The Emperor's blades

18

The sun hung high and bright in the sky, which was bad. It gave the spotters the best chance of finding him. The day was still, which was bad; a light ocean breeze would have obscured any errant sound, any clatter of small rocks as his body scraped over the earth. The day was hotter than normal for the spring, which was also bad. Sweat dripped from his brow, stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. He longed to wipe it away, but wasted motion was anathema to a sniper. Instead, he blinked twice, squinted, and inched ahead along the small furrow. The furrow, too, was bad.

Sniper contests could take place anywhere on the Islands, but the trainers tended to favor a section near the northern coast of Qarsh, where the land sloped abruptly upward to terminate in limestone bluffs that plunged down into the waves. Hundreds of fractures rent the ground into tiny fissures and ravines, as though Pta, the Lord of Chaos, had hefted the entire island in a massive hand and then shattered it on the surface of the sea.

Atop the bluffs themselves perched the spotters’ platform, a raised wooden construction sporting a bronze bell the size of a man’s head. The goal of the exercise was straightforward: sneak close enough to shoot the bell, then sneak out. In practice, it was nearly impossible. Eyrie trainers manned the platform, sweeping the surrounding ground with their long lenses, waiting for the cadets to make a mistake, to slip into the open for a moment.

The hearty native scrub and broken folds of earth provided the only cover, and for Valyn’s first three years, he hadn’t come within a half mile of the platform, let alone close enough to take a shot at the bell. Recently, however, he’d found more success.

Of course, success was a double-edged blade with the Kettral. Success meant that the drills were getting too easy, which meant, in turn, that the drills were about to get a whole lot harder. It was one thing to skulk through the scrub alone, taking as much time as was necessary to work up close to the bell. It was another thing entirely to do so at the same time as someone else, taking care to avoid their eyes as well as those of the spotters, and always trying to eke out a little more speed to try to get to the bell first. Worst of all was squaring off against Annick. The young sniper was so good that for the past year, she’d been going against older cadets. Now, though, as Valyn’s cohort approached Hull’s Trial themselves, there were no older cadets.

Bad luck trumps a lifetime of training, Valyn thought, twisting his head without raising it from the rough ground to try to get a view to the west.

Rocks dug into his shoulder and chest, sharp stones tore at his blacks, and the miserable drainage along which he was dragging himself proved too narrow for the bent bow of the arbalest, which caught on a corner and gouged at his stomach. Kettral were trained in all manner of ranged weapons, but nothing could beat an arbalest for sniping. Unlike a normal bow, you could fire it from a prone position, and the only movement necessary, once you’d cranked it all up, was a twitch of the finger. Of course, it meant you had to haul the ’Kent-kissing thing around.

Compounding his problems, Valyn had no idea where Annick was. He hadn’t expected to, of course. It was more than enough work trying to stay low and keep out of sight of the spotters without expecting to hunt down his competition as well. In any other contest, he wouldn’t have given half a toad’s turd for the location of the other sniper, but this wasn’t any other contest. Annick was out there, and she was hunting him as surely as she was hunting the bell. Despite what he’d told Laith the night before, Valyn’s shoulder blades itched at the thought. His only consolation was that the sun, the heat, and the ground would be as tough on her as they were on him.

Best get on with it, then.

He’d been counting on the meager ravine to carry him within shooting distance, had been following it half the morning, making reasonably good time-a pace or two every few minutes. Unfortunately, the groove had grown shallower and shallower as he moved uphill, until it provided no real cover at all. He had only to raise his head the barest fraction of an inch to see the wooden structure of the spotters’ tower and the bright smudge of the bell hanging from it five hundred paces distant. Still too far off to make the shot, too far by a good stretch.

He considered doubling back. It was the right call, all other factors being equal, but all other factors were definitely not equal. It wasn’t enough to move silently into position; he needed to move quickly, too. In front of him stretched about eight paces of sparse cover-some loose scrub and a patch of dune grass-but if he could make it through those without being spotted, he could hunker down behind a line of boulders, maybe even follow them close enough. It was risky, but then, everything the Kettral did was risky, just being Kettral in the first place was risky. No one taught you to avoid risk on the Islands; they taught you how to assess it, how to gauge probabilities, how to deal with uncertainty.

At the moment, Valyn didn’t feel much like assessing and gauging. Annick was out there, and unless he was very lucky indeed, she wasn’t spending her time hemming and hawing over probabilities.

“’Shael on a stick,” he muttered, pushing himself up to his elbows and knees, then lunging forward in a mad scramble over the stone, trying to stay as low as possible and move quickly at the same time. It took him about fifteen heartbeats to worm through the dirt and gravel, and although his heart was pounding, each beat seemed to stretch on forever. He collapsed, finally, up against the back of a hefty limestone boulder, then rolled to his right, putting a leafy spray of firespike between him and the southern expanse of the area. Only once he’d managed to set up a reasonable amount of cover did he pause to catch his breath. The spotters hadn’t blown the whistle. Annick hadn’t shot him. He grinned to himself. Sometimes gambling paid off.

Over the course of the next hour, he wound his way closer and closer to the observation platform, maneuvering from shrub to low grass, from broken ground to gravelly berm. The bell was clearly visible when he raised his head far enough to get a look at it, as were the two instructors flanking it, scanning the terrain with their long lenses. Come on, Hull, he prayed, inching forward through the grit. Just a little closer. The arbalest he carried was bulky but powerful. If the wind died, he could hit the target from a little over a hundred paces. Just keep Annick busy for a little longer.

He was moving forward behind the cover of a slanted shoulder when someone let out a sharp curse from the spotting platform. He risked a quick look. One of the two trainers, Anders Saan by the sound of the voice, was holding a hand to his chest and swearing like a sailor.

“’Shael take it,” Valyn snarled, scrambling forward. Annick had the range and had already gone to work. A few moments later, the other trainer on the platform doubled over, black silhouette jerking as though stabbed. Stunner arrows wouldn’t kill you, and Annick was showing her respect for the trainers by aiming for their torsos rather than their heads. Still, the dull bolts packed a painful punch.

Valyn gritted his teeth. Annick would need to reload her arbalest before going after the bell. That meant cranking back the bow, fitting another bolt to the channel, and resuming her firing stance. There was a slim to vanishing chance that he could use the intervening time to get off a shot, especially now that the spotters were technically out of the exercise. It should take her at least forty seconds to-

An arrow shattered the stone inches from his head, then fell like a broken bird to the gravel. Valyn stared. Annick couldn’t have reloaded the arbalest that fast. There were cords to notch and ratchets to twist. No one could reload an arbalest that fast.

“Well, she did, you ’Kent-kissing fool,” he growled at himself, rolling hard to his left, trying to put some cover between himself and the general direction of the shooter. He tumbled into a small ravine just as another arrow clattered in the dirt above him.

An arrow.

An arbalest didn’t fire arrows; it fired bolts. Annick was able to reload so fast because she was using a regular bow, although how she managed that lying down, Valyn had no idea. It didn’t matter. She had him pinned, was undoubtedly moving to a new line of sight as he lay there, and would take another shot within the minute. The logical thing to do at this point was surrender. The sniper had clearly won the trial, could ring the ’Kent-kissing bell whenever she wanted, but something in Valyn kicked against the thought of giving up. For Annick, the game wasn’t over until she’d shot everyone on the field, and if the game wasn’t over, he could still win. He scrambled up the ravine on his hands and knees. He just had to reach the-

Another arrow scudded through the dirt right beside him. The girl was fast, but her normal accuracy was failing her. Valyn started to smile-it seemed even Annick had her off days-but as he crawled past the spent shot, his breath froze in his chest. A razor’s edge glinted, bright and vicious in the dust. The arrow was unblunted. A head like that would rip right through his chest and out the other side if Annick found her target.

With a bellow of rage and fear, he lurched to his feet. There was no playing now. No hiding. No ducking behind rocks and skulking through the brush. He had no idea how it was possible, not with both trainers watching the whole thing, but Annick was trying to kill him, had the range and angle already, could probably choose her shot.

He lunged ahead, darting back and forth over the jagged path. If he could reach the low gravel berm fifteen paces distant, he could make a reasonable stand, but fifteen paces was an eternity to a well-trained sniper. His heart hammered at his ribs, his lungs heaved, and he wrestled with the fear as he ran, forced it down into his legs, into his lungs, used it to drive him on. Five more paces. If he could just reach the berm-

The blow caught him high in the shoulder, right above the lung, driving him forward onto the gravel slope. First it was just the shock of the impact that hit him. Then the pain came, a savage tearing fire. He rolled to the side and looked down at the front of his jerkin. The arrow had punched directly through his body, tearing out the front of his chest. Blood coated the head and shaft. Son of a bitch, a real ’Kent-kissing arrow, he thought vaguely.

He tried to move his hands, tried to push himself to his knees, but failed. Fog filled his vision, but he could just make out a slender shape rising from the ground some hundred paces distant. Annick held the shortbow casually in one hand, another arrow nocked to the string. They saw her, Valyn thought groggily. Doesn’t she know that the trainers are looking at her? She raised the bow easily, almost casually, drawing and releasing in the same motion. A moment later, the clang of the bronze bell reached Valyn, dim and tinny, as though heard underwater.

Only after she had lowered the bow did Annick glance toward him, turning her head with the curt, acute movement of a bird. Through the bloody haze that filled his vision, Valyn saw her eyes widen, but there was no joy, no celebration on that hard, child’s face.