The Providence of Fire

by Brian Staveley

  “You won’t be here at all,” the Flea said, “after the horsemen come through. They will kill most of you and keep the rest to sacrifice slowly, with steel and fire, to Meshkent. They will burn your town to ash. People at the south end of Scar Lake, all the way in Aats-Kyl, will hear you screaming.” He shrugged. “You could run, but they’d ride you down. They might pass by if you hide in the marsh. It’s been a long time since I was in a log town, but I didn’t take logmen for a bunch of runners and hiders.”

  “We’re not running,” said a young man, thinner than Larch had been, but quite a bit taller than the Flea. He held a hooked peavey in one hand, the tool’s steel spike bright in the sunlight, but he leaned on it rather than using it as a weapon. “We’re not running, but we’ve got a way of doing things here, and killing the mayor ain’t it.”

  The Flea eyed the peavey, then the man holding it. “What’s your name, son?”

  “Bridger,” he replied.

  The Flea nodded. “Good name.” He looked over the people assembled, pointed at an old woman in greasy wool near the front. “What do you think of Bridger, here, mother?”

  She frowned at the question, glanced over her shoulder for support, found none, then looked back at the Flea. “Good man.”

  “He get in fights?”

  “Not much. Tends to keep to hisself. Quiet feller.”

  The Flea nodded. “I like quiet fellers. Bridger, you’re the mayor.”

  Bridger frowned. “You can’t just make me mayor.”

  “Just did. Pursuant to Emergency War Measure Fifty-six.”

  Gwenna leaned over to Newt. “What in ’Shael’s name is War Measure Fifty-six?”

  The Aphorist shrugged. “Something about taxation on grain, I think.”

  “So it doesn’t…”

  “Nope.”

  Bridger looked confused, but the Flea just patted him gently on the shoulder. “You’re in charge of the town, Gwenna’s in charge of you. If Gwenna dies, it’s Annick, but try not to let Gwenna die.”

  “What about her?” the young man asked, nodding toward Pyrre.

  “That’s General Pyrre. Listen to her, too.”

  “Where are you going?”

  The Flea pointed up into the shifting clouds. “Find some help.”

  “Help?”

  “From down south.”

  “What if they don’t come in time?”

  The Flea shrugged. “Ask Gwenna. Like I said, she’s in charge.”

  * * *

  Gwenna was tempted to stay on top of the beacon tower. The square stone structure stood atop a cliff on Andt-Kyl’s western island, overlooking the lake. According to Bridger, the loggers lit fires in the wide stone pit at the tower’s top to guide ships to the town’s docks on stormy days. Gwenna didn’t give a shit about the ships, but the tower offered an excellent vantage of the entire area. Just as importantly, it gave her a tiny measure of isolation.

  After all the languages and tactics, the demolitions and archery, the conditioning and swordplay, Kettral training hadn’t left much time for useful tips on how to lead six hundred rough frontier loggers in the defense of their town. Even on the Islands, Gwenna hadn’t made a name for herself in the areas of charm and persuasion, and now that she suddenly found herself in charge of a baffled and restive local population, she almost wished she could just fight the Urghul alone. At least atop the tower, there was only Bridger and Annick to deal with. Pyrre was down below with the townspeople, maybe flirting with them, maybe killing them. Gwenna tried not to think about it, focusing, instead, on the local topography. That, at least, she had trained to understand.

  Loggers had built Andt-Kyl at the small delta where the Black dumped into Scar Lake, a rough little town of log houses, log bridges, log temples, and log docks spread over two rocky islands at the river’s mouth. It was clear at a glance why the Flea had chosen the spot to bottle up the Urghul. The horsemen would have to cross three separate forks of the river, each running dark and deep. The network of bridges linking the islands to each other and to the shores on either side would be easy to control and, where necessary, to destroy.

  “So why in Hull’s name is Long Fist crossing here?” Gwenna muttered.

  “The only spot, sir,” Bridger replied. He was handling the arrival of a Kettral Wing, the announcement of an Urghul army, the abrupt deaths of his mayor and constable, and his own elevation to the town’s leading position about as well as could be expected, but he kept glancing at Gwenna warily when he thought she wasn’t looking, and had settled almost immediately into referring to Gwenna and the others as “sir.” She had no idea what to make of that, but she figured they had more pressing business than sorting out the honorifics. “Half a mile north,” the young man was saying, “the Black bogs out. You could ride a thousand horses in there and not one of them would see the other side.”

  “What about a hundred thousand horses?” she asked grimly.

  He shook his head. “They can’t get across up there, not unless they go all the way into the mountains, and then it’s all black flies and balsams packed so close you can’t see through ’em. There’s a few log camps up there, but that’s it.”

  “Log camps?”

  Bridger nodded. “A couple score men and ten thousand logs stacked up on the bank. We’re late for the log drive this year. No bridges, though. No way across.”

  “And south is the lake,” she said, looking out over the sheet of water to where it hazed into the sky at the horizon. “How long is it?”

  “Not sure, exactly. Maybe fifty miles. Maybe more, with Aats-Kyl at the other end.”

  “So that’s why the Urghul are coming here.”

  The logger looked at her. “Are there really a hundred thousand of them, sir?”

  “Probably more,” she spat, then immediately regretted it. For all that Bridger looked like some bruised-knuckled logger—all sun-browned skin and ropy arms, bushy beard, and leather on top of wool on top of more wool—he couldn’t have been much older than her. She tried to imagine how she would have responded if she’d never joined up with the Kettral, if she’d stayed home on her father’s farm and then one day, out of the blue, discovered that an invading army was a few days out, that she was the first and only line of defense. She was tempted to say something reassuring, but then, the assurance would probably just be a lie. “There’s plenty to kill us all a dozen times over, if we fuck up.”

  His lips tightened, but he nodded. “Then we’d better not fuck up.”

  * * *

  The most obvious thing was to destroy the east bridge, the one connecting the larger and flatter of Andt-Kyl’s two islands to the eastern bank of the Black. There was nothing on that far shore but half a dozen miserable farms, the owners of which did some bitching and some moaning on the subject until Pyrre explained about the Urghul and their love for pain and blood. That got almost everyone across the bridge, all except for one stubborn old bastard who sat on his porch with a pair of sharpened felling axes and a great crock of whiskey, who spat on Gwenna’s blacks when she told him he had to move.

  She started to go after the man, but Bridger held her back.

  “Leave him be,” he murmured. “Pikker John’d rather die on his porch than run.”

  “I’m here to make sure people don’t die,” Gwenna said, furious at the old man’s idiocy. She knocked Bridger’s hand off her shoulder.

  “Plenty of folks left to save,” the young man replied, gesturing back toward the village. “Lot of work to be done, sir, and if you’re right about them horsemen, not much time to do it.”

  They left Pikker John on his porch, honing his axes and taking the occasional pull on his crock. Gwenna told herself that at least the stubborn old bastard might kill one or two of the Urghul, but it felt like a failure. Long Fist hadn’t even arrived and she’d already lost a man.

  “We’ve got to blow this bridge,” she said, sizing up the wooden span after they’d crossed back to East Island. The decking didn’t look
like much, rough-sawn lumber tacked down with crude-cut nails, but the whole thing was held up by a dozen pilings, each as thick as a tree, sunk deep in the silt on either side of the channel.

  “Blow it?” Bridger asked.

  Gwenna grimaced. Kettral munitions weren’t exactly a secret—there were too many stories swirling around the world for that—but the Eyrie tried not to spread word of the explosives any further than necessary.

  “Like burning it,” Gwenna said, “only a lot faster.”

  “I’ll get it taken care of,” Bridger said.

  “How?”

  He smiled. “Those are logs. We’re loggers.” He jerked a thumb at one of the half-dozen men who trailed him. “Banders—get a group. Cut it down.”

  The man nodded, then trotted off.

  “What about the pilings in the middle?” Gwenna asked. Most were sunk in the mud flats flanking the channel, but four plunged straight into the swift current of the water.

  Bridger frowned. “Sunk those twelve years back,” he said, “when winter froze the river hard enough to work. Probably can’t get at ’em now, but with the rest chopped and the decking out…”

  “Good,” Gwenna said. “Do it.” She turned to Annick. “Think that’ll hold them?”

  The sniper looked at the river, the wide mud flats on either side, then into the dark trees beyond.

  “For a while. They can build a new bridge.”

  Gwenna frowned. She knew enough about bridge construction to understand how to destroy the things, but the time frame for building was a little murky. She turned to Bridger. “How long would that take? To rebuild?”

  “Depends on the conditions, sir. And on how many bridges they’ve built.”

  “Not many,” Gwenna said. “The Urghul are good at riding, shooting, and killing. Not much on engineering.”

  “Could take weeks, then.”

  Gwenna nodded. Il Tornja could march an army almost all the way from Annur in weeks. “And let’s make sure that the conditions are particularly unpleasant. You have people in this town that can handle a bow?”

  Bridger grinned. “This far north? If you’re not logging, you’re hunting. Got some women are better shots than the men. Kids can pull a bow, too.”

  “Good. Bring them to Annick. She’ll oversee the defense of the east fork.”

  The sniper’s jaw tightened. “I’m not certain I’m the best—”

  “Neither am I,” Gwenna snapped, “but we need archers, and you’re the fucking sniper, so follow Bridger and figure it out.”

  * * *

  The kenarang’s scouts arrived just a few hours later, a dozen hard-eyed men in light legionary armor who looked as though they’d been on the losing end of a battle with about four hundred feral cats. One of the villagers—Apper? Went?—brought them to Gwenna at the western end of the central bridge, where she was overseeing the building of yet another barricade, a fallback if they lost the east island.

  “She’s in charge,” the logger said, pointing to Gwenna.

  The lead scout, a thin man with a hawk’s profile, narrowed his eyes, glancing over her blacks.

  “Kettral?” he asked, obviously surprised. The men behind him shifted warily at the revelation, as though they expected to keel over or explode just from coming close. A few fingered the hilts of their short swords, despite the fact that they were all supposedly on the same side.

  “No wonder someone made you a scout,” Gwenna said. “You can recognize the color black.”

  The scout’s lips tightened at the crack, but his voice remained level. “The kenarang told us there was no military presence this far north.”

  “Sounds like the kenarang needs to brush up on his intel,” Gwenna replied. “He does know there’s a massive Urghul army headed this way, doesn’t he?”

  She tried to keep her tone light, but her heart was hammering. It all depended on this. The presence of the scouts was good. It suggested il Tornja had been moving even before the Flea got to him. On the other hand, there was no telling how far ahead of the main body of the army the men were scouting. Even with the bridge destroyed, Gwenna had no illusions that she could hold the town forever. Long Fist was a bloodthirsty savage, but he wasn’t an idiot, and he had the numbers. Eventually he would find a way across.

  “The Army of the North is pushing hard,” the leader replied. “My name is Jeril. I have orders to take control of the town. To prepare it against attack.”

  Gwenna tensed. She’d known it was coming from the moment the scouts arrived. Sending an advance guard was standard legion procedure: fifty or a hundred men unencumbered by all the apparatus of war, trained to travel light and move fast, men who could scout the necessary terrain, begin preparations for battle, and send back word to the bulk of the army behind. To the general. That was the ticklish bit. For all Gwenna knew, the men were here as much to deal with her and Annick as they were to prepare for the Urghul assault.

  “Where are the rest of you?” she asked warily.

  Jeril grimaced. “We’re it.”

  “Twelve to hold off the whole Urghul army?” Gwenna asked. “You must be really fucking good.”

  “You haven’t seen the terrain south of here,” Jeril replied, shaking his head wearily. “It’s a nightmare. The western track is flooded out with the runoff, and everything else is worse. It was tough enough getting a dozen men through, let alone a hundred.”

  “But somehow il Tornja’s going to get a whole army up here?”

  The man grinned for the first time. “The kenarang’s got his ways.”

  Gwenna raised an eyebrow. “Care to share?”

  Jeril hesitated, then gestured toward the lake. “There’s a dam at the south end. He’s destroying it, probably has it destroyed by now.”

  Gwenna looked out over the lapping waves, trying to understand how blowing a dam fifty miles off was going to get the army north. She’d thought maybe the kenarang planned to use boats, but draining the lake would only … Oh. She shifted her eyes from the water to the shoreline. A glistening width of mud and stone was visible just below the tangled bank. It was hard to be certain, but she didn’t think it had been there earlier.

  “He’s draining the lake,” she said, impressed in spite of herself.

  Jeril nodded. “Not the whole thing—that would take weeks—but enough to march his army up along the coast.”

  Gwenna eyed the uncovered shelf of stone, sand, and mud once more. “It’s wet,” she said. “He’ll have to wait at least a day for it to firm up.”

  Jeril nodded tensely. “It’s going to be close.”

  Despite the genius of the plan, something about it bothered Gwenna, like a stalking shape half glimpsed through the trees. “The Urghul,” she said, seeing it at last. “The Urghul will be able to use the same strip of land to press south along the eastern bank. They won’t need to cross here.”

  Jeril nodded again. “But there are two things stopping them. First, they don’t know the kenarang’s plan. As far as they’re concerned, this might just be normal fluctuation in the water level. They might ride halfway down the eastern bank and find the lake rising again.”

  “Pretty fucking thin,” Gwenna said, shaking her head. “Long Fist has enough men to spare a few thousand on a hunch.”

  “He can’t,” Jeril replied. “Not yet. A man on horseback is almost ten times heavier than one on foot, and the Urghul won’t leave their horses. As the fringe of the lake bed starts to harden, the legions will be able to use it days before any cavalry.”

  Gwenna blew out a long slow whistle. “Holy Hull,” she muttered, “he really is a genius.”

  Jeril smiled wearily. “No one sees his way through a battle like the kenarang. Sometimes I almost pity the bastards who have to fight him.”

  His last words dug at Gwenna like a dull knife. There was no knowing where Valyn was, or whether he’d even managed to intercept the army. It was possible he’d already murdered il Tornja, possible he’d tried and failed, was captive or
dead, his head impaled on a pike in the center of camp as a warning to would-be traitors. The thought made her sick to her stomach, and with an effort she shoved it out of her mind, turning instead to the half-finished barricade rising at the end of the bridge.

  “Higher,” she called to the men lifting a log into place. “Those Urghul horses can clear that.”

  They looked at her skeptically, then nodded.

  “How are you here?” Jeril asked, frowning. “If the kenarang didn’t send you…”

  “The legions react to problems,” Gwenna bluffed. “It’s our job to anticipate them.”

  The scout narrowed his eyes, then glanced over the work. “Well, you’ve made my job easier, for which I thank you, but we’ll take it from here.”

  “Actually,” Pyrre said, stepping out from behind the barricade, “Gwenna’s doing a nice job. I’d recommend letting her keep at it.”

  Jeril frowned. “Who are you?”

  “Pyrre Lakatur,” the assassin replied, sweeping into a low bow. “I realize it’s customary to add ‘at your service,’ but you Annurian military folk make the habitual mistake of thinking I work for you already, and I don’t want to confuse matters.”

  Jeril started to respond, then shook his head, turning back to Gwenna. “Doesn’t matter. I have orders to take command of the town.”

  Gwenna was half tempted to let him have it. She’d done her part. The eastern bridge was gone, the villagers were warned, the barricades were mostly built. She could hand the whole defense over and slip away before the kenarang arrived, figured out who she was, and put her head on a pole. She hesitated. Problem was, whatever the scout’s background, he wasn’t Kettral. She knew the training that legionary scouts went through, and, rigorous though it was, it paled beside her own. The Flea had put her in charge because he thought she could hold the town, and she found, to her surprise, that she intended to do just that.

  “I have the command here,” she said, knowing the words sounded cold, aggressive, but unsure how to warm them.

  A grumble passed through the scouts behind Jeril. A few shifted wide, making room to draw swords, to fight.

  “I can use you,” Gwenna said, wincing inwardly at her own tone. “I’m glad you’re here, but the command is mine.”