Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

For a moment no one moved. No one spoke. The wind whipped spray from the waves, tossing it against the rock. It riffled through the boughs of the pines, scratched at the clouds, whipped the fires below into sparks and ruddy blaze.

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.

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.