Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

“Scar Lake,” Nira said, “and Aats-Kyl.”

A good-sized town of log homes with roofs of turf and shingle had forced back the forest at the south end of the lake. A tall palisade of rough logs ringed the town, wooden towers at the corners. Outside the wall, a rugged patchwork of fields held back the forest, wet ground drained by a ragged network of ditches. Even at a distance, Adare could smell the woodsmoke rising from the stone chimneys, could hear the farmers urging their horses and oxen over the broken ground. Farmers around Annur had begun plowing weeks earlier, but here, with the cold wind scudding down over the Romsdals, planting seemed to come late.

“Well,” Adare said, considering the town, “no one’s tried to kill us yet.”

“Give it time,” Lehav replied.

“Where does the road go from here?”

“It doesn’t,” Fulton said grimly. As the day wore on, he had guided his horse closer and closer to her, checked his broadblade more and more often. Now, he kicked the creature forward a few paces, putting himself between her and the settlement below.

“What’s past here?” she asked.

“Forest tracks and logging camps. Trees.”

And the Urghul, Adare thought, trying to come to grips with the nature of the threat all over again. She’d left Olon expecting to battle il Tornja in the streets of Annur and instead she found herself in a forest on the very edge of the empire preparing to hold off an Urghul attack. Not for the first time she prayed that she was making the right decision, that she wasn’t committing some idiotic mistake that would doom them all.

To her marginal relief, there was no sign of the horsemen, no indication that they’d even come close. Just as reassuring, the Army of the North clearly hadn’t deployed to meet her own force, either.

A good ’Kent-kissing thing, she thought, given the size of the army.

The men were encamped, all of them, across several of the largest fields, tents and cook fires laid out in a grid so neat it might have been carved in the earth with a straightedge. Despite Adiv’s urgency back in Annur, despite the harried march north, despite the refugees on the road south, none of the soldiers in the camp looked to be in much of a hurry. No one seemed to be drilling or fortifying. Knots of men clustered outside their tents, some seated, some lying down, heads propped on their helmets. She could smell the smoke of the cook fires and burning grease hazing the air, as though the whole camp were set up for a festival rather than a war.

Anger and confusion rose inside her. She and Lehav had been flogging the Sons northward for days, Adiv’s account of a full-scale Urghul invasion ringing in their ears. Every night she’d prayed to Intarra to hold the horsemen back for one more day, just one more day. Meanwhile, il Tornja had his men lolling about in the sun.

She squinted, trying to make the camp out more clearly. Something wasn’t right. No one had attacked them. No one looked likely to attack them. Those facts alone should have calmed her nerves, but clearly there was more to the situation than she understood.

“What are they doing?” she asked, jaw tight.

“Looks like they’re resting,” Nira replied. “Maybe there isn’t such a hurry with this Long Fist, after all.”

As Adare watched, an Annurian rider emerged from the nearest gate of the town, and came cantering up the road. Fulton drew his sword well in advance of the man’s approach, then leveled it at him as he drew near. The messenger, a gaunt, balding soldier with peeling skin on his scalp, pulled up short at the sight of Fulton’s sword, took a deep breath, then turned to Adare and bowed low in his saddle, face pressed against the withers of his horse.

“Your Radiance,” he began. The imperial title made Adare shift uncomfortably in her saddle. It was no surprise that Adiv had sent ahead word of her demands, but hearing the words spoken by an Annurian legionary was another matter altogether. On the ride north she had begun to grow accustomed to the Sons calling her prophet. Some even went so far as to touch the hem of her robes as she passed, or to pray outside her tent each night. The reverence was both uncomfortable and disconcerting, but at least it was her own. When soldiers used the imperial title, a part of her wanted to look over her shoulder for her father.

“The kenarang instructed me to escort you into Aats-Kyl,” the messenger was saying. “A pavilion is being erected for you in the camp itself.” He nodded toward a bustle of activity close to the center of the Annurian camp. “But the kenarang has suggested that you meet in town to discuss your defense of the empire. He has requisitioned the finest tavern, if you would care to follow me.”

“I’m not sure she would,” Fulton said, voice hard. His sword remained leveled at the man’s throat.

The rider swallowed uncomfortably. He was clutching the reins as though they might offer some protection if the Aedolian lunged with his blade. “I’m sorry?”

“I think,” Fulton replied, speaking very slowly, “that Her Radiance would prefer to meet on ground of her own choosing.”

“But,” the man replied, glancing over his shoulder in confusion, “the kenarang ’s orders…”

“It’s all right,” Adare said, pushing past Fulton. “Lower your sword.”

It was a risk, going into the town, maybe a foolish one, but then, the whole ’Kent-kissing expedition was a risk. If il Tornja wanted her dead, he wasn’t trying very hard. He could have had her killed before she fled the Dawn Palace or after she returned to Annur. He could have set men to ambush her on the forest road. Instead, his own army lounged in the northern sun. None of it made any sense. He had murdered her father, had admitted to murdering her father, and yet the man seemed unconcerned that she might come to extract her revenge.

He’s in for an unpleasant surprise, she thought grimly.

It was tempting to refuse the offer to parley, to insist that the kenarang meet her in a place of her own choosing, as Fulton suggested. And yet, as she squinted down into the camp below, she could already see that scores of soldiers had stopped in their work, shading eyes with their hands as they stared up at her. If the scouts were to be trusted, the Army of the North believed she had come to help, and if the Urghul were really massing to the north, they would need to present some kind of unified front.

Not that a unified front required the kenarang . In fact, facing the Urghul would prove trial enough without worrying that her own general might stab her just before the battle. Whatever il Tornja’s strange game was, she had no intention of letting him see it through. She would meet him in his tavern, try to glean what useful information she could from him, and then see him killed. It would have to be quiet, of course. She couldn’t afford to spread distrust through the very men she might have to send into battle, but armies were filled with sharp steel and soldiers died accidental deaths all the time.

She kicked her horse into motion.

“Your Radiance,” Fulton hissed, “I must protest.…”

“Less protesting,” she growled. “More protecting.”

Lehav rode up beside her, studying her askance.

“You’re sure about this?”

“Of course not,” she snapped.

He hesitated, then nodded, as though the answer made sense.

“I need you to stay with the Sons,” Adare said. “In case things go wrong in town. Set up camp, but stay ready. Keep them separate from the legions. I want a full field between the two armies with nothing in it but turnips or radishes or whatever it is they grow up here. I don’t want a battle. I don’t want a fight. I don’t even want an unpleasant look. I don’t intend to have Annurians fighting Annurians because some idiot starts quarreling with another idiot over who is flying what flag. Is that understood?”