The Last Mortal Bond

by Brian Staveley

  “Identify yourself,” a man demanded as they stepped free of the cramped, jagged passage. He was tall, but thin to the point of emaciation, all bone and tendon and skin. The bare blade he brandished a few feet from Gwenna’s face looked like the only solid thing about him, and from the way he held it—too far out in front of him, too wide of the centerline—Gwenna doubted he had either the skill or the strength to do much with it.

  “It’s us, Colt,” Qora said wearily. “Plus a few new friends.”

  Gwenna shook her head. “Wrong place for a sentry. Anyone who gets this far is already past the choke point. You want him twenty paces back there,” she added, jerking a thumb over her shoulder, “where we had to climb up onto the ledge.”

  Colt’s eyes bulged. He stared at her so long that Gwenna wondered if he was right in the head. When he finally spoke, he didn’t lower his sword. “You don’t know what’s out there. This isn’t just some cave.…”

  “It’s Hull’s Hole,” Gwenna replied, the anger hot and unexpected in her throat, “and the slarn are out there. I know about slarn because I spent the better part of a miserable day killing them. The slarn are more reason to put guards in the right places, not less.”

  “And just who in Hull’s name are you?” a new voice demanded. Gwenna pivoted to face another man, obviously older than Colt—well into his late forties, by the look of him—and bigger, and stronger. He stepped out of a shadowed alcove by the entrance to the cavern, his sword, too, naked in his hand. Unlike Colt, however, he looked like he knew how to use it, like he was willing to. Something about his face—thick black beard, wide-set eyes, heavy bones through the brow and jaw—looked vaguely familiar. If Qora’s timeline was right, he would have still been on Qarsh, still flying missions, when Gwenna herself first arrived on the Islands. Not that any of that mattered now. He stepped in front of Colt as though the other man were no more than a useless chunk of rock.

  Qora moved forward, but he dragged her out of the way with his free hand, shoving her to the floor. “Get the fuck out of the way, you stupid, stupid bitch. You bring people here? Here?” Despite the fury in his voice, he never took his eyes from Gwenna. He reeked of anger and oiled steel. Beyond him, clustered around the fire, stood a couple dozen men and women, some on their feet, some caught resting, plenty of them hefting blades or bows, but hesitantly, as though they’d never considered how to face such a threat. Gwenna glanced at them, then turned her attention back to the bearded man.

  “You must be Hobb. Qora mentioned you.” He was tall, more than a head taller than Gwenna herself. Worth remembering if she had to kill him. “Your sentry’s in the wrong place.”

  “I’ll ask one more time,” the man replied, jaw tight, “and then I’m going to start cutting. Who are you?”

  “Never mind about the sentry, actually,” Gwenna replied. “Qora told us you weren’t the brains of the operation. Where’s Manthe?”

  It was a gamble, but it paid off. Toward the back of the rough chamber, in the shadows to the left of the fire, a woman jerked as though burned by an errant spark. Still so scared after all these years, Gwenna thought bleakly.

  “Manthe,” Gwenna said, looking straight past Hobb, raising her voice slightly. “You’ve got this poor idiot standing in the wrong spot. Take us, for example—we’re already in the cavern. If you wanted to contain us, it’s too late.”

  She hadn’t been sure what to expect from the woman. She’d read accounts of combat shock, knew that it could scramble all reasonable responses, but even the most dire accounts failed to prepare her for the woman’s panicked shouting.

  “Get flatbows on them! Vessik and Larch, flank them, flank them!” Manthe’s voice was high and desperate, about the furthest thing Gwenna could imagine from the standard-issue Kettral calm. And this when confronted with three strangers who hadn’t even bothered to raise weapons.

  The men and women inside the cavern, frozen by their surprise only moments earlier, lurched into motion, drawing blades and flexing bows, some scrambling to back up Hobb, others searching—as though they had just now considered the notion—for a clear line of fire on the intruders. The whole thing was a pathetic mess, but you could get killed easily enough in a mess, especially if one of the fools with a bow decided to start putting wood and steel in the air.

  “Oh, for ’Shael’s sake,” Gwenna said, careful to keep her hands still at her sides. “There are only three of us. Knock it off with the theatrics. Talal…,” she added in a lower voice.

  “On it,” the leach replied quietly.

  “Annick?” Gwenna asked, not bothering to look back.

  “I have Hobb,” the sniper said. Her voice came from a dozen feet up and to Gwenna’s left. Clearly she’d climbed onto some sort of ledge, although when she’d had time to do that, Gwenna had no idea.

  If Hobb was discomfited by the arrow aimed at his chest, it didn’t show in his voice. “Put down the bow,” he snapped. “Look around. You’ve got one shot. I have ten archers flanking you.”

  “Want me to kill him?” Annick asked. Hobb might not have spoken.

  Gwenna shook her head. “No, I don’t want you to kill him. He seems to be the only person here who knows how to hold a sword. We came to make friends with these fuckups, and besides, they’re unarmed.”

  Hobb snorted. “Look, you idiotic bitch—”

  “Talal,” Gwenna said, raising a finger.

  The twang of snapping bowstrings shivered the cool air, followed by the curses of the men and women holding them.

  “You thought you had archers,” she said, keeping her voice even, cheerful. “In fact, what you have is ten men holding curved pieces of wood. Annick, if Hobb moves, kill Manthe. Leave the rest alone. It’s not their fault they’re being led by idiots.”

  “It is their fault,” Annick replied curtly. “They chose to follow them.”

  Gwenna waved away the objection. “As I understand it, the choices were limited.”

  Hobb shifted toward her. Gwenna looked at his blade, then shook her head.

  “I really wouldn’t,” she said. “It’ll take Annick about half a heartbeat to kill your cowering girlfriend. You think you’ve got something to prove, but the only thing you’re going to prove by getting killed and dumped into a side tunnel for the slarn is that you have … had, I should say … terrible judgment.”

  For a few heartbeats she thought she’d misplayed her hand, that despite her warning the big bastard was going to limber up the sword and start swinging. There was no real danger—all that business about Annick wasn’t a bluff—but if they were going to fight Jakob Rallen and his vicious little cabal, if they were going to get off the island with the birds and munitions, they needed these people to help them. The situation was ugly enough already, and a spasm of wholesale slaughter wasn’t going to help.

  After a moment, however, Hobb cursed, slammed the blade back into its sheath, and stepped up close, so close Gwenna could smell the rank fish on his breath.

  “Don’t threaten my wife,” he growled. “Ever.”

  Wife. That was interesting. So Qora had the story straight, at least the important parts. Gwenna held up her hands in a mock surrender. “The only person I want to threaten is Jakob Rallen. Now, maybe we can put away the swords, and the bows, and the big words, and talk to each other about just what in Hull’s holy dark is going on.”

  She gestured toward what seemed to be the center of the cavern. “Where do you sit around here?”

  “Bare rock too hard for you?” Hobb demanded.

  “Usually I bring a cushion,” Gwenna replied, crossing the floor without waiting to see if Talal was following, “but I’ll make an exception.” She kept the words casual, kept her hands relaxed and far from her weapons. She tried to meet the eyes of Hobb’s ragtag soldiers without glaring. It was hard to know, sometimes, if she was glaring.

  The other soldiers were whispering, murmuring their confusion as though the words were prayer. What they were praying for, Gwenna had no id
ea. Probably that she would die before she started hurting people.

  “So. I’m Gwenna…,” she began, lowering herself to the floor. Hobb was still standing, looming over her, really. The rest of the ragged band was scattered around the cavern, but someone had to sit first if they didn’t plan to stand all night long. “This is my Wing. Sorry for the rocky start.”

  “Wing?” Hobb said, narrowing his eyes. “You’re Kettral?”

  “Of course we’re Kettral. You think three friendly dockyard whores just wandered into Hull’s Hole? We’d like to help, if we can all manage not to cut each other to pieces.”

  From the back of the cavern, Manthe burst in, voice ragged with almost-panic. “She still has the bow.”

  Gwenna shook her head. “What?”

  “Your sniper,” the woman insisted. “You said put down the bows and blades and talk, but she’s still holding one, still aiming straight at me!”

  “Oh,” Gwenna said, waving a hand. “I meant everyone else should relax.”

  “What about her?”

  “Annick never relaxes.”

  “Tell her to put down the bow,” Hobb growled.

  “Yeah. She doesn’t do that either.”

  19

  After five long days forcing the horses forward through miserable stands of tamarack and larch, they were still in the forest. Though the world remained unrelentingly dark to Valyn’s scarred eyes, he could feel the cold wind, honed over the mountain stone and bright as ice. It cut through his leathers and the wool beneath. He could smell the snow, and the ancient ice of the glaciers hanging in the high valleys.

  The Eyrie had flown his class of cadets out to the Romsdals once for a two-week exercise in alpine evasion and survival. He’d only been twelve at the time, but he remembered the great gray-black peaks well. Where the Bone Mountains around Ashk’lan were comprised of clean white granite, of rivers cascading over smooth sweeps of stone, the Romsdals were crumbling and dark. Year-round snow capped the highest mountains, but below that white blanket, everything was ankle-twisting scree and shattered schist. The Romsdals felt old, somehow, older than the Bones, heavy with the age and weight of the world. Even when the sun shone, they were cold.

  “How far west have we come?” Valyn asked. He could smell Huutsuu at his side, her sweat and leather, the dried blood on her hands from butchering a pair of rabbits that morning.

  “Far enough,” she replied after a pause. “We are two days’ ride from a river and just beyond that, a city.”

  Valyn studied his mind’s map, a composite of the hundreds he’d memorized during his time on the Islands.

  “Aergad,” he concluded. “It’s in northeastern Nish, near the headwaters of the Haag.”

  He could smell Huutsuu’s indifference. “Stones piled on other stones. People crammed so close they live in the shit of their neighbors. In this, at least, I agree with your leach—such places should be burned.”

  “Balendin is here?” Valyn asked.

  “He will be, either today or another day. He travels with his own guard now, joining the war at many places. The fiercest fighting is here, so he returns here often.”

  “And you’re hoping the Flea will come hunting.”

  Huutsuu hesitated. “Your warrior friends strike in unexpected places, but never in the heart of our force. We will keep to the forests and hope that they find us.”

  It didn’t seem like much of a plan, but he couldn’t think of another. According to Huutsuu, the Urghul had been trying and failing to track the Flea for months. Even in deep snow, he and his Wing seemed able to simply disappear. The woman could hardly expect that adding a blind man to the mix would lead to more success, and Valyn had kept quiet about his hearing, about the fact that he could smell anything—a fox, a man, a bear—more than a mile distant. Maybe he could track the Kettral Wing if he got close enough, and maybe he couldn’t, but he wasn’t about to reveal that secret to Huutsuu.

  “We ride south,” Huutsuu responded after a pause. “Slowly. He hides, this friend of yours, in the deep forest. He looks for bands like this. If we present a target, he will come.”

  “The problem,” Valyn observed, “is that he might cut all of our throats before you can tell him you’ve switched sides.”

  Huutsuu was silent for a while. “We are not cattle,” she said finally. “Unlike your Annurians, we are not beasts who wait patiently for the carving.”

  Valyn felt the darkness twist, then tense inside him. The memory of slaughtered loggers and trappers filled his mind, of men and women screaming as the Urghul held them down, cut them open. He dropped a hand to the head of an ax; the pitted steel was cool against his burning skin.

  “They are people,” he growled. “Not beasts.”

  Huutsuu snorted. “They are weak. We are not. When this Flea comes, we will be ready.”

  “Ready?” Valyn demanded. He could hear the rage in his own voice, but made no effort to harness it. “If you think because you bore three kids and can ride all day on a horse that you’re ready for the Flea, you’re a fool.” He could hear the horsemen turning in their saddles to look at him. He smiled grimly, then raised his voice. “Which doesn’t say much for these assholes following you.”

  None beside Huutsuu seemed to speak Valyn’s language, but they understood a challenge well enough. They could translate the mockery if not the words. The horses, sensing the anger and confusion of their riders, shifted warily. Hooves ground against broken stone.

  “I made peace with you,” Huutsuu said, “to fight against this leach.”

  “You made peace with me,” Valyn spat back, “because you thought I was a weapon. Well, let’s find out.” The blood slammed in his temples, in his ears, a roaring fire. He set a hand on the head of the other ax. “Who wants to find out? Anyone?” He hurled the words like stones into the jagged silence.

  “Have a care,” Huutsuu’s voice was hard. “These warriors follow me, but it sits ill with them to ride alongside an Annurian.”

  “You’re telling me you can’t keep your people under control?”

  “Control.” She spat the word, as though it tasted bitter. “It is a thing for emperors and the sheep they keep penned. The Urghul are a free people.”

  “I’ve seen what that freedom looks like. I’ve seen the scars it leaves.”

  “It is a meager freedom that leaves no scars.”

  * * *

  They made camp just before nightfall. On the steppe, the Urghul had been happy to ride in the darkness, but the ground of the northern forests was studded with stones and broken by twisting roots—dangerous ground, even for the small, sure-footed horses. The horsemen had gathered wood for a fire.

  The faint heat was tempting, especially as the night’s chill settled into Valyn’s bones, but he didn’t care to spend the night surrounded by Urghul. No one had tried to kill him yet, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. Maybe they agreed with Huutsuu’s decision to find the Flea. Maybe not. He might have a better idea if he could understand their language, but he couldn’t, and he didn’t. He picked out a flat patch of ground fist-deep in brown needles, a narrow space wedged between two huge boulders. He explored it with his hands, then, satisfied that the only approach was from the south, settled in, his back to the stone. It was cold, but he was used to cold.

  For a while he kept his eyes open, staring into the endless void of his blindness. The wind howled between the boulders, kicking up grit and tearing at the ratty leathers the Urghul had given to him. If he listened long enough, there seemed to be voices on that wind, screaming their warnings and their torments, maddened, just beyond the verge of syllables and sense. Only the wind, he told himself. Just the icy fucking wind. It kept tearing at him, however, indifferent to his wall of words, and after a while he gave up, opened his mind to the wind’s wailing.

  The people of Andt-Kyl had screamed like that, screamed as they fought and died, as Valyn crouched atop the signal tower, waiting, watching, and doing nothing. Over at the campfi
re, the Urghul were burning strips of rabbit, but the cooking reminded Valyn of the reek of human flesh, men and women charred to ash in fires they could not escape. Despite the night’s cold claws scratching at his flesh, he was sweating, the ragged wool beneath his leathers—the last remnant of his Kettral blacks—soaked through.

  Most nights it was like this. Plenty of days, too. Memory came with the darkness, horror with the memory, and he could never leave that darkness. Eventually, maybe halfway through the night, his body would shudder its way still and he would sleep, mind racked past endurance, the sudden unconsciousness violent as a breakage.

  I fixed something, he told himself, remembering the child who bore his name, terrified but brave, demanding to go back to save his family. I made that one thing right.

  The words did him no good. His body continued to tremble, his mind to turn in the same ruts like a rusted wheel. The Kettral had taught him to break out of a dozen types of fortress, but they’d said nothing about escaping from his own mind.

  For a long time he sat there, trembling with memory; so long it was almost a relief to hear Huutsuu approaching through the darkness, her footfalls rough in carcasses of leaves and needles, her breathing a warm echo of the great wind all around them.

  She paused a few paces from where he sat, watching him, probably. It was well past dark, but Valyn had long ago lost track of the phases of the moon. Perhaps it was hanging up there somewhere, bright as milk, lighting the stones around him.

  “What is wrong with you?” she asked finally.

  He’d stopped shaking, some part of his mind or body recognizing the threat, readying the flesh to deal with it. Rather than let the woman stand over him, he rose to his feet, settling a hand on the pommel of his knife. The weight of the twin, short-handled axes hanging from his belt was solid, real, a reassuring ballast that kept him from drifting off into his own darkness.

  “Which part?” he replied.