Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne 02 - The Providence of Fire:

by Brian Staveley

  He’d charted a course just north of the White River, close enough that they could often see the frothing surface; distant enough that they wouldn’t run smack into any Urghul watering their horses. There had been some discussion of going south. The fastest route back to Annur would be to ride hard for the Bend, then take a ship for the capital. It was also the most obvious way. If the Eyrie had any hint that Valyn was still alive, they’d have someone watching the docks, watching the walls, watching the whole ’Kent-kissing city. Riding overland to the west was less risky. Less risky, but much, much longer.

  The steppe stretched all the way to the horizon, a great green sea with hills like swells. Aside from the occasional limestone outcrop or stand of stunted trees, there were no landmarks, no mountains or forests, just massive emptiness spread beneath the bowl of the sky. Even the streams looked the same—narrow, low-banked, stony brooks draining south into the White River.

  Valyn found the open space unnerving. It offered nowhere to hide, nowhere to make a stand. The low hills rose and fell just enough to obscure the surrounding territory without providing any shelter. They could be riding parallel to an Urghul taamu for all Valyn could tell, the horsemen just out of sight over the next fold, and his neck grew sore from constantly pivoting, endlessly scanning the green horizon.

  After a few days, Talal pointed to the south. Valyn squinted. A line of golden hills flanked them in the far distance, miles and miles beyond the river. Sand, he realized, the huge, undulating dunes of the Seghir Desert. Entire armies had been swallowed up in the Seghir, foreign and Annurian, bones and armor lost beneath the shifting sand. Even north of the river, where his own Wing rode, the soil began to turn dry and cracked, forcing Valyn to alter course, breaking away from the river for greener grass while still pushing west.

  Twice they spotted herds of bison in the distance, thousands of shaggy brown beasts three times the size of the horses they rode. Despite the curving horns, the creatures seemed docile enough, lazily cropping the long grass, pausing occasionally to snuffle at the air. When they broke into a run, the whole mass wheeling and charging away into the distance, Valyn could feel the ground quiver beneath his feet while the air trembled with a sound like thunder.

  Near the end of the fourth day, they pulled up atop a low hill just in time to see a much larger band of riders—maybe three or four hundred—also headed west, probably half a day’s ride ahead of them. Despite the size of the group, they were hammering hard, even harder than Valyn’s Wing, the herd of horses kicking up a haze of dust that hovered over the steppe like a storm cloud, dimming the noon sun. Valyn counted three more taamu after that, all headed west, moving fast. It was easy enough to stay clear, to avoid the hilltops and rises, but the sight of so many Urghul on the move made him nervous.

  “Where do you think the bastards are going?” Gwenna asked.

  “No idea,” Valyn replied, shaking his head. “Hopefully not the same place we are.”

  The lack of cover during the long, sun-baked days made Valyn sweat, but it was the rain, finally, that did them in.

  He had called a halt early. Though daylight lingered, the east wind reeked of storm, Gwenna, for all that she refused to complain, looked ready to fall out of the saddle, and Valyn himself didn’t feel far behind. As Hendran wrote, There is speed in slowness. Much as Valyn chafed to be back in Annur, to find Kaden, to find whoever was behind his father’s murder, and the monks’, and Ha Lin’s, there were miles of steppe and little to be gained by trying to cross it all in one frenetic push.

  The rain started just after dark. It would have been nice to set up the api or build a fire, but fires meant light and smoke, and the api would do nothing but trap half the Wing and limit its visibility. Better to be cold and ready than warm and dead, and so they wrapped themselves in their bison cloaks, the wet hides chilly and reeking, checked weapons, then sat down to gnaw through strips of dried meat and chunks of hard Urghul cheese before falling asleep.

  Valyn took the first watch. The wound in his shoulder was healing, but still stabbed at him whenever he moved wrong. The others had settled into a rough circle, as though around the memory of a campfire. Asleep, wrapped in the huge cloaks, they looked younger than they were, more innocent, almost like children. Even Pyrre, with her graying hair, might have been a fishmonger or a merchant rather than a vicious death-priest with her hands steeped in blood. It seemed like weeks since Valyn had had the space and time to really think about his Wing, about what they’d given up when they fled the Eyrie, about what they faced in the weeks ahead. The responsibility clamped down on him like a hard fall frost. Then the rain began in earnest.

  The heavy drops soaked his hair in a few heartbeats, chilling his face, seeping down the back of his cloak even as they churned the ground to mud, turned the night air to a black, sheeting murk. Valyn sat up straighter, ignoring the cold settling into his bones, a hand on his belt knife. He didn’t realize how accustomed he’d grown to his heightened hearing, but now, with the quiet roar of a million raindrops spattering against the earth, he felt deaf, disoriented, vulnerable.

  He rose to his feet, slipping a blade from beneath the cloak, and walked to the top of a small rise. Whatever he might have seen beneath a full moon or stars was scrubbed out utterly by the downpour. There was the rain and the earth at his feet, nothing more. After a long pause, he turned back to the camp, unease tickling at his neck, sickening his gut. Gwenna was cursing, trying to get comfortable, and Talal and Pyrre kept shifting, searching for a position that might keep off the worst of the rain.

  To ’Shael with it, Valyn thought. No one’s sleeping anyway.

  They could be miserable on the horses just as well as on the ground. They could rest again when the weather cleared. For all that they needed a break, they were Kettral. A long night on horseback wasn’t going to kill any of them. Besides, he didn’t like sitting still when there was no way to mount an effective guard. They might stumble over someone on horseback, but at least they’d be mounted. At least they’d be ready.

  He was just crouching down to rouse Annick when the drumming of the rain resolved, suddenly, horrifyingly, into the drumming of hooves. He spun about, desperately raising his blade as the mounted Urghul, lances leveled, soaked hair streaming behind, screaming and ululating, galloped down the low hill and into the miserable camp.

  It was Huutsuu. Of course. But not just Huutsuu.

  Laith and Annick had been right. Another taamu, much larger, five or six hundred at least, had found her far to the east. Everything Valyn knew about the Urghul suggested that they should have killed her, offered her up to Meshkent in some hideous ceremony, but evidently everything he learned had been worse than useless. Not only did they not kill her and her people, the larger tribe offered horses and help in hunting down the Annurians.

  Valyn managed to kill two in the fury of the first assault, and Pyrre, somehow, took down four more with her knives. The rest of the Kettral were taken utterly off guard. Within heartbeats, they found themselves ringed with dozens of spearpoints, a sharp, shifting collar inches from their throats. Even then, they looked ready to fight, hands on knives or blades, Annick clutching her half-drawn bow, death in her eyes until Valyn, the words like stones on his tongue, gave the order to stand down.

  In another place, captured by another foe, the fact that they were still alive might have been a comfort. Not here. Valyn remembered his training clearly enough: the Urghul took captives only to offer them later, as sacrifice to Kwihna. If half the stories were true, they might well wish they’d been killed instead of captured. There was a simplicity, a finality to a foot of sharp steel in the gut. The same couldn’t be said of flaying, disemboweling, or burning, the standard fates that awaited an Urghul captive.

  All the more reason, Valyn thought grimly, testing his bonds for the hundredth time, to get uncaptured.

  Not that he’d arrived at any grand plan for escape. There were no prisons on the steppe, no brigs or dungeons, but the Urghul were
thorough enough when it came to restraining their prisoners. Along with the rest of his Wing, Valyn was bound at the wrists and ankles, the rawhide cinched so tight he lost feeling immediately, then tossed over the back of a horse and tied in place. His head dangled down by the beast’s belly, so low that the front hooves threatened to strike him when the animal broke into a canter, making it almost impossible to see anything except the dark mud as they rode. With every stride, the horse’s spine battered his ribs. His wounded shoulder felt ready to rip from the socket. The Urghul had stripped their cloaks, and the frigid rain soaked him until he trembled uncontrollably.

  The pain was constant, staggering, but the pain was the least of it. Over and over again as the horses cantered north through the night and storm, Valyn ran through his decisions: leaving the bird, letting the prisoners live, riding west rather than south. He’d made a mistake, that much was clear as a knife to the eye, but it was hard to know what, exactly, he could have done differently. Even lashed to the horse’s back, he couldn’t imagine killing the children in Huutsuu’s camp. And the bird . . . if they’d tried to fly south, the Flea would have found them, killed them.

  It’s done, he growled at himself after a while. You fucked up somewhere. The question is what you do now.

  It was difficult enough just not to pass out, but, with much straining, Valyn managed to twist his head and half raise his torso, the joints of his arms screaming as he stretched up and back, searching for his companions in the driving rain. There were scores of Urghul, a mass of shifting horseflesh and riders, and though the storm had started to abate, he caught only a glimpse of Laith and Gwenna, trussed like sacks of grain over the backs of their own horses.

  The Urghul finally called a halt in the chill gray hour just before dawn. When the horse went still, Valyn thought he was dreaming at first, that his mind had lifted clear of the constant stabbing misery of his body. Then someone sliced the cord holding him up, and he tumbled to the ground, unable to bring his dead arms up to block the fall. The Kettral, of course, had trained him for captivity. Though he was still bound at the wrists and ankles, he began flexing his legs, drawing them up to his chest, then lowering them, over and over. Then his arms. He knew how to fight with tied hands, and if the opening presented itself, he intended to be ready. His frozen muscles groaned in protest. The Urghul were laughing, he realized, watching him writhe on the ground like a worm. He ignored the sound, kept moving, though the action ground his face against the stones and wet earth.

  Just when he’d gone from shaking to simply trembling, just as he’d managed to stop biting his tongue with chattering teeth, someone seized him by the neck, then wrestled him roughly to his feet. When he managed to straighten up, he found himself staring at Huutsuu. Or, to be more precise, at Huutsuu’s horse. The ksaabe who had dragged him up stepped back, as though to offer Valyn and his captor a measure of intimacy, but the Urghul woman hadn’t bothered to dismount. She sat her horse lazily, short spear balanced in the crook of her arm, the thin line of a smile creasing her face.

  “I told you this. I told you I would find you.”

  Valyn glanced at the spear, then the horse, gauging the distance between himself and the rider. Though his feet were still tied, he could probably grab the weapon, rip it out of her hands or pull her off the horse, maybe even plant it in her chest. He opened and closed his hands. They were still numb, but they seemed to work.

  And then what?

  He glanced over his shoulder, able, for the first time, to make sense of the milling bodies around him. Huutsuu had brought him to a sprawling Urghul camp many times larger than the one in which he’d found her. Valyn stared. Truth be told, the place was more like a town than a camp, with hundreds of api thrown up haphazardly among the cook fires and hobbled horses, men and women riding to and fro, even children darting about between the tents, pale legs and faces spattered with mud. The place reeked of burning horse dung and cooking horseflesh, wet hide and wet mud. Pennants of fur and feather whipped from long lances planted in the earth. Men and women gathered between tents and around fires, tended to their horses or their children, calling to one another in their odd, singsong language. There must have been a thousand Urghul, maybe more.

  Valyn turned his attention back to Huutsuu, leaning back slowly on his heels, forcing himself to stay still, to check his own rage. Even if he managed to kill the woman, he’d still be tied up, trussed like a pig for whatever happened next.

  This is not the time, he told himself silently, repeating the words in his head as though rehearsing them again and again could keep him from folly. This is not the time.

  “Where are we?” he asked instead, jerking his head at the surrounding camp.

  Huutsuu smiled. “These are my people.”

  “I thought your people hated large camps. I thought you lived in taamu, not nations.”

  The Urghul woman shrugged. “We did. Not anymore.”

  Before Valyn could make sense of that, other riders pulled up beside them, each Urghul trailing a horse with a sodden human shape lashed across the back. Relief mingled with fury, Valyn watched as, one by one, the other members of his Wing were cut from their horses, then dumped unceremoniously on the ground. The rest of the Urghul, like Huutsuu, refused to dismount, watching impassively as the horses shifted beneath them, their hooves making sucking sounds in the mud.

  Annick was the first up, struggling to her knees, then her feet. She moved awkwardly, as though she had strained or torn something during the long ride, but Valyn could see her testing the rawhide at her wrists as she stood, searching for some weakness. Gwenna cursed the Urghul until one of the riders knocked her across the back of the head with the butt of his spear, sending her reeling into the mud once more. Talal got to his feet slowly, silent and intent. Valyn studied the leach, then flicked a sign: You’re well?

  Talal made an almost imperceptible nod.

  So, Valyn thought, allowing himself a small smile, that’s something.

  Before he could respond, however, two new Urghul rode up. The taller of them handed a waterskin to Huutsuu without a word, and she, in turn, tossed it to Valyn.

  “Drink,” she said as he caught it awkwardly.

  He eyed the bladder. He knew from experience what a single day without water could do. If he was going to stay sharp, alert, he needed to drink. He locked eyes with Huutsuu, raised the skin to his mouth, then tilted it back.

  At first, there was nothing but the delicious wash of cold water as he sucked it down, his body greedy for the drink. Only after a few swallows did he finally taste the adamanth, the root’s bitter residue roughening his tongue.

  Huutsuu smiled as she watched him pause.

  “For the leach,” she said, gesturing to the waterskin. “My people, too, have such creatures.”

  For a moment, Valyn contemplated draining the full skin, draining it or ripping it open on one of the Urghul spears. The adamanth wouldn’t do him any harm, of course—it might even ease the ache in his shoulder, in his bruised ribs—but the strong infusion would cut Talal off entirely from his well. The Kettral used an even more concentrated form of the tea, but simply boiling the root would prove more than effective. Clearly, the Urghul didn’t know which member of his Wing to be wary of, but it hardly mattered. They would make them all drink.

  Valyn hefted the skin in his hands, testing its weight, then discarded the idea of destroying it. Adamanth was common enough—no more than a weed, really—and one could find it in ditches and swamps from the Waist to the steppe. If he threw away one skin, the Urghul would simply produce another. He glanced at Talal. The leach’s eyes were wary, grave, but he just shrugged. Valyn turned back to Huutsuu, matching her stare as he drank long and full from the skin. At least he could deny her the sight of his own disappointment.

  As the Urghul passed the skin among the prisoners, Valyn considered the camp once more, then his captors.

  “What happens next?” he asked.

  Huutsuu gestured at the fo
rest of tents. “We pack, then we ride.”

  “Ride where?”

  “West.”

  “What’s west?”

  “Long Fist,” the woman replied.

  “What in Hull’s name is Long Fist?”

  “You will learn that when you meet him.”

  So the Urghul weren’t planning to sacrifice them right away. Of course, there was no telling how far west they planned to ride. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  “Is that where the rest of the taamu are going?” Valyn asked. “West? To meet Long Fist?”

  “Too many questions,” Huutsuu said, waving a hand at three of the younger Urghul. “Take them. Put them with the other one. Watch them close. They are a soft people, but fast.”

  “The other one?” Valyn demanded, shaking his head, trying to make sense of it. “Who’s the other one?”

  Huutsuu smiled. “Go. See.”

  The Annurian prisoner was tied up a dozen paces beyond the last row of api. The Urghul had bound his hands to his feet, forcing him into a hunched crouch. It wouldn’t have been horrible at first, but a day, even half a day bent double like that would be enough to crack most men and women. Worse, despite the chill drizzle, they’d stripped him of his shirt. The man clearly hadn’t eaten anything in days. Valyn could count the knobs of his spine, the ribs, could count the seeping gashes in his skin where he’d been whipped. The prisoner didn’t look up as the horses approached. He could have been knocked out. Maybe he thought there was nothing to see.