Reading Online Novel

An Autumn War(107)



"I'm sorry, Father," Nayiit said. "I told Danat-cha that you might be busy...."

"Nothing that can't wait a hand or two," Maati said, waving them in. "It might he best, really, if I step away from it all. After a while, it all starts looking the same."

Nayiit chuckled and took a pose that expressed his sympathy. Danat, red-cheeked, shifted his gaze shyly from one man to the other. Maati nodded a question to Nayiit.

"Danat wanted to ask you something," Nayiit said, and squatted down so that his eyes were on a level with the child's. His smile was gentle, encouraging. A favorite uncle helping his nephew over some simple childhood fear. Maati felt the sudden powerful regret that he had never met Nayiit's wife, never seen his child. "Go ahead, Danat-kya. We came so that you could ask, and Maati-cha's here. Do it like we practiced."

Danat turned to Maati, blushing furiously, and took a pose of respect made awkward by the thickness of cloth around his small arms; then he began pulling books out from beneath his robes and placing them one by one in a neat pile before Maati. When the last of them had appeared, Danat shot a glance at Nayiit who answered with an approving pose.

"Excuse me, Nlaati-cha," Danat said, his face screwed into a knot of concentration, his words choppy from being rehearsed. "Papa-kya's still not back. And I've finished all these. I wondered ..

The words fell to a mumble. \laati smiled and shook his head.

"You'll have to speak louder," Nayiit said. "Hc can't hear you."

"I wondered if you had any others I could read," the boy said, staring at his own feet as if he'd asked for the moon on a ribbon and feared to he mocked for it.

Behind him, where the boy couldn't see, Nayiit grinned. This is who he would be, Nlaati thought. This is the kind of father my boy would be.

"\V'ell," he said aloud. "We might be able to find something. Come with me."

He led them out and along the gravel path to the library's entrance. The air had a bite to it. I Ic could feel the color coming to his own checks. When he'd been young, a child-poet younger than Nayiit, he'd spent his terrible winter in Saraykeht with Seedless and Otah and Liat. In the summer cities, this chill would have been the depth of winter. In the North, it was only the first breath of autumn.

Cehmai looked tip when they came in, a scroll case of shattered silk in his hand. A smear of dust marked his check like ashes. Boxes and crates lay about the main room, stacked man-high. One of the couches was piled with scrolls that hadn't been looked over, two others with the ones that had. The air was thick with the smells of dust and parchment and old binder's paste. Uanat stood in the doorway, his eyes wide, his mouth open. Nayiit stepped around him and drew the boy in, sliding the doors closed behind them. Cehmai nodded his question.

"Uanat was asking if we had any other hooks," NIaati said.

"You have nll of them," the boy said, awe in his voice.

Maati chuckled, and then felt the mirth and simple pleasure fade. The shelves and crates, boxes and piled volumes surrounded them.

"Yes," lie said. "Yes, we have all of them."





Chapter 19

"I low many do we have?" Otah asked.

The bows had been made for killing bears. Each one stood taller than a man, the bow itself made of ash and horn, the drawstring of wire. It took a man sitting down and using both legs to draw it back. The arrows were blackened oak shafts as long as short spears. The tips-usually a wide, crossed head like twined knives-had been replaced by hard steel points made to punch through metal. The chief huntsman of the Khai Cetani nudged one with his toe, spat, and looked out through the trees toward the road below them.

"'Iwo dozen," he said. His voice had a \Vestern drawl. "Sixty shafts, more or Tess."

"More or less the Khai Cetani demanded.

"We're fashioning more, Most I ligh," the huntsman said.

"I low many men do we have who can use them?" (bah asked. "It won't matter if we have a thousand bows if there's only five men who can aim them."

"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.