Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

“So why in Hull’s name is Long Fist crossing here ?” Gwenna muttered.

“The only spot, sir,” Bridger replied. He was handling the arrival of a Kettral Wing, the announcement of an Urghul army, the abrupt deaths of his mayor and constable, and his own elevation to the town’s leading position about as well as could be expected, but he kept glancing at Gwenna warily when he thought she wasn’t looking, and had settled almost immediately into referring to Gwenna and the others as “sir.” She had no idea what to make of that, but she figured they had more pressing business than sorting out the honorifics. “Half a mile north,” the young man was saying, “the Black bogs out. You could ride a thousand horses in there and not one of them would see the other side.”

“What about a hundred thousand horses?” she asked grimly.

He shook his head. “They can’t get across up there, not unless they go all the way into the mountains, and then it’s all black flies and balsams packed so close you can’t see through ’em. There’s a few log camps up there, but that’s it.”

“Log camps?”

Bridger nodded. “A couple score men and ten thousand logs stacked up on the bank. We’re late for the log drive this year. No bridges, though. No way across.”

“And south is the lake,” she said, looking out over the sheet of water to where it hazed into the sky at the horizon. “How long is it?”

“Not sure, exactly. Maybe fifty miles. Maybe more, with Aats-Kyl at the other end.”

“So that’s why the Urghul are coming here.”

The logger looked at her. “Are there really a hundred thousand of them, sir?”

“Probably more,” she spat, then immediately regretted it. For all that Bridger looked like some bruised-knuckled logger-all sun-browned skin and ropy arms, bushy beard, and leather on top of wool on top of more wool-he couldn’t have been much older than her. She tried to imagine how she would have responded if she’d never joined up with the Kettral, if she’d stayed home on her father’s farm and then one day, out of the blue, discovered that an invading army was a few days out, that she was the first and only line of defense. She was tempted to say something reassuring, but then, the assurance would probably just be a lie. “There’s plenty to kill us all a dozen times over, if we fuck up.”

His lips tightened, but he nodded. “Then we’d better not fuck up.”

* * *

The most obvious thing was to destroy the east bridge, the one connecting the larger and flatter of Andt-Kyl’s two islands to the eastern bank of the Black. There was nothing on that far shore but half a dozen miserable farms, the owners of which did some bitching and some moaning on the subject until Pyrre explained about the Urghul and their love for pain and blood. That got almost everyone across the bridge, all except for one stubborn old bastard who sat on his porch with a pair of sharpened felling axes and a great crock of whiskey, who spat on Gwenna’s blacks when she told him he had to move.

She started to go after the man, but Bridger held her back.

“Leave him be,” he murmured. “Pikker John’d rather die on his porch than run.”

“I’m here to make sure people don’t die,” Gwenna said, furious at the old man’s idiocy. She knocked Bridger’s hand off her shoulder.

“Plenty of folks left to save,” the young man replied, gesturing back toward the village. “Lot of work to be done, sir, and if you’re right about them horsemen, not much time to do it.”

They left Pikker John on his porch, honing his axes and taking the occasional pull on his crock. Gwenna told herself that at least the stubborn old bastard might kill one or two of the Urghul, but it felt like a failure. Long Fist hadn’t even arrived and she’d already lost a man.

“We’ve got to blow this bridge,” she said, sizing up the wooden span after they’d crossed back to East Island. The decking didn’t look like much, rough-sawn lumber tacked down with crude-cut nails, but the whole thing was held up by a dozen pilings, each as thick as a tree, sunk deep in the silt on either side of the channel.

“Blow it?” Bridger asked.

Gwenna grimaced. Kettral munitions weren’t exactly a secret-there were too many stories swirling around the world for that-but the Eyrie tried not to spread word of the explosives any further than necessary.

“Like burning it,” Gwenna said, “only a lot faster.”

“I’ll get it taken care of,” Bridger said.

“How?”

He smiled. “Those are logs. We’re loggers.” He jerked a thumb at one of the half-dozen men who trailed him. “Banders-get a group. Cut it down.”

The man nodded, then trotted off.

“What about the pilings in the middle?” Gwenna asked. Most were sunk in the mud flats flanking the channel, but four plunged straight into the swift current of the water.

Bridger frowned. “Sunk those twelve years back,” he said, “when winter froze the river hard enough to work. Probably can’t get at ’em now, but with the rest chopped and the decking out…”

“Good,” Gwenna said. “Do it.” She turned to Annick. “Think that’ll hold them?”

The sniper looked at the river, the wide mud flats on either side, then into the dark trees beyond.

“For a while. They can build a new bridge.”

Gwenna frowned. She knew enough about bridge construction to understand how to destroy the things, but the time frame for building was a little murky. She turned to Bridger. “How long would that take? To rebuild?”

“Depends on the conditions, sir. And on how many bridges they’ve built.”

“Not many,” Gwenna said. “The Urghul are good at riding, shooting, and killing. Not much on engineering.”

“Could take weeks, then.”

Gwenna nodded. Il Tornja could march an army almost all the way from Annur in weeks. “And let’s make sure that the conditions are particularly unpleasant. You have people in this town that can handle a bow?”

Bridger grinned. “This far north? If you’re not logging, you’re hunting. Got some women are better shots than the men. Kids can pull a bow, too.”

“Good. Bring them to Annick. She’ll oversee the defense of the east fork.”

The sniper’s jaw tightened. “I’m not certain I’m the best-”

“Neither am I,” Gwenna snapped, “but we need archers, and you’re the fucking sniper, so follow Bridger and figure it out.”

* * *

The kenarang ’s scouts arrived just a few hours later, a dozen hard-eyed men in light legionary armor who looked as though they’d been on the losing end of a battle with about four hundred feral cats. One of the villagers-Apper? Went? — brought them to Gwenna at the western end of the central bridge, where she was overseeing the building of yet another barricade, a fallback if they lost the east island.

“She’s in charge,” the logger said, pointing to Gwenna.

The lead scout, a thin man with a hawk’s profile, narrowed his eyes, glancing over her blacks.

“Kettral?” he asked, obviously surprised. The men behind him shifted warily at the revelation, as though they expected to keel over or explode just from coming close. A few fingered the hilts of their short swords, despite the fact that they were all supposedly on the same side.

“No wonder someone made you a scout,” Gwenna said. “You can recognize the color black.”

The scout’s lips tightened at the crack, but his voice remained level. “The kenarang told us there was no military presence this far north.”

“Sounds like the kenarang needs to brush up on his intel,” Gwenna replied. “He does know there’s a massive Urghul army headed this way, doesn’t he?”