Brian Staveley - The Last Mortal Bond

“Balendin,” Adare said quietly.

That got Nira’s attention finally. The old woman turned, took up a long lens of her own, and studied him silently.

“He’s the leach, eh?” She shook her head. “Emotion. It’s a strong well. One a’ the strongest.”

“What can he do?” Adare asked. The story from Andt-Kyl was that he had used his foul power to hold up an entire bridge while the Urghul rode across. Adare wasn’t sure whether to believe it or not-the bridge had been destroyed by the time that she arrived, Balendin gone.

Nira frowned. “A lot. He’s not just leaching off those poor doomed fucks.” She gestured down the wall with her cane. “There must be five thousand men on these walls. They’ve heard a’ him. Everyone in the ’Kent-kissing city’s heard a’ him. Once they know he’s here, once he can feel all that hate, and rage, and fear”-she shook her head again-“even the Army of the North might not make a difference.”

* * *

When Quick Jak finally put Allar’ra down inside the improvised Kettral compound, the entire place was on the verge of madness. The other Wings were all there, back from their own scouting missions. No one had found Kaden, obviously, but everyone had seen the same thing north of the wall: the Urghul army parting down the center to make room for Balendin and his string of blood victims. Sigrid and the Flea had managed to impose some sort of order, but Adare was up on top of her tower, stabbing a finger to the north, and a string of terrified messengers were waiting on the cobblestones, all bearing the same message: kill the leach.

“Son of a bitch,” Gwenna cursed, dropping off the talon, “how long has he been there?”

“Not long,” the Flea replied. “Just getting ready, from the sound of it.” He nodded to the south. “What happened to you?”

Gwenna shook her head, unsure how to cram it all into a few words. “Nothing good. Valyn’s with Kaden and Triste. According to Adare, they all need to get to the Spear. I have no idea why, but everyone seems to think it’s pretty fucking important. Including the Army of the North, who is hunting them.”

“You couldn’t manage an extract?”

“The bastards have a leach. Almost knocked us clear out of the air, and we never even saw him.”

“A leach?” the Flea asked. He glanced over at Sigrid. The blond woman just shook her head, made an angry growl in the back of her throat. “That’s two of them,” the Flea said grimly. “Whoever this is south of the wall, and Balendin to the north. Sig thinks that after half an afternoon of cutting out hearts he’ll be strong enough to clear a path through all Adare’s hard-earned wreckage, maybe strong enough to punch straight through the wall.”

“Well that’s unpleasant,” Gwenna said, scrambling for anything resembling a plan, something that would save Kaden and Triste and Annur at the same time.

“Valyn and Kaden,” the Flea said, slicing through her thoughts. “What was their last location?”

“West of the Wool District, heading farther west.”

The Wing leader’s brow furrowed. “Thought you said they wanted to get to the Spear.”

“Yeah. Well. Looks like wanting not to get killed counted a little higher than wanting to get to the Spear. Valyn’s leading them west, which, given the way the army’s arranged, seems like a pretty good idea.”

The Flea glanced over at Sigrid. The blond woman met his gaze, then nodded.

“We’ll get them,” he said, turning back to Gwenna. “We don’t have a bird anyway, and this is a job for a foot team. You take care of Balendin.”

Gwenna stared. “Take care of him? You have any ideas how to do that?”

“Nope. That’s why it’s your job.” The Flea gestured toward the birds. “You’ve got five Wings here. Use ’em.”

For a moment, Gwenna couldn’t move. The thought was too large, the responsibility too daunting. Then the Flea stepped forward, set a solid hand on her shoulder. “You’re a good soldier, Gwenna.”

She met his eyes, but could find no words.

“This is what you trained to do,” the Flea went on, his voice quiet, low, steady as the waves on the shore. “No one ever thinks they’re ready for something like this, but I’m telling you now, and I’m only going to say it once, so listen good.…” He paused, smiled that crooked smile of his. “You’re ready.”

Then, before Gwenna could respond, he and Sigrid were gone, racing south toward Valyn, toward the Army of the North, toward a viciously powerful leach, and in all likelihood, toward an immortal Csestriim general against whom every human attack had failed.

“Well, shit,” Gwenna muttered.

“I agree,” Talal replied. He was standing just a pace distant, Annick at his side.

“We could go with him,” Gwenna said. “Provide air cover.”

“That didn’t work so well last time,” the leach pointed out, “and besides. Balendin’s here. We can’t fight all the fights.”

Gwenna nodded, looked past him to where Quick Jak was going over Allar’ra’s wings, sliding his hands beneath the feathers looking for damage.

“Can he fly?” Gwenna shouted.

The flier hesitated. “He can fly, but I need more time to assess the damage.…”

“We don’t have more time. We have to hit Balendin now. Once he knocks down half the wall, there won’t be much point.” She gestured to the other Kettral, most of whom had dismounted to check over weapons and birds. “Fliers and Wing commanders on me.”

The plan was as shitty as it was simple. They had five birds. Balendin couldn’t look five directions at once. Four Wings would come in from the cardinal directions, and one would stoop from almost directly above.

“Balendin shields himself,” Talal pointed out. “He did at Andt-Kyl, anyway. If the leach attacking us to the south was using a hammer, Balendin’s kenning will be like an invisible wall.”

Gwenna nodded, wondering if she had it all wrong. “He shields himself against arrows, flatbow bolts, spears. You think he can hold out against eight tons of bird coming at him faster than a galloping horse?”

Talal hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not.”

The other Kettral looked nervous. Quick Jak, for all his slick flying just moments earlier, seemed close to panic. He had picked at the cuticle of his thumb so viciously that the nail was awash in blood, but he just kept at it, not seeming to notice.

“Look,” Gwenna said, stepping forward. “Balendin’s only going to get stronger. The more people in this city learn that he’s here, learn who he is and what he does, the harder it’s going to be to kill him. I can’t say that my plan will work. Maybe we get lucky, maybe someone gets through, and maybe we all die.

“I will tell you this, though. You are Kettral, every ’Kent-kissing one of you. We called you washouts, but you’re not, not anymore. You went down in the Hole, you fought the slarn, you drank the egg, and you came back out. That makes you Kettral, you crazy sons of bitches, and let me tell you something about being Kettral. We don’t get the easy jobs. We don’t pull wall duty or guarding the baggage chain. In return for getting to fly around on these enormous, manslaughtering hawks, we actually have to go do the dangerous shit, the shit that gets men and women killed, and so if this isn’t what you signed up for, you tell me now.” She paused, shifting her eyes from one soldier to the next. “Which one of you isn’t Kettral? Who wants to wash out all over again?”

No one stepped forward. No one spoke.

Finally, Gwenna allowed herself to smile. “Good. Mount up.”

* * *

Their hastily constructed plan failed almost the moment they stepped from the shelter of Kegellen’s street-level warehouse and into the street beyond. They needed to go outside in order for the bird to find them, of course, but when they stepped, blinking, into the afternoon heat and sunlight, there was no kettral in the sky. Kaden stood with Valyn and Triste in a wide, treelined avenue, one of Annur’s larger thoroughfares. Shops occupied the bottom floors of the buildings to either side-leatherworkers, mostly, judging from the wares on display-and the street itself was busy with men and women haggling or selling, pushing handcarts loaded with stock, making purchases or deliveries. It almost might have been a normal city street on an everyday afternoon, except for the Annurian soldiers, at least a dozen of them, jogging up the center of the road from the south. They hadn’t spotted their quarry yet, but they weren’t bothering to stop, not even pausing to search inside the shops. They moved with the certainty of hunters who knew exactly where to find the beast they sought.