The Winner's Kiss

by Marie Rutkoski

  “Worried, how?” Roshar glanced at his cards and groaned.

  But Arin, who’d been watching their game without taking part, had already guessed what Kestrel was thinking. “We need the trees for cover,” he said, “but they’ll make it hard to use the guns. We won’t have much hope of hitting targets on the road below.”

  “Better cut them down.” Roshar took his turn. “The wood’s undergrowth might be enough to screen us if we lie low.”

  Kestrel clicked her teeth; an eastern, irritated sort of sound.

  “You learned that from me,” the prince said, pleased. “Now tell the truth. Did you mark the cards?”

  Coolly, she said, “I never cheat.”

  “We can’t cut the trees down,” Arin said.

  “Concentrate,” Kestrel told the prince, sweeping up the card he’d tossed down.

  “To be clear, I’m letting you win. I let you win all the time.”

  “Obviously we can’t cut them down,” she said. “My father will notice a sudden swath of felled trees. We might as well paint a sign telling him we’re there.”

  “Or . . .” Arin said.

  She glanced at him. “What are you thinking?”

  “How much rope do we have?”

  “Two hundred and twelve lengths.”

  Roshar said, “You’ve been going over our supplies?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Could you rattle off the units by heart?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many sacks of grain for horses?”

  “Sixty-two. Play your card. You might as well. You’re going to lose regardless.”

  “Attempts to distract her usually don’t work,” Arin told him.

  “You play the winner, then,” Roshar said, “so that I may observe your technique.”

  Arin checked the rabbit again, pulled it off the fire. “No.”

  A surprised disappointment twitched, insect-like, inside Kestrel’s chest.

  Roshar said, “Why not?”

  Arin sliced meat off the bone onto a tin plate.

  Kestrel, who wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to hear Arin’s answer, said, “Why do you want rope?”

  “Let Arin surprise us,” Roshar said. “That’s how we do things. He comes up with something brilliant and I take the credit.”

  “Tell me,” Kestrel said.

  Arin set down the plate. “I won’t play you because even when I win, I lose. It’s never been just a game between us.”

  Roshar, who was stretched out on his side on the grass, elbow crooked, cheek pillowed on his palm, raised his brows at Kestrel.

  “I meant about the rope,” she muttered.

  Roshar’s gaze slid between her and Arin. “Yes, the rope. Why don’t we talk about that after all, shall we?”

  They were in position. Kestrel waited with the gunners behind a thin layer of trees bordering a hill that overlooked the road. A breeze flipped the leaves. Trees creaked. The gunners, mostly Herrani, nervously looked up at Arin’s project.

  It had taken nearly all the soldiers the better part of the day, using two-handed saws from the supply wagon. Axes, too. And, of course, the rope.

  Arin had tied each tree trunk and staked the rope deep down into the forest floor. Each tree was unique, its height and width and lean calling for a different network of ropes, set at different angles. After the trees had been tied into place, soldiers sawed them at their base—though not quite all the way through.

  “When the Valorians come,” Arin had said, “cut the ropes.”

  “You want to kill me,” Roshar had said. “Embarrassingly. A prince meets his end in battle. He doesn’t get squashed by a falling tree. I bet you tied those things all wrong.”

  A smile tugged at the corner of Arin’s mouth. The air was gritty with sawdust. “After every thing,” he told Kestrel, “I wouldn’t let you be harmed by a tree.”

  “Me,” Roshar said pointedly. “You mean me.”

  But Arin had already gone. Soon after, Roshar left in the opposite direction.

  The plan was an ambush.

  “What formation would the general use,” Roshar had asked her, “for a march along a road of that width?”

  Kestrel had paused, fingers on the worn map.

  “She can’t know for certain,” Arin said.

  “Here’s what I would do if I were him,” she said. “I’d be in the front ranks, where I’d keep most of my cavalry—the officers. New recruits would be behind the supply wagons, which I’d keep in the middle. Infantry in the back, with a few trusted officers just in case. I’d choose officers who wouldn’t complain about being in the rearguard with the lower ranks. They’d be experienced. They’d be good. But there’d be few. Archers and crossbows flanking the regiment, ready to target the hills. He’ll know there’s a risk of a skirmish. It’d make sense, if we were readying for a siege at Errilith, to send small groups to harass their progress north. He’d expect the supplies to be targeted. If we destroy the wagons, we cut the legs out from under him. It’s not that an attack would be a complete surprise. It’s the force of our attack, and our ability to use a weapon he can’t contend with, that give us our best advantages.”

  “So we give him what he expects,” Arin said. “A small company of ours can attack the front lines, draw the general’s attention while our larger force prepares to bucket the rearguard. The general should pull his defenses forward. We might even separate them from the center. Their officers wear metal armor. Volleys from the guns will be more effective on the center and rear. The gunners should drop as many soldiers as possible around the wagons—and, gods help us, the cannons.”

  “A small company attacking the Valorians’ front ranks,” Roshar mused. “How delightfully suicidal. Perfect for you, Arin.”

  “But,” said Kestrel.

  They both looked at her, and she could tell from the set of Arin’s jaw that Roshar had said only what Arin already planned to do anyway. Arin’s eyes were overcast. They had a distant, difficult regard that sent a chill down her spine. It made her wonder whether Arin’s god was real after all. If he was there right now inside Arin, whispering to him.

  “You command this force,” Kestrel told Roshar. “It should be you. Arin can attack the rearguard.”

  With a smirk, Roshar said, “No, that pleasant task is mine. You, little ghost, stay with the guns.”

  Kestrel’s fingers tightened. “You’re placing me in the safest position.”

  “I’m placing you where you won’t be seen by your father.”

  She thought of the general seeing her. She thought of him not seeing her. Both thoughts were paralyzing.

  “You’re not so different from one of those guns,” Roshar said. “A secret weapon. The general must know you’ve escaped the work camp, must guess where you went—if you survived the tundra. But will he think you’re here, with this army? He might, eventually. He might recognize your hand in these dealings whether he sees you or not. But I would rather—and I’m sure Arin would very much rather—that he have no confirmation of your presence.”

  She started to protest.

  “You swore an oath to me,” Roshar said cheerfully. “A Valorian honors her word.”

  Seeing that his last words made her pale with fury, he grinned and left.

  “You want me with the guns, too,” Kestrel told Arin.

  “Roshar’s not wrong.”

  “He’s choosing according to his own best interests.”

  His brow furrowed. “Positioning you with the guns gains him little, personally.”

  “What about your position against the general’s forward ranks?”

  “Sometimes Roshar plays the selfish prince so that no one expects anything better of him. It’s not who he is. He’s choosing well. For me, he’s chosen what I would have chosen for myself. I want the front lines.”

  Kestrel remembered Arin’s words now as she waited in the trees with the gunners, who’d been placed under her command. She remembered how she’d
wanted to explain to him that it had rattled her to try to slip into her father’s mind, to know that the general’s mind and her own felt upsettingly similar. She’d wanted to put her fear inside a white box and give it to Arin.

  You, too, she would tell him. I fear for you. I fear for me if I lost you.

  War is no place for fear, said the memory of her father’s voice.

  “Take care,” she’d told Arin.

  He’d smiled.

  And now he was below, out of sight, beyond the curve of the empty road.

  The sun poured down. The gunners had loaded their weapons. Kestrel watched the road, dagger ready.

  Cicadas. The flit of birdwings.

  Maybe her father had recognized that the coded letter was false.

  Maybe he wouldn’t take the bait.

  A breath of wind. Hours passed, slow as the sweat traveling down Kestrel’s back.

  Her limbs ached from being in the same position. She felt a strange energy slip over her and the gunners, an elastic tension that went tight at the smallest sound, then slackened in the heat, the waiting.

  Dream, wait, startle, wait, dream.

  The gunners, like her, crouched among ferns and saplings. Guns angled down. Small eastern crossbows were at the ready. A sirrin tree dripped orange sap, its spindly branches low and sticky.

  Kestrel watched the road.

  The rapid toc toc toc of a bird’s beak against bark. The brush of leaves. Then—faintly, stronger . . . the rhythm of thousands of boots on the paved road.

  Chapter 28

  Arin heard the valorians marching toward him. The sound made his chest harden with anticipation.

  The Valorians neared. Still hidden behind the bend in the road, Arin turned to catch the eyes of his soldiers, no more than fifty of them, men and women, Herrani and Dacran both. All of them on foot, for stealth and to appear more vulnerable to the Valorian front lines. Some of the Herrani soldiers had lined their eyes in orange and red like Dacran warriors.

  The sound of the Valorian army became deafening. Boots and hooves and wagon wheels. Heavy armor. Metal on metal.

  His gaze on his soldiers, theirs on him. Arin lifted his hand: wait.

  He edged around a tree to look down the road.

  The Valorian cavalry. Enormous war horses. Officers in black and gold.

  Close.

  And one Valorian in particular, leading them, looking no different than he had eleven years ago. Large and armored, his insignia painted across the chest. A woven baldric over his chest, knotted at the shoulder. Helmet simple, made to show his face. That face.

  Good, to have a little distance, to not quite see the general’s light brown eyes—too much like his daughter’s.

  Better, to have this man move his horse nearer to Arin. Almost within his reach.

  Do you want him? Arin’s god whispered.

  Do you want to crush him between your hands?

  Arin glanced back at his company. “Ready,” he whispered, then whispered it again in Dacran. His sword was drawn. His blood was hot.

  Sweet child.

  Mine own.

  Go.

  Kestrel saw the clash from above. Through a spyglass, she watched Valorian war horses rear. Not the general’s. He became motionless: a metal statue. His face was far away, his features a blur. Her stomach clenched.

  And Arin?

  Trees obscured her view. She couldn’t find him. She couldn’t see anything below the horses’ shoulders.

  Infantry against cavalry.

  Kestrel, you fool.

  She realized that she must have believed in Arin’s god. Some unexamined part of her must resolutely trust the god of death’s protection. Only that could explain why she had set Arin against the Valorian vanguard—and her father—with any hope of survival.

  Dread worked its way up her throat.

  In the initial crush, Arin lost sight of the general. An officer’s horse nearly trampled Arin, who dodged the reared front hooves. He caught a blow from the Valorian’s sword; its edge lodged harmlessly in the shoulder of Arin’s hardened leather armor. As the man tugged it free, Arin snatched the reins from the man’s hand and dragged the horse’s head down, heard it scream. The Valorian struggled to keep his seat. Arin buried the point of his sword into the man’s side above his hip, just below the low border of the metal cuirass. Arin pushed.

  An inhuman sound. Blood channeled down the blade. Arin’s hand was warm and wet.

  The Valorian started to slide from his saddle. His foot caught in the stirrup. The greave of his leg armor raked the horse’s side and the animal reared again, nearly dislocating Arin’s arm from his shoulder. He released the reins. The Valorian thumped to the ground. The horse plunged, ran wild, dragging the soldier behind him.

  Arin couldn’t think. He knew, vaguely, that enemy archers weren’t firing on his company, prob ably for fear of hitting the Valorian vanguard. He knew that his own soldiers were falling around him. The Valorians, instead of pulling forward to meet the attack, stood their ground and grew more compact, a wall of metal and horses.

  Those stallions. The gorgeous brawn of them. High and huge.

  Arin shouted in Dacran, then in his own tongue: With me.

  He drew his dagger. A blade in each hand, he ducked into the narrow space between two Valorian war horses and sliced open their necks.

  Kestrel clenched the spyglass. The Valorian officers didn’t advance, didn’t separate from the middle ranks, didn’t expose the supply wagons.

  A war horse stumbled. Then another.

  Her father hacked his sword down. It rose up red. She saw him shout.

  “Cut the ropes,” Kestrel told her gunners. “Now.”

  Arin wanted to cry out. He saw an eastern woman slip past the Valorian defenses, hamstring a war horse, and reach the general. Arin wanted to say No, he wanted to say Mine.

  The general, steady on his steady horse, swung. He cut the woman’s head from her neck. Blood jetted.

  “Hold formation!” the man shouted.

  The rest of the general’s commands echoed in Arin’s ears as he blocked the downswing of a horsed Valorian’s blade. Rearguard, close ranks.

  Arin’s sword arm ached.

  Archers, eyes on the hills. Cannons, at the ready.

  He dropped the dagger from his left hand, hooked his free fingers into the Valorian’s leg armor at the upper thigh, and yanked.

  Flankers, defend.

  The Valorian toppled from his horse.

  Sword into the fallen man’s throat. A gurgling cry.

  The general wasn’t fooled. He’d guessed this was no little skirmish. He held his vanguard back and let Arin’s company come in order to tighten ranks in defense against a larger attack.

  A horse shifted. A path opened between Arin and the general.

  Ah, yes, murmured Arin’s god.

  Then a rough, tumbling crash roared over the sounds of war. Arin almost didn’t know what it meant until a crack broke the air.

  The trees groaned, tipped forward, and thudded down. Most lay where they fell, but a few slid down the hill toward the road. They gathered speed, slammed into boulders or the trunks of other trees. Some speared down: leafy tops first, stopped by nothing or shunted by an obstacle into a diagonal roll that spun them off the hill and onto the Valorian army’s left flank. The trees crushed men and women, cut a swath into the middle ranks.

  Noise rang through the hills. Each thump and scream split the air. It sounded worse to Kestrel as the echoes died. She didn’t want to hear silence.

  “Ready a volley,” she told the gunners. “Aim at the middle ranks. Target archers. Drop the flankers. Drop anyone near a cannon. Cut a hole around the supply wagons.”

  The gunners’ faces were unafraid. Their position was mostly secure, well out of range of Valorian arrows. Cannons might be a problem, but the army below was still fumbling to unhitch cannons from draft horses and unload ordnance from the wagons. Kestrel was about to disrupt that.

&n
bsp; “Matches,” she said.

  They were struck.

  “Light.”

  Short fuses burned.

  “Aim.”

  Gunfire perforated the air. Arin heard what he couldn’t see: the song of metal sailing through space. Iron balls, each no bigger than a small stone, hailed down. They punched into metal. Rang on stone. Drove into flesh.

  Guttural screams. Arin saw the general’s face go gray. Horse carcasses lay between Arin and the general. The shuddering wave of a stallion trying and failing to stand. The pitiable arch and flop of the horse’s neck. And Valorians, two rows of them, trying to hold the front lines, confused, frightened, their eyes not where they should be.

  Arin pushed forward.

  Another volley of gunfire.

  Far away, beyond the Valorian army, came a new sound. Hooves rattled fast up the road. There was a shrieking clash. Roshar’s company must have struck the rearguard.

  The general shouted something incoherent to Arin. The Valorian formation wobbled, seemed ready to dissolve.

  Then a cannon boomed from the central ranks. A second cannon.

  The world became too loud for Arin to understand anything he heard, too fast for him to understand more than what his body did, and did again.

  Blood was in his mouth. His hands were slippery. His muscles were loose and alive.

  A cannonball thudded into the hillside not far below the gunners. Kestrel felt the impact’s tremor in the earth. It vibrated the soles of her boots. It trembled the thin, gummy twigs of sirrin trees.

  “Again,” she told the gunners.

  But despite the gunfire, despite an attack on three fronts, the Valorian army didn’t collapse or panic. The rearguard countered Roshar’s attack. The Valorian army, thousands strong, segmented into three: front, middle, and rear ranks. But Arin’s company, from what Kestrel saw, couldn’t drive through the vanguard to reach the center. The rearguard’s defenses were better than she’d hoped. Roshar made little headway.