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

by Brian Staveley

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning we’re not dead because Long Fist needs us alive.”

  “For what?” Gwenna spat. “Fun?”

  Pyrre looked up, lips pursed as though ready to make some crack, then paused. “How does a man become a chief?” she asked finally. “A chief of anything, let alone a million Urghul?”

  “Kills the people who want to kill him,” Gwenna said. “That’s what I’m saying. Long Fist’s a fool to leave us alive.”

  Pyrre shook her head. “If he tried to kill everyone dangerous, he’d never get done killing. There’s always someone who wants to murder a chief. Long Fist can’t protect against them all. His position isn’t fully secure.”

  “The bastard looks pretty secure when he’s hacking out hearts.”

  “That’s because,” Pyrre said, “no one can imagine him dead.”

  “I’ve been imagining it since I met him,” Gwenna snapped, irritated with the assassin’s roundabout platitudes. “In fact, I’m about to do some more imagining right now.”

  “You can imagine it,” Pyrre said, “but they can’t. When the Urghul look at him, they don’t see a man; they see a legend. All you need is a blade to kill a man.” She snorted. “All you need is fingernails, as you so ably demonstrated this evening. But a legend—a legend is unkillable, and he wears his own legend—uniter of the tribes, the man who made his own sacrifice to Meshkent, the one who plans to destroy Annur—just the same way he wears that bison skin. It’s a symbol of his power, his strength.”

  “You’re saying he lets us wander around free because he believes his own bullshit?” Gwenna demanded, shaking her head. “That’s even stupider than I thought.”

  “I’m saying that we are part of his legend: two Kettral and a Skullsworn tamed by the great chief to fight before his fires.”

  “Tamed,” Gwenna spat. “Speak for yourself.”

  The assassin raised an eyebrow, and Gwenna colored, the memory of the pleading soldier bleeding into her memory, the feel of his flesh as he died. “At least I haven’t quit yet,” she muttered.

  Pyrre shrugged. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever spent time in the Bend?”

  Gwenna shook her head, confused.

  “A pity. It’s a marvelously barbaric place. I watched a man in the killing pits there once. I studied him all afternoon. He fought animals—bears, bulls, wolves—and always just near the end, before he put them down, he’d turn his back, lay down his blade, and wave to the crowd.”

  “Pointless,” Annick said.

  “Maybe,” Pyrre replied, “but the crowd loved it. It made him seem fearless. Invincible. You couldn’t imagine him losing.”

  “And we’re Long Fist’s wolves,” Gwenna said grimly.

  “Funny thing about that guy, though,” Pyrre said. “Just before I left the city, he turned his back on a bear. He had to do it. It was part of the show, remember.”

  “And . . .”

  Pyrre smiled. “And the bear took off his head.”

  Of course, talking about breaking free and actually doing it were two different things. As the night stretched on and the sun set, the three of them were still in the api. Whatever Pyrre said about wolves, Gwenna felt more like a ’Kent-kissing sheep—one waiting for the slaughter, at that.

  “It has to be tonight,” she said, stabbing at the fire with a long stick. “We’ve waited too long already. The entire Urghul nation is riding on the frontier, riding to war, and nobody knows. Annur doesn’t. Valyn doesn’t.”

  “I would imagine that,” Pyrre said, arching an eyebrow, “is exactly the point. I believe it’s referred to among militarily-minded folk as ‘stealing a march.’ ”

  “I know what it’s called,” Gwenna snapped.

  “Tonight,” Annick said abruptly, as though she’d made a decision, stuffing her cured meat into a pack. “It’s time to leave.”

  Time to leave. As though they weren’t surrounded by the largest Urghul army in history.

  Pyrre chuckled. “I like it, Annick. Focus on the big picture. Don’t get bogged down with the details.”

  “I’ve considered what I can,” the sniper replied, cinching the pack shut, “but we don’t have time for anything elaborate. Every hour counts.”

  “But they tend to count less,” the assassin observed, “if we spend the hours dead.”

  “It’s a risk,” Annick said, nodding.

  “And are you going to tell us,” Gwenna asked, burning with frustration, “what your risky plan is, Annick? Or are you just going to walk out of the tent and start killing people?”

  “There’s something to be said for simplicity,” Pyrre pointed out.

  Gwenna rounded on her. “And what the fuck do you want with it? Just a few days ago you were happy to drink Long Fist’s booze and lounge by his fires. Now suddenly you want to go charging off after Annick? I didn’t know you were such a ’Kent-kissing lover of the Annurian empire.”

  Pyrre’s eyes hardened. “Annur can stand or burn. I have my own reasons for wanting to see Long Fist thwarted.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d care to share them?”

  “Not particularly.”

  Gwenna suppressed a growl. This was why Wings had leaders. Between the three of them they had enough experience to come up with something resembling the ass end of a plan, but Annick was about as communicative as a brick, and there was no telling what was going on in Pyrre’s murderous brain. This was the kind of shit Valyn had been dealing with since the Wing was established, but where Valyn was good at it, quick to find the strings that would draw the group together, Gwenna just wanted to hit someone.

  She muscled down the urge.

  “All right,” she said slowly. “We agree that we need to get out.”

  “Consensus,” Pyrre said. “I love consensus.” She frowned. “Although I distrust it.”

  Gwenna ignored her. “Annick, what’s your thinking?”

  The sniper pointed up, through the smoke hole of the api. “Climb the poles and out.”

  “Out where?” Gwenna demanded.

  Perching on top of the hide tent seemed about as useful as lying down in the ’Kent-kissing fire and hoping the smoke would carry her away.

  “You know that Long Fist has people watching this tent, right?”

  “I’m going to shoot them,” Annick said.

  Gwenna stared. “With what?”

  The sniper slid aside one of the skins to reveal a rough wooden bow and half a dozen arrows, the tips hardened in the fire.

  Pyrre nodded appreciatively. “And the string?” she asked.

  Annick gestured to the haunch she’d been butchering. “I used the tendon.”

  Gwenna eyed the crude thing warily. She didn’t doubt Annick’s knowledge when it came to archery. The sniper had been making her own bows since before she arrived on the Islands, but she hardly had the required tools or the necessary time to do the job justice. “Can you hit anything with it?”

  The sniper nodded. “At close range.”

  “Define close range,” Pyrre said.

  “Forty paces,” Annick said. “Fifty at the outside.”

  Gwenna shook her head. At fifty paces, she herself wouldn’t be able to hit a house with the thing. On the other hand, she’d long ago learned to believe Annick when it came to sticking anything full of arrows.

  “And you were going to tell us about the bow . . . when?”

  All this time, the sniper had been working on her weapon and she hadn’t said a thing.

  “When it was time,” Annick replied, meeting Gwenna’s glare with a flat, level look. “The fewer people who know about a thing, the safer.”

  “We’re not just people,” Gwenna spat. “We’re your ’Kent-kissing Wing.”

  Pyrre tsked from across the fire. “Just like Valyn,” she said. “Why is everyone so eager to recruit me for the Kettral?”

  “Never mind,” Gwenna said. “The point is, we’re on the same side now, and if we don’t start acting like it,
this is going to be the shortest breakout in the annals of the Eyrie, bow or no bow.”

  She glared at each of them in turn, trying to slow down her breathing, to stay calm. Trying and failing.

  Pyrre narrowed her eyes. “A lot like Valyn,” she said again. “Same conviction. Same intensity.” She turned to Annick. “Do you see it?” The sniper ignored the question, testing the sinew of her bow instead. The assassin smiled slyly. “You and Valyn would make a sweet pair, Gwenna. Well, maybe sweet’s not quite the right word, but . . .”

  “Leave it,” Gwenna growled.

  The Skullsworn raised her hands. “Didn’t mean to touch a nerve. All right,” she said, sitting up, “enough gossip. We’re planning. We’re working together. Annick shoots a whole boatload of people, lays down a veritable plague of destruction. Good. Then what?”

  “Horses,” the sniper said. “We get to the horses. Then the trees.”

  Gwenna grimaced. It was madness, the whole thing. Unfortunately, she couldn’t come up with anything better. They needed to warn Annur. Which meant escaping. There was just no way around it. Unfortunately, escaping probably meant dying in the attempt. “And when someone notices three non-Urghul women strolling through the camp?”

  Pyrre smiled. “Then we begin our offering to the god.”

  Gwenna shook her head again. “You know we’re going to die,” she said. “This is a shit plan, and it’s going to kill us all.”

  Annick eyed her with that icy stare. “Do you have another suggestion?”

  “No,” Gwenna replied helplessly.

  “Be comforted,” Pyrre said, her smile sharp as a knife. “Ananshael is not particular. Our lives, or theirs, the god will be pleased.”

  The Lord of the Grave must be pretty fucking pleased, Gwenna thought, wiping blood from her face with the back of her hand, trying to see through the cloud-shrouded murk, hoping to Hull that she’d dragged the last body far enough behind the tent that no one would notice it right away. Ananshael. Hull. Meshkent. She was starting to think she’d picked the wrong bloody lot of gods, but, with gore smeared across her blacks and half a million Urghul spread around her, there was no going back now.

  They’d waited until just after midnight, long enough that many of the horsemen had taken to their blankets, enjoying one last night in the api. The tents would stay, Gwenna figured, judging from the fact that no one had bothered to take them down. Maybe a few score of the old, young, and infirm would stay with them, looking after the temporary city while the rest of the nation pushed hard for the border. That push had Gwenna worried. She’d seen the pace Long Fist’s riders set when crossing the steppe, when they’d been burdened with supplies and prisoners. Gwenna would have preferred to wait until more of the Urghul were asleep, but hours wasted now might prove crucial later, and so she found herself moving through the camp, stolen sword held flat against her leg, trying to look everywhere at once without moving her head.

  As promised, Annick had managed to kill the young warriors guarding their tent. As hoped, they’d managed to slip unnoticed into the night. And as feared, they had to traverse a camp that spanned the better part of a mile before they could even think about stealing horses. Gwenna’s instinct was to hug the shadows, darting from tent to tent, using the darkness and her own slarn-sharpened vision to avoid as many people as possible. Annick shared the impulse, and for a while they crept forward, a few paces here, a few paces there, until Pyrre shook her head in irritation.

  “I’m not sure what they teach you on your secret island hideaway, but this isn’t going to cut it.”

  “We haven’t been seen yet,” Gwenna hissed.

  “It’s not us I’m worried about them seeing,” Pyrre said. “It’s the four deceased Urghul with arrows in their necks we left stuffed behind the api. Once they’re found, our nighttime stroll is going to get a lot less leisurely.”

  “If we’re seen—” Annick began, but Pyrre was already stepping brashly out of the darker shadows into the center of the muddy lane running between the tents. Without a glance over her shoulder, she tossed her hair, shrugged her shoulders, then set out at a brisk walk.

  “Fuck,” Gwenna said, glancing over at Annick.

  The sniper’s lips tightened. “Fuck,” she agreed tersely, then followed the older woman into the lane.

  The Skullsworn’s approach worked surprisingly well; they didn’t have to kill anyone for at least a hundred paces. Between the darkness and the chaos of a military camp getting ready to move out, most people were so intent on their own business that they didn’t look twice at three figures moving purposefully through the greater gloom. Pyrre had slipped into something like the Urghul saunter, and she made no effort to hide her face, or shy away from the Urghul they passed. No one challenged them. No one bothered with a second glance.

  Then they ran into the young men with the spears. Gwenna was just starting to think they might walk straight out of the camp when the three taabe stepped out from the darkness between two tents. The idiots were lugging twelve-foot spears—useful on horseback but potentially deadly in the confusion of a night camp—and they tangled up with Gwenna and Pyrre, wooden hafts and steel heads clattering, blocking the lane.

  The youth in the lead shouted angrily in Urghul, a quick barrage of words Gwenna didn’t recognize, then yanked on the haft of his spear. The head ripped through her blacks, slicing into her arm. The wound wasn’t deep, but it took Gwenna by surprise, pulling her off-balance, and she cursed as the metal bit, then slid free. It was that curse that did it.

  The head of the closest taabe snapped around at the unfamiliar language, his dark eyes locked on hers, and then, after a baffled heartbeat, his lips drew back into a snarl. He opened his mouth to shout, but Pyrre was already there, sliding a small blade across his neck, a subtle motion, almost gentle. Instead of a roar, a bloody lisp slipped from his lips as he folded to the earth.

  The two others were still trying to free their spears, oblivious to the silent death of their comrade. Gwenna hacked one across the face, while Annick killed the other with an arrow shaft in the eye. The fight was over in less than two blinks, but the bodies lay hopelessly tangled with the long shafts of the spears, and Gwenna could see movement in both directions down the narrow lane. There was no time to hide corpses. No time to do anything but put distance between themselves and the bodies.

  “This way,” Pyrre said, stepping from the path, sliding between the tents. Her voice was low, relaxed, but held none of her habitual mockery. For once, the assassin sounded as though she was taking things seriously. “Quickly, ladies.”

  Gwenna didn’t care for the idea of taking orders from a Skullsworn, but the center of a hostile army didn’t seem like the time to contest the issue. She grimaced, slid into close-guard, and followed the woman into the tents. A dozen paces farther they emerged onto another muddy track running parallel to the first. Gwenna’s stomach clenched. The Urghul were everywhere, and worse, lit torches lined the path, flames snagging and ripping with the wind. Pyrre didn’t hesitate, striding straight across, aiming for the cluster of tents on the far side. She made it halfway before one of the Urghul—a tall bastard with a long yellow braid—noticed her and barked a question.

  Pyrre turned to the man, a smile on her face, and opened her arms as if for an embrace. “Kwihna!” she said brightly. The word was nonsensical, but the language was familiar, and the warrior paused, confusion flitting across his face. Pyrre stepped into the pause, wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled him close for a long, passionate kiss. When she let him go, the man toppled. Gwenna never even saw the knife.

  They made it a few more streets before the alarm went up—shouting and bellowing followed by long blasts on a horn. The angry, accusatory note sounded again and again, chasing them through the night, drilling into Gwenna’s ears until she half wondered if she’d lost her mind. There was no telling which of the eight or nine corpses they’d left behind had finally done them in. It hardly mattered. The camp—shivering
with screams and ululations—knew they were loose. The whole Urghul army knew.

  “So much for discretion,” Pyrre said.

  The next few minutes were all jolting flight, hot breath between the teeth, scrabbling to keep footing in the treacherous mud, Urghul faces stretched tight with fury, and killing. Lots and lots of killing. Pyrre cut down the warriors without breaking stride, slipping her small knives into throats and stomachs, skewering eyes and slitting tendons, each motion delicate, birdlike, and precise. Gwenna was anything but delicate. The Urghul swords she’d picked up off the dead guards were longer and heavier than the smoke steel with which she’d trained, and trying to keep pace with Pyrre it was all she could do just to hack at the bodies as she passed, huge sweeping motions that jarred her shoulder whenever the sharp edge bit.

  “Less screaming,” Pyrre called back.

  “What?” Gwenna shouted, burying her blade in some woman’s gut, twisting it, then wrenching it free. Blood ran hot over her hands. Hopefully someone else’s.

  “You don’t need to scream each time you hit someone,” Pyrre said. “Try being more circumspect. They’ll still die.”

  Gwenna started to snarl that she wasn’t screaming, then realized that her throat was raw, her ears ringing. Not that it made any difference, really. The whole camp vibrated with violence. The part of her that wasn’t screaming and hacking, running and panting, tried to tally up the odds. It seemed incredible that they were still alive, but here the fury of the Urghul actually worked in their favor. If all the horsemen had fallen silent and stood still, it would have been impossible to escape. The chaos and confusion covered their flight even better than the darkness. They were just three more bodies in a thrashing sea of flesh, three women among tens of thousands. Better yet, the camp was thinning as they approached the perimeter.

  Keep your eyes on the ’Kent-kissing fight, Gwenna, she snapped at herself. Quit looking ahead.

  Still, it was hard not to feel a hot, bright ember of hope. They’d fought clear of the last knot of Urghul, ducked through some more tents, and suddenly they were alone, free, with room to run. Annick pointed toward a picket of horses a hundred paces distant, but before they’d even begun to cross the space, the riders caught up with them, at least a score of horsemen, spears leveled even as they jumped the tent lines, voices raised in triumph.