out before him.
"I think I've found something," Cehmai said. "There's reference in
Nlanat-kvo's notes to a grammatic schema called threefold significance.
If we have something that talks about that, perhaps we can find a way to
shift the binding from one kind of significance to another."
"We don't," Nlaati said. "And if I recall correctly, the three
significators all require unity. "There's not a way to pick between them."
"Well. "Then we're still stuck."
"Yes."
Cehmai stood and stretched, the popping of his spine audible from across
the wide room.
"We need someone who knows this better than we do," Maati said as he
lowered himself onto a carved wooden chair. "We need the Daikvo."
"We don't have him."
"I know it."
"So we have to keep trying," Cehmai said. "The better prepared we are
when the Dai-kvo comes, the better he'll he able to guide us."
"And if he never comes?"
"He will," Cehmai said. "He has to."
16
"Yes," Nayiit said. "That's him."
Otah's mount whickered beneath him as he looked up at the Dal-kvo's
body. It had been tied to a stake at the entrance to his high offices;
the man had been dead for days. The brown-robed corpses of the poets lay
at his feet, stacked like cordwood.
They had taken it all as granted. The andat, the poets, the continuity
of one generation following upon another as they always had. It grew
more difficult, yes. An andat would escape and for a time and the city
it had left would suffer, yes. They had not conceived that everything
might end. Otah looked at the slaughtered poets, and he saw the world he
had known.
The morning after the battle had been tense. He had risen before dawn
and paced through the camps. Several of the scouts vanished, and at
first there was no way to know whether they had been captured by the
Galts or killed or if they had simply taken their horses, set their eyes
on the horizon, and fled. It was only when the reports began to filter
back that the shape of things came clear.
The Galts had fallen hack, their steam wagons and horses making a fast
march to the east, toward the village of the Dal-kvo. "There was no
pursuit, no rush to find the survivors of that bloody field and finish
the work they'd begun. Otah's army had been broken easily, and the
Galts' contempt for them was evident in the decision that they were not
worth taking the time to kill.
It was humiliating, and still Otah had found himself relieved. More of
his men would die today, but only from wounds they already bore. They
had given Otah a moment to rest and consider and see how deep the damage
had gone.
Four hundred of his men lay dead in the mud and grass beside perhaps a
third as many Galts, perhaps less. Another half thousand were wounded or