The Providence of Fire (62 page)

“This way,” Pyrre said, stepping from the path, sliding between the tents. Her voice was low, relaxed, but held none of her habitual mockery. For once, the assassin sounded as though she was taking things seriously. “Quickly, ladies.”

Gwenna didn't care for the idea of taking orders from a Skullsworn, but the center of a hostile army didn't seem like the time to contest the issue. She grimaced, slid into close-guard, and followed the woman into the tents. A dozen paces farther they emerged onto another muddy track running parallel to the first. Gwenna's stomach clenched. The Urghul were everywhere, and worse, lit torches lined the path, flames snagging and ripping with the wind. Pyrre didn't hesitate, striding straight across, aiming for the cluster of tents on the far side. She made it halfway before one of the Urghul—a tall bastard with a long yellow braid—noticed her and barked a question.

Pyrre turned to the man, a smile on her face, and opened her arms as if for an embrace. “Kwihna!” she said brightly. The word was nonsensical, but the language was familiar, and the warrior paused, confusion flitting across his face. Pyrre stepped into the pause, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled him close for a long, passionate kiss. When she let him go, the man toppled. Gwenna never even saw the knife.

They made it a few more streets before the alarm went up—shouting and bellowing followed by long blasts on a horn. The angry, accusatory note sounded again and again, chasing them through the night, drilling into Gwenna's ears until she half wondered if she'd lost her mind. There was no telling which of the eight or nine corpses they'd left behind had finally done them in. It hardly mattered. The camp—shivering with screams and ululations—knew they were loose. The whole Urghul army knew.

“So much for discretion,” Pyrre said.

The next few minutes were all jolting flight, hot breath between the teeth, scrabbling to keep footing in the treacherous mud, Urghul faces stretched tight with fury, and killing. Lots and lots of killing. Pyrre cut down the warriors without breaking stride, slipping her small knives into throats and stomachs, skewering eyes and slitting tendons, each motion delicate, birdlike, and precise. Gwenna was anything but delicate. The Urghul swords she'd picked up off the dead guards were longer and heavier than the smoke steel with which she'd trained, and trying to keep pace with Pyrre it was all she could do just to hack at the bodies as she passed, huge sweeping motions that jarred her shoulder whenever the sharp edge bit.

“Less screaming,” Pyrre called back.

“What?” Gwenna shouted, burying her blade in some woman's gut, twisting it, then wrenching it free. Blood ran hot over her hands. Hopefully someone else's.

“You don't need to scream each time you hit someone,” Pyrre said. “Try being more circumspect. They'll still die.”

Gwenna started to snarl that she wasn't screaming, then realized that her throat was raw, her ears ringing. Not that it made any difference, really. The whole camp vibrated with violence. The part of her that wasn't screaming and hacking, running and panting, tried to tally up the odds. It seemed incredible that they were still alive, but here the fury of the Urghul actually worked in their favor. If all the horsemen had fallen silent and stood still, it would have been impossible to escape. The chaos and confusion covered their flight even better than the darkness. They were just three more bodies in a thrashing sea of flesh, three women among tens of thousands. Better yet, the camp was thinning as they approached the perimeter.

Keep your eyes on the 'Kent-kissing fight, Gwenna,
she snapped at herself.
Quit looking ahead.

Still, it was hard not to feel a hot, bright ember of hope. They'd fought clear of the last knot of Urghul, ducked through some more tents, and suddenly they were alone, free, with room to run. Annick pointed toward a picket of horses a hundred paces distant, but before they'd even begun to cross the space, the riders caught up with them, at least a score of horsemen, spears leveled even as they jumped the tent lines, voices raised in triumph.

“Not ideal,” Pyrre said, slowing, shaking her head.

“We can break through,” Gwenna said, waving to a gap. Even as she waved, it closed.

Annick was shooting. Where she'd picked up the arrows Gwenna had no idea—probably plucked from the dead. The crude bow still looked ridiculous in her hands, but it was proving deadly enough, and the sniper didn't hesitate as she loosed into the attacking Urghul. A few riders fell, but more arrived to take their place. The sniper's shafts were soon gone, and the horsemen were closing.

“Now what?” Gwenna asked, turning to put her back to Annick and Pyrre, shifting her feet, searching for the best footing.

“Now,” Pyrre said, “it is time to greet the god.” She sounded ready. Eager, even.

“You're giving up?” Gwenna spat. Not that she could see any way free, but the assassin's calm conviction baffled her. Worried her. If she let go of her own fury, she wasn't sure anything waited beneath but mindless, gibbering fear, and so she clung to her rage, stoked it, heaped it with fuel. “Fuck that,” she shouted, then turned to the Urghul. “Who's first?” She gestured with her high blade. “Which one of you bloody shits is
first
?”

Sorry, Valyn,
she said silently.
We made a go of it.…

The lead rider—Huutsuu, Gwenna realized—shook her head, lowered her spear, and nudged her horse forward. The scars on her face and arms glistened with sweat in the torchlight. Her lips curled back in a smile or snarl. She had wonderful teeth, Gwenna thought pointlessly. A savage with perfect teeth was going to kill her.…

The scream came first, a sky-shattering, blood-boiling scream. The Urghul closing for the kill suddenly struggled to rein their rearing horses, but that scream drove straight into the beasts' brains, triggering something ancient and undeniable in their hearts, a terror that would not be soothed. Again it came, and again, like steel shrieking through ice. The scream, then the wind, then the great shadow of outstretched wings, a perfect dark against the greater darkness of the night, and then the figures in black alighting silently as shadows.

“Valyn,” Gwenna called, shock and relief raging through her. “It's Valyn!”

She had no idea where he found 'Ra, no idea how he knew to come back, no clue about any of it, and she didn't care. Somehow, impossibly, the Wing was whole again. She'd been about to die, and now the bird had dropped straight out of the night to lift them clear.

The kettral tore into the closest riders with her talons, disemboweling one man and the horse beneath him. Huutsuu hurled herself clear at the last moment, just before her horse bucked then buckled beneath the slicing claws. The riders on the flanks tried to close, but someone was shooting arrows, the feathered shafts sprouting from necks and shoulders. When a huge
taabe
with a crooked nose bellowed, spurring his terrified horse forward, his skull just … folded. Gwenna could think of no other word. She hadn't even seen the blow, but the flesh crumpled in on itself like a rotten gourd dropped from a height.

A kenning.

It had to be a kenning, but when Gwenna whirled about, instead of Talal, she found herself staring at Sigrid sa'Karnya. Not Valyn, she realized, horrified. The Flea's Wing. Sigrid's lips were drawn back in an expression that might have been ecstasy or rage. Blond hair whipped at her face, while blood ran in runnels down her milk-pale skin. The Flea stood just in front of her, shortbow loose in his hand, while a few steps to the side Newt was lighting a …

“Starshatter!”
Gwenna bellowed, hauling Annick back with one hand, seeing the lit charge spin end over end into the mass of horsemen, bracing herself for the bone-jarring shock that lit half the sky and left her ears ringing. The air concussed. Blue-white flame sheeted up and out, slicing the night sky into shards. Gwenna closed her eyes at the last moment, blocking out the worst of the glare, reeled backward still holding Annick, then found her footing. She was amazed to still be standing after such a close detonation, but then, Newt knew his business, had figured in the mass of horses and men, using his target to shield them all from the backblow. A dozen of the beasts were down, some still, others thrashing desperately, kicking, screaming as their riders—one missing a leg, another with her face flayed to the bone—tried to claw their way free.

Someone seized her by the arm, and Gwenna pivoted, hacking down with her stolen sword. The Flea blocked the attack casually, sliding it off to the side as he locked eyes with her.

“Where are the rest?” he shouted. “Where's Valyn?”

Gwenna hesitated. She had no idea if the Flea had come to save her or kill her. The attack on the Urghul argued for saving, but then, the last time the two Wings had met, they'd blown up the better part of a large building trying to murder each other.

“Gwenna!” he said, leaning close. She realized that, while their two swords remained locked together, he had brought a small knife to her throat. “If I wanted to kill you, you would be dead. I'm here to help.” He lowered the knife. “Now where's Valyn?”

“Gone,” she said, waving her hand. “South. It's just us.”

The Flea nodded, focused on something over her shoulder, threw the knife, then gestured to the bird with the empty hand. “Load up.”

Somewhere to Gwenna's right another starshatter ripped into the Urghul. The camp was a madness of flame, screaming horses, brandished steel, and blood, all of it held at bay, impossibly, by the Flea and his Wing.

“Delay,” Newt called over his shoulder, “is the mother of defeat.”

“Meaning get on the bird,” the Flea said again. “Now.”

He tilted his head to the side, as though stretching his neck, and a spear shaft sailed past, embedding itself in the dirt. Gwenna stared at it for a moment, watching it quiver. Then she ran for the bird.

 

32

“Tan'is was among the youngest of us, one of the last Csestriim born without the rot,” Kiel said.

Two of the three lanterns in Morjeta's bedchamber had spluttered out during their conversation, and the remaining lamp was burning low, tossing the corners of the room into fitful darkness. No one made a move to refill them. Morjeta herself had subsided against the pillows of the divan, a stunned look on her face. Kaden could sympathize. His own introduction to the Csestriim had been a shock, and the notion that they still stalked the earth had been introduced to him in gradual stages. To learn all at once that the immortal foes of humanity still lived, that one had all but seized control of Annur, that another sat several feet from her, dark stare as wide and deep and inscrutable as the sea, was clearly more than the woman could absorb all at once. There was no time, however, to ease her gently into the truth.

“Why was he appointed your general in the wars against humanity?” Kaden asked. “Why not someone older? Someone with more experience?”

“Because he was the best,” Kiel replied simply. “Not the best fighter. There were twenty-two Csestriim more skilled than Tan'is with both
naczal
and sword, at least at the start of the wars. In fact, he wasn't even the greatest pure strategist. Asherah and a handful of others could defeat him at the stones board. In battle, however—” Kiel's eyes went suddenly far, as though he were studying some furious fight thousands and thousands of years past. “—none of my people shared his gift for command.

“A part of it was simply native genius. His mind moves more quickly, more unexpectedly than most. More than that, however, Tan'is understood your race in a way that most of us, especially the older Csestriim, did not. He studied you.…”

“You mean he tortured and killed us,” Kaden said, thinking back to the lightless corridors of the Dark Heart.

Kiel nodded. “That was a part of his study, although not the entirety of it. The war lasted several human generations, and Tan'is spent that entire time, whenever he wasn't actually leading the armies, in study, learning your peculiar use of the language, your physiology and limitations, your emerging social structures, your weapons and weaknesses, and most of all, your minds. He spent decades trying to discover what had broken inside you, trying to understand whether it had anything to do with the new gods.”

“What do you mean, the new gods?” Triste asked. Unlike her mother, she wasn't as jolted by the sudden revelation. After all, they'd been discussing the Csestriim for weeks. Triste had suffered in a Csestriim prison and passed through the Csestriim gates. Somehow, she knew their language. As Kiel spoke, she leaned forward on her cushion, eyes bright, sweat sheening her brow.

“You call them the young gods,” Kiel said. “The children of Meshkent and Ciena.”

“Heqet and Kaveraa,” Kaden said, reciting the names as he had heard them recited a thousand times before leaving for the Bone Mountains. “Eira and Maat; Orella and Orilon.”

“And Akalla,” Kiel added slowly. “And Korin.”

Kaden frowned. “No. There are only six of them. Six children of Pleasure and Pain.”

“That is because we killed the other two.”

For several heartbeats no one spoke. Morjeta had retreated behind the stillness of her painted face. Triste's mouth hung open, as though in mid-gasp. Kaden realized that he, too, was leaning forward on his cushion, legs tense, breath lodged in his lungs. He exhaled slowly.

“You're saying you killed two of the gods.”

“Tan'is killed them,” Kiel said. “He captured them after the battle of Nimir Point. Captured them, studied them, then killed them. I was there as historian. It is how we learned, learned conclusively, of the connection between our children—between you—and the new gods.”

Suddenly, Kaden was sitting once more in Scial Nin's study, looking across the rough wooden desk at the abbot, listening to him explain about the
kenta
and the Shin, about the purpose of Kaden's time among the monks. The abbot was dead, one of the hundreds of robed bodies left on the ledges to feed the ravens, and yet Kaden could still hear his patient explanation:
It could have been the birth of the young gods that led to human emotion.