Ajutani. I've come to destroy them."
THE. FIRST REFUGEES APPEARED WHEN OTAII'S LFI"I'LE ARMY WAS STILL three
days' march from the village of the I)ai-kvo. 't'hey were few and
scattered in the morning, and then more and larger groups toward the
day's end. The stories they told Otah were the same. Ships had come to
Yalakeht-warships loaded heavy with Galtic soldiers. Some of the ships
were merchant vessels that had been on trade runs to Chahuri- "lan.
Others were unfamiliar. The harbor master had tried to refuse them
berths, but a force of men had come from the warehouse district and
taken control of the seafront. By the time the Khai had gathered a force
to drive them hack, it was too late. Yalakeht had fallen. Any hope that
Otah's army might he on a fool's errand ended with that news.
In the night, more men came, drawn by the light and scent of the army's
cook fires. Otah saw that they were welcomed, and the tale grew. Boats
had been waiting, half assembled, in the warehouses of Galtic merchants
in \'alakcht. Great metal boilers ran paddle wheels, and pushed their
wide, shallow boats upriver faster than oxen could pull. Boats loaded
with men and steam wagons. The low towns nearest Yalakeht had been
overrun. Another force had been following along the shore, hauling food
and supplies. The soldiers themselves had sped for the Dal-kvo. Just as
Otah had feared they would.
Utah sat in his tent and listened to the cicadas. They sang as if
nothing was changing. As if the world was as it had always been. A
breeze blew from the south, heavy with the smell of rain though the
clouds were still few and distant. Trees nodded their branches to one
another. Utah kept his hack to the fire and stared out at darkness.
"There was no way to know whether the Galtic army had reached the
village yet. Perhaps the Dai-kvo was preparing some defense, perhaps the
village had been encircled and overrun. From the tales he'd heard, once
the Galts and their steam wagons reached the good roads leading from the
river to the village itself, they would be able to travel faster than
news of them.
It had been almost thirty years ago when Otah had traveled tip that
river carrying a message from Saraykeht. The memory of it was like
something from a dream. "There had been an older man-younger, likely,
than Otah was now-who had run the boat with his daughter. They had never
spoken of the girl's mother, and Otah had never asked. That child
daughter would he a woman now, likely with children of her own. Otah
wondered what had become of her, wondered whether that half-recalled
river girl was among those flying out of the storm into which he was
heading, or if she had been in one of the towns that the army had destroyed.
A polite scratch came at the door, his servant announcing himself. Utah
called out his permission, and the door opened. He could see the
silhouettes of Ashua Radaani and his other captains looming behind the
servant boy's formal pose.
"Bring them in," Otah said. "And bring us wine. Wait. Watered wine."
The six men lumbered in. Utah welcomed them all with formal gravity. The
fine hunting robes in which they had come out from Machi had been
scraped clean of mud. The stubble had been shaved from their chins. From