The Providence of Fire (54 page)

He stared, as though he himself didn't know the answer to the question.

“Were you scouting?” Gwenna pressed. “Some mission north of the White?”

“I'm not a scout,” he protested. “I'm a 'Kent-kissing
infantryman,
barely even that. I been in the legion only four months. The Urghul hit us at the L-fort three nights back.” He stared back up at the ring of faces and started scrabbling at the earth again. “What're they gonna
do
to us?”

“The L-fort?” Gwenna demanded, ignoring the last question. “They came
south
?”

“Yes,” he wailed. “'Bout a million of them. The whole fort's gone.”

Gwenna took a deep breath, then another, trying to still her rising panic. Long Fist had shattered one of the forts south of the river, one of the forts intended to keep the Urghul out of Annur. He hadn't just turned on the Kettral; he had turned on the whole 'Kent-kissing
empire
. So much for his defensive army.… Gwenna would have worried about Valyn and the others—they'd left the camp more or less convinced by Long Fist's promises of allegiance—but whatever miserable shitpile Valyn found himself in, her own predicament was looking quite a bit worse.

The soldier's jaw was quivering. “They're gonna hurt us, ain't they?” His eyes locked on Gwenna's, then flickered down to her blacks. “You're not in the legion,” he breathed, comprehension hitting him like a hammer. “You're
Kettral.
”

The words were horrible with hope.

“Can you break us free?”

Gwenna shook her head, furious at that hope, powerless to explain that the legends extended only so far.

“But you'll do somethin', right?
Right?
I mean … the
Kettral
!”

“What I'll do,” Gwenna said, “is keep my eyes open and my mouth shut.”

It came out more harshly than she'd intended, but she couldn't bear the desperate trust in the young man's eyes, the irrational faith. She wanted to shout that the Kettral weren't gods, that they couldn't work miracles, and even if they could, she herself was a pretty shit Kettral. She didn't have Annick's discipline or Talal's cool or anything, really, other than an ability to blow shit up.
If I could save you,
she wanted to scream,
I'd be saving you.

“Just shut up,” she snapped instead, although she'd just gotten done saying it. “Just be ready.”

Whatever that meant. Half buried in the earth they could neither flee nor fight. It was like being bound to a dock piling waiting for the tide to come in. The Urghul who packed the earth around them had retreated, climbing back up the low stone walls to leave Gwenna and the soldier alone at the bottom of the gully. The sun had slipped behind the hills to the west, and though a smear of red and orange still lit the sky, most of the light came from the enormous fires, a fickle, inconstant illumination that sketched the shards of bone one moment and plunged them into shadow the next. Above them the Urghul had risen to their feet, shaking weapons and jeering something incomprehensible in their strange melodic tongue, an entire bloody nation gathered to watch her suffer, men and women thick as wheat on the surrounding slopes. Gwenna wished she understood the words, then thought better of it.

Just blood, probably, and death, and doom, and blah, blah, blah.

The cacophony rose and rose, an unholy and discordant chant, until Long Fist swept his sticks down in a curt motion. The screaming stopped at once, the sound severed as though with a sharp knife. Firelight danced in the thousands of eager eyes.

The shaman spoke briefly in Urghul. Gwenna caught a few references to Kwihna, and maybe the words for “fight” and “die.” She pivoted at the waist, testing her range of motion, wondering what direction the attack would come from. Maybe it would be warriors. Maybe dogs. There was no way to guess.

“Now,” Long Fist said, addressing them, “you will fight. One wins. One dies.” He smiled a slow, easy smile.

Gwenna stared, first at the Urghul, then at the other prisoner, whose face was streaked with sweat and blanched with panic. No dogs, then.

The two sticks clattered to the ground between them.

“Swords,” the Urghul said, gesturing magnanimously.

But they were not swords. They weren't even weapons—too blunt for effective stabbing, too light for a swift killing blow. Given enough time you could maybe beat someone to death with them, striking over and over, aiming for the throat, the eyes, but it would be a nasty process, slow and messy. Which, Gwenna realized, was the whole 'Kent-kissing point. The Urghul hadn't assembled for a fight. This wasn't a test of bravery or martial prowess, it was a sacrifice, the whole thing—buried legs, spindly sticks—designed to draw out the struggle, to prolong the pain.

A sacrifice to Meshkent.

“No,” Gwenna said. She crossed her arms over her chest and locked eyes with the Urghul chieftain. “I'm not taking part in your bloody bullshit.”

Long Fist smiled. “Yes, you are. The other Annurians”—he waved a hand over his shoulder, the gesture suggesting scores of unseen prisoners—“I will cut out their beating hearts, but you are a fighter. You will fight.”

The legionary was trembling, his breath coming in quick gasps, as though some unseen hand were frantically working the bellows of his lungs. He'd probably never seen battle or blood before the horsemen swept down on his fort.

“What happened to wanting to avoid war?” she demanded.

Long Fist just smiled.

The crowd was growing restless. A knot of men barely older than Gwenna were leaning over the edge of the stone wall, shouting at the prisoners and brandishing spears. Another small group seemed to be taunting the chief himself, although it was hard to be sure. The noise rolled over her, jeers and chanting like autumn breakers dashing themselves on the rocks. Gwenna met Annick's eyes for a moment, hoping to see some encouragement or solidarity there, but the sniper's face might have been chiseled from stone.

The first blow landed just above Gwenna's ear, a flash of bright red pain. She turned, shocked, thinking that one of the Urghul had leapt into the gully, only to discover the young legionary staring at her, a stick in each hand, knuckles white.

“I'm sorry,” he cried. A splash of vomit soiled the front of his tunic and stained the rough dirt before him. Tears, whether of remorse or terror, slicked his cheeks. “I'm
sorry,
” he sobbed again, and then, with a mindless fury, started raining down the blows.

It took Gwenna a moment to adjust, and the sticks connected twice more, once just above the eye, the other a glancing blow to the shoulder. The pain was sharp but shallow, the sort of pain she'd felt a thousand times before when smashing a finger between an anchor and the gunwale, or ripping free a blackened toenail, or taking a stunner to the shoulder. Gwenna herself would be hard-pressed to kill someone quickly with those sticks, and the panicked young legionary was striking out madly in his terror, blindly. She raised her hands, blocked two blows in quick succession, timed the third, caught the stick before it could connect, twisted out and away, breaking the man's grip, and then she had a weapon of her own.

The soldier paused, stunned, staring at his empty hand in mute incomprehension. He raised his eyes to Gwenna and moaned, a pitiful, helpless sound, before redoubling his attack. With one weapon already in hand it was a trivial matter to defend against the fresh assault. She swatted aside a blow aimed for her chest, inclined her head to slip beneath a high swing, leaned back as far as the earth would allow, inviting the youth to overextend, and then she had the second stick as well. It was easy, so pathetically easy.

The Urghul were shrieking like seabirds, a high keening sharp as a point driving straight through Gwenna's ears and into her brain. The twin fires had grown even larger, the one in front scorching her face, the one behind burning through her blacks. The unarmed soldier spread his hands wide in supplication.

“I'm sorry,” he cried. “I didn't want to hit you. Please.
Please.
You're Kettral. I'm just a legionary. You're the 'Kent-kissing
Kettral
!
Please
.”

Gwenna held her attack for a moment. She had slipped into a high Elendrian guard without even thinking about it—an absurd gesture. The idiot buried across from her had probably never even
heard
of the Elendrian guard. He was just an Annurian soldier captured while serving his empire, while trying to do his job. His only preparation for the Urghul would have been lurid tales told in the mess hall and barracks. No one had trained him for this.

Gwenna glanced up at their captors, at the uncountable flashing blue eyes, the pale faces glistening with sweat. Firelight lurched over the bones of the dead and the flesh of the living alike, plunging some figures into shadow, garishly illuminating others. Blood throbbed in her ears, flame on her face. There was no way out, no escape.

“Ah, fuck,” she muttered.

“No,” the soldier said, shaking his head slowly, seeing the decision in her eyes.

Gwenna gritted her teeth, then lashed out high and right. The feint worked, drawing the legionary's guard wide, and she took the opening. The Urghul wanted pain, an agony built from a thousand punishing blows, to feed their sick god.

Well,
she thought as she plunged the tip of the stick through the soldier's eye, driving it deep, deeper, twisting the weapon as the youth spasmed, jerked, then slumped forward, utterly still,
the fuckers will have to settle for death.

Her throat was raw as she wrenched the stick free. She was screaming, she realized, but the sound was lost in the awful sheet of Urghul screams. She was sobbing, but the heat of the fire had seared away her tears.

 

28

Kaden crashed out of the
kenta
soaked and gasping for breath, lungs heaving in great desperate gulps of clean air, limbs leaden and useless. His mind registered only that he had moved from a frigid wet darkness into a warm day brilliant as the sun, and for a few heartbeats he allowed himself to simply lie on the soft grass, still swaddled in the
vaniate,
drinking in the sweet sea breeze. A few feet away he could hear Triste retching onto the ground, her body struggling to force out the salt water at the same time as she was trying to breathe. Kiel's own breaths were quieter, more measured, and after a moment Kaden could hear the Csestriim rising to his feet.

“Quickly,” he said, keeping his voice low. “This is only the hub linking the gates, and Rampuri Tan will not kill all of them.”

“They can't follow,” Triste gasped. “Not the way we came.”

“They will not have to. When they have dealt with Tan, they will realize where we went, and they will come through the gate after us. We have to be well gone from here when that happens.”

Kaden nodded, rising unsteadily to his feet. He recognized the island, the ring of slender arches around the perimeter, although it felt like years since he had last stood upon it. Since then … He shook his head, cutting off the thought. Best not to think on the past, on what it would mean for the Ishien to deal with Tan. The
vaniate
wavered. Best to move forward.

He glanced around the green sward. The gate from Assare, he knew, but the writing above the others meant nothing.

“Which way?”

“Annur?” Kiel asked.

Kaden nodded.

The Csestriim indicated an arch a dozen paces distant. Kaden helped Triste to her feet, helped her stumble across the rough ground, watched her vanish as she stepped once more into the
kenta,
then followed her through, moving from bright light into a dry, dusty darkness. For a moment he just stood, waiting for his eyes to adjust. When they did not, he let the
vaniate
slough away. His limbs were still weak from the lack of air, still trembling. His burning irises illuminated little more than his hand before his face.

“Where are we?”

“Underground,” Kiel replied. “In a section of Annur long forgotten. The Ishien know of this place, but no one else.”

“Let's go,” Triste said, her voice tight as a bowstring. “Let's get out of here.”

“Follow precisely in my footsteps,” Kiel replied. “The Ishien have set traps around this gate, and there are other dangers in the forgotten tunnels beneath the city.”

The three of them spent the next hour winding their way through nearly absolute darkness. At several junctures, Kaden caught sight of stacks of bones—femurs, skulls, heaps of fingers dry and brittle as kindling—stretching back into the cavernous black. Triste kept a hand on Kaden's shoulder. He could feel her trembling, though whether with cold or fear or the lingering pain of the wounds the Ishien had inflicted he wasn't sure. Kiel showed no hesitation as he moved through the darkness.

“How can you see?” Triste asked at one point.

“I don't need to see,” the Csestriim replied. “I have the map in my head.”

“That's impossible,” she replied.

“Ask Kaden.”

Kaden tried to imagine the vast network of tunnels, discovering to his surprise that he'd been making a map of his own since they left the
kenta,
some diligent portion of his mind toiling away marking each branch, each fork, each cavern through which they passed.

“Memory,” Kiel said, “is a skill like anything else. It can be honed.”

The words were true enough, but when they finally shoved aside a slab of stone and stepped blinking from the darkness into blinding light, Kaden discovered anew the limits of his memory. They stood in a green leafy cemetery wedged between walls and buildings atop a low hill. While Kiel muscled the stone slab back into place, Kaden just stared. That the Ishien were behind them, he had no doubt. They needed to be away from the graveyard, and fast, but for the space of a few heartbeats, he found himself unable to move, nailed to the spot as he breathed in the sea salt and smoky air of Annur.