An Autumn War

blade still held, but its point wavering and uncertain. Sinja made a

desperate thrust, and Eustin did try to block it, but his arm had gone

weak. Sinja stepped hack, gathered himself, and lunged.

Ills sword's tip was sharp, but broad. It had been made for swinging

from horseback, and so it didn't pierce Fustin's neck quite through.

When Sinja drew back, a fountain of red poured from the man's flesh,

soaking his tunic. "I'he steam from it rose amid falling snowflakes.

Sinja didn't feel a sense of victory so much as surprise. Ile hadn't

expected to win. And now he had, the arrows he'd assumed would be

feathering him were also strangely absent. He stood up, his breathing

heavy. I Ic noticed that his chest hurt badly, and that there was blood

on his robes. Eustin's last cut had gone deeper than he'd thought. But

he forgot it again when he saw the soldiers.

Eight men were kneeling or fallen in the snow, alive but moaning in what

seemed to be agony. Two were still in their saddles, but the bows and

quivers lay abandoned. It was a moment from a dream-strange and

unsettling and oddly beautiful. Sinja took a better grip on his blade

and started killing them before they could recover from whatever had

afflicted them. By the time he reached the fifth of the fallen men-the

first four already sent to confer with their god as to the indignity of

dying curled up like a weeping babe on the stone and snow of a foreign

land-the Galts had started to regain themselves. The fifth one took a

moment's work to kill. The sixth and seventh actually stood together,

hoping to hold Sinja at bay with the threat of the doubled swords

despite the difficulty they had in standing. Sinja danced hack, plucked

a throwing knife from the body of their fallen comrades, and

demonstrated the flaw in their theory.

The horse archers fled as Sinja finished the two remaining men. He

brushed the snow from a stone and sat, his breath ragged and hard,

pluming white. When he had his wind back, he laughed until he wept.

Nayiit, still lying by his cart, called out weakly. lie wasn't dead.

Sinja limped over quickly. The man's face was white and waxy. His lips pale.

"What happened?"

"I'm not sure yet. Something. We're safe for the moment."

"[anat..."

"Don't worry about him. I'll find the boy."

"I promised. Keep safe."

"And you've done it," Sinja said. "You did a fine job. Now let's see how

much it's cost you, shall we? I've seen a lot of belly wounds. Some are

worse than others, but they're all tender to prod at, so expect this to

hurt."

Nayiit nodded and screwed up his face, readying himself for the pain.

Sinja opened his robes and looked at the cut. Even as such things go,

this one was bad. Eustin's blade had gone into the boy just below his

navel, and cut to the left as it came out. Blood soaked the boy's robes,

freezing them to the stones lie lay on. Skin on white fat. "There were

soft, worm-shaped loops of gut exposed to the air. Sinja laid a hand on

the boy's chest and knelt over the wound, sniffing at it. If it only

smelled of blood, there might he a chance. But amid the iron and meat,

there was the scent of fresh shit. Eustin had cut the boy's bowels. That

was it, then. The boy was dead.

"How bad?"

"Not good," Sinja said.

"Hurts."

"I'd imagine."

"Is it ..."

"It's deep. And it's thorough," Sinja said. "If you wanted something

passed on to someone, this would he a good time to say it."

The boy wasn't thinking well. Like a drunkard, it took time for him to

understand what Sinja had said, and another breath to think what it had

meant. He swallowed. Fear widened his eyes, but that was all.

"Tell them. 'Fell them I died well. That I fought well."

They were small enough lies, and Sinja could tell the boy knew it.

"I'll tell them you died protecting the Khai's son," Sinja said. "I'll

tell them you faced down a dozen men, knowing you'd he killed, but

choosing that over surrendering him to the Galts."

"You make me sound like a good man." Nayiit smiled, then groaned,

twisting to the side. His hand hovered above his wound, the impulse to

cradle the hurt balanced by the pain his touch would cause. Sinja took

the man's hand.

"Nayiit-cha," Sinja said. "I know something that can stop the pain."

"Yes," Nayiit hissed.

"It'll he worse for a moment."

"Yes," he repeated.

"All right then," Sinja said, as much to himself as the man lying hefore

him. "You did a man's job of it. Rest well."

He snapped the boy's neck and sat with him, cradling his head as he

finished dying. It was quick this way. There wouldn't be the pain or the

fever. There wouldn't be the torture of trekking back to the city just

to have the physicians fill him with poppy and leave him to dream

himself away. It was a better death than those. Sinja told himself it

was a better death than those.

The blood stopped flowing from the wound, and still Sinja sat. A

terrible weariness crept into him, and he told himself it was only the

cold. It wasn't that he'd traveled a season with men he'd come to

respect and still been willing to kill. It wasn't watching some young

idiot die badly in the snow with only a habitual traitor to care for

him. It wasn't the sickness that came over him sometimes after battles.

It was only the cold. He gently put Nayiit's head on the ground, and

pushed himself up. Between the chill and his wounds, his body was

starting to stiffen. The chill and his wounds and age. War and death and

glory were younger men's games. But he still had work to do.

He heard the cry before he saw the child. It was a small sound, like the

squeak of a hinge. Sinja turned. Either Danat had snuck back, preferring

a known danger to an uncertain world, or else he'd never gone out of

sight of the cart. His hair was wet from melted snow, plastered back

against his head. His lips were pulled back, baring teeth in horror as

he stared at Nayiit's motionless body. Sinja tried to think how old he'd

been when he saw his first man die by violence. Older than this.

I)anat's shocked, empty eyes turned to him, and the child took a step

hack, 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