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

by Brian Staveley

  Fulton and Birch were bound at the wrist but able to walk. Behind them half a dozen grim-faced Sons with long spears stood at attention. Before the prisoners, a cleared pathway ran straight into the Everburning Well.

  “When the march begins,” Lehav said to the two men, “I suggest you move. One way or the other, you will be fed to the flame. Better not to have a spear in your side when you die.”

  “We will walk,” Fulton said, fixing the man with his sunken-eyed stare, “without being prodded like pigs.”

  Lehav shrugged. “Bold words are easy at this distance. You might feel more reluctant as you approach the Well.”

  “With this rain?” Birch quipped. He seemed to have passed through his anger and reluctance and emerged once more into his customary jocularity. “I’ll jump in your ’Kent-kissing hole just to dry off.”

  The crowd was growing restive, a few of the bolder members hurling insults into the driving rain. Thunder rumbled just overhead, drowning out the voices while the flash illuminated faces twisted with fury.

  “It is time,” Lehav said, gesturing.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Fulton growled. “I grow tired of listening to the bleating of these sheep.”

  Get it over with. As though he were talking about a tedious imperial audience rather than his own life. Adare nodded, trying to steady herself, trying to see straight in the rain.

  “Wait,” she said, raising her voice just high enough that they could hear over the rain. “I’m sorry.”

  Worse than useless, those words, a threadbare cloak to cover her own horror.

  “Do one thing for me,” Fulton said.

  Adare nodded eagerly, pathetically. Even at this distance she could feel the heat from the Well. Her robes were steaming, her hair, her hands. The crowd had taken up some sort of martial hymn. “Anything,” she said.

  “Win,” he replied grimly.

  “I’ll second that,” said Birch.

  Adare stifled a sob. She tried to speak, but found her throat closed as a fist.

  Sweet Intarra, she prayed, forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.

  Fulton watched her for three or four heartbeats, until Birch nudged him with his elbow.

  “Come on, old man,” he said, face slick with mingled rain and sweat. “You getting tired right here at the end?”

  Forgive me, Intarra. Forgive me.

  And then the two men, the guards who had watched her door since she was a child, who had flanked her when she left the palace and stood behind her chair at state dinners, who brought her soup when she was ill, and listened to her complain about her brothers, her parents, the two men who, in some ways, knew her better than anyone alive, began their march toward the flame. Despite the heat of the Well and the fury of the crowd, they held their heads high, and even when the mob started hurling stones and dung, they refused to flinch.

  Forgive me, Intarra, Adare begged, but the whole miserable bit of theater was not Intarra’s idea, not Intarra’s fault, and when the two soldiers had marched into their grave, it would not be Intarra who bore the awful weight in her chest day in and day out. It was all well and good to pray to the goddess, but Adare was the one with the hands, with the voice, and suddenly she realized she was screaming, lurching forward toward the Sons of Flame. With clumsy hands, she seized a spear from the nearest of the soldiers, the long shaft heavy and wet, unwieldy in her grip.

  “No!” she bellowed, charging down the open path in the wake of the Aedolians. It was a foolish gesture, beyond foolish. She couldn’t save the men, and the simple act of defiance would see her burned as well, but, suddenly, it didn’t matter. She would die here, in the miserable fucking miracle of a well, but she would not be part of the murder of these men who had watched over her so long.

  It’s on you now, Kaden, she thought grimly, brandishing the steel pointlessly above her head. On you, Valyn. And as for you, Intarra, you can fuck yourself, you miserable bitch.

  And then, as if in response, Intarra spoke back.

  Blinding light. Perfect black. Ringing like a million mouths, screaming, singing. Body instantly and utterly gone. Gone the rain. Gone the mob. Gone her own mind and will. Gone everything but a single voice, Fulton’s and then not Fulton’s, deeper, higher, fuller, broader, broad as the wide sky, broad as the stars, a woman’s voice but greater than any woman, as great as creation itself, uttering a single, ungainsayable syllable: Win.

  21

  Eight.

  Or nine.

  Valyn had lost track of how many times he, Pyrre, and his Wing tried to escape during the endless ride west.

  Which made them zero for eight.

  Or zero for nine.

  In the last attempt, Valyn had dislocated his left shoulder in order to win free of his restraints, Pyrre had strangled two Urghul with her belt, and the rest of the Wing managed to steal half a dozen horses. Valyn had refused to include Balendin in the planning, but the leach was tied up right next to the rest of them, and when the time came to fight, he managed to rip out the throat of a ksaabe with his teeth and kick another one half to death. A reminder, if Valyn needed a reminder, that even drugged, even half starved, the leach was as dangerous as the rest of them. Not that it mattered.

  There were thousands of Urghul, more joining the group every day. Even if the Kettral managed to break out of the constantly moving horde, which they hadn’t, there was nowhere to run but empty steppe. It was a bleak situation, no doubt, and their defiance earned them little more than busted faces and bruised ribs, but it was fight or die, and while Valyn had no illusions about the odds, he didn’t intend to be led to his slaughter like a sheep. When the ninth attempt to break free failed, he was already plotting the tenth.

  Huutsuu, however, had other ideas. The woman rode up, surveyed the carnage, barked a few orders, and in a matter of moments the prisoners were separated, each dragged off by his or her own taabe or ksaabe. Old knots were retied and new restraints added at the elbows and knees, which meant an end to all walking and stretching. From that moment on, numbness alternated with screaming pain in Valyn’s legs and shoulders. He had to beg his taabe to pull down his pants whenever he needed to take a shit.

  The ensuing days proved a repetitive itinerary of agony and endurance: struggling not to cry out each morning in the predawn dark as his nameless captor kicked him awake; refusing to wince as he was lashed across the back of the horse, tight cords biting into his bloody wrists and raw ankles; shivering in the icy rain or sweating beneath a brutal sun while the horse’s relentless gait bruised his ribs and battered the organs beneath; tucking his chin and holding his tongue whenever he was whipped across the back or shoulders; ignoring the famished ache that seemed to be boring a hole through his stomach. . . . And the days were the fucking good part. Every night, bound hand and foot and tethered to a stake, he shivered on the cold, broken earth, watching the flames of the surrounding campfires lap at the sky, listening to the strange cadences of chanting and song.

  Valyn had his own chant and his own fire. His fire was the crackling rage inside him, a heat he fed with his hopes and vows, his shame and resolve, stoking it until it seared, even on the coldest nights. His chant was simple: Don’t quit. Don’t quit, you fuck. Don’t ever quit. He managed to break his captor’s nose one morning; to bite off a good portion of thumb on another, but, lashed tight as he was, there was no way to follow up the small victories, and each petty revolt ended with him curled on the ground, kicks and punches raining down. The struggle was pointless, but it was all he had, so he kept at it, looking for the openings, the little chances when he could get in his useless licks.

  In between, the Urghul set an astounding pace, hammering westward from well before dawn until hours past dark, stopping only to switch horses, an excruciating process during which Valyn was untied, shoved to the ground, then, before he could do anything to stretch his legs, hurled onto another horse and lashed down once more. He tried to keep track of the days. There’d been at least ten when he wa
s still with his Wing, and probably double that since they were separated. He had no idea where they were going, but there couldn’t be much steppe left.

  Occasionally—when they crested a hill or rode along a ridgeline—he caught a glimpse of the entire Urghul strength. Each time, the sight of it staggered him like a fist to the face. The Eyrie trainers had described tribes of fifty or a hundred, little more than extended families, really, nothing like the group in which he rode. There must have been tens, maybe hundreds of thousands, the herd of horses stretching out over the steppe as far as he could see. There was no column, no order of march, just a pounding, thundering mass of horseflesh and riders flowing over the hills like a shifting blanket. No one set up tents, not anymore—the Urghul were in too much of a rush—and some nights, when Valyn could see out over the black hills, he felt as though he were adrift on the night sea, that each of the campfires was a star reflected in the chilly water, that, bound hand and foot as he was, he might sink beneath the surface and drown.

  He tried to gauge numbers, to count fires or horses, but there was no way to keep track. Not that it mattered. Even when he was lashed to the horse’s back, even when he could see nothing but clods of dirt, sweaty flanks, and streaming tails, he could hear the sound clearly enough, a thunder louder and deeper than thunder, the very ground trembling with the Urghul passage. It was not a taamu that he rode with, not a tribe, but a whole people.

  Old Fleck back on the Islands had insisted that the Urghul could manage fifty miles a day, riding hard. The figure had always struck Valyn as inflated, but he was starting to understand how it could be possible. The riders ate on their horses, pissed from their horses, slipped a knee through the crude girths and slept on their horses when necessary, yellow-white hair streaming behind them. Valyn had even seen some of the younger taabe and ksaabe leaping from the back of one cantering beast to another, as though the ground itself were anathema. At one point he caught sight of an enormous herd of bison darkening the plains to the north. The nearest beasts swung their stupid, noble heads ponderously toward the passing horses, and a few score riders peeled off, lances held high, voices eager in the morning air. The rest of the mass continued west, hammering relentlessly across the steppe.

  Just when he thought they would never stop, they did. One moment he was jolting along, rehearsing yet another possible escape attempt, the next his horse slowed to a walk. He half raised his head, realizing they were on the outskirts of an enormous camp, the api packed as closely as trees in a forest. His taabe led the horses through the tents, pausing occasionally to trade words with the other Urghul, to banter or ask a question. People seemed curious about the prisoner tied up and slung across the horse, and more than once Valyn felt his ribs prodded by the butt of a spear.

  When they finally stopped, he was cut free with the same lack of ceremony as always. Legs numb, arms numb, shoulders screaming in their sockets, he rose slowly to his knees, then staggered to his feet. When he finally raised his head, he stared.

  On every hill in every direction, the Urghul were shouting to one another as they hobbled horses and unloaded the poles and hides for their api. This was new. Valyn spat a bolus of blood, crouched, then stood once more, trying to work some feeling back into dead legs. He expected his taabe to punch him in the gut or sweep his legs with a contemptuous kick. Instead, the youth seized him by the hair and dragged him through the throng of people and horses. Valyn staggered behind, refusing to fall, trying to see through the haze of his exhaustion and pain, to understand what was happening. For weeks he’d been waiting for a break in the routine, a new sort of opportunity, and now it had come.

  When they’d traversed half of the unfolding camp, the taabe finally shoved him to the earth with a grunt, kicked him in the head one final time, then turned and stalked off without a word. Valyn hauled himself to his knees to find Huutsuu leaning on a long lance, head cocked to one side, blue eyes fixed on him. She smiled a slow, vulpine smile.

  “Still alive,” she observed.

  Valyn nodded silently.

  She lowered the lance in a fluid motion, leveling the shining tip at his midsection. With a casual motion she prodded lightly at his ribs, his shoulders, his stomach, his crotch, drawing blood with each contact, lifting his blacks from his emaciated frame.

  “We have Hardened you,” she said. “Kwihna will be pleased.”

  “Kwihna can fuck himself,” Valyn replied wearily. “Where’s my Wing?”

  “They, also, we have Hardened.”

  Valyn debated seizing the lance as it loitered around his chest, using it to pull the woman off-balance, then wrapping his bound hands around her throat. Huutsuu was fast—he remembered that from the first night in the rain—but he was faster. Or he had been, before spending the better part of a month lashed to a horse. Now, he wasn’t sure. He’d managed to stand, but his legs wavered beneath him and his fingers felt weak and stupid when he tried to clench them into fists. His belly might have been made of mud. The weakness and helplessness were infuriating—years of training scrubbed out in a few weeks—but they were real. He’d managed to stay alive this long. Little point in getting himself skewered now. Besides, Huutsuu had said the others were hardened. Hardened wasn’t killed.

  “Where are they?” he demanded.

  She nodded past his shoulder, and he turned to find a young ksaabe prodding Gwenna forward, a bared knife at her back. For the first time in what felt like years, Valyn smiled. Gwenna was filthy and battered. Both eyes were swollen half closed, the sockets fading from purple to brown, one cheek crusted with blood. She was battered but awake. She was walking. Valyn glanced at the ksaabe behind her, and his smile widened. The Urghul woman had a fresh bite mark on her own cheek, a gash closing above her eye, and fury in her eyes. When they reached Valyn, she smacked Gwenna across the head with the pommel of her knife, then kicked her legs out from beneath her. Gwenna twisted as she hit the ground, lashing out with her own foot, but the ksaabe danced back, spit in her face, then snapped something angry at Huutsuu.

  “I am going to slaughter that little Urghul bitch,” Gwenna snarled, rolling to her stomach, then shoving herself to her knees. “I’m going to kill her, then eat her.”

  “Looks like you already made some headway,” Valyn observed.

  Huutsuu just laughed and flicked a dismissive hand at the younger warrior.

  “You look like shit,” Gwenna said, turning her attention to Valyn with a frown.

  “You’re no princess,” Valyn replied. “You seen any of the others?”

  The others, as it turned out, were in similar condition—beaten, battered, but alive. One by one they appeared out of the turmoil, each escorted by an Urghul. Talal seemed the most hale, which made sense—he would have offered the fewest insults. Laith’s captor, on the other hand, had leashed him with a length of rawhide, the cord leaving angry welts ringing his neck. Despite his wounds, the flier still managed a fierce grin.

  “This is my liaison, Amaaru,” he said, gesturing to the iron-jawed taabe behind him. He turned to the warrior. “Am I pronouncing your name correctly?” The youth took a swing, but Laith ducked. “He tells me that his name means ‘Horse Anus’ in the proud tongue of his people, and he has been a most gracious host.”

  Annick showed up with a rough sack over her head, which spoke eloquently to her level of resistance, but Pyrre, evidently, had rattled the Urghul worse than any of them. She arrived last, arms lashed to her sides, preventing all movement save the slightest twitching of her fingertips. Instead of one guard, she had four, two men, two women, all older than those assigned to Valyn and his Wing, ringing her with daggers drawn.

  “All right,” Laith said, raising an eyebrow at the woman. “It galls me to say this, but clearly you win.”

  “What did you do to earn them?” Valyn asked, gesturing to the warriors.

  She tried to shrug, but her bonds truncated the gesture. “I introduced a number of our newfound friends to the god.”

  “Whic
h god is that?” Valyn asked. “I’ve had about enough of Kwihna.”

  Pyrre’s face hardened. “So has Ananshael.”

  “Five,” Huutsuu interjected with something that might have been admiration. “Three taabe, two ksaabe. She killed five.”

  “It’s not as though you’re going to run out,” Laith said, nodding to the thousands of Urghul milling around them.

  “And yet, one must draw a line somewhere,” Huutsuu replied, eyeing Pyrre. “Five,” she said again, shaking her head. “I could grow to like this woman.”

  “And you haven’t seen the half of my talents,” the Skullsworn replied, raising a coquettish eyebrow. “You’ve been wasting your time dallying with these . . . boys of yours.”

  Huutsuu laughed, a rich, full sound. “If I took you to my api, I might never come out.”

  “You could tie me,” Pyrre suggested.

  “Tying you has failed several times already.”

  “Enough of this horseshit,” Valyn cut in. Guilt throbbed in his bones, guilt for allowing his Wing to be captured on his watch, for failing to do anything to break them free, and meanwhile Huutsuu and Pyrre were trading smiles and innuendo as though they were browsing the Lowmarket on a lazy summer afternoon. The Skullsworn, for all her sleek urbanity, was no better than the Urghul savages. They were blood-drunk killers, all of them.

  “Pyrre, let me handle this,” he continued. “Why are we stopping? Where are we?”

  Pyrre frowned at Huutsuu apologetically. “Valyn forgets from time to time that I am not a part of his Wing. He takes his work very seriously.”