shoulders at the sound of his hooves, and had the naivete to look relieved that it was him. He rode through the nearest wedge, knocking several to the ground, then pulled up before them and pointed hack at the men behind them.
'Loose your arrows,' Utah croaked. 'It's the only chance they have! Loose arrows!'
The archers stood stunned, their wide confused faces made Utah think of sheep confronted by an unexpected cliff. He had brought farmers and smiths onto a battlefield. He had led men who had never known more violence than brawling drunk outside a comfort house to fight soldiers. Utah dropped from his horse, took a how and quiver from the nearest man, and aimed high. He never saw where his arrow went, but the bowmen at least began to understand. One by one, and then in handfuls, they began to send their arrows and bolts up over the retreating men and into the charging Galts.
''They'll kill us!' a boy shrieked. 'There's a thousand of them!'
'Kill the first twenty,' Otah said. 'I'hen let the ones still standing argue about who'll lead the next charge.'
Behind them, the other fleeing archers had paused. As the first of the fleeing horsemen passed, Otah caught sight of Ashua Radaani and raised his hands in a pose that called the man to a halt. 'There was blood on Radaani's face and arms, and his eyes were wide with shock. Otah strode to him.
'Go to the other archers. 'fell them that once the men have reached us here, they're to start loosing arrows. We'll come hack with the men.'
'You should come now, Most High,' Radaani said. 'I can carry you.'
'I have a horse,' (bah said, though he realized he couldn't say what had become of his mount. 'Go. Just go!'
The Galtic charge thinned as they drew into range of the arrows. Utah saw two men fall. And then, almost miraculously, the Galts began to pull back. Utah's footmen came past him, muddy and bleeding and weeping and pale with shock. Some carried wounded men with them. Some, Utah suspected, carried men already dead. The last, or nearly the last, approached, and Utah turned, gesturing to the archers, and they all walked back together. The few Galts that pressed on were dissuaded by fresh arrows. Ashua had reached the other wedge. 'Thank the gods for that, at least.
The army of Machi, three thousand strong that morning, found itself milling about, confused and without structure as the evening sun lengthened their shadows. They had fled back past the northern lip of the valley where they had made camp the night before onto green grass already tramped flat by their passage. Some supply wagons and tents and fresh water had been caught up in the retreat, but more was strewn over the ground behind them. The wounded were lined up on hillsides and cared for as best the physicians could. Many of the wounds were mild, but there were also many who would not live the night.
The scouts were the first to recover some sense of purpose. The couriers of the trading houses rode back and forth, reporting the movements of the Galts now that the battle was finished. They had scoured the field, caring for their own men and killing the ones Otah had left behind. Then, with professional efficiency, they had made their camp and prepared their dinner. It was clear that the Galts considered the conflict ended. 'T'hey had won. It was over.
As darkness fell, Otah made his way through the camps, stopped at what cook fires there were. No one greeted him with violence, but he saw anger in some eyes and sorrow in others. By far the most common expression was an emptiness and disbelief. When at last he sat on his cot-set under the spreading limbs of a shade tree in lieu of his tenthe knew that however many men he had lost on the battlefield, twice as many would have deserted by morning. Otah laid an arm over his eyes, his body heavy with exhaustion, but totally unable to sleep.
In the long, dreadful march to this battle, not one man had turned hack. At the time, it had warmed Otah's heart. Now he wanted them all to flee. Go back to their wives and their children and their parents. Go hack to where it was safe and forget this mad attempt to stop the world from crumbling. Except he couldn't imagine where safety might be. The Dai-kvo would fall if he hadn't already. The cities of the Khaiem would fall. Machi would fall. For years, he had had the power to command the death of Galt. Stone-Made-Soft could have ruined their cities, sunk their lands below the waves. All of this could have been stopped once, if he had known and had the will. And now it was too late.
'Most High?'
Otah raised his arm, sat up. Nayiit stood in the shadows of the tree. Otah knew him by his silhouette.
'Nayiit-kya,' Otah said, realizing it was the first he'd seen Liat's son since the battle. Nayiit hadn't even crossed his mind. He wondered what that said about him. Nothing good. 'Are you all right?'
'I'm fine. A little bruised on the arm and shoulder, but… but fine.'
In the dim, Otah saw that Nayiit held something before him. A greasy scent of roast lamb came to him.
'I can't eat,' Otah said as the boy came closer. 'Thank you, but
… give it to the men. Give it to the injured men.'
'Your attendant said you didn't eat in the morning either,' Nayiit said. 'It won't help them if you collapse. It won't bring them back.'
Otah felt a surge of cold anger at the words, but hit back his retort. He nodded to the edge of the cot.
'Leave it there,' he said.
Nayiit hesitated, but then moved forward and placed the bowl on the cot. Ile stepped back, but he did not walk away. As Otah's eyes adjusted to the darkness, Nayiit's face took on dim features. Otah wasn't surprised to see that the boy was weeping. Nayiit was older now than Otah had been when he'd fathered him on Liat. Older now than Otah had been when he'd first killed a man with his hands.
'I'm sorry, Most High,' Nayiit said.
'So am I,' Utah said. The scent of lamb was thick and rich. Enticing and mildly nauseating both.
'It was my fault,' Nayiit said, voice thickened by a tight throat. 'Phis, all of this, is my fault.'
'No,' Utah began. 'You can't-'
'I saw them killing each other. I saw how many there were, and I broke,' Nayiit said, and his hands took a pose of profound contrition. 'I'm the one who called the retreat.'
'I know,' Otah said. is
Liat had been nursing her headache since she'd woken that morning; as the day progressed, it had drawn a line from the hack of her eyes to her temples that throbbed when she moved too quickly. She had given up shaking her head. Instead, she pressed her fingers into the fine-grained wood of the table and tried to will her frustration into it. Kiyan, seated across from her, was saying something in a reasonable, measured tone that entirely missed her point. Liat took a pose that asked permission to speak, and then didn't wait for Kiyan to answer her.
'It isn't the men,' Liat said. 'He could have taken twice what he did, and we'd be able to do what's needed. It's that he took all the horses.'
Kiyan's fox-sharp face tightened. Her dark eyes flickered down toward the maps and diagrams spread out between them. The farmlands and low towns that surrounded Machi were listed with the weight of grain and neat and vegetables that had come from each in the last five years. Liat's small, neat script covered paper after paper, black ink on the butter-yellow pages noting acres to be harvested and plowed, the number of hands and hooves required by each.
The breeze from the unshuttered windows lifted the pages but didn't disarray them, like invisible fingers checking the corners for some particular mark.
'Show me again,' Kiyan said, and the weariness in her voice was almost enough to disarm Liat's annoyance. Almost, but not entirely. With a sigh, she stood. The line behind her eyes throbbed.
''T'his is the number of horses we'd need to plow the eastern farmsteads here and here and here,' Liat said, tapping the maps as she did so. 'We have half that number. We can get up to nearly the right level if we take the mules from the wheat mills.'
Kiyan looked over the numbers, her fingertips touching the sums and moving on. I ler gaze was focused, a single vertical line between her brows.
'How short is the second planting now?' Kiyan asked.
'The west and south are nearly complete, but they started late. The eastern farmsteads… not more than a quarter.'
Kiyan leaned back. Otah's wife looked nearly as worn as Liat felt. The gray in her hair seemed more
