Most worrisome of all, at least at the moment, was the fact that ’Ra herself was struggling, the normally effortless beating of her wings irregular and labored, her great body listing to port. Valyn had read about fights between wild kettral, but, aside from a few harmless skirmishes between hatchlings, he’d never witnessed one. How ’Ra could fly at all after trading blows with the Flea’s bird Valyn had no idea, but fly she did, albeit weakly. He couldn’t even guess where Sami Yurl’s bird had ended up in the chaos.
We’re alive, Valyn reminded himself. We got out.
At least, he hoped they had. There had been no sign of the Flea’s Wing since Assare. It was possible, more than possible, that Chi Hoai was dead, her kettral was crippled, and the rest of the Wing was stranded. On the other hand, the two birds hadn’t been out of sight for that long, not long enough to be certain of anything, and trusting to someone else’s failure made for shit strategy. And so, for hour after hour he stared east, vision blurred by his wind-whipped tears, searching in the stacked columns of cloud for some sign of pursuit. His eyes ached, but at least the effort took his mind off his own pain. Nerve-fraying as it was, staring into the empty darkness was better than looking at Gwenna’s limp form.
He’d managed to do his job—Kaden was clear, Valyn’s own Wing was alive—and yet all he felt, aside from the wracking pain in his shoulder, was a sick slosh of guilt and anger. Guilt for the injuries to Gwenna and Talal; anger at Pyrre for starting the fight and at himself for not stopping it; and yet more guilt for Blackfeather Finn.
They might be part of the plot, he reminded himself. They could have been keeping us alive for questioning, for torture. It was possible, but the possibility didn’t change the fact that a man Valyn had liked and admired was dead.
An hour out, he called a short stop. He hated to do it. Landing turned them into a grounded, stationary target, but they needed Laith on top of the bird, not strapped in beneath, they needed to regain something like a fighting configuration, and Valyn wanted at least a few moments to look over Talal’s wound and Gwenna’s.
“I’m fine,” the leach said, grimacing as he straightened his knee. “I’m not going to die of a leg wound.”
In fact, there were plenty of ways to die of a leg wound—the Eyrie medical archives were packed with them—but Valyn wasn’t going to press the point. If the leach could stand, he could fly, and for the moment, flight was imperative.
Gwenna’s case was more troubling. Valyn refused to light a lantern, but her normally pale skin looked even paler, ashen to his night eyes, and though she winced and cried out when he searched through the tangled mess of her hair for the wound, she didn’t wake up. Blood had soaked into her curls, then frozen, and after a moment he hacked away several handfuls with his belt knife. She’d probably curse him for the decision when she woke, but waking was a prerequisite to the cursing. Her skull felt intact, though his fingers were too numb to be certain, and regardless, it was easy enough to wreck the brain without damaging the skull. In the end, all he could do was wrap her in a heavy blanket to keep off the worst of the chill, then strap her to the talon once more.
The rest of the flight was cold, long, and miserable. Laith hugged the valleys and passes, trying to keep them low enough that the ridgelines would hide them from pursuit, but not so low that they all got dead. The flier knew his business, but it was dark and they were belly-to-the-dirt. Valyn could see the cracks in the boulders, the small caches of snow secreted beneath the stones. A single mistake from Laith would leave them all smeared across the side of some granite cliff.
By the time they crested the final ridgeline, Valyn was nauseated from the pain in his shoulder, from peering endlessly into the darkness, from feeling his muscles clench every time they scraped over some jagged escarpment. It didn’t help that light was starting to soak the eastern sky. In an hour the sun would be up, and then they would really have problems. The Kettral worshipped Hull for good reason: even wounded, even fleeing, Valyn’s Wing had a chance as long as it stayed dark. With the arrival of dawn, however, they’d be visible from the ground and the air both. If the Flea could fly, if he had guessed their direction of travel, if he, too, had been pushing west through the night, he’d be able to spot them from twenty miles off. Farther, if he used a long lens. It was a lot of “ifs,” but then, the Flea had made a career out of turning “ifs” into “whens.”
Valyn scanned the grasslands unfolding below. Though the Kettral had flown plenty of missions north of the White River, especially in recent years, striking at various Urghul bands, most of the action happened nearly a thousand miles to the west, in the Blood Steppe and the Golden Steppe, where the nomadic tribes butted up against the boundary of the Annurian Empire. The vast, undifferentiated swath of land below, empty grasslands flowing into the jutting teeth of the Bone Mountains, was marked “Far Steppe” on the Eyrie maps, but Valyn couldn’t remember much more about it. There were tribes this far east, but the Kettral trainers dismissed them as irrelevant—an omission Valyn regretted now. He was going to have to land—that much was clear. Gwenna and Talal required serious attention, and the bolt in his own shoulder would have to come out. Just as crucially, ’Ra needed to rest before she dropped out of the sky.
Pyrre prodded him in the shoulder, breaking his concentration.
He turned to face the woman. That she had survived the fight in Assare, the fight she had started, seemed grossly unfair, but then, there were no judges in battle, no one to adjudicate the dispute and keep everyone between the lines. Valyn had no idea what to do with her when they were finally clear of the mountains. He was tempted to simply leave her on the ’Kent-kissing steppe, but that was a decision that could wait.
She prodded him again, and he swallowed a curse.
“What?” he shouted, leaning so close to the assassin that her hair whipped at his face. If she was frightened to be flying a wounded bird above dangerous territory while pursued by a Kettral Wing, she didn’t show it, didn’t smell it. Valyn had yet to see the woman really scared.
“Fire,” she mouthed, pointing off to the northwest.
He followed her finger. They were still too far off to make out more than a dull orange smudge, but the flame wasn’t large, probably a cook fire kindled in the predawn. Which meant Urghul. Valyn tightened his grip on the strap, leaning out into the dark for a better view. His trainers might have skipped an analysis of the eastern tribes, but he’d learned enough about the nomadic horsemen to be wary.
Unlike the other polities surrounding Annur—the Manjari Empire, Anthera, Freeport, and the Federated Cities—the Urghul had no government, which meant no law, no significant trade, and no respite from the constant blood feuds, vicious intertribal vendettas lasting dozens of years at a time. Evidently, it was all a part of their worship of the Lord of Pain. The Annurians knew the god as Meshkent, but the Urghul had a different name, one in their own language: Kwihna, they called him, the Hardener. There were no cities on the steppe, but over the millennia the Urghul had erected hundreds of altars to their god, some massive stone tablets, others little more than piled cairns where they carried out their savage worship of pain and blood sacrifice.
Valyn tried to remember the occasions for such sacrifice: the full moon, the new moon, solstices and storms, floods and famines, all requiring breathing bodies to offer up to the god. Gent had demanded to know how there were any of the bastards left after so much blood and burnt offering, but according to Daveen Shaleel, there were more Urghul than most people realized—maybe a million in small tribes, taamu, they called them, scattered across the enormous grasslands. Valyn always found that number unsettling. Although the population of the empire itself ran into the tens of millions, the legions rarely fielded more than half a million soldiers, and those were spread all over the border. The Urghul, on the other hand, had no dedicated military; every man, woman, and child was a fighter. Consummate horsemen, physically and mentally toughened by a hard life in a hard place, well-blooded through con
stant conflict, they could pose a serious threat to Annur, if they ever stopped fighting amongst themselves.
More to the point, they posed a serious threat to Valyn’s Wing. Cadets weren’t kept formally apprised of Kettral missions, but there was always buzz in the training yard and the mess hall, enough that Valyn knew the Eyrie had been flying missions over the steppe nearly every month for the past several years. Who the target was, or why an empty chunk of grassland without cities or towns was so important, he had no idea, but it hardly mattered now. The Urghul immediately below might not have encountered Kettral, but they would have heard tales of great birds dropping out of the sky bearing men and women dressed in black. The odds of a welcome parade were not high.
But still, he thought as he stared out over the land, all shifting grays and blacks beneath a cloud-wracked anvil of sky, We might have to go down there.
He considered the campfire once more. Gwenna’s head wound required rest. They all needed rest. The rations they’d stolen in their flight from the Eyrie were nearly gone. Both Talal’s injury and Valyn’s own needed to be cleaned and cauterized, which meant fire and yet more rest. It was possible to make their own camp, to go without food, to tend their own wounds and steer clear of the people below, but that choice presented its own risks. In the end ’Ra’s deteriorating wingbeat decided him.
The bird couldn’t stay in the air much longer. She was gliding in long sweeps, losing hundreds of feet of altitude as she rested, then struggling mightily to regain the lost elevation. The stutter in her wingbeat had grown worse, and she was flying head-down. Laith would have to look her over on the ground to discover what was wrong. Worse, a battered kettral could take days or weeks to recover. That campfire meant Urghul, and Urghul meant horses. Valyn hated riding, but it beat walking, if Gwenna even could walk.
He reached for the signaling strap, tugging out the relevant code: Circle target.
For a moment nothing happened, then he felt the bird bank slightly to the north, aiming directly at the campfire.
He leaned over to Talal, cupping a hand to his mouth. “How’s your Urghul?”
The leach grimaced, though whether at the question or the pain in his leg, Valyn couldn’t say. “Awful,” he replied.
“Can you tell them we don’t want a fight?”
“I don’t think Don’t want a fight is an Urghul concept.”
“How about, If you move, the bird will rip your throat out?”
Talal frowned. “Bird kill you is about the best I can do.”
“Bird kill you it is.”
“Are you certain about this, Valyn?” the leach asked.
“No.” It had been a very long time since Valyn felt certain about anything.
He turned back to the flame. As they grew closer, his spirits rose. There was only a single fire with a few small figures gathered around it. Two api, the collapsible hide tents favored by the Urghul, stood a little way off, with a line of hobbled horses between them. The camp probably contained about ten people. No more than a dozen. Even injured, a Kettral Wing would be equal to ten or twelve nomadic savages.
“I’ve got no ’Kent-kissing certainty whatsoever,” he went on. “But we need food and fire, rest and horses—and they’re all right there.”
* * *
All in all, the drop went better than Valyn had dared to hope. The Urghul tending the campfire were just kids—the oldest maybe ten years old—preparing the morning meal while their elders enjoyed a few final moments of sleep and warmth inside the api. The oldest girl, a pale, blond child of nine or ten, hurled herself at them, screaming imprecations in her strange language and stabbing with her cooking knife until Laith knocked her unconscious with a carefully calibrated blow of his sword hilt. The two younger children glanced uncertainly from the massive bird to the api and back, but, aside from shouting a few vicious-sounding threats, they made no move to interfere.
The adults were a different story. As soon as the children stopped shrieking, a man barreled out of the entrance flap of the nearest tent, stark naked save for the spear in his hand, face twisted with confusion and rage. The sight of Suant’ra looming over his cook fire slowed him for a moment, but if he was frightened by six well-armed, black-clad figures materializing out of the predawn murk, he didn’t show it. With a bellow, he hurled the spear directly at Valyn. Valyn slid aside, letting the shaft glide harmlessly into the night, but then, before he could take a step forward, a knife sprouted from his assailant’s throat.
Valyn glanced over his shoulder at Pyrre.
The Skullsworn smiled at him, then winked.
“We’re not here to kill them,” he spat.
“Please stop using the first-person plural,” she replied, bouncing another knife on her palm. “I’m not a part of your Wing.”
“I am on the Wing,” Laith interjected, “and I’m all right with killing them. I remember those lectures on blood sacrifice and pain ritual, and I’m not all that eager—”
He broke off as a woman burst from the api, naked as the first man, a shorthorn bow in her hand. Her skin, like that of all the Urghul, was onion-pale, almost lambent in the firelight, and her hair, too, a great blond mane, might have been spun from white-hot fire. She took a step forward, then paused, eyeing the assembled Kettral. A chill, vicious wind sliced through the camp. She didn’t shiver.
“Go ahead and say it,” Pyrre remarked. “She’s a woman. And we don’t kill women. I don’t mind. Tell me how helpless she is.”
Valyn stared at the Urghul. Scars puckered the skin of her belly and legs—lance wounds and arrow punctures. Her hair whipped at her face, but she paid it no mind, focusing instead on Valyn. She hadn’t yet drawn the bow, but an arrow was nocked to the string, and, from the easy way she held it, he imagined she was familiar with the weapon.
“If she moves,” he said slowly, “kill her.”
“How barbaric,” Pyrre replied, amusement bright in her voice. “Triste would never have approved, poor girl.”
Valyn ignored her. “Talal, start talking. Quick.”
The leach hesitated a moment, then began haltingly: “Wasape ebibitu—”
“You killed my wasape,” the woman said, cutting him off, indicating the sprawled corpse with her chin. “Do not savage my language.”
That she spoke the Annurian tongue was something of a surprise, but it meant Valyn could handle the negotiation himself. As the woman spoke, other figures had emerged from the two api, some wearing leather riding breeches and rough tunics, others bare-chested. As Valyn had hoped, they numbered just half a dozen. Ten with the kids and the dead man.
“He attacked us,” Valyn said, indicating the corpse. “We killed him only in defense.”
The woman considered the body for a moment, then shrugged. “There are other warriors to warm my nights.”
To her right, a young man growled something incomprehensible. He had a knife in each hand, and from the way he was crouched forward, looked eager to try his luck.
“Annick…” Valyn began.
“I’ve got him,” she replied.
The Urghul woman looked at the sniper, then turned to her companion, uttering a few curt words.
He snapped something angry in response, waved a knife at the Kettral, then spit full in her face.
Without blinking, the naked woman pivoted, slamming her arrowhead through his throat. She held it there firmly as the dying man dropped his knives, clutched at the wooden shaft, then released it as he crumpled. She considered the body for a moment, then turned to the other Urghul. Valyn caught the words for chief, dead, and challenge. She spread her arms wide as if inviting attack from her own people, evidently indifferent to her own nakedness, the biting wind, and the Kettral Wing a few paces away. Only when the other Urghul had nodded did she turn back to Valyn.
“I am Huutsuu,” she said. “Wohkowi of this family. Do we fight or do we eat?”
“I think I’m in love,” Pyrre said appreciatively. “I hope I don’t have to kill her.”<
br />
Valyn stared at the Urghul. If the lack of guards, the motley weapons, or the two newly dead men on the grass were anything to go by, they were hardly masters of military tactics. On the other hand, the woman showed no fear of her own death, nor any remorse over the bodies before her. She waited, arms spread, for his response.
“We eat,” Valyn said finally. “I regret your … men.”
Huutsuu shrugged. “Men would have killed you. These two…” She waved the bow in their direction. “Fools.”
“Nonetheless,” Valyn said, uncertain how to proceed in the absence of any sort of grief or anger, “we would avoid fighting.”
“Then we eat.” She turned to the children, both of whom were still glaring at Valyn. “Peekwi. Sari. Slap your sister awake and put the pot on the fire. I need my furs.” She turned, ducking back into the api without a word, and abruptly Valyn found himself standing in the center of an Urghul camp in which people went about their early morning routine—pissing behind the api, checking horses, rubbing chilled hands by the fire—as though nothing amiss had occurred, as though half a dozen soldiers hadn’t just dropped out of the sky on a giant bird to murder one of their number. Even the pair disposing of the bodies appeared indifferent to the manner of their death, bickering incomprehensibly as they stripped the few ornaments, tossed aside the weapons, and hauled the corpses into the high grass.
“This makes me nervous,” Talal murmured.
Valyn nodded. “Annick, keep your bow handy.”
“Maybe we got lucky,” Laith said, vaulting off the back of the bird. “Nothing wrong with a little good luck every now and then.”
Valyn allowed himself a moment of hope, then crushed it. “Optimism kills soldiers,” he replied, quoting Hendran.
“Steel in the guts kills soldiers,” the flier countered. “Or steel in the leg,” he added, glancing significantly at Talal. “Or the shoulder.”
The Providence of Fire Page 20