An Autumn War(132)

Eiah swallowed and her eyes shone with tears. Maati smiled at her, stood again, and waved her back toward the stairs. Cehmai came close, frowning.

"I'm not sure that was a kind thing to tell her," he said, but a sudden outburst of trumpet calls sounded before Maati could reply. Maati thought could hear the distant tattoo of drums echoing against the city walls. He gestured to Cehmai.

"Come on. "['here isn't time. Finish drawing those, then light the candles and close that blasted door. We'll all freeze to death before the andat can have its crack at us."

"Or we'll have it all in place just in time for the Galts to take it."

Maati scribbled out the rest of the binding. He'd wanted time to think on each word, each phrase; if he'd had time to paint each word like the portrait of a thought, it would have been better. "There wasn't time. He finished just as Cehmai lit the final lantern and walked up the stone steps to the snow door. Before he closed it, the younger poet looked out, peering into the city.

"What do you see?"

"Smoke," Cehmai said. 't'hen, "Nothing."

"Come back down,,, \laati said. "\V'here are the robes for it?"

"In the back corner," Cehmai said, pulling the wide wooden doors shut. "I'll get them."

Nlaati went to the cushion in the middle of the room, lowered himself with a grunt, and considered. The wall before him looked more like the scrihhlings of low-town vandals than a poet's lifework. But the words and phrases, the images and metaphors all shone brighter in his mind than the lanterns could account for. Cehmai passed before him briefly, laying robes of blue shot with black on the floor where, with luck, the next hands to hold them wouldn't be human.

\laati glanced over his shoulder. Eiah was sitting against the back wall, her hands held in fists even with her heart. I Ic smiled at her. Reassuringly, he hoped. And then he turned to the words he had written, took five deep breaths to clear his mind, and began to chant.

O'EMI STOOD ON T11E 1.11' OF"17IF. ROOF AND LOOKE1) DOWN XI' 1NIACIII AS IF IT were a map. The great streets were marked by the lines of rooftops. Only those streets that led directly to I louse Siyanti's warehouses were at an angle that permitted him to see the black cobbles turning white beneath the snow. To the south, the army of the Galts was marching forward. The trumpet calls from the high towers told him that much. "I'hey had worked out short signals for some eventualities-short melodies that signaled some part of the plans he had worked with Sinja and Ashua Radaani and the others. But in addition there was a code that let him phrase questions as if they were spoken words, and hear answers in the replies from the towers far above.

The trumpeter was a young man with a vast barrel chest and lips blue with cold. Whenever Otah had the man blow, the wide brass hell of the trumpet seemed as if it would deafen them all. And yet the responses were sometimes nearly too faint to hear. 'l'imes like now.

"What's he saying?" the Khai Cetani asked, and (bah held tip a hand to stop him, straining to hear the last trailing notes.

"The Galts are taking the bridge," Otah said. "I don't think they trust the ice."

"That'll mean they're longer reaching us," the Khai Cetani said. ""That's good. If we can keep them out of the warmth until sundown ..."

Otah took a pose of agreement, but didn't truly believe it. If they were able to trap the Galts above ground when night came, the invaders would take over the houses and burn whatever they could break small enough to fit in the fire grates. If the cold air moved in-a storm or the frigid winds that ended the gentle snows of autumn-then the Galts would be in trouble, but the snow graying the distance now wasn't prelude to a storm. Otah didn't say it, but he couldn't imagine keeping an army so close and still at bay long enough for the weather to change. The Galts would he defeated here in the streets, or they wouldn't he defeated.

Ile paced the length of the rooftop, his eyes tracing the routes that he had hoped to guide them toward-the palaces and the forges. Behind him, his servants shivered from the cold and the need to remain respectfully still. The great iron fire grate that they'd hauled up and loaded with logs was burning merrily, but somehow the heat from it seemed to go out no more than a foot or two from the flames. The Khai Cetani stood near it, and the trumpeter. Otah couldn't imagine standing still. Not now.

The southern reaches of the city were essentially Galtic already; there was no way to make them safe against the coming army. The battle would he nearer the center, in the shadows of the towers, in the narrower ways where Otah's men could appear all along the Galtic line at once as they had in the forest. Another trumpet call came. The Galts had finished crossing the river. The march had begun on Nlachi itself.