The Providence of Fire

by Brian Staveley

  The riders of the horses, two taabe, two ksaabe, nudged their mounts forward, slowly, slowly. As the ropes drew taut around his wrists and ankles, Pikker John’s body rose into the air, and an awful, guttural moan escaped his lips. The Urghul had fallen utterly silent. Balendin, however, began to chant something incomprehensible in Urghul. Where the bastard had learned the words, she had no idea, but the thousands of horsemen seemed mesmerized by the spectacle. Gwenna could hear the horses’ hooves striking the ground, the strain of the ropes as they pulled.

  “Watch!” she shouted again, her heart slamming away at her ribs. “You want to know who the Urghul are? This is who they are.”

  The chanting on the far bank quickened, then quickened further, keeping pace with Gwenna’s pulse. The other Urghul joined in, and it grew louder. Pikker John screamed, an awful, animal sound, and with his scream, the riders lashed their horses, crops rising and falling over and over, the body suspended between them writhing, his mouth a gaping howl lost on the storm of Urghul voices. In the midst of the chaos, Annick stepped up beside Gwenna, leaning in to whisper in her ear.

  “I can stop it. One arrow.”

  Gwenna hesitated, watching the horses strain, watching John’s body as it twisted and writhed. “No,” she said, swallowing the bile that came with the word. “They need to see this.”

  The sniper turned those hard blue eyes on her.

  “They’re not soldiers. It’s terrifying them.”

  “They need to be terrified,” Gwenna hissed. “If we lose, if the Urghul take the town, this is waiting for all of them, and you won’t be there to end it with an arrow.” She turned away before Annick could argue with her further, vaulted atop the highest log in the barricade.

  “This is what is coming,” she shouted at the crouching townsmen. “It is not a raid. It is not a skirmish. It is the entire Urghul nation, and if we don’t hold them here, they will offer up everyone you know to Meshkent just like they’re doing with Pikker John over there. This is what they do. This is how they worship. This is who they are. So pay fucking attention!”

  She wasn’t sure anyone could hear her over the commotion on the far bank, but the message seemed to get through. One man just at her feet was retching into the mud, but most of the small force straightened up, staring at the horror unfolding in what had, until that morning, been a part of their home.

  Pikker John must have been made of gristle and bone. Even after he lost the strength to scream, his body held together. Even when the shoulders popped from their sockets and the joints went horribly loose, the ligaments held. For what seemed like hours, the horses pulled on him, pulled, and pawed at the dirt, and snorted, and pulled some more, until all at once, with an awful lurch, an arm tore away. The Urghul shrieked in a kind of collective ecstasy as the one rider galloped down the bank, pumping his fist in the air as that grisly tail bumped along behind him.

  The other riders eased off their horses, allowing what was left of Pikker John to settle back to earth, where, amazingly, he writhed until his life drained out of him with his blood. The Urghul unhitched him, dragged the corpse to the river, and tossed it in. Balendin raised his eyes, looking first at the prisoners cowering behind him, then across the river at Gwenna once more.

  It’s over, she told herself. They killed one old man, but they’re still on their side of the river.

  But it was more than one old man. As she watched, a woman, probably someone from the outlying hamlets to the northeast, was dragged pleading toward the riverbank. The sacrifices were just getting started, and with each one, the leach’s power, sucked from the terror of his captives, would grow.

  * * *

  By the end of the second day, the Urghul had torn apart dozens more people, those poor, miserable souls who lived between Andt-Kyl and the Black, who had had no warning of the approaching army. The far bank was muddy with blood, while the bloated corpses dotted the river mouth, tangling in the roots and rushes where the current slowed. The Urghul killed, and killed, and killed, but they had made no effort to cross.

  That made Gwenna nervous.

  Around noon on the second day, she’d thought they were starting a push. A few dozen taabe and ksaabe had tossed some tree trunks into the river, watching them float down toward the old bridge pilings where they tangled between the posts. It wasn’t much, four or five logs, enough that some brave, stupid shithead might sneak across, but certainly not enough for a full-fledged attack. The Urghul stared at them for a while, as though expecting the bridge to grow itself, then went back to killing people. It was like they didn’t even care about getting to the town.

  “What the fuck are they doing?” Gwenna demanded, biting her lip as she looked across the small table at Pyrre and Annick. After a day at the barricades, she’d had Bridger set up a command post inside one of the most easterly of the buildings, where she could still get to the river fast, but where she could discuss strategy with Annick, Pyrre, and Bridger out of earshot of the townspeople. It was good protocol, insulating the troops from the decision-making process, but mostly Gwenna just didn’t want the people of Andt-Kyl to hear how little their commanders actually knew.

  “Long Fist has to be aware that the Army of the North will get here eventually. Every day the bastard waits is a risk.”

  “We haven’t seen Long Fist,” Annick pointed out. “We don’t know he’s with his army.”

  “Where else would he be?” Gwenna demanded.

  Pyrre pursed her lips. “Off in the forest, perhaps. Torturing small woodland creatures.”

  Gwenna ignored her, rounding on Bridger. “Are you sure there’s not another way to cross? Somewhere to the north?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been all through that territory logging. In the winter, when the bogs are frozen, you could maybe move across, but now you’d be weeks trying to get through even on foot, let alone with horses. The firs grow so thick on some of the high ground that you have to squeeze between the trunks, and the swamps’ll swallow you right up.”

  “And there are no other towns?” she asked. “No bridges?”

  “Nothing but the log camps, and they don’t have any need for bridges. Unless those horses can balance on rolling tree trunks floating downriver, there’s nothing to help him in the north.”

  “I wonder what became of your short, bellicose friend and his large bird,” Pyrre mused. “Maybe he got to Long Fist after all. Maybe they’re all just milling on the far bank because they have no idea what else to do.”

  It was a tempting explanation, but after a long pause, Gwenna shook her head. “Doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If the Flea carried out the hit, he’d be back by now. And if Long Fist were really dead, wouldn’t the Urghul tear each other apart? Even Balendin wouldn’t be able to hold them without the shaman’s power backing him.”

  “Just trying to be optimistic,” the assassin said with a shrug. “Bridger, do you have any more beer?” She gestured to the tankard in front of her. “Sitting on one’s ass watching men and women get rent limb from limb tends to lead to a thirst.”

  Gwenna started to respond, but an urgent chorus of shouts from just outside cut her off. She was out the door in three steps, scanning the far bank, the near bank, the lake, hunting for the attack that she’d missed. The townspeople were pointing upriver, but, in the growing gloom, she couldn’t make out much. Certainly there was no Urghul assault.

  “Oh sweet Ciena,” Bridger swore, horror in his voice as he followed her eyes. “The drive.”

  “The drive?” Gwenna demanded. “What’s the drive?”

  “The log drive,” he said, pointing to the dark shapes bobbing just above the surface of the river, so thick on the water Gwenna hadn’t noticed them, a loose raft of shifting logs jostling one another as they floated south with the current.

  “They can’t cross on those, can they?” Gwenna asked.

  “Not there,” he said. “Not on horses. But that’s not the problem.”

  Gwenna scanned down the
river, then stopped at the old bridge pilings, fear punching her in the chest.

  “There,” she breathed.

  He nodded grimly. “That’s why they tossed in the first logs. They’re going to make a dam.”

  “How many of those are there?” Gwenna asked, gesturing upstream.

  “Enough to clog the whole north end of the lake. Enough for a dozen bridges, if they get hung up.”

  “Why would they get hung up? Don’t you drive the logs through those pilings every year?”

  Bridger nodded bleakly. “But we usually have men and women on the bridge with poles to make sure they don’t get stuck. To break up a jam before it starts. Now…” He gestured helplessly. “There’s no bridge.”

  “How long?” she asked, but even as she watched it was happening, the logs bumping up against the others the Urghul had floated in place. A few nosed over, forced on by the press behind. Others spun with the current, then ducked beneath the surface, driven down and replaced by still others. There seemed no end to the logs. As far north as Gwenna could see the river was packed with them. And there was no way to stop the river.

  “Those,” Pyrre said, raising her eyebrows, “are going to be a problem.”

  “They’ll fill the whole river,” Gwenna said, the horror mounting inside her. They would fill the river, and then the Urghul would cross. That was what they’d been waiting for.

  “The other channels,” Bridger said. “We’ve got to divert the logs down the other two channels, the ones that aren’t blocked.”

  Gwenna stared at the mass of logs, the sheer, unstoppable tonnage. “And how in Hull’s name do we do that?”

  “We have to…” He shook his head. “I can’t explain. I have to go! Miller!” he bellowed. “Franch!” Two men from the line of archers turned. “Two drive crews. Get ’em up, get ’em going. Now!”

  “We need poles and dogs!”

  “Then get them!” Bridger shouted. “Get them, and get to North Island.”

  “Well,” Pyrre observed as the logger sprinted away, “he certainly seems excited.”

  It was a shocking transformation. Bridger had been nothing but deference since the Flea killed the two head men in the town square, asking questions and jumping to do as he was ordered. Now that he had a task that he understood, however, all hesitation vanished. The problem was, the drive crews were pulling men and women from the line; the toughest men and women, by the look of it, and this while the Urghul were riding out of the trees on the far bank, shrieking and bellowing, horses pawing at the ground as the logs piled up. One ksaabe, a good bit bolder than she was smart, kicked her horse into a charge. It was an ill-fated attack; her horse bogged in the mud, buried to her knees in the soft silt. Screaming, the young woman leapt from the beast’s back, charged laboriously through the rest of the silt, then tried to run across the logs. Gwenna watched as a trunk shifted beneath her. She teetered for a moment, then disappeared, the weight of wood shifting closed before the splash had even subsided.

  “They can’t cross yet,” Annick observed.

  “They will,” Gwenna replied grimly. Whatever Bridger managed above the fork, there were enough logs already in the east channel to form a dam once the current packed them in densely enough. It would be a treacherous crossing, to be sure. Logs would shift, and Urghul would die, but they were coming.

  The line of archers, so pathetic to begin with, looked like a group of slack-mouthed farmers shown up from the countryside for the village fair, except they were about to be shooting at people instead of straw butts, and if they missed, they died. A few of them were glancing over their shoulders, as though thinking of running. Gwenna had been gnawing the inside of her mouth so viciously that it had started to bleed. She spat the coppery blood out into the mud, and tried to think. Great generals could win impossible battles, but she wasn’t a great general. She was barely Kettral, and a declared traitor at that.

  “Are you contemplating the beauty of the northern forest at dusk?” Pyrre asked.

  “I’m thinking, you miserable bitch,” Gwenna snarled, fury at her own impotence spilling over toward the Skullsworn. The woman had done nothing since they arrived but drink beer and make her mocking little cracks. “Why did you even come here?”

  Pyrre took a contemplative pull on her tankard before responding. “You may recall that the choice was this or a quick, inglorious death among the pines.”

  “Well, this goat fuck is shaping up to be pretty quick, inglorious, and deadly, too,” Gwenna said. The Flea had left her the command, and now everyone from Andt-Kyl looked likely to die. Worse, instead of figuring out a way to stop it, here she was trading barbs with a woman who actually relished slaughter, who would look with joy on the deaths of children, men, and women, a whole town full of folk who, until two days earlier, couldn’t imagine that war’s hammer was about to descend upon them. “You should have saved yourself the trip,” Gwenna spat. “You and me both.”

  “On the contrary,” Pyrre said. “Here, I have the comforts of human society as I face my god. The bond of a sisterhood in arms.”

  “Bugger your fucking sisterhood.”

  Pyrre frowned speculatively. “I was picturing a different type of sisterhood.”

  She started to raise the tankard to her lips once more, and then Gwenna’s knife was out, stabbing toward the Skullsworn’s throat in pure, unpremeditated fury. There were plenty of little knife fights back on the Islands, cadets and vets settling scores by squaring off and fighting to the first blood. This wasn’t that. Gwenna put her whole weight behind the thrust, pivoting with the blow, twisting her wrist to feather the blade as it sunk into the flesh … only there was no flesh to find. The blade clattered against something, and Gwenna’s wrist jammed with the impact. She tried to slice sideways, but the Skullsworn had caught the knife inside her tankard. Gwenna yanked it back, trying to pull it free, and Pyrre stepped into the open space, hammering up with the heel of her hand, slamming Gwenna’s mouth shut so hard that her teeth throbbed and her neck snapped back as she tumbled to the mud.

  The whole thing had taken less than a heartbeat. Most of the loggers hadn’t even noticed, and by the time they looked over, Pyrre was extending a hand to Gwenna, her smile broad, her eyes hard.

  “Careful, sir,” she said, echoing Bridger’s deference. “The footing through here is treacherous.”

  Gwenna glanced over at the curious archers, shackled her pride, and took the woman’s hand. Pyrre’s grip might have been hammered from steel. When she yanked Gwenna to her feet, she pulled her close enough to murmur in her ear.

  “I came here to kill Urghul, which means that, in theory, we are on the same side.” She paused, allowed Gwenna to regain her footing and pull back. “Am I wrong?” she asked, voice sickeningly mild.

  “No,” Gwenna growled. “You’re not wrong.”

  “Excellent!” She smiled. “The thing is, I’m good with the killing, but not all that great when it comes to the tedium of tactics and strategy, so maybe you could”—she waved a hand toward the logs piling up in the river—“think through all that sort of thing. In the meantime,” she held the empty tankard aloft, “I seem to have spilled my beer.”

  Gwenna ground her teeth as the woman turned back toward the houses, tried to ignore the blood hammering at her temples, tried to figure out how to get the fewest people killed. It was tempting to pull everyone back to West Island, maybe as far as the West Bank, and then to destroy the bridges behind them. That would put a little more space between the people of Andt-Kyl and the Urghul, plus two more channels of flowing water. The trouble was, she’d already tried that trick once, and Long Fist had anticipated it. She could give ground, then find herself on the far bank facing the same army without even the semblance of a defensive position. At least here the Urghul would have to pick their way slowly across the shifting and uneven dam, and while they were picking, the loggers could be shooting.

  Gwenna looked over the crew, trying to see something different, something t
hat might give her hope. She cursed the Flea again for putting her in charge. She wasn’t a general. She was a demo master. She’d trained to blow things up, not to lead people, she—

  “Oh, Holy Hull,” she breathed, staring at the dam. “Oh fuck.”

  She tried to run through a dozen calculations at the same time—weight, force, flow, distance, density—and failed. It was impossible to say how deep the dam went, how tangled the logs were, what it would take to dislodge them, but it was suddenly, perfectly clear what she had to do.

  “Annick,” she said, turning to the sniper. “Hold them here.”

  The sniper blinked. “Where are you going?”

  Gwenna waved at the bridge. “I’m going to blow it.”

  “They’ll fill you with arrows before you get halfway across, and a starshatter on the surface…” She shook her head. “It won’t work.”

  “I’m not going across,” Gwenna said. “I’m going under.”

  She had the faint satisfaction of seeing Annick’s eyes widen a fraction. She waited for the sniper to tell her it was insane, impossible, that the water was too cold, the dam too wide, the explosives inadequate to the task. Instead the sniper just nodded. Not that that should have been surprising.

  Gwenna took a deep breath, then turned away from the barricades. She was going to die, that much seemed clear, but this kind of mission, at least, she understood.

  “If you don’t see anything by full dark,” she said, “it didn’t work.”

  The sniper nodded again. Then, as Gwenna grabbed her pack of munitions, Annick extended a hand. For just a moment she looked small, girl-like, confused.

  “Good luck, Gwenna,” she said quietly.

  Gwenna wasn’t sure whether to cry or shit herself.

  * * *

  By the time she got to North Island, the Urghul were already trying to cross back at the logjam. She couldn’t make out much more than the shapes of men, women, and horses in the distance and thickening dark, but it looked as though Annick was holding them, Annick along with the mud flats on either side of the channel and the precarious nature of the dam itself. Still, the Urghul had the numbers. Sooner or later a group would reach the near bank, and then it would be villagers and their wood axes against mounted horsemen with spears. Gwenna tried not to think about that.