Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

“Holy Hull,” Talal breathed.

Valyn could only nod as the great balance of the log raft began to flex, then give way, the pilings that had originally blocked its passage suddenly and utterly obliterated. The riders who had been approaching the makeshift bridge just before it blew reined back their terrified mounts, scrabbling for the dubious safety of the shore while logs the size of a man’s leg still clattered to earth, stabbing into the mud, cracking open on the harder ground beyond.

Laith let out a savage whoop, the sound lost in the greater chaos. “Gwenna, you vicious, redheaded genius !” he cheered. “That’s our demo woman!” he shouted, seizing Valyn by the shoulder in his celebration, stabbing his finger at the wreckage of the bridge. “ She did that!”

“But how?” Valyn asked slowly. “Where is she?”

Talal’s face was sober. “The charge was triggered from beneath. You can see from the blow pattern.”

“Which means she went under,” Valyn said, staring at the insane mass of splintered logs, huge, jagged shards with the whole pent-up weight of the angry river behind them. The east channel was a churning wreckage of blasted bodies and spinning trunks. The channel had become Ananshael’s own sword. If Gwenna were there, and she had to be … “She’s dead,” Valyn said. The words left him hollow. “Gwenna’s dead.”

Laith stared for a second, then shoved him away. “You don’t know that.”

“We don’t know anything, ” Valyn spat, “but use your fucking eyes .” He stabbed a finger at the river. “Could you swim that out?”

“We don’t know, ” Laith insisted. Then more quietly, “Even if she is dead, she did what she needed to do.”

“Part of it,” Valyn amended, pointing toward the center bridge. It felt like a heartless thing to say, but having too much heart in the middle of a battle was just a way to get dead. “She blew the dam, but the Urghul can still cross from the east island to the west.”

Talal was staring through the long lens. “At a quick count, I put about three hundred on the east island.”

“Making it an even fight at the bridge,” Valyn said.

“An even fight,” Talal said quietly, “except that it’s three hundred of Long Fist’s best and bravest against a bunch of loggers and a half dozen of il Tornja’s scouts.”

The new battle line was already forming up at the west end of the central bridge, just a hundred paces from the base of their tower. The loggers had erected another hasty barricade there as well, a waist-high wall of logs with archers spread out on either side. It was a good position. They could rake the Urghul on the bridge with arrows as they crossed, and the bridge itself made it difficult for the mounted riders to come at them more than two abreast.

A good spot, Valyn amended silently, in the middle of a disastrous fucking mess .

It had taken the Urghul less than an hour to cross the eastern channel and seize half the village. The loggers were making a good show of it, but they were poorly armed and, judging by their dangerously ragged ranks on the near shore, close to breaking. Gwenna’s sacrifice had won them a momentary respite from the full weight of the Urghul force, but even that respite might not matter. As he watched, one rider managed to cross nearly the whole center span, crumbling just as he reached the barricade, an arrow in his eye. Annick’s work, no doubt, but Annick couldn’t shoot them all.

“Fuck this,” Laith said. “I’m going down.”

“Il Tornja-” Valyn began.

“Il Tornja is your ’Kent-kissing obsession,” the flier spat. “ You kill him.”

All at once, Valyn’s shame and helplessness, his resolve and uncertainty boiled over in a burning wash of black fury. Since the Wing was formed back on the Islands, Laith had done nothing but go with his gut, flying his way, fighting his way, ignoring orders when it suited him, and to Hull with whatever it did to the rest of the Wing. The son of a bitch seemed to think that just because he was quick with a joke and a pat on the back, everything would work out, that people would overlook all the damage caused by his recklessness. Valyn wanted to seize the flier by the throat and pound some discipline into him, and he half rose, moving toward him, when Talal put a hand on his shoulder.

“It might be best,” the leach said quietly. “Two of us should be enough to finish il Tornja, and Annick and Pyrre could use some help down there, someone else to put a little backbone into the local folk.”

Valyn remained in his half crouch for a moment, then spat over the edge of the tower and sat back. He looked at the flier and shook his head.

“Good luck,” he said, voice cold as the dark water lapping the cliff below.

Laith considered him warily. “What do you want me to tell them down there? About you? What do you want me to tell Annick?”

Valyn hesitated. “Tell them I’m dead,” he said finally.

The flier locked eyes with him a moment, then snorted in disgust. “Yeah, that fits. You might as well be.”

* * *

It might have been a page from one of the textbooks back on the Islands, something from a chapter on morale, about the power of a single determined warrior to stiffen the resolve of an entire unit. Laith reached the bridge at a crucial point, just as a knot of horsemen were about to breach the barricade, and he threw himself into the fight with a fury, vaulting over the logs, hamstringing the first two horses, and splitting the skull of one of the fallen riders. Without glancing back to see who was following, the flier pressed on across, sliding between the horses, slitting tendons and throats with equal ease.

Annick and the other archers covered him, and moments later Pyrre appeared at his side. It seemed impossible that the two of them could hold the span against hundreds, but the Urghul were used to fighting on the wide steppe where they could use the speed of their horses and the length of their spears. The narrow space of the bridge worked against them, as did the darkness, and the constant rain of arrows. Laith and Pyrre turned back the assault, and then, while the Urghul withdrew in dismay, they retreated behind the barricade.

Valyn watched it all through the long lens, his stomach churning with a bilious mix of worry, fierce pride, and bitter resentment. Once again Laith had ignored orders and broken ranks, choosing to do just what suited him. He was a rogue, a renegade, a ’Shael-spawned menace … but then why, looking down on the vicious fight, did Valyn feel like the fraud and the failure? Professionals held to the mission. That mantra had been drilled into him ten thousand times. Professionals didn’t go needlessly off script. And yet, lying on the cold roof, so close to the fight and so far away, he felt anything but professional. He wanted to scream, but the mission dictated silence, so he held his peace and watched.

Seven times the Urghul came, and seven times the villagers held them, Laith and Pyrre at the forefront, swords and knives a moonlit scribbling of quicksilver. Pyrre moved like a shadow between the mounted riders, never seeming to hurry, always just beneath the attacker’s thrust, just to the side of it, pivoting or twisting to slide her knife into a neck or rib cage with all the delicacy of a dancer. Laith, on the other hand, was a whirlwind of blades, a maelstrom of savage hacking and slicing, a storm come among the Urghul. Valyn had seen the flier fight before, hundreds of times, but never like this. Laith moved as though possessed, unflagging, untiring, as though he could hold the bridge for days, months, as though nothing could cut him down.

Then the arrow took him through the lower back.