“Long Fist lied to us,” Laith continued, as though the revelation were a shock.
“It was a smart play,” Talal said. “He risks nothing by using us to get at il Tornja. If we succeed, he wins. If we fail,” he shrugged, “he was planning to fight the battle anyway.”
Laith spat. “And we’re just cheerfully going to keep doing what this horsefucker wants?” He stared at Valyn, the challenge hard in his voice. “We’ve already killed a couple Annurian soldiers for the great and mighty Long Fist—what’s a little more Annurian blood? Is that it?”
“There is more than one fight here,” Valyn ground out. “The fact that one is evil doesn’t make the other good. Long Fist lied to us, but il Tornja murdered the Emperor.”
“According to Balendin,” Laith said, voice rising in disbelief.
“According to my sister,” Valyn replied, trying to keep his voice calm. “Adare confirmed it. The kenarang killed my father and seized control of the empire.”
“It is your sister,” Talal pointed out quietly, “who has taken on the imperial mantle.”
“She’s il Tornja’s puppet,” Valyn snapped. “She thinks she’s doing the right thing, but she doesn’t understand the larger forces at play.”
“Seems to me,” Laith said archly, “that she is one of the larger fucking forces. She’s the Malkeenian in charge now, she’s declared herself Emperor, she has the kenarang jumping to her tune, the Army of the North, and, in case you didn’t notice it, the ’Kent-kissing Sons of Flame into the bargain.”
“The Army of the North is the kenarang’s army,” Valyn growled. “When we kill the kenarang we can bring it back under control. Kaden can appoint a new commander.”
“If Kaden is alive,” Talal said, meeting Valyn’s eye as he spoke. “Adare didn’t mention him.”
Valyn drew a deep, ragged breath. Worry for his brother had gnawed at him since the two groups were separated back in the Bone Mountains. Their whole scheme seemed like madness now, a plan with a hundred possible holes. The gate itself could have killed Kaden, or the Ishien on the other side of it. He could have returned to Annur and run afoul of il Tornja’s men, could have avoided the conspiracy altogether only to end up dead in a canal with some footpad’s blade in his back. The old monk, Rampuri Tan, had seemed capable with that strange spear of his, but there wasn’t any telling how far even he could be trusted. Looking back on it, Valyn wished he’d done more to stay at Kaden’s side. At the time, there hadn’t seemed to be any choice.
It had been a long time since he’d felt as though he had a true choice. Abandoning the Islands, losing Kaden, fighting the Flea, landing on the steppe, leaving half his Wing in Long Fist’s clutches—each decision looked like the wrong one now, but at the time they hadn’t seemed like decisions at all. Instead of contemplating a series of forking paths, Valyn felt as though he’d been racing down a single treacherous track, just a half step ahead of his foes, no time to look either back or forward.
He stared out over the dark water toward the small town. Maybe this was a mistake, too. He could still turn back, try to find that invisible fork, try to take a better path, but the other paths all looked even worse than the one he was on. Leave il Tornja to his triumph? With a crucial military victory tucked tight in his belt, the man would be even more difficult to unseat. Continue north in hope of freeing Gwenna and Annick from the Urghul? The odds of success looked worse than pathetic, and if he died in the rescue attempt, he couldn’t kill il Tornja or help Kaden. Return to the Islands and lay the information about the plot before Daveen Shaleel and the rest of Eyrie Command? They reported to il Tornja; for all Valyn knew, they were complicit in the plot.
There were dozens of variables, none of which he could control—Long Fist, the Ishien, Rampuri Tan—but about Ran il Tornja, at least, he could do something. He could try to do something.
“Kaden is going to have to look after himself for now,” he said. “But we can do our vicious bloody best to make sure that if he’s alive, when he does return to Annur, that a backstabbing traitor isn’t sitting on his seat.” He wasn’t sure if he was talking about il Tornja or Adare. Possibly both.
Laith raised his hands in surrender, let out a snort half weariness, half disgust. “The whole thing is above my pay grade. I trained to fly birds, and now we don’t even have a ’Kent-kissing bird.”
“Speaking of which,” Talal said, raising the long lens toward the town once more, “how do you plan to get to that tower? Without ’Ra, it looks a little tricky.”
The sun had set, but Valyn could see well enough in the gray-green darkness. Dozens of lanterns and fires blazed on the two islands—the extravagance of wood and oil speaking eloquently to the fear in the streets. The loggers’ preparations, though, would face east, toward the approaching Urghul. No one would be looking south over the water, and if they were, well, the Kettral wore blacks and worshipped Hull for a reason.
“We swim,” he said. “Exit at the cliff. Climb straight up to the top of the tower.”
“A half-mile swim in glacial runoff followed by a seventy-foot climb,” Laith grumbled. “Just what I was hoping for.”
Valyn fought down a sudden and powerful urge to seize the flier by the neck. There was a time, not so long ago, when Valyn had trusted Laith more than any other member of his Wing, but combat had changed both of them, changed them for the worse. Laith’s jocularity had crumbled into a series of snipes and complaints, and Valyn could feel his own tolerance fraying like a worn rope. No one wanted to swim the fucking lake. No one wanted to climb a tall stone tower in the middle of the night with cold hands and wet blacks, but they were Kettral.
“This is what we do,” Valyn said, leashing his voice, keeping it low, holding back the shouting that snarled and prowled inside. “This is what we are for.”
“Come on,” Talal said, sensing the tension and stepping between them. “Let’s just get it over with.”
Over. Valyn almost laughed at the word. Once they swam the lake, they’d have to climb the cliff. Once up the cliff, they’d face the tower. Once on the tower, he’d need to kill il Tornja, and if he managed that, he needed to find a way to free Gwenna and Annick. One fight just led to the next, on and on and on. It wasn’t really over, none of it. Not until you were dead.
* * *
The swim was mercifully shorter than Valyn had expected, but the climb above proved brutal—seventy feet of narrow ledges made even more treacherous by the darkness, their sodden boots, and the crumbling mortar of the old tower itself. Three times Valyn trusted his weight to seemingly solid stone only to have it give when he tried to move up on it, ripping clear of the wall to plummet into the lapping waves below, leaving him to cling desperately with one hand while the other scrabbled for purchase.
It was painstaking, difficult work, but Valyn found it strangely calming. There were few decisions to make—this stone or that, this ledge or that—and the consequences of each choice were immediate: the rock crumbled, or it did not. No lies. No deception. No one to kill. His body warmed with the exertion, and his focus narrowed to the vertical swath of stone immediately above and below him. He was almost disappointed when he reached the roof, pulling up and over onto the rough boards, though his forearms ached and the tips of his fingers bled.
For a moment he just laid on his back, staring at the stars, each one a hole stabbed in the darkness. Then Talal’s voice pulled him back to the present.
“Someone’s been working hard,” he murmured, nodding toward the eastern bank of the Black. “They’ve got the place locked up tight.”
Valyn rolled onto his stomach, then pulled the long lens from his oilskin.
“What’ve we got?”
Talal nodded into the darkness. “Looks like the bridge is out, destroyed, like you said. Hard to say in the darkness.”
Between the fires and the stars, the night was plenty bright to Valyn, and when he raised the lens to his eye, the chopped pilings leapt immediately into view, jagged teeth
stabbing up from the mud flats on either side of the central channel, a few stray planks strewn about.
“I wonder who warned them?” he said, scanning the town below.
The place was a hive of activity, men and women pushing and pulling all manner of carts, some filled with tools, others loaded high with tables or logs, while children scurried through the streets, shouting messages to the adults. It was chaotic, but after watching for a few minutes, Valyn could start to see a kind of order imposed on the madness: laden carts headed east, toward what appeared to be some sort of barricade on the far bank of the East Island, then returned filled with food and jugs of water, all manner of provisions. Valyn followed the activity to a knot of figures in the small town square, brought the leader into focus, then almost dropped the lens.
“Holy Hull,” he breathed, then found himself laughing, joy and relief washing over him like a cool wave back on the Islands, scrubbing away for just a moment all the doubt and the anger. “Meshkent, Ananshael, and holy black Hull.”
“Is there a joke I’m not getting about the fact that this whole miserable town’s about to be burned to the dirt?” Laith asked.
For once, even the flier’s cynicism couldn’t dampen Valyn’s spirits. He just smiled and passed the long lens. It took Laith a moment to find Gwenna in the shadows, and then he, too, was laughing.
“That tough, stubborn bitch,” he marveled. “Leave it to Gwenna Sharpe to decide she’s fed up playing prisoner to an entire army of Urghul.” Shaking his head, he handed the lens to Talal.
“Annick’s there, too,” the leach said after a moment. “And Pyrre.”
Valyn’s face hurt from smiling. It seemed like forever since he’d had a reason. “I wonder how they got free.…”
“Those three?” Laith asked. “Probably just kept clawing eyes and biting throats until there weren’t any Urghul left. Here we are wandering all over Raalte killing our own men, and they’ve busted themselves free, humped it back ahead of an entire mounted army, and started preparing the defense.” The bitterness had crept back into his voice. “Starts to make you wonder why we even bothered.”
The smile slid from Valyn’s face like a shadow. “We bothered,” he said, “because it seemed like the right choice at the time.”
“Well, we’re here now,” Laith said, rising to his feet on the crumbling roof. “Let’s get down there while there’s still work to do.”
Valyn hesitated, then shook his head. “No.”
For a moment no one moved. No one spoke. The wind whipped spray from the waves, tossing it against the rock. It riffled through the boughs of the pines, scratched at the clouds, whipped the fires below into sparks and ruddy blaze.
The flier turned on him slowly, incredulous. “No?”
“We stay here,” Valyn said, keeping his voice low. “The mission is to kill il Tornja. That hasn’t changed.”
“And what about the fact that our Wing is right down there?” Laith demanded, waving a hand at the small town below. “What about the fact that the ’Kent-kissing Urghul are coming and these people need help?”
“Gwenna has it in hand,” Valyn said, his own words bitter on his tongue. He wanted to be down there as much as Laith, standing with his Wing and his people, throwing up barricades, thinking through strategy.… Three more bodies wouldn’t mean much when it came to the actual fight, but three Kettral-trained soldiers could do a lot right now when it came to organizing and leading the townsfolk. It would feel good to lift something, move something, do something. It would also jeopardize the mission.
“Il Tornja’s going to be here in a day,” Valyn said, “and unless you forgot, those men down there, the ones with the nice swords, are his scouts. If we go down, they’ll make us in a heartbeat and report back. If il Tornja knows we’re here, we’ve lost the element of surprise, which, right now, is our only ’Kent-kissing advantage.”
Laith snorted with disgust. “Fuck, Valyn. Half the Wing’s already down there. You think if il Tornja hears about Gwenna and Annick he’s not going to assume you’re along, too?”
Valyn grimaced. It was an unexpected problem, but a problem didn’t mean a disaster. “Gwenna knows the truth about il Tornja, she knows that we’re hunting him, and she’s smart enough not to piss in the broth.”
“There’s another reason to stay clear,” Talal said, frowning. “It’s hard to see how this all ends up, but if, when it’s over, il Tornja finds Gwenna and Annick, he’s going to realize they survived Yurl’s attack, which means he’s probably going to assume they know the truth about him. Or at least suspect it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he locks them up for questioning—discreetly, of course.”
Valyn nodded. He hadn’t considered that angle, but, as usual, Talal was right. “Which gives us two reasons to stay out of sight.”
Laith shook his head. “Right. Two reasons: what if … and just in case … We’re a brave new breed of philosopher soldier, keeping our hands clean while other people swing the swords.”
Valyn didn’t reply. He had a sense that they’d all be swinging swords soon enough, and once they started, there was no telling when they’d stop.
42
Old Pikker John said he’d rather die on his porch than run, and he got his wish. Well, the dying part of it anyway. Gwenna couldn’t say how long he’d managed to hold on to his porch, but when the Urghul dragged him out onto the east bank of the Black, he’d lost his axes, his crock of whiskey, and, if the way his head lolled on his shoulders was any indication, the ability and will to fight.
“They got him,” Bridger said.
“Of course they got him,” Gwenna snapped. “Did you think one old man was going to see off the entire Urghul nation all by himself?”
She bit off the rest of the tirade. She was mad at John, not Bridger, mad at the old man for his stupidity, for his stubbornness, and for making her watch what had to happen next.
From behind Annick’s barricades on East Island, Gwenna could see the far bank clearly enough, could make out individual faces of the Urghul as they scouted up the river and down along the drying east shore of the lake, she could see the markings on their horses, the fletching on their arrows. They were close enough to shout to, to shoot, and the only thing holding them back was the narrow strip of mud and water. It seemed a feeble defense.
Gwenna glanced up and down the ranks of townsfolk Annick had arrayed behind the barricades. Men and women crouched behind the stacked logs, some kids, too, whose shortbows lacked the range to get much past the water. If the Urghul got close enough for those bows to hit, the whole island would be almost overrun. Gwenna would have preferred to send the kids somewhere else, but then, if the Urghul broke through, there wasn’t anywhere else to go. Besides, the place was their home—they had more right to die on it than she did.
As she watched, someone loosed an arrow. It floated up, high over the river, then fell harmlessly into the silt on the far side of the channel.
“Knock it off!” Gwenna shouted. They couldn’t afford to waste the shafts. There were already more Urghul than arrows, not that she wanted the loggers dwelling on that fact. “No one looses an arrow until they try to cross!”
She wasn’t sure whether to be worried or relieved that none of the horsemen had tried to swim their mounts. It would be utter suicide, obviously, but the Urghul weren’t generally known for their sophisticated grasp of tactics. Not before Long Fist, at least.
Strangely, of the shaman himself, there had been no sign. He might have been lurking back in the trees, directing the fight from a safe distance, but his absence made her nervous, as did his choice of lieutenant. If Long Fist was nowhere, Balendin Ainhoa seemed to be everywhere, stalking up and down the bank in his cloak of dark bison hide, pointing and giving orders as though he’d lived among the Urghul all his life. If the horsemen resented him, none showed it, which, Gwenna supposed, was smart, given what she knew about Balendin.
As she watched, he was directing a knot of taabe and ksaabe to ma
ke a space in the open area between the trees and the mud flats. When most of the riders had moved aside, Pikker John was thrust, stumbling, to the ground. Balendin stood above the man for a while, gazing over the river toward the town, as though he felt Gwenna’s eyes upon him from behind the barricade. While he waited, other prisoners were dragged forward from the trees—scores of them—then forced facedown in the dirt where they could see the leach and the old logger. Someone stepped forward with a handful of ropes, and Balendin, with a few practiced motions, cinched them around Pikker John’s wrists and ankles.
“What are they doing?” Bridger asked.
“I don’t know. Something fucking terrible,” Gwenna said. She didn’t want to watch. It was one thing to kill and see people killed in the middle of a fight. The fear and fury that came with battle didn’t leave any time to dwell on the sights and sounds of men becoming meat. Watching from behind the barricade though, as they hitched the four ropes to the saddles of four separate horses, Gwenna felt like she might retch all over her boots. A dismayed muttering spread through the crouching townspeople as they realized what was about to happen, and their fear and nausea quickened her own. She wanted to turn away, but she couldn’t, not while she was the leader of the town’s miserable defense, and yet her body needed an outlet, needed something to distract her from the scene playing out on the far side of the river.
She surged to her feet, drew her sword, and leveled it across the river. “Watch!” she shouted.
The loggers turned to her, but she shook her head angrily. “Don’t look at me, you assholes. Look over there, at the man you called your neighbor. Watch what they do to him.”
The Providence of Fire Page 59
