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

by Brian Staveley

  He watched the Annurians beat back another attack, then cursed under his breath, jerking the long lens around to the south, studying the two armies once more. Judging from the standards, the Sons of Flame were to the east, while the Army of the North was working up the western shore. Il Tornja’s group was making better time than the Intarran troops, but not enough better.

  “Just get here,” he muttered. “Just get here, you fucking bastard. Get here.”

  The words, of course, changed nothing. The army could only march as fast as it could march, and Valyn could only watch, first the battle below, then the distant troops, running the numbers over and over in his head, hating the answer every time he arrived at it.

  Since slipping over the side of the roof nearly an hour earlier, Talal had disappeared. Valyn thought he’d seen the leach out in the lake, swimming toward the eastern island, but he’d lost track of him amongst the bobbing logs and hadn’t been able to find him again. He swung the long lens over to Balendin. The corpses were piled around him now, eight or nine. As Valyn watched, one of the Urghul riders was gesturing urgently to the south. Balendin grimaced, then nodded, holding one hand out toward the central bridge as though to fix it in place, then turning toward the eastern shore. To Valyn’s horror, the loose raft of logs bobbing between the pilings began to pack tighter, stacked by some invisible force.

  Sweat streaked Balendin’s face, but his jaw was set, and as Valyn stared the Urghul dragged out two more prisoners, a man and a woman, and began to tear the skin from their flesh. Balendin’s lips moved as he directed the hideous ritual, and from the far shore the Urghul began to stream across the dam, no longer afoot, but on horse, riding straight over the island toward the central bridge and the loggers beyond.

  Valyn searched the burned-out rubble desperately for Talal, stared until his eyes watered and his hands had twisted into claws around the long lens. There was no one. Nothing. Nothing but smoke, and embers, and death.

  The slowness hurt. It hurt because Gwenna could hear the loggers fighting for their lives on the far side of the bridge, the high, strident calls of people struggling and losing slowly. It hurt because she could glimpse, through the burned-out hulks of the buildings, the awful mutilation of Balendin’s captives, the blood, and piss, and terror that she and Talal were too slow to prevent. And it hurt because just plain moving fucking hurt, and moving slowly just drew out the pain.

  The cover was for shit, and Urghul were everywhere, afoot, on horse. Most were charging west, from one of Balendin’s bloody bridges to the other, the endless parade of horseflesh and steel that couldn’t end in anything but death for the people of Andt-Kyl. Enough, however, had spread out over the island, searching for ’Shael only knew what, that Gwenna and Talal were forced to hunch in shadowy corners for minutes at a time, to drag their way under still-smoldering beams and through rubble-filled cellar holes, all of which also hurt.

  Gwenna would have cursed the fact that she couldn’t actually stand on her broken ankle, but then, standing only would have got her killed quicker, and so she sucked up the pain, kept her belly in the mud and ash, and dragged herself forward on her elbows behind Talal.

  It came as a shock when she lifted her head to find the hunched backs of the prisoners just a few paces off. She had no idea how long it had taken them to traverse the island—it felt like days—but the screaming and dying to the west meant the battle wasn’t over yet. They weren’t too late.

  She turned her attention to the square. Balendin stood near the center, ringed with the dead and dying, his face a mask of rapture and rage, the vessels at his temples pulsing, sweat matting his hair to his scalp, slicking his cheeks. Gwenna ducked back down behind the low, broken wall that hid them from view.

  “Why don’t we just shoot him?” she hissed.

  Talal shook his head. “Annick tried. He’s shielded. We can’t get at him.”

  Gwenna took a deep, shuddering breath. Between the pain, the disorientation, and the shock at finding herself alive at all, she hadn’t allowed herself to consider what they were coming to do. It was the logical tactical decision. The only decision, as far as she could see. And it meant murdering scores of Annurians.

  “What about a starshatter?” she asked, pulling the last remaining munition from her belt. “Will his shield stop that?”

  Talal spread his hands hopelessly. “I don’t know. I just . . . I don’t know.”

  Gwenna’s stomach clenched, and she forced down the urge to vomit. She could take a chance on Balendin, but they would only get the one chance. She risked another glance over the wall. A young man, no older than her, was groveling at Balendin’s feet. His eyes were gouged out, and when he tried to scream the sound came out a gurgling, slithering mess. Someone had slit his tongue, she realized. And they were starting on his fingers.

  “Sweet ’Shael,” she said, sliding back behind the wall. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

  Talal nodded grimly, hesitated, then extended his hand. “You light the wick. I’ll throw it.”

  “It doesn’t matter who fucking throws it,” Gwenna spat.

  The leach didn’t flinch. “Yes,” he said quietly. “It does. You don’t have to do this alone. You light it. I’ll throw it. We came here together, and we’ll finish it together.”

  Suddenly, for no reason Gwenna could understand, she found herself weeping, the tears hot as coals on her cheeks.

  “All right,” she said, words choking in her throat. She fumbled for the striker, found it, made a flame, and pressed it to the wick. “Together,” she said, passing the starshatter to Talal.

  He took it, stared a moment at the burning wick as though it were a snake, closed his eyes, and mouthed a silent prayer. Then, with a roar, he stood from behind the wall and hurled it into the center of the doomed captives.

  With a roar.

  The last thing Gwenna thought before the starshatter exploded, tearing through bone and flesh, rending the bodies of dozens of helpless people like so much rotten meat, was that, until that moment, she’d never heard Talal raise his voice.

  47

  The histories were horseshit.

  Adare had read about warfare in the histories. She had pored over the intricate maps of Annur’s most famous battles, studying the neat lines of advance and retreat, committing to memory the most classic short pieces: Fleck’s Five Principles of Cavalry, Venner’s Longbows and Flatbows, Huel-Hang’s The Heart of a Conflict. She’d been through Hendran’s cryptic volume twice during the march north, grilling Fulton and Ameredad on the more obscure points. She didn’t expect to become a battlefield commander, certainly not by reading a few old books, but she had hoped that her hasty study of war might help her to better understand the events churning around her, maybe even to save a few lives. The soldiers who had marched all this way to fight and die at her command deserved an emperor who would make an effort to understand what she had asked of them.

  And so she had pored over the books until her lids drooped and the maps swam before her eyes only to discover here, now, in the midst of the furious battle for Andt-Kyl, that the books had told her less than nothing. The chaos in the streets of the tiny logging town seemed more like a riot than a battle. There were no disciplined blocks of men working in concert, no ordered sequence of attack and defense, no clear delineation between friend and foe. Instead, there was madness. The leather-clad loggers of the town ran in all directions, some cradling vicious wounds, some collapsed in doorways weeping, some hurling buckets of water on burning buildings, some charging down the street brandishing axes and crude spears, pointing and hollering in a direction that Adare desperately hoped was east.

  Three times she had seen knots of Urghul horsemen—some no more than twenty paces distant—and three times Fulton had forced her to backtrack, to take a different route, his face grim as he spat orders at the Aedolians under his command, gesturing with his naked sword.

  He had almost refused to let her into the town at all.

 
“You can only do two things in Andt-Kyl,” he told her bluntly, staring at the smoking village from the western shore of the Black, where they had paused while il Tornja and the Army of the North pushed ahead. “You can get in the way, or you can die, Your Radiance.”

  “I need to see it,” she had insisted.

  “You can see it from here. It will make even less sense up close.”

  She stared at her Aedolian. “Are you defying me?”

  “I am protecting you.”

  “There are other threats to my life and rule than an Urghul spear in the chest.”

  Fulton shook his head curtly. “That is why my order exists. Why I exist.”

  Adare blew out a frustrated breath. She had no doubts about Fulton’s loyalty, but loyalty was not the same as judgment.

  “Listen,” she began, uncertain just how much she wanted to reveal. “The legions love il Tornja. Have you heard what the men say? He’s invincible. He’s unstoppable. Fearless. Brilliant—”

  “Good qualities in a kenarang.”

  “You and I both know he is more than the kenarang. The true question is how much more he hopes to be.”

  Fulton narrowed his eyes. “I understood you had him in check, that your Mizran Councillor had . . . thwarted him.”

  Adare leaned close. “You saw exactly what I saw: a collar of flame. It was there for a few heartbeats, then it disappeared. Nira says she can keep il Tornja in check, but what do I know about a leach’s kenning? What do you know?”

  The Aedolian started to respond, but she cut him off.

  “And even if it’s true, even if we have il Tornja controlled, he’s not the only danger. I’m new to the throne, Fulton. In fact, I’ve never even sat on the fucking thing. I’m young. I’m a woman. The Sons of Flame follow me because of what happened at the Everburning Well, but the legions follow il Tornja. If I’m going to win their support and loyalty, I need to prove myself something more than a callow young princess with more ambition than spine.”

  “Wading into a battle is no way to demonstrate your bravery.”

  “Unfortunately,” Adare replied, “it is.”

  She gestured to the small town. Smoke rose over the far shore, but the nearest island appeared relatively untouched by the violence. At least, she hoped it was untouched. According to her scouts, il Tornja was in the tall stone tower that seemed to grow straight out of the cliffs on the island’s southern coast. It looked close enough for her to reach.

  “I have to go,” she said again, willing Fulton to see the wisdom of her words, hoping desperately that they were, in fact, wise. “I have to go.”

  Fulton grimaced, flexed and unflexed his sword hand, then nodded curtly. “But once we cross the river, you obey me. If I tell you to move, you move. If I tell you to drop, you drop.” He fixed her with a glare. “Do you understand? Your Radiance?”

  Adare nodded. “I understand.”

  Despite the chaos raging in the streets, they reached the tower without any of the Aedolians being forced to bloody their blades. Il Tornja’s own men stood at the base. Their eyes widened at the sight of the Emperor and her guard, but they bowed and moved aside. Only when Adare had stepped out of the light and madness into the cool, sepulchral dark of the tower did she realize she was trembling, her hands balled into aching fists at her side. She uncurled them slowly while Fulton ordered the other Aedolians to join the kenarang’s men at the entrance, then started climbing the spiral stair before he could notice her fear.

  The stone of the tower dampened the worst of the sound—the clash of steel on steel, the screaming of men and horses—and Adare found herself climbing more slowly as she reached the top. When they approached the trapdoor at the top of the spiral, she paused, allowing Fulton to step past her, then followed him into the blinding light and battering noise of the battle.

  She had expected a square room, something with windows to let out the light of Andt-Kyl’s beacon, but there were no windows. She realized, as she blinked against the sun, that there weren’t even walls. The top floor was open to the elements on all sides, a round stone pit six paces across at the center, blackened from the signal fires. Half a dozen stone pillars ringed the circumference, supporting a conical roof clearly intended to keep the worst of the rain and snow off the signal fire. Between the stone floor and the ceiling above, there was nothing but air, air opening onto a sheer drop in every direction.

  Adare’s stomach twisted. She wanted nothing more than to shrink back through the trapdoor into the relative silence and safety below. She, however, was the one who had insisted on coming, on being brave, being seen being brave, and after a moment she forced herself to take a step forward, to look at the full panorama of blood and suffering spread out below.

  The bridges were gone, but the Urghul still crossed on felled logs, lashing their panicked mounts forward into the churning mass of gore and struggling bodies that had overtaken the two small islands. Adare stared. Every street and small square, every tiny alley, was packed with men, steel, and horseflesh. There was no way to make sense of the slaughter, no way to organize it. Two women, one in black, one in what looked like a fur coat slung over tattered red silk, fought back to back, ringed by a dozen riders. Adare stared. The black-clad one looked like little more than a girl, but she was holding the Urghul at bay somehow, twin blades spinning in her hands. As Adare watched, the horsemen forced them out of sight behind a burning building.

  Fully half the town’s houses were burning, bright and indifferent flame shimmering the air. A two-story log structure groaned as fire lapped the beams, then collapsed into the street, crushing a score of legionaries. Down by the river, the press forced soldiers into the turgid current where they flailed for a desperate moment before their armor dragged them under. Two streets over, a pair of Annurians hacked at the legs of a rearing horse while the rider plunged his spear downward over and over. The full fury of the struggle had not yet engulfed the tower, but men fought and died just a hundred paces distant.

  This is battle, Adare told herself angrily. Look at it.

  It didn’t look like battle. It looked like mutual slaughter. She wanted to vomit.

  “Your Radiance,” Fulton said, extending an armored arm. “Please keep back from the edge. This is a dangerous place.”

  “I am not going to fall off the tower,” she told him, trying to keep her voice firm, confident, turning her attention from the dead and dying to her immediate surroundings. Il Tornja sat at the very edge of the stone floor, just a few paces away. He had left all his guards below, but a dozen young men, battle messengers judging from their light armor, stood at attention, eyes moving nervously from il Tornja to the battle, then back. As Adare watched, two more runners burst up through the trapdoor, sweat streaming down their faces, chests heaving as they took their places at the end of the line. Blood dripped from the hand of the closest man, his blood or someone else’s. Adare couldn’t tell.

  The kenarang himself might have been carved from stone. Unlike the famous generals whose paintings hung in halls of the Dawn Palace—men standing high in their stirrups or brandishing a sword from a rocky escarpment—il Tornja sat on the stone floor with his legs crossed beneath him, hands in his lap. He wore a sword buckled at his belt, but it remained sheathed. Adare couldn’t see his face, but there was something about the man’s absolute stillness that made her pause.

  No, she reminded herself. Not a man. A Csestriim.

  “The battle?” she asked, choosing her words carefully. “Is it going as planned?”

  Il Tornja didn’t turn, didn’t speak. The wind shifted his hair, tugged at the collar of his cloak, but the general himself remained motionless. Adare glanced at the line of runners and signalmen. The nearest, a black-haired, wide-eyed youth, met her gaze, shook his head slightly, then pursed his lips. It took her a moment to realize he was mouthing the word “No.” He looked almost as frightened of il Tornja as he did of the battle below.

  Adare hesitated, then pushed her way forward.
She hadn’t risked the trip into town only to be cowed by her own kenarang. Csestriim or no, he still had Nira’s collar around his neck, a deadly, invisible noose. One word from Adare and the old woman would kill him. Not that Nira was there. Even spry as she was, she couldn’t have managed the forced march north. Adare tried to ignore the fact.

  “General,” she said, stepping forward, taking il Tornja by the shoulder.

  He turned his head.

  “I said—”

  The words withered in her mouth. She had locked gazes with her kenarang hundreds of times—over a shared pillow and a bared knife, in lust, love, and furious distrust—and she thought she understood the range of his emotion. She thought that she had fought past his lies and betrayals to finally understand something of the creature to whom she had tied her fate. Staring into his face, however, she realized for the first time the depth of her error.

  Gone was the wry amusement she had seen so often, gone the wolfish hunger. All emotion had been scrubbed from those eyes, all expression Adare might have recognized as human . . . gone. His face was the face of a man, but for the first time she saw the mind behind in that unwavering stare: a mind cold and alien and unknowable as the dark space between midwinter stars. She wanted to shrink into her cloak, to turn away, to flee. For half a heartbeat, the terrifying drop from the tower seemed to offer escape rather than certain death.

  “Stay,” he said, the word quick as a knife nicking a vein. “But do not speak. It is a near thing, this contest.”

  “What—” she began, then faltered.

  “I am what you kept alive to wage your wars. Now you will see why.”

  Adare nodded numbly. She felt that if she looked into the emptiness of those eyes a heartbeat longer her mind might unhinge. Far below, blood ran heavy as spring snowmelt in the town’s crude gutters. The fight crashed up against the base of the tower. Men fought, and screamed, and died, but she no longer feared the battle. That, at least, was a fight between men, courage matched against courage, will against will. She was no warrior, but she could understand their hope, terror, and rage, emotions that seemed warm as summer rain, soft as a down bed when compared to the eyes of the creature beside her.