With every day, most men were afoot while huntsmen and scouts and utkhaiem rode. Horsemen were called to the halt long before the night should have forced them to make camp, for fear that those following on foot would fail to reach the tents before darkness fell. And even so, men continued to straggle in long after the evening meals had been served, leaving them unrested and fed only on scraps when morning came. The army, such as it was, seemed tied to the speed of its slowest members. He needed speed and he needed men at his side, but there was no good way to have both. And the fault, Otah knew, was in himself.
There had to he answers to this and the thousand other problems that came of leading a campaign. The Galts would know. Sinja could have told him, had he been there and not out in some Westlands garrison waiting for a flood of Galts that wasn't coming. They were men that had experience in the field, who had more knowledge of war than the casual study of a few old Empire texts fit in between religious ceremonies and high court bickering.
The scratch came at the door, soft and apologetic. Otah swung his legs off the cot and sat up. He called out his permission as he parted the netting, but the one who came in wasn't the servant boy. It was Nayiit.
He looked tired. His robes had been blue once, but from the hem to the knee they were stained the pale brown of the mud through which they had traveled. Otah considered the weight of their situation-the young man's dual role as Maati's son and his own, the threat he posed to Danat and the promise to Machi, the aid he might be in this present endeavor to prevent harm to the Dal-kvo-and dismissed it all. He was too tired and pained to chew everything a hundred times before he swallowed.
He took a pose of welcome, and Nayiit returned one of greater formality. Otah nodded to a camp chair and Nayiit sat.
"Your attendant wasn't here. I didn't know what the right etiquette was, so I just came through."
"He's running an errand. Once he's hack, I can have tea brought," Otah said. "Or wine."
Nayiit took a pose of polite refusal. Otah shrugged it away.
"As you see fit," Otah said. "And what brings you?"
"There's grumbling in the ranks, Most High. Even among some of the utkhaiem."
"There's grumbling in here, for that," Otah said. "There's just no one here to listen to me. Are there any suggestions? Any solutions that the ranks have seen that escaped me? Because, by all the gods that have ever been named, I'm not too proud to hear them."
"They say you're driving them too hard, Most High," Nayiit said. "That the men need a day's rest."
"Rest? Go slower? That's the solution they have to offer? What kind of brilliance is that?"
Nayiit looked up. His face was long, like a Northerner's. Like Otah's. His eyes were Liat's tea-with-milk brown. His expression, however, owed to neither of them. Where Liat would have kept her eyes down or Otah would have made himself charming, Nayiit's face belonged on a man hearing a heavy load. Whatever was in his mind, in this moment it was clear that he would press until the world was the way he wanted it or it crushed him. It was something equal parts weariness and joy, like a man newly acquainted with certainty. Otah found himself curious.
"They aren't wrong, Most High. These men aren't accustomed to living on the road like this. You can't expect the speed of a practiced army from them. And the walkers have been rising early to drill."
"Have they?"
"They have the impression their lives may rest on it. And the lives of their families. And, forgive me Most High, but your life too."
Otah leaned forward, his hands taking a questioning pose.
"They're afraid of failing you," Nayiit said. "It's why no one would come to you and complain. I've been keeping company with a man named Saya. He's a blacksmith. Plow blades, for the most part. I Iis knees are swollen to twice their normal size, and he wakes before dawn to tic on leather and wool and swing sticks with the others. And then he walks until he can't. And then he walks farther."
Nayiit's voice was trembling now, but Otah couldn't say if it was with weariness or fear or anger.
"These aren't soldiers, Most High. And you're pushing them too hard."
"We've been moving for ten days-"
"And we're coming near to halfway to the Dai-kvo's village," Nayiit said. "In ten days. And drilling, and sleeping under thin blankets on hard ground. Not couriers and huntsmen, not men who are accustomed to this. Just men. I've spoken to the provisioners. We left Nlachi three thousand strong. Do you know how many have turned hack? How many have deserted you?"
Otah blinked. It wasn't a question he'd ever thought to ask.
"How many?"
"None."