Seasons of War

when you killed him. He addressed you in the familiar. Sinja-kya.’
    ‘Men begging for their lives sometimes develop an inaccurate opinion of how close they are to the men holding the blades,’ Sinja said, and the general had the good manners to blush. ‘I understand your position, sir. I’ve been living under the Khaiem for a long time now. You don’t know my history, and if you did, it wouldn’t help you. I’ve broken contracts before, and I won’t lie about it. But I would appreciate it if we could treat each other professionally on this.’
    Balasar sighed.
    ‘You’ve managed to shame me, Captain Ajutani.’
    ‘I won’t brag about that if you’ll agree to be certain you’ve a decent cause to kill me before taking action,’ Sinja said.
    ‘Agreed,’ Balasar said. ‘But your men? I meant what I said about them.’
    ‘I’ll be sure they understand,’ Sinja said, then swigged down the last of his wine, took a pose appropriate to taking leave of a superior, and walked back into the streets of the fallen city, hoping that it wouldn’t be clear from his stride that his knees felt loose. Not that a sane measure of fear could be held against him, but there was pride to consider. And someone was watching him. He could be damned sure of that. So he walked straight and calm through the streets and the smoke and the wailing of the survivors until he reached the camp outside the last trailing building of Nantani. The tents were far from empty - the thugs and free armsmen of Machi didn’t all have a stomach for looting Nantani - but he didn’t speak to his men until just after nightfall.
    They had a fire burning, though the summer night wasn’t cold. The light of it made the tents glow gold and red. The men were quiet. The boasting and swaggering that the Galts were doing didn’t have a place here. It would have if the burning city had been made from gray Westlands stone. Sinja stood at the front on a plank set up on chairs in a makeshift dais. He wanted them to see him. The scouts he’d sent out to assure that the conversation was private returned and took a confirming pose. If General Gice had set a watch over him, they’d gone to their own camps or else come from within his own company. He’d done what he could about the first, and the second there was no protection for. He raised his hands.
    ‘So most of what we’ve done since the spring opened has been walk,’ he said. ‘Well, we’re in summer now, and you’ve seen what war looks like. It’s not the war I expected, that’s truth. But it’s the one we’ve got, and you can all thank the gods that we’re on the side most likely to win. But don’t think that because this went well, this is over with. It’s a long walk still ahead of us.’
    He sighed and shifted his weight, the plank wobbling a little under his feet. A log in the fire popped, firing sparks up into the darkness like an omen.
    ‘There are a few of you right now who are thinking of leaving. Don’t . . . Quiet now! All of you! Don’t lie to yourselves about it and don’t lie to me. This is the first taste of war most of you’ve seen. And some of you might have had family or friends in Nantani. I did. But here’s what I have to say to you: Don’t do it. Right now it looks like our friends the Galts can’t be stopped. All the gods know there’s not a fighting force anywhere in the cities that could face them, that’s truth. But there’s worse things for an army to face than another army. Look at the size of this force, the simple number of men. It can’t carry the food it needs with it. It can’t haul that much water. We have to rely on the land we’re covering. The low towns, the cities. The game we can hunt, the trees and coal we can feed into those traveling kilns of theirs. The water we can get from the rivers.
    ‘If the cities North of here can organize - if they can burn the food and the trees so we have to spend more of our time finding supplies, if they foul the wells so that we can’t move far from the rivers, if they get small, fast bands together to harass our hunting parties and scouts - we could still be in for hell’s own fight. We took Nantani by surprise. That won’t happen twice. And that’s why I need every man among you here, keeping that from happening. And besides that, any of you that leave, the general’s going to hunt down like low-town dogs and slit your bellies for you.’
    Sinja paused, looking out at the earnest, despairing