheard him and been overcome by grief, and then - seeing her face - that some miraculous arrow had found its way