protected him from the ticks. He remembered looking up at the wide sky

with something like contentment. It seemed fourteen years sleeping in

the best bed in Machi had made a difference.

"Is there something I can bring you, Most I Iigh?" the servant boy asked

from the doorway of the tent. Utah pulled open the netting and turned

over in his cot, twisting his head to look at him. The boy was perhaps

eighteen summers old, long hair pulled back and bound by a length of

leather.

"Do I seem like I need something?"

The boy looked down, abashed.

"You were moaning again, Most High."

Otah let himself lie back on the cot. The stretched canvas creaked under

him like a ship in a storm. He closed his eyes and cataloged quietly all

his reasons for moaning. His hack ached like someone had kicked him. His

thighs were chafed half raw. They were hardly ten days out from Machi,

and it was becoming profoundly clear that he didn't know how to march a

military column across the rolling, forested hills that stretched from

Machi almost to the mountains North of the Daikvo. The great Galtic army

that had massed in the South was no doubt well advanced, and the Dal-kvo

was in deadly danger, if he hadn't been killed already. Otah closed his

eyes. Right now, the throbbing sting of his abused thighs bothered him most.

"Go ask the physicians to send some salve," he said.

"I'll call for the physician."

"No! Just ... just get some salve and bring it here. I'm not infirm. And

I wasn't moaning. It was the cot."

The boy took a pose of acceptance and backed out of the tent, shutting

the door behind him. Otah let the netting fall closed again. A tent with

a door. Gods.

The first few days hadn't been this had. The sense of release that came

from taking real action at last had almost outweighed the fears that

plagued him and the longing for Kiyan at his side, for Eiah and Danat.

The Northern summer was brief, but the days were long. He rode with the

men of the utkhaiem, trotting on their best mounts, while the couriers

ranged ahead and the huntsmen foraged. The wide, green world smelled

rich with the season. The North Road ran only among the winter

cities-Amnat-"Tan, Cetani, Machi. There was no good, paved road direct

from Machi to the village of the Dai-kvo, but there were trade routes

that jumped from low town to low town. Mud furrows worn by carts and

hooves and feet. Around them, grasses rose high as the bellies of their

horses, singing a dry song like fingertips on skin when the wind stirred

the blades. The feeling of the sure-footed animal he rode had been

reassuring at first. Solid and strong.

But the joy of action had wearied while the dread grew stronger. The

steady movement of the horse had become wearisome. The jokes and songs

of the men had lost something of their fire. The epics and romances of

the Empire included some passages about the weariness and longing that

came of living on campaign, but they spoke of endless seasons and years

without the solace of home. Otah and his men hadn't yet traveled two

full weeks. They were still well shy of the journey's halfway mark, and

already they were losing what cohesion they had.

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