The Last Mortal Bond (31 page)

“So,” he said instead. “You're looking for these Annurian warriors, these ghosts. You know that they're Kettral, right?”

He'd spent most of the day pondering Huutsuu's words back at the homestead: three warriors, dressed all in black, almost unkillable. They had to be Kettral; the question—the question that gnawed at his mind like a rat—was
who
?

“We know this,” Huutsuu replied.

“Then you're an idiot. The Kettral, whoever they are, are going to want to help you even less than I do. They're not going to put aside the knowledge of what you've done here.”

Huutsuu hesitated. A snow-cold breeze out of the north carried the smell of seared elk. Most of the Urghul were clustered around the fire, talking quietly between bites. It had always struck Valyn as strange that a people so brutal should speak in such a musical tongue. Listening to the horsemen was like listening to gentle chanting or birdsong. He could smell the stale sweat and leather of the sentries, four of them standing guard in a rough square around the camp. For just a moment the small patch of forest felt safe, warm, the kind of place you could let down your guard to enjoy the company of friends.

“The Kettral will not help us, even if it means killing this leach who leads my people?” Huutsuu asked.

“A man can hate two foes at the same time. Especially if one's a traitor and the other is a blood-soaked barbarian that loves to carve open kids.”

“My fight is not with Annur.”

Valyn stared stupidly into the darkness, toward where her face would be. “Then what the fuck are you
doing
here, Huutsuu? Why did you even cross the Black?”

Her frustration was bright, sharp. “We came to purge the world of your weakness, this is true. But now—the world has changed.”

“The world doesn't change.”

“There is much a man might miss while hiding in the forest.”

Valyn shook his head grimly. “Did you torture Annurian citizens?”

He could feel the whisper of wind in his ragged beard as she nodded. “By the score.”

“Then I haven't missed anything.”

“We have stopped. I and my people put aside that fight. There is another, greater foe than the millions of people your empire raises into sheep.”

“And because you realized you listened to the wrong lies, that you followed the wrong bloody bastard, you'll stop cutting Annurian throats for … what? A few weeks? Long enough to find a proper religious fanatic to lead you again? Then what? Back to boiling Annurian children in your pots? If you're really done with this then
go home
.”

“I will not leave the leach at my back. I will not leave him alive to return to the northern grasses when his war is finished.”

“And if you manage to kill Balendin, you will leave?”

“I will leave. This land was not built for horses.”

Valyn breathed deeply, smelling her, searching for the lie. There was only the woman's sweat, her determination.

He shook his head, sick of it all. After more than half a year in the forest, lost, forgotten, dead in the minds of everyone who knew him, here he was again, getting tangled up in some formless war where no one was right, where everyone murdered and lied, where the ally you sided with might be worse than the foe you fought.

It doesn't matter,
he reminded himself silently.
That family of trappers is still alive.
That's
why you're here
.

The rest of it would end in ugliness and blood. Saving that kid, though, him and his family, that, at least, had been good. Valyn hadn't expected, in the long months scratching an existence out of the forest, to have another chance to do a thing that was good, unfouled. As for what came next … well … it didn't much matter whether he died fighting a bear for next winter's cave or trying to put a knife in Balendin's heart.

“Fine,” he said at last. “Tell me about these ghosts you're hoping to find.”

“They wear black.”

It was no more than she'd said that morning, but once more the urgency pricked at Valyn. The only other Kettral at Andt-Kyl had been those on his Wing. Immediately after the battle, when he was still struggling with the fact that Adare's knife had not killed him, he thought he'd caught Gwenna's smell on the lake wind, and Annick's, and Talal's. He'd thought about trying to rejoin them, had even tried for half a morning to force his way through the trees. Then he abandoned the course. His Wing, if they were alive, if his mind wasn't taunting him with warmed-over memories, was better off without him. All he'd done was to lead them from ambush to disaster, and that was
before
il Tornja carved out his eyes. They'd defended the small town just fine without him, better than fine. He'd taken one more long breath, dragging the air of those forests into his lungs, lingering over the distant smells of his companions, his friends, his Wingmates, and then he'd turned his face away, to the north, pushing slowly through the trees until he couldn't smell anything but the forest and the wind off the mountains.

“Kettral,” he said quietly. His palms were slick with sweat, as was his face, despite the cold air slicing between the trunks. Could it be his own Wing after all these months, Gwenna and Talal and Annick hiding in the woods just like Valyn himself?

No,
he amended silently.
Not like me. Not hiding. Fighting
.

He half hoped that he was right. After so many months alone, he could almost hear Gwenna's tart laugh ringing in his ears, almost feel Talal's hand steady on his shoulder. But then, there was a reason he hadn't tried to find them immediately after Andt-Kyl. Even if they were his Wing, he had nothing left to give them.

“Describe them,” he said.

Huutsuu hesitated, marshaling her thoughts. “The details are elusive; they attack only at night.”

“Try.”

“There are three, two men and a woman.”

Valyn leaned back against the rough trunk of the tree, disappointment mingling with relief. It wasn't his Wing after all, at least not all of it. Maybe they weren't even Kettral after all. It wasn't as though the Eyrie had the only black cloth in the world.

“The leader is short,” Huutsuu continued. “Shorter than me, and black-skinned. There is a tall, yellow-haired woman, almost Urghul-looking. Maybe Eddish.”

Valyn's relief evaporated. He leaned forward. Huutsuu paused.

“You know them,” she said.

“The third,” Valyn said. “An ugly bastard with a scraggly beard.”

Her nod was a whisper.

“The Flea,” he said. “Holy Hull. You're looking for the Flea.”

Huutsuu repeated the name. “The Flea,” she said slowly, as though tasting the word. “You are certain of this?”

“The description fits. It's perfect.”

“Who is this Flea?”

Valyn shook his head, momentarily at a loss about how to respond. “The deadliest of us,” he said finally.

“You know him?”

“He trained me,” Valyn replied slowly.

“It was good to bring you, then.”

“Not really. We fought later. It was my fault that his sniper died.”

The memory of that desperate fight in Assare filled his mind, of Blackfeather Finn stepping from the open doorway, Pyrre's knife buried in his belly. Valyn had decided, over the course of the cold, lonely months, that that was the moment when his own life had turned. Everything that had gone before, even the horror of Ha Lin's death, even the flight from the Islands themselves—none of it would have led down the same path if only Valyn had managed to keep his people in check, to find a way to make his peace with the Flea instead of fighting him. He'd gone over the events a thousand times. Pyrre, of course, had been the wick that lit the whole explosive mess, but he should have found a way to control Pyrre. For some time he couldn't measure, he lost himself in it all over again. It was Huutsuu's voice, finally, that pulled him clear.

“So you fought him. Warriors fight. This does not mean you cannot ride at his side again.”

Valyn frowned at the word
ride
. “Does he have his bird?”

“The bird is dead,” Huutsuu replied. “Long Fist killed it the first time these Kettral attacked. He killed it and the woman flying on its back.”

“Chi Hoai Mi,” Valyn said, then shook his head. “The
first
time?”

“They came for Long Fist just before the battle at the lake, northeast of Andt-Kyl—the three of them with no bird, just like now. They killed many of my people, fought their way almost to Long Fist himself before they were stopped, taken. Then the bird came. Long Fist brought it down, but the other three escaped.”

“Brought it down?” Valyn demanded. “With what?”

Huutsuu hesitated. He could taste her awe, bright and cold as the night wind. “His strength is not all in his limbs. He raised a hand, and the bird burst into flame. It screamed as it fell.”

“A leach,” Valyn breathed. “Long Fist is a 'Kent-kissing leach. Just like Balendin.”

“Long Fist is blessed by the god,” Huutsuu said. “Your Kettral leach … he is twisted.”

“Twisted,” Valyn growled. “We're all fucking twisted.” He was holding the handle of his knife so tightly that his knuckles ached. With an effort he relaxed his grip. “Where did the Flea go? After.”

“He disappeared. Into the forest. For months now, he has haunted our camps, striking, leaving a dozen dead in moments, then disappearing into the trees. I need him now; a Kettral to kill a Kettral leach.”

“That's right,” Valyn spat. “You need him. Not me.”

“Two spears are better than one. I will use whatever weapon I can hold inside my hand.”

“I'm not a weapon.”

There was wariness on the wind now, and something else, something bright and hot that Valyn couldn't quite recognize. “I have seen you kill,” the woman said finally. “I have seen this with my own eyes.”

“I'm fucking
blind,
you stubborn bitch.”

“Perhaps. And perhaps it is because of this that you cannot see what you have become.”

 

18

“I hate this fucking place,” Gwenna said, staring into the fissure in the limestone that marked the entrance to Hull's Hole.

They'd waited in the mangroves until dark, crossed the spine of Hook to Buzzard's Bay, stolen a boat from the harbor, rowed it three-quarters of the way to Irsk, scuttled it, then swam in the last few miles. The days since leaving Annur had pared away the moon, sliver by sliver, until only a slight crescent remained. Still, a slight crescent was enough to illuminate a boat on the waves, and Gwenna spent the entire passage scanning the sky, searching for some sign of pursuit.

If Qora and Quick Jak were right, if all of Rallen's thugs were washouts who hadn't passed the Trial, the darkness was plenty thick to hide a few swimmers. On the other hand, Gwenna herself could see just fine in the watery light, could make out the slow, graceful shapes of swells around them, the sullen bulk of Qarsh black against the horizon, a few high clouds thin as silver filigreed across the night. It would only take one flier who passed the Trial to make them, just one of those bastards with the slarn sight to turn them into chum. She'd felt exposed in the boat, then exposed in the water. The entire passage, she'd felt hunched and hunted, desperate to get under cover once more, and yet now that they were here, in front of the Hole, staring into that jagged black pit … well … the ocean didn't seem quite so bad.

Hull's Hole reeked in its subtle, sick-sweet way of guano, and salt, and mussels gathered by the seabirds then shattered on the rocks. Gwenna could still remember those mussels from the first time. Next to the slarn and the poison, it seemed like a trivial detail, but she could picture them inside the entrance, hundreds of purple shells burst open, the stringy, gelatinous flesh torn apart by the beaks of birds, what was left of the mollusks pierced through by their own shattered shells. There was something obscene about them, about that splattering of wet, helpless flesh, too dumb and busted even to squirm.

And that was just the
entrance
. She could smell more now than she had been able to then. Farther in, there was the thin, dank scent of wet stone, the keen smell of blood, and beneath these, faint as a remembered nightmare, the slick, oleaginous, rotten stink—like yesterday's vomit laid over rotting meat—of the slarn.

“How long have all of you been hiding here?” Talal asked, no more eager, evidently, to go down into the Hole than Gwenna herself.

“Months,” Qora replied. “Manthe and Hobb had the idea.”

“The idea to hide in a cave filled with poisonous hive lizards?” Gwenna asked. “Who are those two geniuses?”

“They're in charge,” Quick Jak said. “Since we broke off from Rallen. They've been holding us together.”

“And the slarn?” Talal asked. “You've found a way to keep them at bay?”

“Mostly.”

The word spoke volumes. Gwenna hadn't forgotten the reptilian monsters—half snake, half eyeless lizard. She'd dreamed of them the night she escaped the Hole and passed the Trial, then nearly every night after that. If those dreams had grown less frequent, it was only because other horrors now vied with the slarn for her few restless hours of sleep. She hadn't forgotten the slarn, nor had she forgotten what the slarn did to people. When she closed her eyes, she could see Ha Lin's corpse, smooth skin pared open in long, fine gashes, flesh peeling back from the wounds. Some of that had been Balendin's work. Some, but not all.

“How many have you lost?” Gwenna asked.

Qora stared at her, held her silence like it was some kind of treasure.

“Twenty-two,” Jak said quietly.

Gwenna stared at him. “Out of…”