Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

He smiled. “The Kwihna Saapi is an honor.”

“Well aren’t I just tickled,” she muttered, stepping into the hole.

The earth came to the middle of her thighs and, as she looked up toward the Urghul chief for some further sign, a pair of young riders leapt down from the stone wall, crude shovels in hand, and began filling in the earth around her.

Gwenna forced herself to remain still, to think. The Annurian in the other hole had already surrendered to panic. He was trying to hoist himself from the small pit, half screaming, half begging, thrashing with both hands at the shovel and the youth wielding it, trying ineffectually to knock aside the dirt. He managed to get one leg out when three more Urghul jumped down from the stone wall and, to the ululation and cheering of the crowd, shoved him into the hole once more and held him there, writhing and biting, while the dirt piled up around him. When the work was done, Gwenna found herself immobilized in the earth facing the terrified young man across from her.

He was all forehead and ear and wide, baffled eyes set in a pimply face.

“Quit thrashing,” she said. She couldn’t think with him carrying on, and besides, the Urghul were clearly enjoying the show.

“What are they going to do?” he moaned. “What’s happening? What are they going to do?”

“Do I look like a scholar of obscure Urghul ass-fuckery?” she snapped. His panic was starting to dig at her, to creep, cold and lizardlike up her neck, over her skin, to bore into her belly. “What are you doing here?” she asked, more to distract herself from the fear than anything else. “How did these bastards get you?”

He stared, as though he himself didn’t know the answer to the question.

“Were you scouting?” Gwenna pressed. “Some mission north of the White?”

“I’m not a scout,” he protested. “I’m a ’Kent-kissing infantryman, barely even that. I been in the legion only four months. The Urghul hit us at the L-fort three nights back.” He stared back up at the ring of faces and started scrabbling at the earth again. “What’re they gonna do to us?”

“The L-fort?” Gwenna demanded, ignoring the last question. “They came south ?”

“Yes,” he wailed. “’Bout a million of them. The whole fort’s gone.”

Gwenna took a deep breath, then another, trying to still her rising panic. Long Fist had shattered one of the forts south of the river, one of the forts intended to keep the Urghul out of Annur. He hadn’t just turned on the Kettral; he had turned on the whole ’Kent-kissing empire . So much for his defensive army.… Gwenna would have worried about Valyn and the others-they’d left the camp more or less convinced by Long Fist’s promises of allegiance-but whatever miserable shitpile Valyn found himself in, her own predicament was looking quite a bit worse.

The soldier’s jaw was quivering. “They’re gonna hurt us, ain’t they?” His eyes locked on Gwenna’s, then flickered down to her blacks. “You’re not in the legion,” he breathed, comprehension hitting him like a hammer. “You’re Kettral. ”

The words were horrible with hope.

“Can you break us free?”

Gwenna shook her head, furious at that hope, powerless to explain that the legends extended only so far.

“But you’ll do somethin’, right? Right? I mean … the Kettral !”

“What I’ll do,” Gwenna said, “is keep my eyes open and my mouth shut.”

It came out more harshly than she’d intended, but she couldn’t bear the desperate trust in the young man’s eyes, the irrational faith. She wanted to shout that the Kettral weren’t gods, that they couldn’t work miracles, and even if they could, she herself was a pretty shit Kettral. She didn’t have Annick’s discipline or Talal’s cool or anything, really, other than an ability to blow shit up. If I could save you, she wanted to scream, I’d be saving you.

“Just shut up,” she snapped instead, although she’d just gotten done saying it. “Just be ready.”

Whatever that meant. Half buried in the earth they could neither flee nor fight. It was like being bound to a dock piling waiting for the tide to come in. The Urghul who packed the earth around them had retreated, climbing back up the low stone walls to leave Gwenna and the soldier alone at the bottom of the gully. The sun had slipped behind the hills to the west, and though a smear of red and orange still lit the sky, most of the light came from the enormous fires, a fickle, inconstant illumination that sketched the shards of bone one moment and plunged them into shadow the next. Above them the Urghul had risen to their feet, shaking weapons and jeering something incomprehensible in their strange melodic tongue, an entire bloody nation gathered to watch her suffer, men and women thick as wheat on the surrounding slopes. Gwenna wished she understood the words, then thought better of it.

Just blood, probably, and death, and doom, and blah, blah, blah.

The cacophony rose and rose, an unholy and discordant chant, until Long Fist swept his sticks down in a curt motion. The screaming stopped at once, the sound severed as though with a sharp knife. Firelight danced in the thousands of eager eyes.

The shaman spoke briefly in Urghul. Gwenna caught a few references to Kwihna, and maybe the words for “fight” and “die.” She pivoted at the waist, testing her range of motion, wondering what direction the attack would come from. Maybe it would be warriors. Maybe dogs. There was no way to guess.

“Now,” Long Fist said, addressing them, “you will fight. One wins. One dies.” He smiled a slow, easy smile.

Gwenna stared, first at the Urghul, then at the other prisoner, whose face was streaked with sweat and blanched with panic. No dogs, then.

The two sticks clattered to the ground between them.

“Swords,” the Urghul said, gesturing magnanimously.

But they were not swords. They weren’t even weapons-too blunt for effective stabbing, too light for a swift killing blow. Given enough time you could maybe beat someone to death with them, striking over and over, aiming for the throat, the eyes, but it would be a nasty process, slow and messy. Which, Gwenna realized, was the whole ’Kent-kissing point. The Urghul hadn’t assembled for a fight. This wasn’t a test of bravery or martial prowess, it was a sacrifice, the whole thing-buried legs, spindly sticks-designed to draw out the struggle, to prolong the pain.

A sacrifice to Meshkent.

“No,” Gwenna said. She crossed her arms over her chest and locked eyes with the Urghul chieftain. “I’m not taking part in your bloody bullshit.”

Long Fist smiled. “Yes, you are. The other Annurians”-he waved a hand over his shoulder, the gesture suggesting scores of unseen prisoners-“I will cut out their beating hearts, but you are a fighter. You will fight.”

The legionary was trembling, his breath coming in quick gasps, as though some unseen hand were frantically working the bellows of his lungs. He’d probably never seen battle or blood before the horsemen swept down on his fort.

“What happened to wanting to avoid war?” she demanded.

Long Fist just smiled.

The crowd was growing restless. A knot of men barely older than Gwenna were leaning over the edge of the stone wall, shouting at the prisoners and brandishing spears. Another small group seemed to be taunting the chief himself, although it was hard to be sure. The noise rolled over her, jeers and chanting like autumn breakers dashing themselves on the rocks. Gwenna met Annick’s eyes for a moment, hoping to see some encouragement or solidarity there, but the sniper’s face might have been chiseled from stone.