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.
I should he down there, Otah thought. I should get a sword or an axe and
go down there.
It was an idiotic idea, and he knew it. One more blade or how in the
streets wouldn't matter now, and getting himself killed would achieve
nothing.
Trumpets sounded-half a dozen of them at once. And Galtic drums.
Everyone sending signals, none of them listening. Otah squatted at the
roof's edge with his eyes closed, trying to make out one message from
another. Frustration built in his spine and neck. Something was
happening-several things, and all at the same moment, and he couldn't
hear what they were.
"Most high!" one the servants called. ""There!"
Otah and the Khai Cctani both looked to where the servant boy was
pointing. A runner dashed along a rooflinc, down near the great, wide
streets that led toward the forges. A great pillar of smoke was rising