Brian Staveley - The Last Mortal Bond

The first kettral exploded into flames when it was still a hundred paces from the leach, the second a heartbeat after that. One moment the birds were flying, screaming their defiance, the next they were charred, already dead, tumbling from the air, the burning Kettral struggling to cut themselves free of their harnesses. Struggling and failing.

“Sweet Intarra’s light,” Adare breathed.

“They could use a little a’ that right now,” Nira agreed.

Whether the leach had used too much strength too quickly, or he just didn’t see the full scope of the attack early enough, the other three birds got closer. Closer, but not close enough. Balendin raised his hand, dropped it down, and the nearest kettral, already coming in low for its attack, slammed into the earth, scattering horses and riders, plowing up the soft ground. The mounted Urghul surrounded it, screaming, swarming over the broken creature and the soldiers beneath like so many ants on a rotting carcass.

The fourth bird careened off some invisible wall, and though it managed to stay airborne, even Adare could tell from the stuttering wingbeat that the creature was injured, and badly. This one, however, managed to limp off toward the north, and though a group of the horsemen gave chase, it seemed at least possible that the soldiers strapped to the talons beneath would survive, escape.

That left the fifth bird, the one dropping straight down out of the clouds.

That one’s Gwenna, she realized, staring through the lens. The largest bird, the golden one, is hers .

Adare allowed herself the smallest spark of hope. It was possible Balendin hadn’t noticed, that he’d been too busy knocking back the first four attacks to notice the fifth. He couldn’t see everything at once; he had to miss something eventually. The long lens was shaking so badly in Adare’s hand that she couldn’t see the leach’s face. She leaned it against the top of the stone wall, took a moment to find the range again, and then her stomach recoiled inside her. Balendin was staring straight up. Staring straight up, and smiling.

Adare clenched her teeth, waiting for the inevitable, for this bird, too, the last of a shattered hope, to burst into flame or be smashed into the dirt. At the last moment, however, the enormous creature sheered off, peeling away toward the east, abandoning the attack. Not that it mattered. Another blow, just as vicious as the one that crippled the other four kettral, hammered into the huge golden bird from the side. It tumbled sideways, screamed, managed to right itself, then disappeared behind the rooftops, flying toward the Broken Bay.

For a moment, it was all Adare could do to stay on her feet.

“They didn’t even get close,” she breathed quietly. “Five Wings of Kettral attacking simultaneously, and they didn’t even get close.”

“It’s worse than that,” Nira said. “That victory just dug his well deeper, filled it higher.”

Adare turned to the older woman.

“Think of your awe,” Nira continued quietly. She gestured to the Urghul, to the Annurians manning the walls. “Now multiply that by a hundred thousand.”

* * *

Gwenna was still cursing when Quick Jak put the bird down south of the wall, in the open square that served as the Kettral command and control. Only there were no Kettral left, none but her own Wing.

“The ’Shael-spawned son of a fucking whore,” Gwenna snarled. “That bastard. That son of a bitch .”

The curses weren’t directed at anyone, they weren’t even coherent, but they kept her from sobbing.

She’d known it was a risk. They all had. She’d known, when she gave the order to attack, that people wouldn’t be coming back, that Balendin would put up some kind of fight and that people would die. She’d known there was a possibility that the leach was just too strong, and she’d made the choice to go after him anyway, before he got even stronger. She’d known all of it, and yet seeing the birds burst into flame, seeing the men and women she’d so hastily trained burning, falling, dying … she hadn’t known how much that would hurt.

The fact that her own Wing had survived only made it worse, and when Quick Jak dropped off Allar’ra’s back, Gwenna went at him with a fury, seizing him by the throat and throwing him to the ground. The fact that she could see the fear in his eyes, that she could smell the stink of panic on him, made her want to kill him right there and be done with it.

“Why did you peel off?” she demanded.

“Gwenna,” Talal said quietly.

“Stay out of this, Talal.” She didn’t take her eyes off the flier. “Why did you peel off?”

Jak managed to shake his head slightly. “He … had us. You saw.…”

“You don’t know that,” Gwenna shouted. “You don’t know that, you worthless piece of shit. The plan, the fucking plan, was to go in hard and keep going . That’s what the other Wings did, or maybe you were too busy shitting your pants to notice.”

Jak’s face was purpling, but he made no move to fight back or try to pull free.

“Other Wings…,” he managed, “died.”

“Sometimes that happens,” Gwenna screamed. “Sometimes when you’re fighting, people fucking die . It doesn’t mean you stop fighting. The only reason you stop fighting is you’re too frightened, because you’re a coward, because something’s fucking broken inside you.”

The flier opened his mouth, then closed it, shut his eyes.

“Gwenna,” Talal said again, taking her by the shoulders this time, pulling her back. “Get off of him. We’re alive because he saved us.”

Gwenna slammed the flier’s head against the ground once, then straightened up to shove a finger in Talal’s face.

“He saved us,” she hissed, “by running away . I ordered those other Wings into the fight. I told them we were all going, that we were making a concerted attack, together, and then I ran away.”

“Would it be better if we were dead?”

“Yes!” she said, shocked at her own conviction. “Yes.”

Talal shook his head slowly. “No.”

Behind them, Quick Jak was getting unsteadily to his feet. Gwenna took a long, shuddering breath, held it for a few heartbeats, then let it out. Then she did it again, and again. When you fight, Hendran wrote, people die. It’s only human to care, but you need to cut out that human thing. If you care too much, you lose.

When she thought she could speak without screaming, she turned to face her Wing.

“Stay with the bird,” she said, then gestured toward the wall and the tower punctuating it. “I’m going to tell the Emperor we failed.”

* * *

Adare had just sent out a dozen runners east and west along the wall. The fight with the Kettral had been pretty hard to miss, but all the same, she wanted to make sure the Sons of Flame understood what was coming.

The leach is going to hit us today, she told the messenger. And we think he’s going to hit us here, at this tower.

That, at least, was what Nira believed, for reasons Adare didn’t fully understand. Maybe the old woman was right, and maybe she was just finally going insane, but after seeing the Kettral scrubbed from the sky, Adare needed to do something, and sending out a warning was something. She was searching for another task when Gwenna stepped up through the trapdoor and onto the tower’s top.

“Your Radiance,” she said, bowing her head. The genuflection was uncharacteristic. “The attack failed.”

Adare bit back the first sharp retort that came to mind. “I saw,” she said instead. “I’m sorry for your soldiers.”

The words sounded stiff, useless, formulaic, but what else was there to say? The leach had just shattered the best weapon that Adare could bring against him, shattered it without even the slightest hint of effort.