The Winner's Kiss (32 page)

Kestrel removed her trousers and unwrapped the bandage. It was damp and heavy from the river.

The cut wasn't bleeding. It didn't hurt that much. She spread ointment onto the cut anyway. When it numbed, she thought of the prison's nighttime drug. Her chest throbbed with a slow pang. She missed the drink's taste, and what it did to her.

She painted the cream down her thigh where Arin had touched her. The skin went numb.

Kestrel bandaged herself again and tried to envision the morning, when she'd break down her tent, break camp, and strike south to attack her father.

Chapter 27

They split their forces once more. A contingent was sent to Errilith's manor to make it look ready for a siege. If Kestrel's father trusted the coded note, he'd run scouts ahead to gather information on the manor.

Roshar sent most of the supply wagons there. All of their cannons, too: a risk.

“Fast and light.” He spoke as if this were an entertaining choice and not a dangerous necessity to leave their main artillery behind. But stealth was necessary (as much as a small army could be stealthy). Speed was important, too, and the terrain was bad for hauling anything. They'd need to work their way south through the forest and up to the hills overlooking the main road.

“I'm worried about the trees,” Kestrel said to Roshar at the end of the first day of their move south. Irrielle birds hunted overhead, swirling into a black fingerprint against the violet sky. Kestrel flicked a playing card to the grass. A rabbit was roasting on a spit over the nearby fire, its skin a crackled brown. Arin slid a knife into it, separating the flesh. Too
pink.
He added sticks of resinous sirrin wood to the fire. They caught instantly, blazing blue.

“Worried, how?” Roshar glanced at his cards and groaned.

But Arin, who'd been watching their game without taking part, had already guessed what Kestrel was thinking. “We need the trees for cover,” he said, “but they'll make it hard to use the guns. We won't have much hope of hitting targets on the road below.”

“Better cut them down.” Roshar took his turn. “The wood's undergrowth might be enough to screen us if we lie low.”

Kestrel clicked her teeth; an eastern, irritated sort of sound.

“You learned that from me,” the prince said, pleased. “Now tell the truth. Did you mark the cards?”

Coolly, she said, “I never cheat.”

“We can't cut the trees down,” Arin said.

“Concentrate,” Kestrel told the prince, sweeping up the card he'd tossed down.

“To be clear, I'm
letting
you win. I let you win
all the time.
”

“Obviously we can't cut them down,” she said. “My father will notice a sudden swath of felled trees. We might as well paint a sign telling him we're there.”

“Or . . .” Arin said.

She glanced at him. “What are you thinking?”

“How much rope do we have?”

“Two hundred and twelve lengths.”

Roshar said, “You've been going over our supplies?”

“Yes,” she said.

“
Could you rattle off the units by heart?”

“Yes.”

“How many sacks of grain for horses?”

“Sixty-two. Play your card. You might as well. You're going to lose regardless.”

“Attempts to distract her usually don't work,” Arin told him.

“You play the winner, then,” Roshar said, “so that I may observe your technique.”

Arin checked the rabbit again, pulled it off the fire. “No.”

A surprised disappointment twitched, insect-like, inside Kestrel's chest.

Roshar said, “Why not?”

Arin sliced meat off the bone onto a tin plate.

Kestrel, who wasn't entirely sure she wanted to hear Arin's answer, said, “Why do you want rope?”

“Let Arin surprise us,” Roshar said. “That's how we do things. He comes up with something brilliant and I take the credit.”

“Tell me,” Kestrel said.

Arin set down the plate. “I won't play you because even when I win, I lose. It's never been just a game between us.”

Roshar, who was stretched out on his side on the grass, elbow crooked, cheek pillowed on his palm, raised his brows at Kestrel.

“I meant about the rope,” she muttered.

Roshar's gaze slid between her and Arin. “Yes, the rope. Why don't we talk about that after all, shall we?”

They
were in position. Kestrel waited with the gunners behind a thin layer of trees bordering a hill that overlooked the road. A breeze flipped the leaves. Trees creaked. The gunners, mostly Herrani, nervously looked up at Arin's project.

It had taken nearly all the soldiers the better part of the day, using two-handed saws from the supply wagon. Axes, too. And, of course, the rope.

Arin had tied each tree trunk and staked the rope deep down into the forest floor. Each tree was unique, its height and width and lean calling for a different network of ropes, set at different angles. After the trees had been tied into place, soldiers sawed them at their base—though not quite all the way through.

“When the Valorians come,” Arin had said, “cut the ropes.”

“You want to kill me,” Roshar had said. “
Embarrassingly
. A prince meets his end in battle. He doesn't get squashed by a falling tree. I bet you tied those things all wrong.”

A smile tugged at the corner of Arin's mouth. The air was gritty with sawdust. “After every thing,” he told Kestrel, “I wouldn't let you be harmed by a
tree
.”

“Me,” Roshar said pointedly. “You mean
me
.”

But Arin had already gone. Soon after, Roshar left in the opposite direction.

The plan was an ambush.

“What formation would the general use,” Roshar had asked her, “for a march along a road of that width?”

Kestrel
had paused, fingers on the worn map.

“She can't know for certain,” Arin said.

“Here's what I would do if I were him,” she said. “I'd be in the front ranks, where I'd keep most of my cavalry—the officers. New recruits would be behind the supply wagons, which I'd keep in the middle. Infantry in the back, with a few trusted officers just in case. I'd choose officers who wouldn't complain about being in the rearguard with the lower ranks. They'd be experienced. They'd be good. But there'd be few. Archers and crossbows flanking the regiment, ready to target the hills. He'll know there's a risk of a skirmish. It'd make sense, if we
were
readying for a siege at Errilith, to send small groups to harass their progress north. He'd expect the supplies to be targeted. If we destroy the wagons, we cut the legs out from under him. It's not that an attack would be a complete surprise. It's the
force
of our attack, and our ability to use a weapon he can't contend with, that give us our best advantages.”

“So we give him what he expects,” Arin said. “A small company of ours can attack the front lines, draw the general's attention while our larger force prepares to bucket the rearguard. The general should pull his defenses forward. We might even separate them from the center. Their officers wear metal armor. Volleys from the guns will be more effective on the center and rear. The gunners should drop as many soldiers as possible around the wagons—and, gods help us, the cannons.”

“A small company attacking the Valorians' front ranks,” Roshar mused. “How delightfully suicidal. Perfect for you, Arin.”

“
But,” said Kestrel.

They both looked at her, and she could tell from the set of Arin's jaw that Roshar had said only what Arin already planned to do anyway. Arin's eyes were overcast. They had a distant, difficult regard that sent a chill down her spine. It made her wonder whether Arin's god was real after all. If he was there right now inside Arin, whispering to him.

“You command this force,” Kestrel told Roshar. “It should be you. Arin can attack the rearguard.”

With a smirk, Roshar said, “No, that pleasant task is mine. You, little ghost, stay with the guns.”

Kestrel's fingers tightened. “You're placing me in the safest position.”

“I'm placing you where you won't be seen by your father.”

She thought of the general seeing her. She thought of him not seeing her. Both thoughts were paralyzing.

“You're not so different from one of those guns,” Roshar said. “A secret weapon. The general must know you've escaped the work camp, must guess where you went—if you survived the tundra. But will he think you're
here
, with this army? He might, eventually. He might recognize your hand in these dealings whether he sees you or not. But I would rather—and I'm sure Arin would
very
much rather—that he have no confirmation of your presence.”

She started to protest.

“You swore an oath to me,” Roshar said cheerfully. “A Valorian honors her word.”

Seeing that his last words made her pale with fury, he grinned and left.

“You want me with the guns, too,” Kestrel told Arin.

“
Roshar's not wrong.”

“He's choosing according to his own best interests.”

His brow furrowed. “Positioning you with the guns gains him little, personally.”

“What about
your
position against the general's forward ranks?”

“Sometimes Roshar plays the selfish prince so that no one expects anything better of him. It's not who he is. He's choosing well. For me, he's chosen what I would have chosen for myself. I want the front lines.”

Kestrel remembered Arin's words now as she waited in the trees with the gunners, who'd been placed under her command. She remembered how she'd wanted to explain to him that it had rattled her to try to slip into her father's mind, to know that the general's mind and her own felt upsettingly similar. She'd wanted to put her fear inside a white box and give it to Arin.

You, too,
she would tell him.
I fear for you. I fear for me if I lost you.

War is no place for fear,
said the memory of her father's voice.

“Take care,” she'd told Arin.

He'd smiled.

And now he was below, out of sight, beyond the curve of the empty road.

The sun poured down. The gunners had loaded their weapons. Kestrel watched the road, dagger ready.

Cicadas. The flit of birdwings.

Maybe her father had recognized that the coded letter was false.

Maybe
he wouldn't take the bait.

A breath of wind. Hours passed, slow as the sweat traveling down Kestrel's back.

Her limbs ached from being in the same position. She felt a strange energy slip over her and the gunners, an elastic tension that went tight at the smallest sound, then slackened in the heat, the waiting.

Dream, wait, startle, wait, dream.

The gunners, like her, crouched among ferns and saplings. Guns angled down. Small eastern crossbows were at the ready. A sirrin tree dripped orange sap, its spindly branches low and sticky.

Kestrel watched the road.

The rapid
toc toc toc
of a bird's beak against bark. The brush of leaves. Then—faintly, stronger . . . the rhythm of thousands of boots on the paved road.

Chapter 28

Arin heard the valorians marching toward him. The sound made his chest harden with anticipation.

The Valorians neared. Still hidden behind the bend in the road, Arin turned to catch the eyes of his soldiers, no more than fifty of them, men and women, Herrani and Dacran both. All of them on foot, for stealth and to appear more vulnerable to the Valorian front lines. Some of the Herrani soldiers had lined their eyes in orange and red like Dacran warriors.

The sound of the Valorian army became deafening. Boots and hooves and wagon wheels. Heavy armor. Metal on metal.

His gaze on his soldiers, theirs on him. Arin lifted his hand:
wait
.

He edged around a tree to look down the road.

The Valorian cavalry. Enormous war horses. Officers in black and gold.

Close.

And
one Valorian in particular, leading them, looking no different than he had eleven years ago. Large and armored, his insignia painted across the chest. A woven baldric over his chest, knotted at the shoulder. Helmet simple, made to show his face. That face.

Good, to have a little distance, to not quite see the general's light brown eyes—too much like his daughter's.

Better, to have this man move his horse nearer to Arin. Almost within his reach.

Do you want him?
Arin's god whispered.

Do you want to crush him between your hands?

Arin glanced back at his company. “Ready,” he whispered, then whispered it again in Dacran. His sword was drawn. His blood was hot.