The Providence of Fire

29

Three days’ hard ride south of the Urghul camp they hit the White River. Valyn reined in his horse as they topped the rise, gazing down into the shallow, winding valley below. Back at the base of the Bone Mountains the White was shallow enough in some places to swim a horse across, frothing over the jumbled boulders in a spray of foam that gave the river its name. Here, however, a thousand miles to the west, it ran deep and dark, a sinuous snake a quarter-mile wide, draining all the vast pasturage of the steppe.

“Careful,” Valyn said, backing his horse down the northern side of the hill.

The chances of being spotted by an Annurian patrol were thin. The river still lay a few miles off, and along this section the border forts were spread at least twenty miles apart. Still, there was no point perching atop the hill, offering a stark silhouette to whoever might be riding in the valley below. The evening sun already smudged the western sky, and in another hour they’d be able to ride the final miles safely.

Laith sighed audibly. “We’re swimming, aren’t we? At night.”

“We are,” Valyn replied absently, scanning the far bank for rising smoke or some other sign of one of the forts. After years flying on the back of a kettral, it was frustrating to be tethered to the horizon. Five minutes in the air, and he’d know everything he needed to know, but he didn’t have five minutes in the air. He spared a thought for Suant’ra, hoping that she had returned to the Eyrie somehow. That would be the best thing for her, and it would play into his own plans as well. A bird returning empty usually meant the Wing was dead, and if people thought he was dead, maybe they’d stop hunting him for a while, long enough, at least, for him to get close to il Tornja and find out what was going on. To kill the man if necessary.

He was still grappling with Balendin’s revelation. He had known, of course, that the plot to destroy his family extended into the highest strata of Annurian society, into the Dawn Palace itself-there was no other way to explain the involvement of both the Mizran Councillor and a large portion of the Aedolian Guard. Still, it felt different to have a name. The name. If Balendin was to be believed, il Tornja had devised the entire plot. He had pulled Yurl’s strings and Balendin’s, Ut’s and Adiv’s. Every death could be laid at his feet.

Something dark and bestial coiled around Valyn’s heart, squeezing, squeezing, until the air burned in his lungs. His knuckles ached, and he realized he was clutching his belt knife, that he’d drawn the blade halfway from its sheath as though the kenarang stood before him. He stared at the hand. The knuckles were pale, tendons rigid beneath the skin of the wrist.

“Leave the horses here?” Talal asked, breaking into his thoughts.

Valyn hesitated, shuddered away the rage, slid the knife back into the sheath before anyone could notice, then nodded. Even the indefatigable Urghul beasts couldn’t swim the massive flow. It would mean running on the far side, but running was nothing new. Once they hit settled territory it wouldn’t be difficult to steal new horses.

“No bird,” Laith grumbled as they dismounted, then turned their mounts free. “No horses. We might as well be slogging around in the ’Kent-kissing legions.”

“Makes you feel for the common soldier, doesn’t it?” Talal asked.

Laith stared at the leach as though he were mad. “Hull can have the common soldier. I joined up with the Kettral to avoid this kind of shit.”

“Luckily,” Valyn cut in, “you know how to swim. At least you’re not stuck back in the Urghul camp.”

“Are you kidding? Gwenna and Annick have their own tent, a kid to bring them food twice a day, and skins and skins of that horse-piss fire liquor they drink up there. We, on the other hand, just lost our horses and are about to dive into a river that originates with glacial snowpack. I’ll take the Urghul side of the equation any day.”

The water was cold, far colder than the sea around the Islands, cold enough that Valyn insisted the three of them run the bank until they were sweaty and hot before starting across. All Kettral could swim more or less indefinitely, given the right conditions, but the seeping cold of that black running water would sap the strength from the strongest swimmer in minutes.

Cadets learned about cold water the hard way. Each year the trainers sent a group up to the Ice Sea where they were dumped in the drink and told to paddle for the shore a half-mile distant. It was a trivial distance, but no one ever made it. Valyn remembered swimming until his lips turned blue, his limbs went to lead, and his mind filled with hazy fog. The trainers were there to fish him out once he started to sink, but he still remembered the sensation, first the shock, then the gradual creeping weight in his chest, then indifference swaddling him like a soft blanket.

Halfway across the White River he found the same heavy lassitude pressing him gently beneath the surface. Laith’s head and Talal’s were barely visible in the moonlight, dark splotches a few paces from him on either side. The flier’s stroke was visibly weakening, and when Valyn glanced over at Talal he realized that all of them were struggling.

He rolled onto his side for a moment, lifting his head above the water as he swam.

“Faster,” he said. His mouth felt stiff and awkward around the word, as though the syllables were cold stones on his tongue, and for a moment he thought neither of the two had heard. When Laith turned his head for his next breath, however, he cursed briefly but eloquently, then picked up the tempo. Talal, too, seemed to get the message. Valyn was hauling the inflated bag with their weapons, and the other two started to draw away from him. Grimly he rolled back onto his stomach and redoubled his effort. He couldn’t maintain the new pace for long, but the choice was stark: swim or die.

When he finally hit the far shore, Talal and Laith were already out, but they stepped back into the current to drag him the last few steps. Valyn’s legs had gone stiff and stupid with the cold, and as he emerged from the water into the slicing blade of the evening air it was all he could do to stay on his feet. All three of them were naked, clothes tied tight in the inflated bladder along with their weapons. His jaw chattered uncontrollably, and his throat had gone tight, as though the muscles inside it had frozen.

“Blacks…” Laith managed. “Need … our blacks…”

Valyn shook his head. The light wool was perfect for retaining heat, but they had already shed their heat during the long swim. They needed a fire, but a fire would take too long, and the light would draw Annurian troops. Besides, the south bank of the White was as barren as the north, all broken ground and no trees. Work would have to warm them.

“Run,” he said, pointing a trembling arm.

Talal met his eyes, nodded, then set out south at a jerky trot.

Laith growled something that might have been a protest or a curse, but when Valyn started, the flier fell in behind, both of them stumbling over the uneven ground beneath the swaying stars.

They’d been moving for at least an hour before the warmth started to seep back into Valyn’s flesh. With the warmth came feeling, and with the feeling came itching, then pain. His soles were rugged from running the Island trails, but fleeing through the darkness over rough earth on feet like clubs had resulted in several bruises, a nasty gash across the arch of his right foot, and the loss of the toenail on his left large toe.

“How are we doing?” he asked, slowing to a walk.

“I hope you don’t take it as insubordination,” Laith replied, “if I tell you exactly where you can stuff that particular question.”

Talal chuckled quietly. “I wouldn’t want to do it all over again.”

Valyn smiled. “And here I just realized I forgot our gear on the far bank.”

“I will drown you,” Laith said.

“How about our blacks?” Talal asked. “And the swords, too. I’d feel better with some clothes on my body and a blade close to hand.”

“Why?” Laith asked, shaking his head. “I was just going to club anyone who came close with my cock.” He glanced down. “Unfortunately, after that dip in the river it’s no longer the fearsome, crushing weapon I remember.”

Valyn tossed the pack down on the grass and sorted through the weapons and clothes. The dry wool felt good on his skin, and the soft leather boots gave some cushion to his battered feet. The run had both dried and warmed him, and he flexed his hands and fingers, working out the last stubborn patches of stiffness, then rolled his shoulders in their sockets. Already the memory of the desperate cold had started to fade.

“All right,” he said finally. “We travel by night for two days, until we’re well clear of the border. Il Tornja has no idea where we are, no idea that we’re still alive, no idea that we’re coming for him, but he’s sure to sit up and take notice if one of his patrols picks up the remnants of a Kettral Wing wandering around just south of the White.”

“We still don’t know if the kenarang is responsible for your father’s death,” Talal pointed out. “Balendin might have been lying.”

Valyn nodded. “He might have been lying, but I doubt it. Balendin was frightened when Long Fist questioned him, almost terrified. You both saw him.” He hesitated, then decided to leave out the fact that he had also smelled the leach’s fear, had tasted it, like a thick, bilious skim over spoiled milk. “Either way, there’s no reason to take chances. We stay out of sight until we have some ’Kent-kissing idea what’s going on.”

“I liked it better when we had ’Ra,” Laith said, shaking his head. “I hope she made it clear of the steppe. No telling what those Urghul bastards might do with her if they took her down.”

“I’m sure she’s-” Talal began, but Valyn cut him off with a curt chop of the hand.

Somewhere behind them, off to the north but hammering closer in a dull tattoo, Valyn could make out the sound of horses.

Laith cocked an ear, then half spread his hands. “What?”

“Riders,” Valyn said, “pushing hard.”

The flier glanced at Talal. “You hear anything?”

“Just the wind,” Talal replied.

“They’re coming,” Valyn said, crouching down to set an ear to the earth. He listened a moment more, then nodded. “About a mile off. Riding at a canter.”

“A canter at night over this ground?” Talal shook his head. “Dangerous.”

Laith pressed his own ear to the dirt, waited a long time, then stood. “I have no idea how you heard that, but I hear them now. Sounds like they’re on some sort of path. The earth is packed.”

Talal had cocked his head to one side, twisting the iron bracelet on his wrist absently as he did so. “I think they’re going to pass us to the west. We should be all right.”

“You using some kind of secret leach trick?” Laith asked.

“Yes, very secret. Very tricky. It’s called listening.”

Valyn figured the angles in his head. Four horses pushing south hard in the middle of the night weren’t a routine patrol. Even on a path, they were taking a risk with their horses, which meant urgency. Urgency meant information, and the only information this far north was information about the Urghul. Valyn gritted his teeth.

He’d intended to stay out of view, to slink into Annur-past the border first, then into the capital itself-and locate il Tornja without anyone the wiser. Maybe he could meet up with Kaden before choosing his course, maybe not, but waiting for Kaden to tell him what was going on hardly made for a complete plan. Sooner or later he was going to need to decide whether or not to actually kill the kenarang, and to do that he’d need to decide whether Long Fist was telling him the truth. The Urghul chief had insisted that his massive camp of horsemen was a purely defensive measure, but tens of thousands of mounted warriors could turn aggressive in the time it took them to mount up. For all Valyn knew, Long Fist was playing him. Either way, this was a chance to get some unfiltered, unblemished, unprepared intelligence. Not only that, but they’d have horses.

“Modified dead-man ambush,” he decided abruptly, turning toward the hill and breaking into a jog.

Laith didn’t budge. “What about sneaking past the patrols?”

“We need the intel and we can use the horses,” Valyn called over his shoulder.

“And the soldiers?” Talal asked. The leach had fallen in beside him immediately, but when Valyn glanced over he could see the concern written on his face. “They’re Annurians.…”

“I’m aware that they’re Annurians,” Valyn replied, trying to think through the attack. It was hard to say just how far off the horses were, but they only had a few minutes. “We’re not going to kill them.”

“Captives,” Laith observed as he caught up to them, “are complicated.”

“We take them,” Valyn replied. “Tie their legs. Drop them five miles off the path. Should take them a few days to wriggle back, by which time we’ll be well south. With any luck, they won’t even know we’re Kettral.”

“Luck,” Laith said, shaking his head. “I’d like to start needing it less or having it more.”

As he spoke, they crested a gentle rise, and Valyn paused, scanning the land below. It was almost as bare as the steppe, but there were a few withered pines, a couple patches of twisted alder, limbs silver in the moonlight-enough cover for a dead-man. And there, the only straight line in a landscape of slopes and curves, the hammered earth of the Annurian track, striking south toward the horizon.

“I’m the deader,” Valyn said, considering the contours a moment more, then pointing, “right there. Four horses most likely means two riders, with two remounts.”

Laith nodded. “You want to go with a V or a half-hatch?” Once the flier got his griping and theatrics out of the way, he actually liked to fight. Not as much as he liked to fly, but then, there wasn’t much flying to be had without a bird.

“Half-hatch,” Valyn said, indicating a gnarled trunk and a waist-high line of scrub on the far side of the road.

“It’s going to be tight,” Talal said, turning an ear toward the drumming hooves.

Valyn nodded.

“What’s the play?” Laith asked.

“After the halt,” Valyn said, spinning out the possibilities as he spoke, “I’ll take the dismount.…”

“If there’s a dismount,” Talal said.

“No dismount, and we ditch it,” Valyn said. “We let them ride.”

“You take the dismount,” Laith urged, waving a hand impatiently, “then-”

“Spark and bang,” Valyn replied. He glanced at Talal.

“Yeah,” the leach replied. “I can manage it.”

“All right then. Standard. One moves for the bridle. The other takes him down. Don’t worry about sound. We’ve got to be five miles from the river by now. Just make sure he doesn’t bolt.”

“And if there are more?” Talal asked.

Valyn paused to listen to the drumming hooves. It was tricky to unthread the different gaits, but the horses were close now. He was all but certain there were only four beasts. “Four men means no remounts,” he said, “and that pace without remounts would be idiocy.”

Laith nodded, then turned to jog into position.

Talal hesitated.

“Say it or stow it,” Valyn said. “They’re almost on us.”

“Seems right,” the leach said after a moment. “Standard protocol. Four horses. Two men.” He turned to follow Laith.

* * *

Valyn realized the approaching soldiers had buggered the ’Kent-kissing protocol the moment the horses hammered into view.

Four horses. Four men.

Either they had a remount not far to the south or they were utter fools. It hardly mattered. Valyn lay just to the side of the road. Had there been even a little cover, his blacks might have concealed him-the men were riding hard, and couldn’t expect a body here, near the very fringe of the empire-but then, Valyn had chosen his spot precisely for the lack of cover. A dead-man ambush wasn’t much good if the mark rode by without noticing the deader. Cursing under his breath, he rolled toward the low gully a few paces distant, but the soldiers were on him before he was halfway there, the leader calling out to his companions over the clatter of hooves, all of them hauling up short, horses blowing.

“Stand and show yourself,” one of the soldiers called out. The command was followed by the uneasy scrape of steel over leather as the men freed their swords.

Valyn rolled slightly onto his side, slipping his belt knife from its sheath as he tried to recalibrate tactics. Three on four made perfectly acceptable odds for the Kettral, especially in an ambush, but you had to be willing to cut some throats.

“It’s an Urghul, Kidder,” another soldier said, voice high and tight. “A ’Kent-kissing scout.”

“What’s he doing here then?” A third voice. “Where’s his horse?”

Valyn risked a glance at the riders. As he suspected, they wore the light leather armor of legionary messengers. The leader’s horse was out in front, but the other three were clustered tight together. Laith and Talal were on the far side of the road, which meant two of the four men were partially shielded from attack. If the first man dismounted, if Valyn could take him down quickly enough, he might be able to hamstring the nearer horse, which would solve one of the problems.…

“Stand,” the closest rider said again, “in the name of the regent, or I will ride you down.”

“No,” Valyn moaned, raising a hand, “please. No. I’m wounded. I’m Annurian. Legion.”

“Sound like an Urghul to you, Arin?”

“They don’t all talk nonsense,” Arin replied stubbornly. “Maybe this one’s a spy.”

“All the legion up this way is tied to the forts,” the leader, Kidder, said carefully, turning back to Valyn. “Are you with the Thirty-second?”

Valyn hesitated. Legionary deployments were constantly shifting-generals didn’t want their men to get too comfortable in a single place-and the Kettral rarely bothered studying the latest configuration. There was nothing to do but throw the dice.

“Tenth,” he groaned. “Please. I’m hurt.”

Kidder reined in his horse. “Tenth’s way west in the Romsdals,” he said guardedly. “What’re you doing here?”

Valyn paused. The longer they talked, the more time Talal and Laith had to shift position and rethink tactics, but a large part of the success of the ambush relied on surprise. Even as they spoke, the other riders were spreading out, staring worriedly into the surrounding terrain.

“Messenger,” he moaned. Paused. “The Urghul hit me. My partner’s dead.”

His mention of the Urghul caused some consternation, the other men circling warily. It seemed, however, to earn him some trust with the leader, who dismounted after a moment, then approached slowly, sword drawn. He stopped a couple of paces from Valyn, blade leveled between them.

“What’s your message?” he asked.

Valyn shook his head weakly. “For the garrison commander…”

“Where’s your horse?”

“South,” Valyn moaned. “Maybe a mile. I crawled.… Please.”

The man glanced over his shoulder, and in the short moment his head was turned, Valyn rolled to his feet, knocked the sword aside by the flat, then struck out at the soldier’s neck with the heel of his hand. It wasn’t a killing blow, wasn’t intended to do much more than stagger the man for a few heartbeats, but Valyn felt something crunch, and the Annurian sagged, gagging. There was no time to think about what he’d done, not while the other riders were in play, and Valyn stepped forward, twisted the long blade free of the soldier’s grip, then spun away, slashing through the neck of the nearest horse. He needed three mounts, not four.

The beast recoiled, then, before its rider could leap free, collapsed thrashing. The soldier screamed as his leg broke, and then Valyn was on him, knocking him unconscious with the sword’s pommel.

That made two down. He turned to find that Laith had already knocked a third clear of his saddle. The fourth, however, the one farthest from the center of their attack, had broken free, and was hammering up the road to the north, his companions forgotten. Valyn cursed and cast about for one of the two remaining horses. The beasts were panicked, rolling their eyes and snorting, and when Valyn edged close to the nearer of the two, it reared up, lashing out with a hoof. He sidestepped the blow, trying to come in close, but the animal pivoted, keeping him at bay.

“Talal!” he called. The whole thing was a goat fuck already, but if the last rider got away they’d have half a legion on them by the time the sun rose.

The leach stood a dozen paces off, chin lifted, eyes fixed on the rapidly retreating figure. As Valyn watched, Talal made a slight gesture with his left hand, like swatting a fly away from his fingers, and, with a scream, the horse collapsed, front legs buckling abruptly. The rider, suddenly free of the saddle, soared through the air, arms scrabbling at nothingness, then hit headfirst with a vicious crunch. Talal went after him, but it was already over. Though the horse thrashed furiously, lost in pain and panic, the slumped shape of the man beneath remained horribly still.

Valyn took a deep breath, then turned back to the scene at hand. The first soldier was bent double, straining to haul breath through his shattered windpipe as he clawed at the dirt with one hand. The man trapped beneath the horse lay still, but it was clear from the awkward angle of his body that his leg was broken. A heavy horrible stone settled in Valyn’s gut. In just heartbeats his neat ambush had spiraled utterly out of control. The men down weren’t traitors or barbarians; they were Annurians, soldiers of his own empire, loyal troops following orders as best as they were able, and for that loyalty Valyn had attacked them, crippled at least one for life, and possibly killed another.

“Is he alert?” Valyn asked roughly, turning to Laith. The flier had the fourth soldier pinned to the earth, a knee in the small of his back.

“For now,” he replied, lacing the man’s wrists with a length of light cord. He glanced over his shoulder at the surrounding violence. His eyes showed bleak in the moonlight. “Holy Hull. What did we do?”

“We did what we had to,” Valyn replied, trying to shackle his own nausea and horror.

“Had to?” Laith demanded, gesturing at the bodies with a hand. “How did we have to do this?”

“It’s done, Laith,” Talal said quietly, rejoining the two of them. “It went wrong, but we all did it, and we can’t take it back.”

“What about him?” Valyn asked, nodding toward the soldier up the road. Talal had slit the horse’s throat, and both beast and man lay still.

The leach shook his head. “The fall snapped his neck.”

Valyn stared at the shadowy forms of man and horse, then turned his back on them, crossing instead to the soldier with the injured windpipe. The Annurian knelt on his hands and knees, hacking out a shattered sound, half cough, half retch, his body quivering in the still air. For a moment, Valyn could do nothing but watch. Between the moon’s light and his own eyes, he could see everything, even the details-the small tattoo of a mouse behind the soldier’s ear, the scarring across his right knuckles, the uneven patch where someone had hacked away too much hair with a belt knife. The man had managed to crawl maybe a dozen paces, no goal beyond escaping his own terror.

“Crushed,” Talal said, joining him.

“Maybe not,” Valyn replied.

“It’s crushed,” the leach said again, quietly but firmly.

“Someone could treat it. Remember Vellik back on the Islands? He busted his throat in a botched barrel drop, and it healed up all right.”

“They got Vellik into the infirmary in less than an hour, and even still, he can barely talk now. I know how to patch up a lot of things, but this…” He spread his hands. “It’s just a question of fast or slow.”

The man finally turned his head at the sound of their voices. He was young, maybe a year or two older than Valyn. He raised a weak hand in a gesture that might have been pleading or accusation, his jaw working around the mangled wreckage of his words.

Valyn blew out a long, uneven breath. Talal was right. The only kindness now was the knife’s kindness, and yet Valyn hesitated, feeling for the first time what it meant to command the Wing. With all the swimming and language study, flight training and demolitions work back on the Islands, it was easy sometimes to forget that this was what he had trained his whole life to do. Kettral was just a polite word for killer. Of course, he wasn’t supposed to be killing Annurian soldiers, but then, killing was killing. No one wanted to die.

Valyn forced himself to look at the wounded soldier; the least he could do was meet his eyes. The legionary held the stare. What did he see, looking into the darkness of Valyn’s vacant irises? Valyn read fear and pain, smelled the hot burn of terror on the air. Maybe the messenger had been following their conversation, maybe not, but one way or another, he knew that his death had arrived.

Which makes every heartbeat a cruelty, Valyn thought bleakly.

Then, before he could think further, he buried his knife in the soldier’s neck, ripping furiously through the windpipe and arteries, then tearing up through the muscle until the blade snagged on bone. Hot blood soaked his blacks, and Valyn’s own breath came hot and ragged in his throat. The soldier sagged against him, head canting off at an obscene angle, eyes blank, mouth hanging open.

“Holy Hull, Val,” Laith muttered. “You didn’t need to take his whole head off.”

Valyn stared at the body for a moment, then jerked his knife free. The corpse collapsed.

“He’s fucking dead, isn’t he?” he demanded, knuckles white with clutching the blade. “Let’s see what the other two have to say. Let’s see if all this was worth anything.”