Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

Gwenna scanned down the river, then stopped at the old bridge pilings, fear punching her in the chest.

“There,” she breathed.

He nodded grimly. “That’s why they tossed in the first logs. They’re going to make a dam.”

“How many of those are there?” Gwenna asked, gesturing upstream.

“Enough to clog the whole north end of the lake. Enough for a dozen bridges, if they get hung up.”

“Why would they get hung up? Don’t you drive the logs through those pilings every year?”

Bridger nodded bleakly. “But we usually have men and women on the bridge with poles to make sure they don’t get stuck. To break up a jam before it starts. Now…” He gestured helplessly. “There’s no bridge.”

“How long?” she asked, but even as she watched it was happening, the logs bumping up against the others the Urghul had floated in place. A few nosed over, forced on by the press behind. Others spun with the current, then ducked beneath the surface, driven down and replaced by still others. There seemed no end to the logs. As far north as Gwenna could see the river was packed with them. And there was no way to stop the river.

“Those,” Pyrre said, raising her eyebrows, “are going to be a problem.”

“They’ll fill the whole river,” Gwenna said, the horror mounting inside her. They would fill the river, and then the Urghul would cross. That was what they’d been waiting for.

“The other channels,” Bridger said. “We’ve got to divert the logs down the other two channels, the ones that aren’t blocked.”

Gwenna stared at the mass of logs, the sheer, unstoppable tonnage. “And how in Hull’s name do we do that?”

“We have to…” He shook his head. “I can’t explain. I have to go! Miller!” he bellowed. “Franch!” Two men from the line of archers turned. “Two drive crews. Get ’em up, get ’em going. Now!”

“We need poles and dogs!”

“Then get them!” Bridger shouted. “Get them, and get to North Island.”

“Well,” Pyrre observed as the logger sprinted away, “he certainly seems excited.”

It was a shocking transformation. Bridger had been nothing but deference since the Flea killed the two head men in the town square, asking questions and jumping to do as he was ordered. Now that he had a task that he understood, however, all hesitation vanished. The problem was, the drive crews were pulling men and women from the line; the toughest men and women, by the look of it, and this while the Urghul were riding out of the trees on the far bank, shrieking and bellowing, horses pawing at the ground as the logs piled up. One ksaabe, a good bit bolder than she was smart, kicked her horse into a charge. It was an ill-fated attack; her horse bogged in the mud, buried to her knees in the soft silt. Screaming, the young woman leapt from the beast’s back, charged laboriously through the rest of the silt, then tried to run across the logs. Gwenna watched as a trunk shifted beneath her. She teetered for a moment, then disappeared, the weight of wood shifting closed before the splash had even subsided.

“They can’t cross yet,” Annick observed.

“They will,” Gwenna replied grimly. Whatever Bridger managed above the fork, there were enough logs already in the east channel to form a dam once the current packed them in densely enough. It would be a treacherous crossing, to be sure. Logs would shift, and Urghul would die, but they were coming.

The line of archers, so pathetic to begin with, looked like a group of slack-mouthed farmers shown up from the countryside for the village fair, except they were about to be shooting at people instead of straw butts, and if they missed, they died. A few of them were glancing over their shoulders, as though thinking of running. Gwenna had been gnawing the inside of her mouth so viciously that it had started to bleed. She spat the coppery blood out into the mud, and tried to think . Great generals could win impossible battles, but she wasn’t a great general. She was barely Kettral, and a declared traitor at that.

“Are you contemplating the beauty of the northern forest at dusk?” Pyrre asked.

“I’m thinking, you miserable bitch,” Gwenna snarled, fury at her own impotence spilling over toward the Skullsworn. The woman had done nothing since they arrived but drink beer and make her mocking little cracks. “Why did you even come here?”

Pyrre took a contemplative pull on her tankard before responding. “You may recall that the choice was this or a quick, inglorious death among the pines.”

“Well, this goat fuck is shaping up to be pretty quick, inglorious, and deadly, too,” Gwenna said. The Flea had left her the command, and now everyone from Andt-Kyl looked likely to die. Worse, instead of figuring out a way to stop it, here she was trading barbs with a woman who actually relished slaughter, who would look with joy on the deaths of children, men, and women, a whole town full of folk who, until two days earlier, couldn’t imagine that war’s hammer was about to descend upon them. “You should have saved yourself the trip,” Gwenna spat. “You and me both.”

“On the contrary,” Pyrre said. “Here, I have the comforts of human society as I face my god. The bond of a sisterhood in arms.”

“Bugger your fucking sisterhood.”

Pyrre frowned speculatively. “I was picturing a different type of sisterhood.”

She started to raise the tankard to her lips once more, and then Gwenna’s knife was out, stabbing toward the Skullsworn’s throat in pure, unpremeditated fury. There were plenty of little knife fights back on the Islands, cadets and vets settling scores by squaring off and fighting to the first blood. This wasn’t that. Gwenna put her whole weight behind the thrust, pivoting with the blow, twisting her wrist to feather the blade as it sunk into the flesh … only there was no flesh to find. The blade clattered against something, and Gwenna’s wrist jammed with the impact. She tried to slice sideways, but the Skullsworn had caught the knife inside her tankard. Gwenna yanked it back, trying to pull it free, and Pyrre stepped into the open space, hammering up with the heel of her hand, slamming Gwenna’s mouth shut so hard that her teeth throbbed and her neck snapped back as she tumbled to the mud.

The whole thing had taken less than a heartbeat. Most of the loggers hadn’t even noticed, and by the time they looked over, Pyrre was extending a hand to Gwenna, her smile broad, her eyes hard.

“Careful, sir,” she said, echoing Bridger’s deference. “The footing through here is treacherous.”

Gwenna glanced over at the curious archers, shackled her pride, and took the woman’s hand. Pyrre’s grip might have been hammered from steel. When she yanked Gwenna to her feet, she pulled her close enough to murmur in her ear.

“I came here to kill Urghul, which means that, in theory, we are on the same side.” She paused, allowed Gwenna to regain her footing and pull back. “Am I wrong?” she asked, voice sickeningly mild.

“No,” Gwenna growled. “You’re not wrong.”

“Excellent!” She smiled. “The thing is, I’m good with the killing, but not all that great when it comes to the tedium of tactics and strategy, so maybe you could”-she waved a hand toward the logs piling up in the river-“think through all that sort of thing. In the meantime,” she held the empty tankard aloft, “I seem to have spilled my beer.”

Gwenna ground her teeth as the woman turned back toward the houses, tried to ignore the blood hammering at her temples, tried to figure out how to get the fewest people killed. It was tempting to pull everyone back to West Island, maybe as far as the West Bank, and then to destroy the bridges behind them. That would put a little more space between the people of Andt-Kyl and the Urghul, plus two more channels of flowing water. The trouble was, she’d already tried that trick once, and Long Fist had anticipated it. She could give ground, then find herself on the far bank facing the same army without even the semblance of a defensive position. At least here the Urghul would have to pick their way slowly across the shifting and uneven dam, and while they were picking, the loggers could be shooting.