'Bear hunters are rare,' the huntsman said. 'There aren't any old ones.'
'I low many?'
'Fight who are good. 'Twice that who know how the bow works. With practice…'
The Khai Cetani frowned deeply, and turned to Otah. Otah chewed at the inside of his lip and looked down and to the east. The trees here were thick, unlike the plains nearer to the newly abandoned city where the need for lumber had created new-made meadows. The leaves were red and gold, bright as fire. The days were still warm enough at their height, but the nights were cold and getting colder. Soon it would be freezing before morning, and soon after that-a week, ten days-it wouldn't be thawing by midday.
'We have two and a half thousand men,' Otah said. 'And you're telling me only eight can work these things?'
'They're not good for much apart from hunting big animals that need killing fast. And there aren't many who care to do that, if they can help it,' the huntsman said. 'Why learn something with no use?'
Otah squatted and took one of the bows in his hand. It was heavier than it looked. It would be able to throw the bolts hard. Otah wondered how close they could afford to get to the road. Too far back, and the trees would offer as much protection to the Galts as cover for Otah's men. Too close, and they'd be seen before the time came. It wouldn't take much skill to hit the belly of a steam wagon if you were near enough. He tossed the how from hand to hand as he weighed the risks.
'Go ask for volunteers,' Otah said. 'Ask on both sides of the road. Anyone who says they're willing, test them. Take the twenty best.'
'A man who doesn't know what he's doing with this can scrape the meat off his legs,' the huntsman said.
Otah stopped tossing the bow and turned to consider the man. The huntsman blushed, realizing what he had just said and to whom. He took a pose of obeisance and backed away from the two Khaiem, folding himself in among the trees and vanishing. The Khai Cetani sighed and took a pose of apology.
'He's a good enough man,' he said, 'but he forgets his place.'
'He isn't wrong,' Otah said. 'If this were a better time to have our orders questioned, I'd have listened to him. But then, if it were a better time, we wouldn't be out here.'
The last of the men and women fleeing Cetani had passed them five days before, carts and wagons and sacks slung over hunched backs. For five days, the combined forces of Cetani and Machi had haunted these woods, sharpening their weapons and planning the attack. And growing bored and hungry and cold. Two nights ago, Otah had ordered an end to all fires. The smoke would give them away, and the prospect of a halfsleeping man dropping a stray ember on the forest floor was too likely. The men grumbled, but enough of them saw the sense of it that the edict hadn't been ignored. Not yet.
It wouldn't be many more days, though. If the Galts didn't come, the men would grow restive and careless, and when the time came, it would be the battle before the Dai-kvo again, only this time, the Galts would march into Machi. The bodies left in the streets wouldn't be of poets. They would be the families of every man in the hidden clumps that dotted the hills. 'Their mothers, fathers, lovers, children. Everyone they knew. Everyone that remained. That Was good for another day. Perhaps two.
'You're thinking of the frost,' the Khai Cetani said. 'You're worried that it's going to conic and drop our screen of leaves before the Galts do.'
Otah smiled.
'No, actually, I'd been worrying about other things entirely. 'Thank you for distracting Inc.'
The Khai Cetani actually chuckled.
'I'll go and speak With my leaders,' he said, clapping Otah on the shoulder. 'Keep their spirits up.-
'I'll do the same,' Otah said. 'It's coming. They'll he here soon.'
The camps had been divided. Groups of men no larger than twenty. Only one stayed close the road on either side. The others fanned out to the west. When the Galts appeared at the edge of the last cleared forest, runners would come from the watch camps, and the men would make their way to the road. Trees already had been felled at four places along the path-two before they reached the forest, another halfway to the hill on which Otah now stood, and the last where the road turned a little to the south and then west again toward Nlachi. The first time they were forced to stop, they would expect the attack. By the fourth, Otah hoped they would only think it another delay. The mixed coal would have their steam wagons running hotter than thev intended. The hearhunting bows would prick the steel chambers. In the chaos, the armies would appear, falling on the Galts' long vulnerable flanks. If it all went well. If the plan worked. If not, then the gods alone knew how the fight would end.
Night fell cold.'l'he wide cloudless sky seemed to pull the warmth of the day and land up into it, and Otah, most honored and powerful man in his city, wrapped an extra cloak around himself and settled down against it tree, Ashua Radaani snoring gently at his side. I Ic had expected his dreams to be troubled, but instead he found himself ice fishing, and the fish he saw moving below the ice were also Kiyan and his children, playing with him, tugging at the line and then darting away. A trout that was also Kiyan in a silver-blue robe leapt from the waterwith the logic of dreams frozen and vet unfrozen-and splashed back down to Otah's delight when a rough hand shook him awake. Dawn was threatening, gray and rose in the east, and Saya the blacksmith towered over him, checks so red they seemed dark in the dim light, nose running, and a grin showing his teeth.
'They've come, Most High.'
Utah leapt up, his back and hip aching from the cold night and the unforgiving ground. To the east, smoke rose in a wall. Coal smoke from the Galtic wagons strung along the road from Cetani like beads on a string. It was earlier in the day than he'd expected them, and as he pulled on his makeshift armor of boiled leather and metal scale, his mind leapt ahead, guessing at what tactical advantages the Galtic captain intended by arriving with the dawn..
None, of course. They had no way to know Otah's men were there. And still, Otah considered how the light would strike the road, the trees, what it would make visible and what it would hide. He could no more stop his mind than call down the stars.
The sun found the highest reaches of the smoke first, where it had diffused almost to nothing. Closer to the ground, the smoke was already visibly nearer. The Gaits had passed the third log barrier while the runners had come to him. The fourth lay in wait where Utah could see it. The innocent forest was alive with his men, or so he hoped. From his place at the ridge of the low hill, he saw only the dozen nearest, crouched behind trees and stones. Utah heard somethingthe clank of metal or the sound of a raised voice. He willed them to be silent, fear and anger at the sound almost enough to make his teeth ache until he heard it again and realized it was the first of the Gaits.
The bear hunter appeared at his side. He held three of the spearlike bolts and the great bow. Saya the blacksmith scampered up with another, its steel heads only just fastened to it. Men appeared on the road below them.
'The horn. Where's the horn?' Utah said, a sudden fear arcing through him. If he had learned the lesson of drums and horns from the Galts only to misplace the signal at the critical moment… But the brass horn was at his hip, where it had been since they'd set their trap. He took the cold metal in his hands, brushing dirt from the mouthpiece.
'They look a bit rough around the edges, eh?' Saya whispered, pointing at the road with his chin. 'Amnat-Tan must have done them some hurt.'
Utah looked at the Galtic soldiers. 'There were perhaps a hundred that he could see on this small curve of road. Ile tried to recall what the men he had faced outside the 1)ai-kvo's village had looked like; how they had walked, how they had held themselves. He couldn't. The memory was only of the battle, and of his men, dying. Saya took a pose of farewell and slunk away, down toward the trees where the battle would soon begin.
The first of the steam wagons came into sight. He could hear it clacking like a loom. The wide belly at its back glowed gold in the rising sun. It was piled with sacks and boxes. Tents, perhaps, or food. Coal for the furnaces. The packs that soldiers would have worn on their shoulders. The wreckage he had seen at the 1)ai-kvo's village had let him understand what these things were, but seeing one move-wheels turning at the speed of a team at fast trot, and vet without a horse near-was no less strange than his dreams. For a moment, he felt something like awe at the mind who had conceived it. The first of the soldiers below him saw the fallen log and called out-a long musical note that might have been a word or only a signal. The sound of the steam wagon changed, and it slowed, jittered once, and came to a halt. The long call came again and again as it receded down the road like
