The Providence of Fire

47

The histories were horseshit.

Adare had read about warfare in the histories. She had pored over the intricate maps of Annur’s most famous battles, studying the neat lines of advance and retreat, committing to memory the most classic short pieces: Fleck’s Five Principles of Cavalry, Venner’s Longbows and Flatbows, Huel-Hang’s The Heart of a Conflict. She’d been through Hendran’s cryptic volume twice during the march north, grilling Fulton and Ameredad on the more obscure points. She didn’t expect to become a battlefield commander, certainly not by reading a few old books, but she had hoped that her hasty study of war might help her to better understand the events churning around her, maybe even to save a few lives. The soldiers who had marched all this way to fight and die at her command deserved an emperor who would make an effort to understand what she had asked of them.

And so she had pored over the books until her lids drooped and the maps swam before her eyes only to discover here, now, in the midst of the furious battle for Andt-Kyl, that the books had told her less than nothing. The chaos in the streets of the tiny logging town seemed more like a riot than a battle. There were no disciplined blocks of men working in concert, no ordered sequence of attack and defense, no clear delineation between friend and foe. Instead, there was madness. The leather-clad loggers of the town ran in all directions, some cradling vicious wounds, some collapsed in doorways weeping, some hurling buckets of water on burning buildings, some charging down the street brandishing axes and crude spears, pointing and hollering in a direction that Adare desperately hoped was east.

Three times she had seen knots of Urghul horsemen-some no more than twenty paces distant-and three times Fulton had forced her to backtrack, to take a different route, his face grim as he spat orders at the Aedolians under his command, gesturing with his naked sword.

He had almost refused to let her into the town at all.

“You can only do two things in Andt-Kyl,” he told her bluntly, staring at the smoking village from the western shore of the Black, where they had paused while il Tornja and the Army of the North pushed ahead. “You can get in the way, or you can die, Your Radiance.”

“I need to see it,” she had insisted.

“You can see it from here. It will make even less sense up close.”

She stared at her Aedolian. “Are you defying me?”

“I am protecting you.”

“There are other threats to my life and rule than an Urghul spear in the chest.”

Fulton shook his head curtly. “That is why my order exists. Why I exist.”

Adare blew out a frustrated breath. She had no doubts about Fulton’s loyalty, but loyalty was not the same as judgment.

“Listen,” she began, uncertain just how much she wanted to reveal. “The legions love il Tornja. Have you heard what the men say? He’s invincible. He’s unstoppable. Fearless. Brilliant-”

“Good qualities in a kenarang.”

“You and I both know he is more than the kenarang. The true question is how much more he hopes to be.”

Fulton narrowed his eyes. “I understood you had him in check, that your Mizran Councillor had … thwarted him.”

Adare leaned close. “You saw exactly what I saw: a collar of flame. It was there for a few heartbeats, then it disappeared. Nira says she can keep il Tornja in check, but what do I know about a leach’s kenning? What do you know?”

The Aedolian started to respond, but she cut him off.

“And even if it’s true, even if we have il Tornja controlled, he’s not the only danger. I’m new to the throne, Fulton. In fact, I’ve never even sat on the fucking thing. I’m young. I’m a woman. The Sons of Flame follow me because of what happened at the Everburning Well, but the legions follow il Tornja. If I’m going to win their support and loyalty, I need to prove myself something more than a callow young princess with more ambition than spine.”

“Wading into a battle is no way to demonstrate your bravery.”

“Unfortunately,” Adare replied, “it is.”

She gestured to the small town. Smoke rose over the far shore, but the nearest island appeared relatively untouched by the violence. At least, she hoped it was untouched. According to her scouts, il Tornja was in the tall stone tower that seemed to grow straight out of the cliffs on the island’s southern coast. It looked close enough for her to reach.

“I have to go,” she said again, willing Fulton to see the wisdom of her words, hoping desperately that they were, in fact, wise. “I have to go.”

Fulton grimaced, flexed and unflexed his sword hand, then nodded curtly. “But once we cross the river, you obey me. If I tell you to move, you move. If I tell you to drop, you drop.” He fixed her with a glare. “Do you understand? Your Radiance?”

Adare nodded. “I understand.”

Despite the chaos raging in the streets, they reached the tower without any of the Aedolians being forced to bloody their blades. Il Tornja’s own men stood at the base. Their eyes widened at the sight of the Emperor and her guard, but they bowed and moved aside. Only when Adare had stepped out of the light and madness into the cool, sepulchral dark of the tower did she realize she was trembling, her hands balled into aching fists at her side. She uncurled them slowly while Fulton ordered the other Aedolians to join the kenarang’s men at the entrance, then started climbing the spiral stair before he could notice her fear.

The stone of the tower dampened the worst of the sound-the clash of steel on steel, the screaming of men and horses-and Adare found herself climbing more slowly as she reached the top. When they approached the trapdoor at the top of the spiral, she paused, allowing Fulton to step past her, then followed him into the blinding light and battering noise of the battle.

She had expected a square room, something with windows to let out the light of Andt-Kyl’s beacon, but there were no windows. She realized, as she blinked against the sun, that there weren’t even walls. The top floor was open to the elements on all sides, a round stone pit six paces across at the center, blackened from the signal fires. Half a dozen stone pillars ringed the circumference, supporting a conical roof clearly intended to keep the worst of the rain and snow off the signal fire. Between the stone floor and the ceiling above, there was nothing but air, air opening onto a sheer drop in every direction.

Adare’s stomach twisted. She wanted nothing more than to shrink back through the trapdoor into the relative silence and safety below. She, however, was the one who had insisted on coming, on being brave, being seen being brave, and after a moment she forced herself to take a step forward, to look at the full panorama of blood and suffering spread out below.

The bridges were gone, but the Urghul still crossed on felled logs, lashing their panicked mounts forward into the churning mass of gore and struggling bodies that had overtaken the two small islands. Adare stared. Every street and small square, every tiny alley, was packed with men, steel, and horseflesh. There was no way to make sense of the slaughter, no way to organize it. Two women, one in black, one in what looked like a fur coat slung over tattered red silk, fought back to back, ringed by a dozen riders. Adare stared. The black-clad one looked like little more than a girl, but she was holding the Urghul at bay somehow, twin blades spinning in her hands. As Adare watched, the horsemen forced them out of sight behind a burning building.

Fully half the town’s houses were burning, bright and indifferent flame shimmering the air. A two-story log structure groaned as fire lapped the beams, then collapsed into the street, crushing a score of legionaries. Down by the river, the press forced soldiers into the turgid current where they flailed for a desperate moment before their armor dragged them under. Two streets over, a pair of Annurians hacked at the legs of a rearing horse while the rider plunged his spear downward over and over. The full fury of the struggle had not yet engulfed the tower, but men fought and died just a hundred paces distant.

This is battle, Adare told herself angrily. Look at it.

It didn’t look like battle. It looked like mutual slaughter. She wanted to vomit.

“Your Radiance,” Fulton said, extending an armored arm. “Please keep back from the edge. This is a dangerous place.”

“I am not going to fall off the tower,” she told him, trying to keep her voice firm, confident, turning her attention from the dead and dying to her immediate surroundings. Il Tornja sat at the very edge of the stone floor, just a few paces away. He had left all his guards below, but a dozen young men, battle messengers judging from their light armor, stood at attention, eyes moving nervously from il Tornja to the battle, then back. As Adare watched, two more runners burst up through the trapdoor, sweat streaming down their faces, chests heaving as they took their places at the end of the line. Blood dripped from the hand of the closest man, his blood or someone else’s. Adare couldn’t tell.

The kenarang himself might have been carved from stone. Unlike the famous generals whose paintings hung in halls of the Dawn Palace-men standing high in their stirrups or brandishing a sword from a rocky escarpment-il Tornja sat on the stone floor with his legs crossed beneath him, hands in his lap. He wore a sword buckled at his belt, but it remained sheathed. Adare couldn’t see his face, but there was something about the man’s absolute stillness that made her pause.

No, she reminded herself. Not a man. A Csestriim.

“The battle?” she asked, choosing her words carefully. “Is it going as planned?”

Il Tornja didn’t turn, didn’t speak. The wind shifted his hair, tugged at the collar of his cloak, but the general himself remained motionless. Adare glanced at the line of runners and signalmen. The nearest, a black-haired, wide-eyed youth, met her gaze, shook his head slightly, then pursed his lips. It took her a moment to realize he was mouthing the word “No.” He looked almost as frightened of il Tornja as he did of the battle below.

Adare hesitated, then pushed her way forward. She hadn’t risked the trip into town only to be cowed by her own kenarang. Csestriim or no, he still had Nira’s collar around his neck, a deadly, invisible noose. One word from Adare and the old woman would kill him. Not that Nira was there. Even spry as she was, she couldn’t have managed the forced march north. Adare tried to ignore the fact.

“General,” she said, stepping forward, taking il Tornja by the shoulder.

He turned his head.

“I said-”

The words withered in her mouth. She had locked gazes with her kenarang hundreds of times-over a shared pillow and a bared knife, in lust, love, and furious distrust-and she thought she understood the range of his emotion. She thought that she had fought past his lies and betrayals to finally understand something of the creature to whom she had tied her fate. Staring into his face, however, she realized for the first time the depth of her error.

Gone was the wry amusement she had seen so often, gone the wolfish hunger. All emotion had been scrubbed from those eyes, all expression Adare might have recognized as human … gone. His face was the face of a man, but for the first time she saw the mind behind in that unwavering stare: a mind cold and alien and unknowable as the dark space between midwinter stars. She wanted to shrink into her cloak, to turn away, to flee. For half a heartbeat, the terrifying drop from the tower seemed to offer escape rather than certain death.

“Stay,” he said, the word quick as a knife nicking a vein. “But do not speak. It is a near thing, this contest.”

“What-” she began, then faltered.

“I am what you kept alive to wage your wars. Now you will see why.”

Adare nodded numbly. She felt that if she looked into the emptiness of those eyes a heartbeat longer her mind might unhinge. Far below, blood ran heavy as spring snowmelt in the town’s crude gutters. The fight crashed up against the base of the tower. Men fought, and screamed, and died, but she no longer feared the battle. That, at least, was a fight between men, courage matched against courage, will against will. She was no warrior, but she could understand their hope, terror, and rage, emotions that seemed warm as summer rain, soft as a down bed when compared to the eyes of the creature beside her.

“One runner to the bridge,” il Tornja said. He didn’t turn to look at his messengers, nor did he raise a hand. “Tell them to abandon spears. Use swords.”

A man darted through the trapdoor without a word.

Adare searched desperately in the madness for the Annurians holding what was left of the bridge, found them, finally. There couldn’t have been more than two score, holding what looked like a desperate defensive position, their thicket of bristling long spears the only thing keeping the attacking Urghul at bay.

Fulton, following her gaze, shook his head slowly.

“They’ll be slaughtered,” Adare breathed. “Without spears, they’ll be slaughtered.”

She glanced at her Aedolian, hoping she was wrong, but he nodded grimly. “They need those spears.”

“Most will die,” il Tornja said, voice smooth as unscratched ice. “Some won’t. Two runners,” he went on. “One to the fourth street, one to the fifth. Archers on fourth to retreat. Archers on fifth to charge. Redirect the fourteenth squad to support that Kettral woman and her companion, the woman in red.”

The runners saluted briskly, then bolted down the stairs.

“Kettral?” Adare asked, staring at the young girl in blacks she had seen earlier. “She’s Kettral?”

“Yes,” il Tornja replied flatly. “And she and the woman beside her are all that holds that entire street. That street anchors that flank. If they go down, we lose.”

“Can they do that?” Adare asked, hands clenched at her side. “There are only two of them.”

“They are doing it,” the kenarang replied. Then, shifting his focus to a different quarter of the town, “Signal arrows. Two red. One green.”

Bowmen stepped forward, lit oil-soaked rags at the tips of their arrows, waited for the unnatural flames to catch, fired high into the air, then stepped back without a word. Adare had no idea what the signals meant. She tried to find some corresponding movement in the battle below, found nothing but death and terror. Over by the burned-out bridge, the first messenger had reached the spearmen and convinced them to abandon their long shafts. As Fulton predicted, the Urghul pressed close, slaughtering the soldiers from the backs of their horses. After a few dozen heartbeats the entire position collapsed.

“They’re dying,” Adare protested.

“Yes,” il Tornja replied.

“Why?”

He shook his head, the barest hint of a motion. “It’s too complex.”

Adare spent the hour that followed in a kind of horrified trance, watching as the kenarang sent runner after runner into the chaos below, listening as he uttered order after inscrutable order. Hold this street, retreat into this alley, burn that building, charge. Twice he sent soldiers into the fray to do nothing more than wave Annurian flags above their heads. He instructed his archers to light the docks on fire, despite the fact that there was no one on the docks. He even ordered several dozen troops in three different locations to surrender. None of it made any sense, not the insanity below nor il Tornja’s response to it. He was like a madman commanding the troops at random, only there was no madness in those impossibly blank eyes, and despite the Urghul numbers, despite the fury with which they attacked again and again and again, despite the chaos engulfing the Annurian soldiers, he held the horsemen back.

Finally, as the sun began to settle in the sky, the kenarang rose smoothly and unexpectedly to his feet.

“It is finished,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder, suddenly indifferent.

Adare stared at the carnage below. She could see no slackening of the battle, no shift in the violence. Exhausted soldiers heaved their weapons over and over into the flesh of their foes, screaming as they killed and were killed in turn. Il Tornja paid them no mind. Instead, he faced his signalmen and messengers, then bowed.

“You men have done well,” he said as he straightened. “Thanks to you, the day is ours. You are dismissed.”

It took the bowmen and messengers just a few moments to file back into the tower, leaving Adare alone on the roof with Fulton and il Tornja. When the trapdoor had clattered shut behind them, she turned to the general.

“What do you mean, it’s over?” she demanded, voice cracking as she spoke.

“The battle is done. The rest is…” He paused. “You have seen a chicken struggle after the head is parted from the body?”

Adare nodded, horrified.

“This is that-a last spasm of blood and emotion. The real work is done.”

She stared. “Where is Long Fist? The Urghul chieftain?”

“Not here.” There was something in his voice, something Adare couldn’t place. Not regret, certainly. Hunger, perhaps. A great hunger held in check. “He refused to take the field.”

“It doesn’t look done to me,” Fulton growled. “Those horsemen are fifty paces from the tower.”

Il Tornja shifted his gaze to the Aedolian. “That is why I am the kenarang and you are a guard.”

“How do you know?” Adare demanded.

He fixed her with that hollow stare and once again she felt that dizzying vertigo, as though she teetered on the very lip of a bottomless well, as though if she fell forward, she would fall forever. Finally, he turned away, gesturing to the far bank.

“How many trees?” he asked.

Adare stared. “What?”

“The trees. How many are there?”

She shook her head, staring at the dark ranks of fir and pine. Even as she watched, the Urghul were slipping into the shadows between those trunks. Retreating, she realized. They were pulling back.

“I’ve no idea,” she said. “Why does it even-”

“Two thousand six hundred and eight, between the mouth of the river and the stone point.”

Adare stared.

“You’ve been counting trees this whole battle?”

He turned the empty pits of his eyes on her. “I don’t need to count them, Adare. That is what I have tried to tell you. This thing you call thought, call reason, this plodding, deliberative mental process-it is … unnecessary to my kind.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Thought and reason were the essence of the Csestriim. All the histories agree.”

He bent his face into a smile. “Ah. The histories.” He raised a hand, held up two fingers. “How many?”

Adare stared. “What?”

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

She shook her head. “Two.”

“How do you know?”

“I just-”

“Did you count?”

“Of course not. I just … see them.”

The kenarang nodded. “In the same way, I just see”-he waved a hand at the slaughter taking place behind him-“all this.”

For a while all she could do was watch dumbly as the men screamed and the blood flowed. Il Tornja’s claim was too big, like being told there was another sky behind the sky.

“So we won?” she asked at last.

In an instant, the kenarang slipped back into his habitual wry smile. The horrifying emptiness drained from his eyes. “We?” he asked, amusement in his voice. “Yes, Your Radiance. We won.”

The words should have been a relief, but when she thought a moment about what they meant, about what this general of hers could do, about how tenuously Adare herself understood the kenning that bound him to her will, his victory seemed suddenly sharp and cold, a knife in the dead of winter pressed against her ribs.