Daniel Abraham - Autumn War

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."