The Providence of Fire (79 page)

The flier turned on him slowly, incredulous. “No?”

“We stay here,” Valyn said, keeping his voice low. “The mission is to kill il Tornja. That hasn't changed.”

“And what about the fact that our Wing is right down there?” Laith demanded, waving a hand at the small town below. “What about the fact that the 'Kent-kissing Urghul are coming and these people need
help
?”

“Gwenna has it in hand,” Valyn said, his own words bitter on his tongue. He wanted to be down there as much as Laith, standing with his Wing and his people, throwing up barricades, thinking through strategy.… Three more bodies wouldn't mean much when it came to the actual fight, but three Kettral-trained soldiers could do a lot right now when it came to organizing and leading the townsfolk. It would feel good to lift something, move something,
do
something. It would also jeopardize the mission.

“Il Tornja's going to be here in a day,” Valyn said, “and unless you forgot, those men down there, the ones with the nice swords, are his scouts. If we go down, they'll make us in a heartbeat and report back. If il Tornja knows we're here, we've lost the element of surprise, which, right now, is our only 'Kent-kissing advantage.”

Laith snorted with disgust. “
Fuck,
Valyn. Half the Wing's already
down
there. You think if il Tornja hears about Gwenna and Annick he's not going to assume you're along, too?”

Valyn grimaced. It
was
an unexpected problem, but a problem didn't mean a disaster. “Gwenna knows the truth about il Tornja, she knows that we're hunting him, and she's smart enough not to piss in the broth.”

“There's another reason to stay clear,” Talal said, frowning. “It's hard to see how this all ends up, but if, when it's over, il Tornja finds Gwenna and Annick, he's going to realize they survived Yurl's attack, which means he's probably going to assume they know the truth about him. Or at least suspect it. I wouldn't be surprised if he locks them up for questioning—discreetly, of course.”

Valyn nodded. He hadn't considered that angle, but, as usual, Talal was right. “Which gives us two reasons to stay out of sight.”

Laith shook his head. “Right. Two reasons:
what if …
and
just in case …
We're a brave new breed of philosopher soldier, keeping our hands clean while other people swing the swords.”

Valyn didn't reply. He had a sense that they'd all be swinging swords soon enough, and once they started, there was no telling when they'd stop.

 

42

Old Pikker John said he'd rather die on his porch than run, and he got his wish. Well, the dying part of it anyway. Gwenna couldn't say how long he'd managed to hold on to his porch, but when the Urghul dragged him out onto the east bank of the Black, he'd lost his axes, his crock of whiskey, and, if the way his head lolled on his shoulders was any indication, the ability and will to fight.

“They got him,” Bridger said.

“Of course they got him,” Gwenna snapped. “Did you think one old man was going to see off the entire Urghul nation all by himself?”

She bit off the rest of the tirade. She was mad at John, not Bridger, mad at the old man for his stupidity, for his stubbornness, and for making her watch what had to happen next.

From behind Annick's barricades on East Island, Gwenna could see the far bank clearly enough, could make out individual faces of the Urghul as they scouted up the river and down along the drying east shore of the lake, she could see the markings on their horses, the fletching on their arrows. They were close enough to shout to, to shoot, and the only thing holding them back was the narrow strip of mud and water. It seemed a feeble defense.

Gwenna glanced up and down the ranks of townsfolk Annick had arrayed behind the barricades. Men and women crouched behind the stacked logs, some kids, too, whose shortbows lacked the range to get much past the water. If the Urghul got close enough for those bows to hit, the whole island would be almost overrun. Gwenna would have preferred to send the kids somewhere else, but then, if the Urghul broke through, there
wasn't
anywhere else to go. Besides, the place was their home—they had more right to die on it than she did.

As she watched, someone loosed an arrow. It floated up, high over the river, then fell harmlessly into the silt on the far side of the channel.

“Knock it off!” Gwenna shouted. They couldn't afford to waste the shafts. There were already more Urghul than arrows, not that she wanted the loggers dwelling on that fact. “No one looses an arrow until they try to cross!”

She wasn't sure whether to be worried or relieved that none of the horsemen had tried to swim their mounts. It would be utter suicide, obviously, but the Urghul weren't generally known for their sophisticated grasp of tactics. Not before Long Fist, at least.

Strangely, of the shaman himself, there had been no sign. He might have been lurking back in the trees, directing the fight from a safe distance, but his absence made her nervous, as did his choice of lieutenant. If Long Fist was nowhere, Balendin Ainhoa seemed to be everywhere, stalking up and down the bank in his cloak of dark bison hide, pointing and giving orders as though he'd lived among the Urghul all his life. If the horsemen resented him, none showed it, which, Gwenna supposed, was smart, given what she knew about Balendin.

As she watched, he was directing a knot of
taabe
and
ksaabe
to make a space in the open area between the trees and the mud flats. When most of the riders had moved aside, Pikker John was thrust, stumbling, to the ground. Balendin stood above the man for a while, gazing over the river toward the town, as though he felt Gwenna's eyes upon him from behind the barricade. While he waited, other prisoners were dragged forward from the trees—scores of them—then forced facedown in the dirt where they could see the leach and the old logger. Someone stepped forward with a handful of ropes, and Balendin, with a few practiced motions, cinched them around Pikker John's wrists and ankles.

“What are they doing?” Bridger asked.

“I don't know. Something fucking terrible,” Gwenna said. She didn't want to watch. It was one thing to kill and see people killed in the middle of a fight. The fear and fury that came with battle didn't leave any time to dwell on the sights and sounds of men becoming meat. Watching from behind the barricade though, as they hitched the four ropes to the saddles of four separate horses, Gwenna felt like she might retch all over her boots. A dismayed muttering spread through the crouching townspeople as they realized what was about to happen, and their fear and nausea quickened her own. She wanted to turn away, but she couldn't, not while she was the leader of the town's miserable defense, and yet her body needed an outlet, needed
something
to distract her from the scene playing out on the far side of the river.

She surged to her feet, drew her sword, and leveled it across the river. “Watch!” she shouted.

The loggers turned to her, but she shook her head angrily. “Don't look at me, you assholes. Look over there, at the man you called your neighbor. Watch what they do to him.”

The riders of the horses, two
taabe,
two
ksaabe,
nudged their mounts forward, slowly, slowly. As the ropes drew taut around his wrists and ankles, Pikker John's body rose into the air, and an awful, guttural moan escaped his lips. The Urghul had fallen utterly silent. Balendin, however, began to chant something incomprehensible in Urghul. Where the bastard had learned the words, she had no idea, but the thousands of horsemen seemed mesmerized by the spectacle. Gwenna could hear the horses' hooves striking the ground, the strain of the ropes as they pulled.

“Watch!” she shouted again, her heart slamming away at her ribs. “You want to know who the Urghul are?
This
is who they are.”

The chanting on the far bank quickened, then quickened further, keeping pace with Gwenna's pulse. The other Urghul joined in, and it grew louder. Pikker John screamed, an awful, animal sound, and with his scream, the riders lashed their horses, crops rising and falling over and over, the body suspended between them writhing, his mouth a gaping howl lost on the storm of Urghul voices. In the midst of the chaos, Annick stepped up beside Gwenna, leaning in to whisper in her ear.

“I can stop it. One arrow.”

Gwenna hesitated, watching the horses strain, watching John's body as it twisted and writhed. “No,” she said, swallowing the bile that came with the word. “They need to see this.”

The sniper turned those hard blue eyes on her.

“They're not soldiers. It's terrifying them.”

“They
need
to be terrified,” Gwenna hissed. “If we lose, if the Urghul take the town, this is waiting for all of them, and you won't be there to end it with an arrow.” She turned away before Annick could argue with her further, vaulted atop the highest log in the barricade.

“This is what is coming,” she shouted at the crouching townsmen. “It is not a raid. It is not a skirmish. It is the entire Urghul nation, and if we don't hold them here, they will offer up everyone you know to Meshkent just like they're doing with Pikker John over there. This is what they do. This is how they worship. This is who they
are
. So pay fucking attention!”

She wasn't sure anyone could hear her over the commotion on the far bank, but the message seemed to get through. One man just at her feet was retching into the mud, but most of the small force straightened up, staring at the horror unfolding in what had, until that morning, been a part of their home.

Pikker John must have been made of gristle and bone. Even after he lost the strength to scream, his body held together. Even when the shoulders popped from their sockets and the joints went horribly loose, the ligaments held. For what seemed like hours, the horses pulled on him, pulled, and pawed at the dirt, and snorted, and pulled some more, until all at once, with an awful lurch, an arm tore away. The Urghul shrieked in a kind of collective ecstasy as the one rider galloped down the bank, pumping his fist in the air as that grisly tail bumped along behind him.

The other riders eased off their horses, allowing what was left of Pikker John to settle back to earth, where, amazingly, he writhed until his life drained out of him with his blood. The Urghul unhitched him, dragged the corpse to the river, and tossed it in. Balendin raised his eyes, looking first at the prisoners cowering behind him, then across the river at Gwenna once more.

It's over,
she told herself.
They killed one old man, but they're still on their side of the river.

But it was more than one old man. As she watched, a woman, probably someone from the outlying hamlets to the northeast, was dragged pleading toward the riverbank. The sacrifices were just getting started, and with each one, the leach's power, sucked from the terror of his captives, would grow.

*   *   *

By the end of the second day, the Urghul had torn apart dozens more people, those poor, miserable souls who lived between Andt-Kyl and the Black, who had had no warning of the approaching army. The far bank was muddy with blood, while the bloated corpses dotted the river mouth, tangling in the roots and rushes where the current slowed. The Urghul killed, and killed, and killed, but they had made no effort to cross.

That made Gwenna nervous.

Around noon on the second day, she'd thought they were starting a push. A few dozen
taabe
and
ksaabe
had tossed some tree trunks into the river, watching them float down toward the old bridge pilings where they tangled between the posts. It wasn't much, four or five logs, enough that some brave, stupid shithead might sneak across, but certainly not enough for a full-fledged attack. The Urghul stared at them for a while, as though expecting the bridge to grow itself, then went back to killing people. It was like they didn't even care about getting to the town.

“What the fuck are they doing?” Gwenna demanded, biting her lip as she looked across the small table at Pyrre and Annick. After a day at the barricades, she'd had Bridger set up a command post inside one of the most easterly of the buildings, where she could still get to the river fast, but where she could discuss strategy with Annick, Pyrre, and Bridger out of earshot of the townspeople. It was good protocol, insulating the troops from the decision-making process, but mostly Gwenna just didn't want the people of Andt-Kyl to hear how little their commanders actually knew.

“Long Fist
has
to be aware that the Army of the North will get here eventually. Every day the bastard waits is a risk.”

“We haven't seen Long Fist,” Annick pointed out. “We don't know he's with his army.”

“Where else would he be?” Gwenna demanded.

Pyrre pursed her lips. “Off in the forest, perhaps. Torturing small woodland creatures.”

Gwenna ignored her, rounding on Bridger. “Are you
sure
there's not another way to cross? Somewhere to the north?”

He shook his head. “I've been all through that territory logging. In the winter, when the bogs are frozen, you could
maybe
move across, but now you'd be weeks trying to get through even on foot, let alone with horses. The firs grow so thick on some of the high ground that you have to squeeze between the trunks, and the swamps'll swallow you right up.”

“And there are no other towns?” she asked. “No bridges?”

“Nothing but the log camps, and they don't have any need for bridges. Unless those horses can balance on rolling tree trunks floating downriver, there's nothing to help him in the north.”

“I wonder what became of your short, bellicose friend and his large bird,” Pyrre mused. “Maybe he got to Long Fist after all. Maybe they're all just milling on the far bank because they have no idea what else to do.”