The Last Mortal Bond

by Brian Staveley

  And so the Urghul did not scheme or build siege engines. For four days they came at the wall, bathed it in their screams and their blood, and for four days the wall held. The Flea’s orders to Valyn, Newt, and Sigrid were simple: Go where the shit’s worst. When the men start to break, don’t let them.

  It seemed like a ludicrous command, so reductive it was almost glib. As the battle raged on, however, as the Urghul threw themselves howling at the wall over and over and over, Valyn started to see the wisdom in it. The Kettral spent years studying tactics back on the Islands, poring over hundreds of battles from dozens of wars, learning the intricate dance of advance and retreat. Victory, those lessons seemed to say, was something hammered out in a general’s head, a matter of maps and strategies.

  Not here.

  Atop the wall, any attempt at convoluted tactics could only obscure a series of simple, brutal truths: the wall was all that stood between the Urghul and the south. If the wall fell, the Urghul won. The wall could not fall.

  “Go where the shit’s worst,” Valyn muttered to himself on the morning of the first day, chopped his way through two Urghul who had managed to get their feet beneath them. He buried an ax in the first, shoved the body into the second, then smashed them both back over the wall with his second ax.

  Go where the shit’s worst. When the men start to break, don’t let them.

  The first half of the orders were easy. The second, less so. All Valyn’s training had been in small-team tactics, teams built of meticulously trained specialists. He had no doubt that the legionaries beside him on the wall were excellent at marching, at holding a formation, at stabbing with their spears and hacking over and over with their swords, but they were hardly Kettral. Valyn could smell the terror on them, ranker and thicker each time the Urghul came. Each time the riders attacked, a few more gained the walkway. Three or four, the men could throw back. More than that, and there would be panic.

  All that first morning, Valyn searched in vain for something to say to the soldiers, a few words that might make a crucial difference. The history books were filled with noble exhortations from commanders, but Valyn had no exhortations. He’d told the truth when the legionaries first arrived: they were dead men, all of them—either that day, or the next, or the one following. There was no escaping the Urghul army, no way to hold the wall forever. Sooner or later, the riders would break through, and then Ananshael would wade among them, unmaking men and women alike, his fingers, terribly nimble, unbinding the tangled knots that were their lives.

  The best that Valyn could do was to keep the men grounded in the fight. Rather than giving them time to think about what had to happen in an hour or a day, Valyn hurled the brute fact of the battle over and over again in their faces. Midway through the day, while the sun burned through the clouds overhead, Brynt took an arrow to the shoulder. It wasn’t a killing wound, at least not right away, but it would have hurt, and the man collapsed to the battlements, pale face even more blanched with the pain.

  Valyn had knelt beside the soldier for a moment, exploring the wound. Then he took the arrow in both hands, broke it off, slapped the man when he began to faint, then dragged the jagged shaft through the wound.

  Brynt screamed. Blood flowed, hot and quick. The legionaries near them turned to stare, eyes wide, fear boiling off them. Brynt was a distraction, that was clear enough, and there was no room for a distraction. With a curse, Valyn hauled the man back to his feet, stabbed a finger at the mass of horsemen as they wheeled.

  “There,” Valyn bellowed, choosing one of the Urghul archers at random, a woman with fire-gold hair streaming out behind her. “Kill her. She’s the one who shot you, so fucking kill her.”

  For a moment, he thought the young soldier was too lost in his pain and panic to understand. Then Brynt pulled free of his grip. He wobbled for a moment, leaning against the ramparts, then steadied himself, raising his spear with his good arm. When the woman galloped within range, he bellowed and let the shaft fly. It lagged her slightly, burying itself in the horse’s flank, but that was good enough. The poor beast bellowed, buckled, and went down, throwing the woman, then crushing her. Brynt didn’t have his spear anymore, but each wave of Urghul brought fresh weapons, and more importantly, Brynt was standing again, shouting, ignoring the blood on his shoulder, bellowing taunts at the riders below. And just like that, the men around him, soldiers close to buckling moments before, were yelling too.

  They made it through the afternoon that way, and another day, and another, Valyn choosing targets, the men focusing their fear and rage on one particular face, fighting a single foe at a time. Valyn lost himself so thoroughly in the battle, in the rhythm of attack, hold, and regroup, that when twilight finally crept into the sky on that fourth day, he almost didn’t notice. One moment the Urghul were hurling themselves at the wall, dying by the dozen, and the next they were pulling back. The thunder of hooves, the clash of steel against stone, the thousand-voiced chorus of battle—it was gone, replaced by the whimpers and sobs of the dying, the breathless, desperate gasps of those left alive atop the wall.

  Valyn glanced west to where the sun had set beneath the low Nishan hills. Already, night was lowering over the old fort like an iron bowl. The soldiers’ pupils dilated in the growing gloom. They moved over the bloody walkway atop the wall more hesitantly, uncertain of their fading footing.

  “Sir?” someone asked.

  Valyn turned to find Brynt facing him. The legionary’s shoulder wound was wrapped in a rough bandage. Somehow he’d made it through four days of fighting with just one hand.

  “What is it?” Valyn asked.

  “The Urghul,” Brynt replied, gesturing over the lip of the wall.

  Valyn didn’t bother to look. Today, as on every other day, there would be hundreds of Urghul dead, and among them, the wounded. The riders never made an effort to come for them. According to Huutsuu, this, too, was their way, their sacrifice to Kwihna. Even now, Valyn could hear the living crawling, limping, scrabbling across the churned-up no-man’s-land between the wall and the Urghul camp. Those who managed to drag themselves back to the roaring fires would be honored with song and dance. Those who didn’t … would not.

  “The wounded…,” Brynt said, gesturing wordlessly over the wall.

  Valyn turned back to the soldier. “What about them?”

  The young man stared at him. “I don’t know. It’s just … shouldn’t we do something? Put arrows in them … or send someone out with an ax.…”

  Valyn shook his head. “Leave them. This is what they chose, and we have our own to care for.”

  Few enough, as it turned out—barely twenty, when you counted Huutsuu’s surviving Urghul and the Flea’s Kettral. There was a makeshift infirmary set up in the shadow of the wall, little more than a scrap of canvas to keep off the worst of the wind and cold. Each night, Valyn and the other Kettral labored by the shifting light of two lanterns to stitch the gashes that could be stitched, to scrub, then cauterize the wounds. They weren’t trying to save anyone. That wasn’t the point. The point was to find a way to keep each man who had survived the day’s madness on the wall for another day, to keep the dying, for just a little longer, from joining the dead.

  That night, when they were finished, the Flea beckoned to Valyn. The legionaries, exhausted from the vicious battle, had mostly collapsed at their posts atop the wall, each man falling into his own stunned sleep. Later, woken by hunger or pain, they would rise, cook the last of their remaining rations over low fires, stare silently into the blaze or exchange the day’s grim tales. For now, however, they slept.

  “Inside the fort,” the Wing leader murmured, gesturing.

  Valyn raised his brows.

  “We need to talk about the next steps.”

  No one had bothered to light a lantern inside the stone chamber at the heart of Mierten’s Fort; the wan starlight lancing through the crumbling roof was more than enough for Kettral eyes. Valyn glanced over his companions as he entered. None o
f them had escaped the battle unscathed. The Flea’s right eye was almost swollen shut, Newt had acquired a limp, and an Urghul sword had taken off the two smallest fingers on Sigrid’s left hand. The bandage seeped blood, but the woman ignored it. For the first time Valyn remembered, she didn’t smell of delicate perfume. Her blacks were filthy and wrinkled. Like the rest of them, she reeked of blood.

  “Just us?” Valyn asked, glancing over his shoulder toward the door.

  “Just us,” the Flea agreed. “Kettral business.”

  “I’m not sure I’m Kettral anymore.”

  “Neither am I,” the Flea agreed, “but you might be important in what has to happen next.” He looked around the room, studying each of them in turn. “We can’t hold another day. We don’t have the soldiers left. Tomorrow, probably well before noon, the Urghul will take the wall and the fight will be over.”

  Newt pursed his lips. “No man can stand against the tide. So what do you want to do?”

  To Valyn’s surprise, the Flea laughed. “What I want to do is to take off these ’Shael-spawned boots, dig up a barrel of ale, sit down somewhere with a view of the river, drink ’til I’m numb, then fall asleep for a week.”

  The admission seemed uncharacteristic, but Newt chortled, and even Sigrid’s lips twitched incrementally upward. It was more spasm than smile, gone before it began.

  “Wrong question,” Newt agreed, still grinning. “What I meant was, ‘What are we going to do?’”

  “Ah,” the Flea said, scrubbing his face with a hand. “That. That’s less pleasant.”

  Sigrid licked her chapped lips, then hacked out a series of mangled syllables.

  “My lovely and talented companion,” the Aphorist began, “points out that this is as good as any other place to die.”

  The Flea shook his head slowly. “I disagree. For one thing, it’s dark and cold and we’re out of food. More importantly, we can still do some good if we survive.”

  Valyn stared. “You want to abandon them.”

  “As I said,” the Wing leader replied, meeting his gaze, “what I want doesn’t really come into it.”

  “When?” Newt asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tonight is better,” the Aphorist pointed out. He seemed to have no qualms about leaving behind the men beside whom they had fought so desperately and for so long. “A lot more hours to get out, get clear.”

  The Flea nodded. “I thought about that. I’m still hoping, though, that Balendin shows himself one final time. We stay until the last moment, and then we bolt.”

  Sigrid laughed, then shook her head.

  “As the lady points out,” Newt said, “we are well past our best running.”

  “We’re not running,” the Flea said. He nodded west, toward where the river’s roar echoed between the banks. “We stay here, we fight, we hope for one more shot at Balendin. If we don’t get it, we swim.”

  The Aphorist raised his bushy brows. “With that current? I believe the word you’re searching for isn’t swim. It is drown.”

  The Flea shrugged. “Maybe. I scouted it last night. I give us even odds.” He turned to Valyn. “That’s why you’re here.”

  Valyn shook his head slowly. “I haven’t swam in better than a year.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You’re half our age, almost uninjured, and stronger than anyone I’ve seen. I might ride out the current and get free. You definitely will.”

  Unbidden, the thought of Huutsuu filled Valyn’s mind. She was probably asleep atop the wall somewhere, or curled up in the lee of the wall. The Annurian way of war, she would call it. Escaping just when the struggle peaked.

  “I won’t go,” he said.

  The Flea just watched him for a long time. “You think it’s bravery to die here on this wall.”

  “I think we owe it to the men.”

  “What about them?” the Flea asked, jerking a thumb to the south.

  Valyn narrowed his eyes. “Who?”

  “Everyone else. The kids. The farmers in their fields. The grandfathers sitting on porches. What do you owe them?”

  Valyn gritted his teeth.

  “Dying is easy,” the Flea said. The words were hard, but his voice was gentle. “When the time comes, we’ll do it. It’s just not time.”

  “It is for those poor bastards standing on the wall tomorrow.”

  The Flea nodded. “Yes. For those poor bastards, it is almost time.”

  * * *

  Chilten, a sword.

  Jal, an ax.

  Yemmer, who fought with two swords, another sword.

  Sander, a spear.

  Fent, an arrow to the throat.

  Dumb Tom, an arrow to the gut.

  Ho Chan, who killed the rats, a spear in the eye.

  Belton, four arrows before he dropped.

  Brynt, a spear, and Ariq, a spear.

  Kel, a fall from the wall’s top, then hooves.

  Gruin the Brick, who knew so many poems by heart, a slender Urghul knife.

  These were the ways they would die the next day while Valyn and the others slipped silently away, making for the river while there was still time.

  51

  Adare had just risen to descend from the Unhewn Throne when the soldiers marched into the Hall of a Thousand Trees. There were dozens of them, then scores, then hundreds, so many that they forced back the assembled bureaucrats and courtiers, herding them into the empty space beside the throne through the sheer weight and volume of their presence. Their uniforms were clean but threadbare, ripped and restitched a dozen times over, their armor dented from blows no amount of polish could ever scrub away. Most carried spears; every twentieth man held the insignia of the Annurian legions on a long staff.

  None of the men brandished their weapons. They entered in silence, assembled in neat ranks, and then just stood there, spear butts planted on the stone floor, all eyes fixed rigidly forward. There was no shouting. There were no threats. There was no violence or spilled blood. The whole display was so orderly that they might have come at Adare’s own command. There was just one problem: she had issued no such command.

  The last Adare had heard, the Army of the North was still in Aergad. That was the report from Ulli and Jia Chem. According to the messengers, the legions were supposed to be holed up in the old stone city, holding a ruined bridge while the Urghul rode south unopposed. To find them here, now, in Annur itself, should have been as much a relief as it was a shock. More than anything, Adare needed bodies for the walls, experienced soldiers rather than Kegellen’s loose knots of killers and thieves. An army of trained legions, veterans blooded in the furious northern battles, men who understood the Urghul and how to fight them—it was something close to the miracle for which she had prayed each night. And yet, when she stared out over those rigidly assembled ranks, she felt her heart go cold.

  This is wrong, a small voice whispered. Dangerous.

  She half reached up to pat the lacquered wooden pins holding up her hair—gifts from Kegellen—then forced her hand back down. The hairpins were poisoned, but Adare wasn’t about to kill an entire Annurian legion with a pair of hairpins. Slowly, warily, she settled back into her seat atop the throne.

  She’d been sitting atop the ’Kent-kissing thing all morning, trying to hold together the fundamental governance of the city while other people—Lehav, Nira, and Kegellen, mostly—made final preparations for the coming battle. It was amazing how even in the face of invasion the most basic functions of Annur still needed tending. There was trash to clear out and grain to distribute, docking disputes to resolve, and foreign emissaries to placate. Most of it was handled by an army of ministers, bureaucrats, and scribes, of course, but all of those men—and they were mostly men—turned to Adare to solve the difficult questions, and so, as the city readied for war, she had spent half the morning adjudicating idiotic disputes. It didn’t feel heroic. It didn’t even feel useful, but any one of the small crises, untended, could erupt into its own conflagration, and they a
lready had plenty of conflagrations.

  And this unexpected army, Adare wondered, studying the troops below. Is it water to stop the burning, or another fire?

  At the base of the throne, the crowded ministers shifted nervously, then began to whisper. The fact that the legions had entered the palace unannounced, with no forewarning, suggested that they had marched straight into, then through the city. The fact that they had entered the palace at all meant that the guards on the gates had been sufficiently impressed or cowed to allow their passage. Meant that someone had cowed them.

  “Who commands here?” Adare asked, heart thundering against her ribs. She ran her eyes along the line of soldiers, searching for the kenarang, for il Tornja, for the man who had taken her son. It was the only answer: he hadn’t disappeared, he had been leading his legions south, sneaking past the Urghul, arriving in Annur just in time to reinforce the walls. “Where is il Tornja?” she demanded.

  Instead of il Tornja, however, another soldier stepped forward. “The kenarang is fighting on another front, Your Radiance,” he said. “The command is mine. I am General Van.” He saluted. Saluted, but did not kneel.

  Adare narrowed her eyes, studying this unknown commander. He was middle-aged and weather worn, tall, taller than her, though he seemed to slouch strangely to one side. His leg, she realized after a moment. Instead of a boot, instead of a foot, his right leg ended in a bright steel point. Whether he lost the foot in the northern campaign or much earlier, she had no way to tell. It seemed impossible he should have marched all the way from Aergad on that steel spike, but then, it seemed impossible that any of them could have made the trek on foot faster than the mounted Urghul.

  “Where did you come from, General?” Adare asked carefully. “We were led to believe that the Army of the North had taken up the defense of Aergad.”

  He shook his head. “A ruse, Your Radiance. We were moving south almost as soon as we had crossed the Haag.”

  “Still, to cover so much ground so quickly…” She shook her head. “The legionary messengers arrived only days ago, and they were on horseback nearly the whole time.”