An Autumn War

hundred soldiers would press forward and take the forges, where Sinja

had said the paths down would be open. They were only another street

down. "There wasn't a line of defenders to crush, so the horsemen were

less useful. They could still move fast, and men on foot who entered the

streets wouldn't be able to attack them easily. Footmen with archers

interspersed between them ducking fast from doorway to doorway was the

best plan.

Etc explained it all to the group leaders, watching the men's faces as

he asked them to run through the rain of stones and arrows. Two hundred

men to move forward, to take control of the forges and then hold the

position against anything that came up out of it until the rest of their

force could join them. Balasar would lead them. Not one of them

hesitated or voiced objection.

"If we live until sunset," he said, "we'll see the end of this. Now take

formation."

The drum throbbed, the captains and group leaders scrambled to the

places where their men stood waiting. A few bricks detonated on the

street in their wake, but no one had stayed out long enough to be in

danger from them. Balasar squatted in his chosen doorway, rubbing his

shoulder. The air was numbing cold, and the great dark towers rose

around them, higher than the crows that wheeled and called, excited, he

guessed, by the smells of blood and carrion.

It struck him how beautiful the city was. Austere and close-packed, with

thick-walled buildings and heavy shutters. The brightness of snow and

the glittering icicles that hung from the eaves set off the darkness of

stone and echoed the vast blank sky. It was a city without colordark and

light with hardly even gray in between-and Balasar found himself moved

by it. He took a deep breath, watching the cloud of it that formed when

he exhaled. The drummer at his side licked his lips.

"Go," Balasar said.

The deep rattle sounded, echoing between the high walls of the houses,

and then the press was on, and Balasar launched himself into it, shield

high, shoulder cramping. He made it almost halfway to the shelter of the

forges and their great copper roofs before the arrows could drop the

distance of the towers. Five men fell around him as he ran that last

stretch and found himself in a tangle of heat and shouting and swinging

blades. One last group of the enemy had stayed hidden here to defy him,

to stand guard against them. Balasar shouted and moved forward with the

surge of his men. In the field, there would have been formation, rules,

order. This was only melee, and Balasar found himself hewing and hacking

with his blood singing and alive. It was an idiotic place for a general

to be, throwing himself in the face of a desperate enemy, but Balasar

felt the joy of it washing away his better sense. A man with a spear

fashioned from an old rake poked at him, and he batted the attack away

and swung hard, cutting the man down. Three of the locals had formed a

knot, fighting with their backs together. Balasar's men overwhelmed them.

And then it was finished. As suddenly as it had begun, the fight ended.

The bodies of the enemy lay at their feet, along with a few of their

own. Not many. Steam rose from the corpses of friend and foe alike. But

they'd reached the tu

the city, and it would be over. The war. The andat. Everything. He felt

himself smiling like a wolf. His shoulder and arm no longer hurt.

"General! Sir! It's blocked!"

"What?"

One of his captains came forward, gore soaking his tunic from elbow to

knee, his expression dismayed.

"It can't he," Balasar said, striding forward. But the captain turned

and led him. And there it was. A great gateway of stone, a sloping ramp

leading down wide enough for four carts abreast to travel into it. And

as he came forward, his hoots slipping where the fight had churned the

snow to slush, he saw it was true. The shadows beneath the gateway were

filled with stones, cut and rough, large as boulders and small as fists.

Something glittered among them. Shattered glass and sharp, awkward

scraps of metal. Clearing this would take days.

I Ie'd been betrayed. Sinja Ajutani had led him astray. The taste of it

was like ashes. And worse than the deception itself was that it would

change nothing. The defending forces were scattered, the towers would

run out of bricks and arrows, given time. All that Sinja had

accomplished was to prolong the agony and cost Balasar a few hundred

more men and the Khai Machi a few thousand.

Ah, Sinja, he thought. You were one of my men. One of mine.

"Get me the maps" was what he said.

Knowing now that it had been a trap, knowing that the forces of Nlachi

would have some way to retreat, some pathway to muster their attack,

Balasar sca

His fingers left trails of other men's blood.

Not the palaces. Sinja had sent him there. Not the forges. His mind went

cool, calm, detached. The blood rage of the melee was gone, and he was a

general again. The warehouses. There, in the North. The galleries below

would be good for mustering a large force or creating an infirmary.

"There would be water, and the light from it wouldn't shine out. If it

were his city, that would be the other plausible center from which to

make his campaign.

"I need ru

palaces and tell them that the plan's changed."

SINJA HAD RIDDEN HART) FUR THE. NORTH. EVEN AS HE HEARD THE DIS"I'ANI'

horns that meant the battle within Machi had begun, he leaned down over

his mount and pushed for the paths and rough mining roads that laced the

foothills behind the city. And there, low in the mountains where

generations ago it had been easy and convenient to haul ore, one of the

first, oldest, tapped-out mines. Otah's bolt-hole for the children and

the poets, and the only thing between it and the city-Eustin and a

hundred armed Galts. Visions of cart tracks crushed in the snow and

disappearing into the mine's mouth pricked at his mind. Let Eustin not

find them.

He reached the first ridge behind Machi just as a distant crashing sound

came from the city, the violence muffled by distance and snowfall. The

horse steamed beneath him. Riding this hard in this weather was begging

for colic; the horse was nearly certain to die if he kept pressing it.

And he was going to keep pressing it. If a horse was the only thing he

killed before sunset, it would be a better day than he'd hoped.

Sinja reached the tu

Silently, he walked down into the half-lit mouth of the tu

squatted, considering the dust-covered ground until his eyes had adapted

to the darkness. It was dry. No one had passed through here since the