was only of the battle, and of his men, dying. Saya took a pose of
farewell and slunk away, down toward the trees where the battle would
soon begin.
The first of the steam wagons came into sight. He could hear it clacking
like a loom. The wide belly at its back glowed gold in the rising sun.
It was piled with sacks and boxes. Tents, perhaps, or food. Coal for the
furnaces. The packs that soldiers would have worn on their shoulders.
The wreckage he had seen at the 1)ai-kvo's village had let him
understand what these things were, but seeing one move-wheels turning at
the speed of a team at fast trot, and vet without a horse near-was no
less strange than his dreams. For a moment, he felt something like awe
at the mind who had conceived it. The first of the soldiers below him
saw the fallen log and called out-a long musical note that might have
been a word or only a signal. The sound of the steam wagon changed, and
it slowed, jittered once, and came to a halt. The long call came again
and again as it receded down the road like whisperers at court passing
the words of the Khai to distant galleries. The Galts came together,
conferring. At Otah's side, the bear hunter sat back, bracing the curve
of the bow against the soles of his feet. I Ic took one of the bolts,
steadying it between his fists as, two-handed, he drew back the wire.
The how creaked.
"Wait," Utah said.
A man came forward, past the steam wagon. He wore a gray tunic marked
with the Galtic "free. I Iis hair was dark as Utah's own, his skin dark
and leathern. The crowd of men at the fallen trees turned to face him,
their bodies taking attitudes of respect. Utah felt something shift in
his bell-.
"I lim," Utah said.
"Most High?" the huntsman said, strain in his voice.
"Can you hit the man in gray from here?"
'['Ile huntsman strained his neck, turned his body and his bow.
"I lard. Shot," he grunted.
"Can you do it?"
The huntsman was silent for half a breath.
"Yes," he said.
"'T'hen do. I)o it now."
The wire made a low thrum and the huntsman did something fast with his
ankles that caught the bow before it could fall. He was already bending
back again when the huge arrow struck. It took the gray man in the side,
just below his ribs, and he collapsed without crying out. Otah fumbled
with his horn, raising it to his lips. The note he blew filled his ears,
so that he only knew the Galts below him were calling out to each other
by the movement of their jaws and their drawn swords and axes.
The second bolt flew at the steam wagon as the soldiers fell back. It
struck the belly of the steam wagon with a low clank and fell useless to
the ground. A horn answering Otah's own called, and something terrible
and sudden and louder than anything Otah had ever heard before drowned
it out. A great cloud gouted up into the sky from perhaps three hundred
yards back in the Galtic column, and then the huntsman at his side