Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

Sweat streaked Balendin’s face, but his jaw was set, and as Valyn stared the Urghul dragged out two more prisoners, a man and a woman, and began to tear the skin from their flesh. Balendin’s lips moved as he directed the hideous ritual, and from the far shore the Urghul began to stream across the dam, no longer afoot, but on horse, riding straight over the island toward the central bridge and the loggers beyond.

Valyn searched the burned-out rubble desperately for Talal, stared until his eyes watered and his hands had twisted into claws around the long lens. There was no one. Nothing. Nothing but smoke, and embers, and death.

* * *

The slowness hurt. It hurt because Gwenna could hear the loggers fighting for their lives on the far side of the bridge, the high, strident calls of people struggling and losing slowly. It hurt because she could glimpse, through the burned-out hulks of the buildings, the awful mutilation of Balendin’s captives, the blood, and piss, and terror that she and Talal were too slow to prevent. And it hurt because just plain moving fucking hurt, and moving slowly just drew out the pain.

The cover was for shit, and Urghul were everywhere, afoot, on horse. Most were charging west, from one of Balendin’s bloody bridges to the other, the endless parade of horseflesh and steel that couldn’t end in anything but death for the people of Andt-Kyl. Enough, however, had spread out over the island, searching for ’Shael only knew what, that Gwenna and Talal were forced to hunch in shadowy corners for minutes at a time, to drag their way under still-smoldering beams and through rubble-filled cellar holes, all of which also hurt.

Gwenna would have cursed the fact that she couldn’t actually stand on her broken ankle, but then, standing only would have got her killed quicker, and so she sucked up the pain, kept her belly in the mud and ash, and dragged herself forward on her elbows behind Talal.

It came as a shock when she lifted her head to find the hunched backs of the prisoners just a few paces off. She had no idea how long it had taken them to traverse the island-it felt like days-but the screaming and dying to the west meant the battle wasn’t over yet. They weren’t too late.

She turned her attention to the square. Balendin stood near the center, ringed with the dead and dying, his face a mask of rapture and rage, the vessels at his temples pulsing, sweat matting his hair to his scalp, slicking his cheeks. Gwenna ducked back down behind the low, broken wall that hid them from view.

“Why don’t we just shoot him?” she hissed.

Talal shook his head. “Annick tried. He’s shielded. We can’t get at him.”

Gwenna took a deep, shuddering breath. Between the pain, the disorientation, and the shock at finding herself alive at all, she hadn’t allowed herself to consider what they were coming to do. It was the logical tactical decision. The only decision, as far as she could see. And it meant murdering scores of Annurians.

“What about a starshatter?” she asked, pulling the last remaining munition from her belt. “Will his shield stop that?”

Talal spread his hands hopelessly. “I don’t know. I just … I don’t know.”

Gwenna’s stomach clenched, and she forced down the urge to vomit. She could take a chance on Balendin, but they would only get the one chance. She risked another glance over the wall. A young man, no older than her, was groveling at Balendin’s feet. His eyes were gouged out, and when he tried to scream the sound came out a gurgling, slithering mess. Someone had slit his tongue, she realized. And they were starting on his fingers.

“Sweet ’Shael,” she said, sliding back behind the wall. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

Talal nodded grimly, hesitated, then extended his hand. “You light the wick. I’ll throw it.”

“It doesn’t matter who fucking throws it,” Gwenna spat.

The leach didn’t flinch. “Yes,” he said quietly. “It does. You don’t have to do this alone. You light it. I’ll throw it. We came here together, and we’ll finish it together.”

Suddenly, for no reason Gwenna could understand, she found herself weeping, the tears hot as coals on her cheeks.

“All right,” she said, words choking in her throat. She fumbled for the striker, found it, made a flame, and pressed it to the wick. “Together,” she said, passing the starshatter to Talal.

He took it, stared a moment at the burning wick as though it were a snake, closed his eyes, and mouthed a silent prayer. Then, with a roar, he stood from behind the wall and hurled it into the center of the doomed captives.

With a roar.

The last thing Gwenna thought before the starshatter exploded, tearing through bone and flesh, rending the bodies of dozens of helpless people like so much rotten meat, was that, until that moment, she’d never heard Talal raise his voice.

The histories were horseshit.

Adare had read about warfare in the histories. She had pored over the intricate maps of Annur’s most famous battles, studying the neat lines of advance and retreat, committing to memory the most classic short pieces: Fleck’s Five Principles of Cavalry, Venner’s Longbows and Flatbows, Huel-Hang’s The Heart of a Conflict . She’d been through Hendran’s cryptic volume twice during the march north, grilling Fulton and Ameredad on the more obscure points. She didn’t expect to become a battlefield commander, certainly not by reading a few old books, but she had hoped that her hasty study of war might help her to better understand the events churning around her, maybe even to save a few lives. The soldiers who had marched all this way to fight and die at her command deserved an emperor who would make an effort to understand what she had asked of them.

And so she had pored over the books until her lids drooped and the maps swam before her eyes only to discover here, now, in the midst of the furious battle for Andt-Kyl, that the books had told her less than nothing. The chaos in the streets of the tiny logging town seemed more like a riot than a battle. There were no disciplined blocks of men working in concert, no ordered sequence of attack and defense, no clear delineation between friend and foe. Instead, there was madness. The leather-clad loggers of the town ran in all directions, some cradling vicious wounds, some collapsed in doorways weeping, some hurling buckets of water on burning buildings, some charging down the street brandishing axes and crude spears, pointing and hollering in a direction that Adare desperately hoped was east.

Three times she had seen knots of Urghul horsemen-some no more than twenty paces distant-and three times Fulton had forced her to backtrack, to take a different route, his face grim as he spat orders at the Aedolians under his command, gesturing with his naked sword.

He had almost refused to let her into the town at all.

“You can only do two things in Andt-Kyl,” he told her bluntly, staring at the smoking village from the western shore of the Black, where they had paused while il Tornja and the Army of the North pushed ahead. “You can get in the way, or you can die, Your Radiance.”

“I need to see it,” she had insisted.

“You can see it from here. It will make even less sense up close.”

She stared at her Aedolian. “Are you defying me?”

“I am protecting you.”

“There are other threats to my life and rule than an Urghul spear in the chest.”

Fulton shook his head curtly. “That is why my order exists. Why I exist.”

Adare blew out a frustrated breath. She had no doubts about Fulton’s loyalty, but loyalty was not the same as judgment.

“Listen,” she began, uncertain just how much she wanted to reveal. “The legions love il Tornja. Have you heard what the men say? He’s invincible. He’s unstoppable. Fearless. Brilliant-”