36

Close to its headwaters, the Haag ran fast, and white, and cold, pouring down from the high, glaciated valleys above. This, too, Valyn remembered from his training years before, and from the maps he had studied back at the Eyrie. Over uncountable eons, the river had carved a deep course between the banks to the east and the west. It wasn’t as wide as the Black River at Andt-Kyl, or the White just above the confluence, but it was wide enough to form a boundary. More importantly, it was violent.

He could hear the river when they were still half a day’s ride off, below the noise of the horses moving through the thick forests of pine and tamarack: a churning, grumbling current. At first it was no more than an itch in the ear, some vibration buried so deep in his bones he might have imagined it. As they drew closer, however, the growl grew to a roar that all but obliterated the softer sounds of the forest: it was as though all the squirrels scuttling along branches, all the woodpeckers and snuffling porcupines had fallen silent together, as though they’d all died.

The sound brought back his memory of the sight: the river’s current smashing down against house-sized boulders in the rocky bed, tossing spray fifty feet into the air. He could smell it now, the schist and iron on the damp morning air. Aergad stood on the western bluff, almost a mountain itself, dark stone slammed up against the skyline. It had been a fortress before it was a city, a single castle guarding the northeastern marches of Nish. Over time, as war faded, a city had grown up around it, an entrepot for traders coming through the Romsdal passes or linking up the northern atrepies. It hadn’t seen a battle in two hundred years, and yet the city, when Valyn had last seen it, still looked built to take a siege-all windowless walls and arrow loops glaring down on the river below.

A single bridge spanned the river. All those years ago, Valyn’s instructors had spent a whole morning lecturing the cadets about that bridge, pointing out the methods of construction, the weak points, the economic value to the city itself.… Valyn had forgotten most of it, but one point remained, the most basic: that bridge was the only place to cross the Haag above Lowan. Whoever held that bridge held the whole southwestern corner of Vash.

Judging from the furious sounds of battle echoing off the river’s banks below, Valyn wasn’t the only one who had learned that lesson. The Haag was still almost a mile from where he stood, hidden in the shadows at the forest’s edge, among the last fringes of firs, but even at that distance he could make out the vicious clash of steel against steel, the thunderous drumming of hooves churning the dirt to mud, the brutal chorus of thousands of voices shouting, bellowing, screaming out their rage, and bafflement, and pain. He had lived so long in the quiet of the northern forests that he had almost forgotten the deafening noise of war’s thousand-throated roar.

Valyn let it pour over him, tried to find some structure, some order in the serrated wave of sound. Sometimes a word or phrase would rise out of the swell, like a stone tossed up on the beach by the sea’s storm-an order, a plea, a dying scream. Everyone was down by the river, but it seemed the Urghul were concentrated at the northern and eastern ends of the battle, sounded as though they were trying to force their way west.

“The bridge,” Valyn murmured quietly. “The horsemen are trying to take the bridge.”

The Flea just grunted, started rummaging in his pack. A moment later, Valyn heard the metallic click of the long lens snapping open.

“Give two men the wide world,” Newt observed, “and they will still kill each other over a single scrap of land.” The words were bleak, but if he was concerned about the violence unfolding below, Valyn couldn’t hear it in his voice, couldn’t smell it on him. The Aphorist reeked, as he always did, of smoke and nitre, wet wool and rancid sweat.

“What I’m concerned about,” the Flea said after a moment, “is that the Annurians don’t seem to be doing their share of the killing.”

Valyn shut his eyes, let himself sink more deeply into the sound. If the panicked shouts of the Annurians were anything to go by, the Army of the North was losing. Valyn could hear the legionary drums beating out conflicting orders to conflicting companies-Stand firm. Retreat. Dig In.-the skins trembling out the bass to some greater music whose treble registers were the screeching of steel against steel, the screams of the frightened and the dying. He could imagine them pressed back against the river’s bank, forced onto that single, crucial bridge.

“A week ago, the fight was further east,” the Flea observed grimly. “Higher up in the foothills. Something has changed.”

The northwestern corner of Raalte was a strange place to be fighting in the first place. Long Fist’s initial strike at the empire had been far more direct, aiming to cross the Black close to the steppe, and from there to drive straight into the heart of Raalte. After the defeat at Andt-Kyl, however, after Long Fist’s disappearance, Balendin had taken charge, and he’d pulled the Urghul back, all the way into the icebound empty land north of the Black. They’d been able to make good time up there, pushing west past the source of the streams that fed the wetlands below, until they reached the apron of the Romsdals. The shattered scree didn’t favor the Urghul horses much more than the dense forests of the Thousand Lakes, and il Tornja met them there with the Army of the North. According to both Huutsuu and the Flea, the two forces had locked horns and barely moved in the long months since. The winter had taken its toll on both armies, but the Annurians had supply lines running back through Aergad; the Urghul were left hunting deer, elk, and beaver through the chest-high snows.

“I thought the Urghul were too weak for a major push,” Valyn said. “Too hungry.”

“They are,” Huutsuu replied.

“Not that weak, if they managed to force the Army of the North back to the Haag.”

“It is a matter of only miles.”

“Important miles,” the Flea said. “Before, it was just rocks and gravel. Now they’re fighting for something that matters. It’s the first time since Andt-Kyl. Il Tornja has made a mistake.”

They fell silent at that. As he listened to the thunder of hooves, the high cries of the nomads, the grudging, barked commands of the legionary soldiers, Valyn tried to imagine Ran il Tornja, kenarang and Csestriim, making a mistake. After watching the battle of Andt-Kyl, he thought it seemed unlikely.

“My people will not take the bridge,” Huutsuu said. “The Annurians have fortified it fully.”

“They don’t need to take the bridge,” the Flea replied. “They’re not trying to cross. At least, I wouldn’t be. If they can bottle up the Annurians over in Aergad, on the western bank, it’s a straight shot south along the east bank of the Haag, a straight shot all the way to Annur.”

“The Thousand Lakes back up to the river,” Valyn said, trying to remember the details of his geography.

“Not quite,” the Flea replied. “There’s a strip of high ground separating the drainages. We’re at the edge of it now. It’s not more than a few miles wide in most places, but wide enough for the Urghul to ride and to ride hard. They could be in Annur in days.”

“And the legions aren’t blocking that southern passage?” Valyn asked. “How are they deployed?”

He could hear the battle well enough, but it was maddening not to be able to see, not to be able to make more sense of the riot of sound.

“Shittily,” the Flea said. “If they form up to stop the Urghul from going south, they won’t have enough men to guard the bridge, or Aergad for that matter. If they protect the bridge and the city, they leave the path to Annur wide open.”

“Better to sacrifice one city than the whole empire,” Valyn said.

“They don’t appear to agree. Whoever’s in charge has a screen of men across the southern route, not nearly enough. The rest are on the bridge or west of it, where the Urghul can’t get at them. It’s a strong defensive position, but they’re defending the wrong thing.”

“Where is this war chief of yours?” Huutsuu asked. “Ran il Tornja?”

She smelled wary, suspicious. Even while surveying the battle below, she was careful to keep a few paces between herself and the Kettral, as though she half expected them to come after her at any moment.

“The kenarang seems to have disappeared,” the Flea said after a long time.

“Disappeared?” Valyn asked. The word felt like Adare’s knife buried in his guts all over again, a cold, serrated betrayal.

They’d come for Balendin-that had been the plan from the start-but now that Valyn stood on the edge of the battle, just a mile from the Army of the North, he realized that during every step of the long ride, even when he thought he wasn’t thinking, even asleep, a part of his mind had been revolving one image over and over, the last thing he’d seen with his unbroken eyes: il Tornja’s blade, and behind the blade, his face. Valyn was ready to kill Balendin, eager, but killing the leach was just a beginning. Once the slaughter started, there would be no reason to stop, not while Il Tornja remained alive, or Adare.…

Valyn realized he was trembling. He balled his hands into fists around the horse’s reins, forced himself to breathe slowly, steadily, until the shuddering stopped. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded old as good steel gone to rust.

“Where is he?”

“Gone,” the Flea replied simply.

“Not every man you cannot see is gone,” Huutsuu said. “He could be somewhere in this city. He could be meeting with his chiefs.”

“No,” Valyn said. He dragged in a long breath, testing the air. It was impossible to unthread one man’s smell from the stench of piss, and mud, and shit, and bleeding meat, but an awful certainty had settled in his gut all the same. “The Flea is right. Il Tornja is gone. That’s why the Urghul were able to force their way west, why they were able to get here.”

Sigrid made a vexed, violent sound. She shifted in her saddle, gesturing to something, and for half a heartbeat the delicate jasmine scent of her hovered on the air, unsullied by the battle’s reek.

“This flawless woman at my side,” Newt said, “would like to point out that even if the kenarang is gone, the man we came to kill is very much present.”

“So he is,” the Flea agreed quietly. “So he is.”

Valyn turned his head pointlessly to the north, opening his eyes from darkness to darkness, as though that might do the slightest bit of good.

“Where?” Valyn asked. “What’s he doing?”

“Balendin is doing what he always does,” the Wing leader replied. “Standing at the edge of battle, beyond it and above it, tearing people apart.”

“He has the high ground?” Valyn asked.

“Sure does. About half a mile northwest of us. Staked out the best command post on this side of the valley. On top of that rise, he can see everything.”

“He’s not trying to see everything. He wants everyone else to see him. He wants the Annurians to witness him murdering his prisoners, skinning them, or cutting out their hearts, or threading their eyes on string. He wants the legions terrified and the Urghul in awe. It’s how he builds his power. He did the same thing back in Andt-Kyl.”

“For what?” Huutsuu asked. “What does he want to do with that power?”

Valyn spread his hands angrily. “I can’t…”

“The bridge,” the Flea said.

“My people cannot take that bridge,” Huutsuu said again. “Even with the leach, they cannot seize it.”

“Balendin doesn’t want to seize it,” the Flea replied grimly. “He wants to destroy it.”

Valyn cocked his head to the side. There was another sound, a new one, something that hadn’t been there when they first arrived at the battlefield, a low, bass scraping of stone over stone punctuated by percussive cracks. Those cracks were far apart, at first, as though someone incompetent were struggling to set off Kettral munitions. Then they came faster, the sound growing louder, shifting into a higher register.

“He’s tearing it down,” the Flea said.

The bridge’s collapse came just moments later, the slow groan of stones that had stood for centuries caving beneath some new, unnatural weight. Valyn’s blindness spared him the sight of the men falling from the crumbling span, of the soldiers trapped and crushed as the huge blocks shifted, of legionaries pulled under the standing waves by the weight of their armor or pinned against stones to drown more slowly. He couldn’t see it, but he could hear it all, even the individual voices: the most plaintive, the most strident. Some submitted quickly, lives quenched in an instant. Others took a long time to die.

“We have to move,” the Flea said. There was no awe in his voice, no sorrow or anger. We have to move. It was a fact, nothing more.

“The bridge…,” Valyn began.

“… is gone. Or will be soon. When it’s done, Balendin will hammer through the poor bastards set up to screen the southern approach.”

“Unless we kill him first,” Huutsuu said.

“Hopeless,” the Flea replied.

Sigrid spoke, and Newt translated. “He’s filled with his power. We would never get close.”

Valyn could feel Huutsuu’s anger spike, then subside as she brought it back under control.

“So we go back to the woods,” she said. “Wait for him to pass, then strike at his back.”

“No good,” the Flea said. “Newt, get up there to the line. Order half the legionaries screening the southern approach to fall back on my position. And get me messengers, at least two.”

The demolitions master kicked his horse into motion without bothering to reply.

“What is not good?” Huutsuu demanded. “We came to kill the leach. It is his death that matters, not the dirt where his blood drains out.”

The Flea ignored her. “Sig,” he said, voice calm, quiet. “Can you hold here ’til nightfall?”

There was a long silence as the leach took stock of some context known only to herself. Valyn could feel the sun on his face. It was low in the sky, maybe an hour until dusk. Sigrid must have made some sign in reply, because the Flea grunted. “Good. Don’t die.”

She rasped out a few syllables.

“I’ll tell you when it’s time to make our stand, and this isn’t it,” the Flea said. “Buy us time, but not with your life.”

Like Newt, the woman didn’t respond, just wheeled her horse and galloped off to the north.

“Your leach will make no difference,” Huutsuu said. “My people will shatter that line. They will ride over your soldiers like grass.”

The Flea shook his head. “Sigrid might not have Balendin’s strength, but she’s been at this game a lot longer. If she says she can hold until night, she’ll hold. It’s our job to make use of the time.”

“How?” Huutsuu demanded.

“Is there any kind of choke point farther south?” Valyn asked. “Anywhere we could hope to bottle them up?”

“We’ll talk in the saddle,” the Flea said. “As soon as we have these two.”

“These two?” Valyn asked, then listened. After a moment, he realized that two runners were approaching. He could hear their footfalls and ragged breath even over the noise of the battle. They stopped a few feet from the Flea. Valyn could smell the wariness on them, even stronger than the sweat and blood. Wariness and deep, bone-bruising weariness.

“Messengers?” the Flea asked.

“We are,” one of them replied. “I am Jia Chem. This is Ulli.” He hesitated. “And you…”

“Just another soldier trying to hold this mess together,” the Flea replied.

“Are you-”

“Kettral,” the one named Ulli cut in. “You’re Kettral, aren’t you.”

“We are,” the Flea said.

And suddenly, there was hope. Valyn could almost taste it, thick and viscous on the cold breeze.

“The Kettral are here?” Chem asked. “How many…”

“We’re it,” the Flea said. “Sorry. Take four horses and ride hard for Annur. Tell whatever idiots are on or around the throne that the Urghul are coming. They have days to get ready. Weeks at the most.”

To the messenger’s credit, his shock lasted only a moment. “Who should I say sent the order?”

The Flea snorted. “Doesn’t much matter who’s giving the order, does it? What matters is that there’s an Urghul army coming.”

“Understood, sir.”

“And just so we’re clear-you’re it.”

The messenger hesitated. “It, sir?”

“The two of you are the only messengers. I won’t tell you how to do your work, but remember that for every moment you rest, Annur will pay in lives. No one else is carrying this word. There are no birds. There are no other riders. You are it.”

“Understood, sir. What about you?”

“Us?” the Flea asked. “We’re going to ride with you for a while.”

“And then what?”

“Well, at a certain point, we’re going to stop riding, turn around, and do some fighting.”

* * *

The ride south was punishing. In the forest, Valyn had been forced to guard constantly against the low-hanging boughs that threatened to sweep him from the saddle, but at least they’d rarely been able to move at much more than a walk. The uplift between the Haag and the eastern forests, however, was all grassland, open enough to allow the horses their heads, and although his beast was more sure-footed than any Annurian steed, Valyn still found himself thrown about roughly in the saddle, blind to the land ahead, unable to anticipate the thousand tiny adjustments of his horse.

He soon discovered, however, that if he could see too little, he could hear too much. They couldn’t have been much more than a mile south of the ragged Annurian line when Balendin ordered the attack. He couldn’t hear the leach, of course, but he didn’t need to. At that distance, the individual cries all washed together, Urghul and Annurian, killer and killed, the rage and the terror, all caught up in the same swell of sound, punctuated by the crash of steel against steel. Given the scene the others had described, it seemed impossible that the legionaries would survive even that initial charge, but as Valyn galloped south, away from the fight, he began to hear the screaming of horses woven into the other sounds. Which meant that the legions were hurting the Urghul after all, holding them back, if only for the moment. The battle raged, but it didn’t seem to be following.

The Aphorist caught up another mile on.

“Got half of them,” he said.

“And the other half?” the Flea asked.

Valyn could hear the Aphorist’s shrug, the shift of stiff wool over skin. “Dying. As all men must.”

“Sigrid?”

“Making the dying take longer. She’ll hold the line until night.”

“Good,” the Flea replied. “Double back to the Annurians coming south. Stay with them. Keep them moving at a double march through the night. You’ll catch up to us around midday tomorrow.”

Newt whistled quietly. “These soldiers are not Kettral. They do not have our training. Every man has a point beyond which he will break.”

“They can break later. Right now, they’re all that stands between the Urghul and Annur. Explain that to them. Go ahead and promise them all estates on the Channarian coast when this is done.”

“We have no estates to give,” Newt observed. “Regrettably.”

“That’s fine,” the Flea replied. “When this is all over, there won’t be any soldiers left alive to give them to. Regrettably.”

The Aphorist chuckled, as though it were all a fine joke. “A vital lie can shine more brightly than the truth.”

“Sure,” the Flea replied. “Just keep them moving.”

Huutsuu shifted in her saddle as the Aphorist rode off.

“Urghul can ride at night,” she said. “Ride fast enough to catch these soldiers, if they have to.”

“But they don’t have to,” the Flea said. “Balendin might have a straight shot to Annur, but even the Urghul aren’t going to ride all the way there without stopping. There’s no reason for him to risk a night gallop now when he has hundreds of miles to cover.”

He kicked his horse into motion once more, and after a moment, Valyn followed.

“What is our plan?” he asked.

“Plan?” the Flea replied. “I thought you heard me when I told the two messengers. We ride south for a while, then turn around, then fight.”

“For a great warrior,” Huutsuu said, “this seems very foolish.”

“Yeah,” the Flea said. “Well. I didn’t end up all the way out here because I was smart.”

* * *

As it turned out, the Flea did have a plan after all. After a full night riding, eating strips of dried venison in the saddle, and stopping only to change mounts, they crossed a shallow stream early the next morning. The Wing leader called a halt just beyond it. For a few moments the only sounds were the water washing over the stones, the breathing of the weary beasts, and the shifting of men and women in the saddle, stretching sore muscles after so many hours.

“What is this?” Huutsuu asked finally.

“A fort,” the Flea replied.

“It looks like a ruin.”

“You’re welcome to stand out in the middle of the grass when your people arrive.”

Valyn pored over musty memories of battles he had studied back on the Islands, trying to remember what a fort might be doing out here, in the middle of nowhere.

“Something left over?” he ventured. “From when Raalte was an independent kingdom?”

“It was the northernmost of Mierten’s forts. A bulwark against the barbarians beyond.”

“How did you know it was here?”

“I memorized the map of this area years ago.”

“Lucky for us.”

The Flea shrugged. “Not really. I memorized them all.”

Valyn stared into the darkness.

“There are hundreds of maps at the Eyrie.”

“Yep,” the Flea said. “It was a pain in the ass.”

Valyn turned south, toward where the old fort waited. More than ever, his blindness chafed. Around people, he could use his other senses. He could hear them approaching, could listen to their breathing or their heartbeats. He could smell them, their fear or hope. Their confusion. Here, however, facing the dilapidated wall, there was nothing to hear but the wind, nothing to smell but the vague cold scent of stone.

“Can we hold it?” he asked.

“Not a chance.”

“Then why…”

“We’re not fighting to win. We’re fighting to buy time. This old wall is worth a day. Two days, maybe, if the dice come up our way. It’s hard to ride a horse through a wall.”

“What’s anchoring it? Why don’t they just go around?”

“The river to the west,” Huutsuu replied. “And something that looks like a bog to the east.” It was hard to tell from her tone if she was happy about the terrain or not.

“That,” the Flea agreed, “and the fact that Balendin’s not going to want to leave a fort full of enemies at his back.”

“Full?” Valyn asked. “We’ve got what, a hundred Annurians on the way, plus a dozen of Huutsuu’s Urghul?”

“No,” the woman said. “This is not our fight. It means nothing to me if your empire of cowards falls. We came to kill the Annurian leach, not to make war with our own people.”

“So go kill him,” the Flea replied.

Huutsuu reeked of anger. “Our pact-”

“-remains,” the Flea said quietly. “We need to get a good fight going, first. Without a fight, Balendin has no reason to reach for his well, and we have no way to get close.”

“A distraction?” Huutsuu asked, incredulous. “It will not work. Even in battle, this leach guards himself. If he could be killed with a spear in the back, he would be dead already.”

“A spear wasn’t what I had in mind,” the Flea replied. “More like an explosion. He can’t be guarding against everything. A mole right underneath his feet might do the job.”

Huutsuu’s suspicion hung in the air, sickly sweet as the stench of overripe fruit. “If you have these … devices, if you are able to make these explosions, why did you not kill him months ago?”

“Not the right ground,” Valyn said, seeing the strategy despite his blindness. “In order for the explosion to do any good, you need to know where Balendin’s going to be and when. The front was too wide before. The timing was too uncertain.”

“That,” the Flea agreed, “and all the spots we knew he would go were in the middle of an Urghul army. Didn’t think they’d take kindly to us burying munitions in the center of their camp. Here, though, we have it all. We know when, and we’ve got a pretty good idea of where.”

“The hill,” Huutsuu said, stirring in her saddle to point in a direction Valyn couldn’t make out.

“The hill,” the Flea agreed. “It’s high enough for him to see and be seen. He’ll drag his captives up there, and start slaughtering them, hoping to pull more power from the Urghul and from our people on the wall. But that means,” he went on, turning to Huutsuu, “that we need to have people on the wall. We need to make it a fight. If not, he’ll have no reason to bother getting up on that hill. We’ll end up blowing a few clods of dirt fifty feet into the air. That’s it.”

Huutsuu didn’t reply at first. Valyn could hear the other Urghul behind her, the restlessness of the riders in the shifting of their mounts.

“All right,” she said at last. “We will stand here with you. We will make this place a great sacrifice to Kwihna. And you will kill the leach.”

Only when she had wheeled her horse away, calling out to the Urghul in her own tongue, leading them south to the fort itself to begin the preparations, did the Flea turn to Valyn.

“Will she betray us?” he asked.

Valyn hesitated, poring over his memories of Huutsuu. “No,” he replied finally. “She’s too proud.”

“We’re risking a lot on one woman’s pride.”

“When I first captured her on the steppe, she looked me straight in the eye and told me that if I didn’t kill her, she would hunt me down.”

“That was dumb.”

Valyn nodded slowly. “Maybe. But it was brave.”

“Brave usually has some dumb mixed in.”

Valyn shook his head, trying to see the situation clearly. “She hates Balendin. To her he is a … perversion of everything sacred.”

The Flea grunted. “Enough of a perversion to make her turn traitor?”

“She doesn’t see it as treachery. The Urghul don’t share our notion of command or duty.” Valyn thought of Huutsuu killing the Urghul warriors who had opposed her, the way she’d opened their throats without hesitation or regret. “For Huutsuu, it is the result that matters, not the path. If she needs to fight other Urghul in order for Balendin to die, she’ll do it. It’s not as though they’ve never fought one another before. I don’t see very many things clearly, but I’ll tell you this: she will stand on that wall and fight.”

The Flea sucked at his teeth, spat into the dirt. “And what about you? Can you fight?”

Valyn took a deep breath. His hands were suddenly sweating, the blood and death of Andt-Kyl scrawled across his vision. All over again he could hear the screaming, the men and women carved apart, burned alive, crushed beneath falling homes, choking as the river’s current dragged them down.

“I’ll fight,” he managed finally. “I’ll fight.”

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