Even divided, the Valorians would overcome their attacks. The only way to cripple Kestrel’s enemy for the long term was to destroy the supplies. But the guns, deadly though they were, weren’t precise enough in their aim. They couldn’t open a path for either Arin’s or Roshar’s company to reach the supply wagons.
Anxiety clawed her belly. Roshar, she thought, would have the good sense to retreat if he must. She wasn’t so sure about Arin. She thought that if she couldn’t drag a victory out of this battle, he’d struggle against the vanguard until it overwhelmed him.
The solution is simple, her father whispered inside her. Kestrel didn’t know whether it was a memory or her imagination. If you can do it.
She looked at the sirrin trees. Their sap oozed.
She heard the plunk of an iron ball dropped into its chamber. The dry pour of black powder. As the gunners reloaded their guns, Kestrel shakily tucked her braid into her leather helmet. She could do nothing about the obvious Valorian style of her armor. She remembered how she’d been uncertain whether she wanted her father to see her. A shudder ran through her.
No. Not seen. Never. What ever happened, she didn’t want to be recognized. She scooped a handful of forest earth and scrubbed it onto her face.
Kestrel became aware that the small sounds of reloading guns had stopped, giving way to the dull roar of the battle below. The gunners, crouched low like she was, regarded her.
She stood. “Which of you is truly brave?”
The Valorian vanguard changed tactics. They moved forward now, pressing Arin’s company back.
A hand caught Arin’s arm, pulled him from the path of a charging horse. He turned.
No one.
Bodies and blood. And then . . . an eerie energy in his veins. A sharp zing that made his gut tighten and his guard go up right before a tiny Valorian dagger flew into his vision, spiking through the air, straight for his throat.
As the gunners fired, Kestrel sliced her dagger through the shreds of rope left tied to the stakes in the ground. She scavenged the forest floor for smooth, dry sticks of birch. Hands wrapped in broad leaves, she broke sappy twigs from the sirrin tree. Careful to keep her skin from contact with the flammable sap, she bunched the twigs together, holding them around a birch stick and one end of the rope. With a free hand, she wound the rope around the twigs and the birch stick. Then she held the makeshift torch beneath the dripping sirrin tree, letting drops of sap coat the rope and glue it down to the twigs.
“Exactly like that,” she told the four soldiers who’d agreed to join her. When they each had a torch and had taken a box of matches from the gunners, Kestrel said, “Don’t hold the stick upright until you must. The sap will run. If it gets on your skin, you might burn, too.” She told the gunners to fire two more volleys and then stop.
She and the four soldiers began to run down the hill.
Arin dodged the small dagger. A Needle. He knew that weapon. Needles were a set of six little knives.
He caught the next one in his arm, flung up to block the dagger from his face. It bit into the exposed underside of his forearm where his armor buckled.
Then either his assailant had grown impatient with targeting from afar, or a new opponent had entered the game. As pain flared up Arin’s arm, somebody’s sword crashed into his and knocked his weapon to the ground.
Kestrel followed the scars made by the fallen trees in the forest. She skidded down the steep incline, the four soldiers following. A volley of gunfire shattered the air. A Valorian cannon boomed back. The cannonball crashed into the trees. They cracked. Broken branches hurtled through the air.
A chunk of flying wood nearly hit Kestrel. Startled, she lost her balance and stumbled, getting sap from her torch on her chest armor. But she shouted Run. They were nearly to the road.
The second volley hailed down. Kestrel stopped the four soldiers at the edge of the trees level with the road. Peering through the leaves, she saw that the guns had killed enough soldiers on this flank that gaps in the Valorian defenses here were wide. She spotted the wagon that must hold the black powder. A Valorian stepped out of it, lugging a cannonball in his arms. “Not that wagon,” she told the four. “I’ll take the one next to it. The rest of you, each choose a different wagon. Ready?”
Kestrel’s fingers trembled as she opened the matchbox.
A commander never shows fear, her father said.
Her hand steadied. She lit a match.
They set their torches on fire.
Arin dodged the swing of the Valorian sword. He pulled the Needle free from his arm, felt pain spurt. Arin briefly eyed his attacker. A slender, quick form.
The Valorian lashed out again.
Just throw it and run, Kestrel told herself. Throw and run.
She burst from the trees. Her boots hit stone paving.
A crossbow quarrel soared over her head. Another hit a Herrani soldier running alongside her. He sagged and dropped.
One of the four, a Dacran woman, snagged his torch from the ground and lobbed it at the nearest wagon. Its canvas cover flared into flame.
Kestrel kept running. She couldn’t see what the woman did with the second torch, but heard a howl of pain, a shrieking eastern curse. Kestrel understood only one word of it: fire. The sirrin sap, Kestrel thought. Maybe it had run down the woman’s arm. Maybe the Dacran was burning alive.
Kestrel forced herself to run faster. Valorian soldiers were scattered now, disordered, cut off from the general.
She heard another wagon crackle with fire. She ran erratically toward her target. Never a straight line if you have to run, her father said. Other wise you’re too easy to sight and shoot.
She got shot anyway. An arrow hit her chest.
When the sword came at him again, Arin sidestepped it and seized the hand that held the hilt. Squeezed. Felt the knuckles pop. The sound and the scream were lost amid other sounds and other screams. With the Needle in his left hand, Arin pierced the Valorian’s wrist and saw the red point emerge on the other side. Arin ripped the sword free, claimed it as his own, and stabbed.
Kestrel staggered but didn’t fall. The arrow hadn’t penetrated her armor.
She had almost reached her targeted wagon. Heart slamming against her rib cage, she glanced up at her torch. The sap traced a thin blue line of flame down the birch stave. Her fingers were hot. She threw the torch into the wagon’s belly.
Then she spun and ran for the trees. Her legs pumped hard. She felt the old wound in her thigh split open and seep. She shouted the names of her four soldiers, cried out with ragged breath for them to run. Run, she called in two languages, and then a third. Even in Valorian she shouted for people to flee, because her wagon was already a bonfire, and it was right next to the wagon that held the black powder.
A breeze feathered her sweaty skin. A puff of wind.
An explosion rocked the ground. The stone road shivered under Arin’s boots. Beyond the vanguard, above in the center of the Valorian army’s column, flame shimmered the sunny air.
A Valorian horn blew. The sound curled—too pretty for war, Arin thought.
Stop thinking, said his god. Fall back. Fall to the sides. The trees.
Suddenly, there was a halo of space around Arin. “Not yet,” he murmured.
They are going to charge right up this road, right over you and every one you’re responsible for. Retreat. Now.
But the general, Arin thought.
The god shrugged. It’s your life.
Do you truly care for my life?
A laugh.
Arin called for a retreat.
From the trees on a hill, Arin and what was left of his company watched the Valorians flee. They thundered up the road—as many, at least, as could run. The rearguard, caught between the fire and Roshar’s company, had nowhere to go.
Chapter 29
Later, Arin learned that Roshar had eventually sounded a retreat of his own. The Valorian rearguard had been trapped by the fire, but their numbers still
outweighed Roshar’s. Desperation and excellent training made the Valorian rearguard difficult to overwhelm. “I have no particular interest in dying,” Roshar explained when his forces had regrouped with Arin’s on the gunners’ hill. “The loss of so handsome a man would do the world a great disservice.” The rearguard had fled. The road burned.
When Kestrel had staggered up through the trees, a broken arrow shaft in her armor, her face dirty yet white around her wide eyes, Arin caught her to him, exhaling deeply with relief. She reeked of smoke. Her armor was sticky with sirrin sap. He guessed what she had done, and a tremor flickered through him even though she was safe. He pulled away, then saw that he had printed blood on her. Traces here and there. A faint red leaf marked her cheek. He saw her see him. He didn’t like to think about how he must look.
“Your father’s alive,” Arin told her, sure that it was the wrong thing to say even as he was sure that it must be said. An emotion darkened her eyes.
Later, after the fire had burned out and the road was a charred ruin littered with corpses, Roshar’s soldiers had scavenged the remains, and Arin had helped catch riderless war horses, Kestrel finally spoke. “He’ll resupply.” Her voice was flat. “The empire doesn’t lack for black powder. He might have to return to Ithrya Island to get what he needs, but he’ll hit hard when he hits next.”
The stolen supplies and their wounded were loaded in wagons. The army made its way to reunite with the forces left behind at Errilith.
Outside Errilith, in the meadow near where they had first made camp in this region, Arin came to share Roshar’s cooking fire. The sun had just set. The air was still heavy and warm, cast with a honeyed light.
Roshar was smoking. He’d been in a foul mood since they’d left the fire-blackened road, though Arin had reminded him that the battle was a victory. “I know,” Roshar had said, yet looked nettled.
Arin helped himself to warmed flatbread toasted over the fire. Soft bread on a military campaign seemed just short of magic. He ripped off a small piece and chewed slowly. Roshar glanced at him, huffed a little, but said nothing—which was disappointing, since Arin had hoped to provoke the prince by taking his food.
A Herrani soldier passed close to their fire and moved on, though not before Arin noticed that the man’s eyes were rimmed with orange like a Dacran’s.
“That’s nice,” Arin commented to Roshar.
The prince choked on a lungful of smoke. When he stopped coughing, Arin said, “Is it disrespectful that my people wear that paint?”
“Oh, no,” Roshar said, not sarcastically, yet with a bite that suggested that Arin had missed the point. “It’s nice.”
“Say what you mean.”
“I am not nice.”
Arin’s brow furrowed. “True, but we’re not talking about you.”
“We should be. We should absolutely be talking about me.”
Arin wished Roshar wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t slip on false arrogance as if it were mourning garb worn in the service of a joke. He opened his mouth to say so, then saw that Roshar looked genuinely troubled. “What’s wrong?”
Roshar said, “Do you remember how you attacked me in my city, in front of the queen’s guard?”
“To be fair, you had drugged and bound me.”
“Do you remember how you were punished for that?”
“I don’t see what this has to do with the paint.”
“That’s because you don’t understand your punishment.”
Uneasy, Arin said, “The queen told you to choose my punishment. You never did.”
“That entire audience with my sister was in Dacran, which you didn’t speak or understand at the time—or did you?”
“No.”
“I was your translator. I warned you. I said that you had to hope that I wouldn’t lie.”
“Did you?”
“Let’s say that I translated very loosely.”
“Roshar.”
“At the time it didn’t seem important. What would you care about the finer points of Dacran law? And you didn’t have anything worth taking.”
“What exactly did the queen say?”
“That your life belonged to me.”
Arin, whose life had already belonged to many different people, felt his lungs shrink.
“So yes,” Roshar said, “I had—have—the right to decide your punishment, to kill you if I wish. By our law, I can also seize anything you possess.”
“You’re not in Dacra. Your law holds no weight here.”
“My soldiers would say other wise.”
“What do you want?” Arin’s voice rose. “My house?”
“This isn’t entirely about what I want or don’t want. But if we win this war, you’ll have a prize very much worth wanting.”
Arin saw what he meant. “This country wouldn’t be mine.”
“Oh, Arin. Please.”
Arin fell silent. They’d let the fire go out. Shadows had grown around them.
“Puts my sister in quite an interesting position,” said Roshar. “It was a public announcement. One that she clearly didn’t think through, though I’ll be honest and say that when you fetched up on our shores you didn’t appear worth much. It cost her nothing then to offer me your life. It made for good courtly show. And now what ever is yours is mine. Despite its miserably cold weather, Herran is a pretty prize: rich, fertile. A good buffer between Dacra and the empire. My sister has a few options, depending on how this war plays out. If we win against the empire, we could seize Herran by force, which normally wouldn’t cause a fuss, if it weren’t for the fact that she’d be taking from me what our country considers legally mine. I happen to be popular with my people. Another option: she could ask me to give Herran to her.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Because you and I are friends? How touching. And naive. That’s actually what I like about you. You’re so endearing sometimes.”
“I’d never let you. You’d have to kill me.”
“Yes, little Herrani, I know.” Roshar set aside his pipe. He brushed his hands as if cleaning them, then looked down at their emptiness.
Arin was no longer angry. “You wouldn’t,” he said again, “or you’d never have said any of this to me.”
“I’d like to think that, but we’re talking about the same person who deliberately let his little sister be taken hostage by his enemy. What will you say? That we all make hard choices? Do things we regret? Betray our best selves? Yes, exactly. I have wanted to tell you. I didn’t. Not for months.”
“What did you think would happen if we lost?”
“Usually I don’t think. Usually my sister thinks, and tells me what to do. I’m quite comfortable letting other people run my life.”
“You never say what you really mean.”
Roshar held his eyes. “If we lose, I’ll take you home.”
“Your home.”
“Mine, yours.”
“Not possible.”
Roshar sighed. “Well, lots of things are.”
“Your sister . . .” Arin flushed.
“Oh, that.”
“How does that play into this?”
“Well, that, as I understand, happened in my city when you were just a ragged, trespassing foreigner of little importance. Of course”—Roshar gave him a sidelong look—“you have your charms. Now you’ve put an end to that—which, I don’t know, I think that if I were you I wouldn’t have. Your country could always be returned to you as a wedding present.”
Arin made a frustrated sound.
“It might be better for you if you didn’t draw every thing in such rigid lines.” Roshar thumbed more tobacco into his pipe. “It might be better for me if I did.”
“You know how I feel. Where I stand.”
Roshar arched one brow. “Indeed.”
Chapter 30
Kestrel stopped short of where the prince lay on his back in the grass in the midst of camp, eyes loosely closed against the sun. It was rare to see his face
relaxed. The sun showed how scar tissue had thickened his upper lip and knotted where the tip of his nose had been.
She knew he wasn’t sleeping. “Lazy,” she accused.
“This is how I look when I conspire.”
“No Valorian commander would let his soldiers see him like this.”
“This is a strategy.”
She snorted.
“It is.” His eyes were still closed. “Aren’t you going to ask me how it is?”
She toed him. He stretched like a cat and seemed to settle back into position. Then his hand lashed out, seized her ankle, and yanked her leg out from under her. She landed on her rear.
“Yes.” Roshar’s black eyes glinted as she spluttered. “A masterful plan. Divine.”
Kestrel kicked him.
“ Tch. Lovely lady, won’t you hear my plan? It is the very best. You’ll like it. Here it is: I am waiting.”
“Sunbathing.”
“Waiting, I say, for you to tell me what to do.”
She told him exactly what he could do.
“Such language. Did you learn that from Arin? Stop kicking, little ghost. We’re in full view of the camp. Weren’t you just haranguing me about my honor? How can I cultivate respect in the rank and file if you kick me? Now. Truly. Look at my absolutely serious face as I say this. What would you have me do? More to the point, what will your father do?”
Kestrel went still.
“A move must be made,” said the prince.
Lerralen. Kestrel had learned of the Valorians’ failure to invade via the beach there. She knew how smooth the terrain would be from the beach to Herran’s city.
If victory is slow, her father would say, it becomes increasingly harder to grasp.
He must wince from his defeat along the southern road. How could he wreak the most damage in retaliation? He could claw victory to himself by regrouping his forces to land at Lerralen with overwhelming force, with countless cannons and soldiers spread thick and wide. A costly victory. But if achieved, it’d lead to a rapid seizure of the city.
She told Roshar to garrison a contingent at Errilith to hold what they had well defended, and move the rest of his army west to reinforce the Dacrans stationed at Lerralen.
The Winner's Kiss Page 25
