The Last Mortal Bond (33 page)

“So he's in charge?”

“There isn't … a formal structure,” Qora replied. “Manthe can't fight. Won't fight. Whatever. But she seems better than Hobb with a lot of things—tactics, knowledge of the birds, stuff like that.”

“You have no birds,” Annick observed. It was the first thing she'd said since entering the cave. “You are hiding in a cave being slowly decimated by slarn. It is time to shift tactics.”

“My point exactly,” Gwenna said. “If Manthe is the strategic genius behind this operation, you might want to rethink your leadership.”

“They're Kettral,” Jak protested. “The only Kettral.”

Gwenna smiled grimly. “Not anymore.”

*   *   *

The cavern stank of torch smoke and spoiled food, piss and wet wool. There was no ventilation. The air just sat, wet and sullen, fat and unmoving. The chill didn't feel invigorating. It felt dead. The large fire Qora had described was visible well before they reached the cavern proper. Gwenna had expected something warming, comforting, but from the tunnel in which they stood, it looked like a hazy red maw, the ruddy light throwing everything beyond its scope into deeper darkness. And then there was the blood, long dried but still acrid, a reminder, as if she needed a reminder, that the darkness had teeth.

“Identify yourself,” a man demanded as they stepped free of the cramped, jagged passage. He was tall, but thin to the point of emaciation, all bone and tendon and skin. The bare blade he brandished a few feet from Gwenna's face looked like the only solid thing about him, and from the way he held it—too far out in front of him, too wide of the centerline—Gwenna doubted he had either the skill or the strength to do much with it.

“It's us, Colt,” Qora said wearily. “Plus a few new friends.”

Gwenna shook her head. “Wrong place for a sentry. Anyone who gets this far is already past the choke point. You want him twenty paces back there,” she added, jerking a thumb over her shoulder, “where we had to climb up onto the ledge.”

Colt's eyes bulged. He stared at her so long that Gwenna wondered if he was right in the head. When he finally spoke, he didn't lower his sword. “You don't know what's
out there
. This isn't just some cave.…”

“It's Hull's Hole,” Gwenna replied, the anger hot and unexpected in her throat, “and the slarn are out there. I know about slarn because I spent the better part of a miserable day killing them. The slarn are
more
reason to put guards in the right places, not less.”

“And just who in Hull's name are you?” a new voice demanded. Gwenna pivoted to face another man, obviously older than Colt—well into his late forties, by the look of him—and bigger, and stronger. He stepped out of a shadowed alcove by the entrance to the cavern, his sword, too, naked in his hand. Unlike Colt, however, he looked like he knew how to use it, like he was willing to. Something about his face—thick black beard, wide-set eyes, heavy bones through the brow and jaw—looked vaguely familiar. If Qora's timeline was right, he would have still been on Qarsh, still flying missions, when Gwenna herself first arrived on the Islands. Not that any of that mattered now. He stepped in front of Colt as though the other man were no more than a useless chunk of rock.

Qora moved forward, but he dragged her out of the way with his free hand, shoving her to the floor. “Get the
fuck
out of the way, you stupid, stupid bitch. You bring people here?
Here?
” Despite the fury in his voice, he never took his eyes from Gwenna. He reeked of anger and oiled steel. Beyond him, clustered around the fire, stood a couple dozen men and women, some on their feet, some caught resting, plenty of them hefting blades or bows, but hesitantly, as though they'd never considered how to face such a threat. Gwenna glanced at them, then turned her attention back to the bearded man.

“You must be Hobb. Qora mentioned you.” He was tall, more than a head taller than Gwenna herself. Worth remembering if she had to kill him. “Your sentry's in the wrong place.”

“I'll ask one more time,” the man replied, jaw tight, “and then I'm going to start cutting. Who are you?”

“Never mind about the sentry, actually,” Gwenna replied. “Qora told us you weren't the brains of the operation. Where's Manthe?”

It was a gamble, but it paid off. Toward the back of the rough chamber, in the shadows to the left of the fire, a woman jerked as though burned by an errant spark.
Still so scared after all these years,
Gwenna thought bleakly.

“Manthe,” Gwenna said, looking straight past Hobb, raising her voice slightly. “You've got this poor idiot standing in the wrong spot. Take us, for example—we're already in the cavern. If you wanted to contain us, it's too late.”

She hadn't been sure what to expect from the woman. She'd read accounts of combat shock, knew that it could scramble all reasonable responses, but even the most dire accounts failed to prepare her for the woman's panicked shouting.

“Get flatbows on them! Vessik and Larch, flank them,
flank them
!” Manthe's voice was high and desperate, about the furthest thing Gwenna could imagine from the standard-issue Kettral calm. And this when confronted with three strangers who hadn't even bothered to raise weapons.

The men and women inside the cavern, frozen by their surprise only moments earlier, lurched into motion, drawing blades and flexing bows, some scrambling to back up Hobb, others searching—as though they had just now considered the notion—for a clear line of fire on the intruders. The whole thing was a pathetic mess, but you could get killed easily enough in a mess, especially if one of the fools with a bow decided to start putting wood and steel in the air.

“Oh, for 'Shael's sake,” Gwenna said, careful to keep her hands still at her sides. “There are only three of us. Knock it off with the theatrics. Talal…,” she added in a lower voice.

“On it,” the leach replied quietly.

“Annick?” Gwenna asked, not bothering to look back.

“I have Hobb,” the sniper said. Her voice came from a dozen feet up and to Gwenna's left. Clearly she'd climbed onto some sort of ledge, although when she'd had time to do that, Gwenna had no idea.

If Hobb was discomfited by the arrow aimed at his chest, it didn't show in his voice. “Put down the bow,” he snapped. “Look around. You've got one shot. I have ten archers flanking you.”

“Want me to kill him?” Annick asked. Hobb might not have spoken.

Gwenna shook her head. “No, I don't want you to kill him. He seems to be the only person here who knows how to hold a sword. We came to make friends with these fuckups, and besides, they're unarmed.”

Hobb snorted. “Look, you idiotic bitch—”

“Talal,” Gwenna said, raising a finger.

The twang of snapping bowstrings shivered the cool air, followed by the curses of the men and women holding them.

“You thought you had archers,” she said, keeping her voice even, cheerful. “In fact, what you have is ten men holding curved pieces of wood. Annick, if Hobb moves, kill Manthe. Leave the rest alone. It's not their fault they're being led by idiots.”

“It
is
their fault,” Annick replied curtly. “They chose to follow them.”

Gwenna waved away the objection. “As I understand it, the choices were limited.”

Hobb shifted toward her. Gwenna looked at his blade, then shook her head.

“I really wouldn't,” she said. “It'll take Annick about half a heartbeat to kill your cowering girlfriend. You think you've got something to prove, but the only thing you're going to prove by getting killed and dumped into a side tunnel for the slarn is that you have …
had,
I should say … terrible judgment.”

For a few heartbeats she thought she'd misplayed her hand, that despite her warning the big bastard was going to limber up the sword and start swinging. There was no real danger—all that business about Annick wasn't a bluff—but if they were going to fight Jakob Rallen and his vicious little cabal, if they were going to get off the island with the birds and munitions, they needed these people to help them. The situation was ugly enough already, and a spasm of wholesale slaughter wasn't going to help.

After a moment, however, Hobb cursed, slammed the blade back into its sheath, and stepped up close, so close Gwenna could smell the rank fish on his breath.

“Don't threaten my wife,” he growled. “Ever.”

Wife.
That was interesting. So Qora had the story straight, at least the important parts. Gwenna held up her hands in a mock surrender. “The only person I want to threaten is Jakob Rallen. Now, maybe we can put away the swords, and the bows, and the big words, and talk to each other about just what in Hull's holy dark is going on.”

She gestured toward what seemed to be the center of the cavern. “Where do you sit around here?”

“Bare rock too hard for you?” Hobb demanded.

“Usually I bring a cushion,” Gwenna replied, crossing the floor without waiting to see if Talal was following, “but I'll make an exception.” She kept the words casual, kept her hands relaxed and far from her weapons. She tried to meet the eyes of Hobb's ragtag soldiers without glaring. It was hard to know, sometimes, if she was glaring.

The other soldiers were whispering, murmuring their confusion as though the words were prayer. What they were praying for, Gwenna had no idea. Probably that she would die before she started hurting people.

“So. I'm Gwenna…,” she began, lowering herself to the floor. Hobb was still standing, looming over her, really. The rest of the ragged band was scattered around the cavern, but someone had to sit first if they didn't plan to stand all night long. “This is my Wing. Sorry for the rocky start.”

“Wing?” Hobb said, narrowing his eyes. “You're Kettral?”

“Of course we're Kettral. You think three friendly dockyard whores just wandered into Hull's Hole? We'd like to help, if we can all manage not to cut each other to pieces.”

From the back of the cavern, Manthe burst in, voice ragged with almost-panic. “She still has the
bow
.”

Gwenna shook her head. “What?”

“Your
sniper,
” the woman insisted. “You said put down the bows and blades and talk, but she's still holding one, still aiming straight
at me
!”

“Oh,” Gwenna said, waving a hand. “I meant everyone
else
should relax.”

“What about
her
?”

“Annick never relaxes.”

“Tell her to put down the bow,” Hobb growled.

“Yeah. She doesn't do that either.”

 

19

After five long days forcing the horses forward through miserable stands of tamarack and larch, they were still in the forest. Though the world remained unrelentingly dark to Valyn's scarred eyes, he could feel the cold wind, honed over the mountain stone and bright as ice. It cut through his leathers and the wool beneath. He could smell the snow, and the ancient ice of the glaciers hanging in the high valleys.

The Eyrie had flown his class of cadets out to the Romsdals once for a two-week exercise in alpine evasion and survival. He'd only been twelve at the time, but he remembered the great gray-black peaks well. Where the Bone Mountains around Ashk'lan were comprised of clean white granite, of rivers cascading over smooth sweeps of stone, the Romsdals were crumbling and dark. Year-round snow capped the highest mountains, but below that white blanket, everything was ankle-twisting scree and shattered schist. The Romsdals felt old, somehow, older than the Bones, heavy with the age and weight of the world. Even when the sun shone, they were cold.

“How far west have we come?” Valyn asked. He could smell Huutsuu at his side, her sweat and leather, the dried blood on her hands from butchering a pair of rabbits that morning.

“Far enough,” she replied after a pause. “We are two days' ride from a river and just beyond that, a city.”

Valyn studied his mind's map, a composite of the hundreds he'd memorized during his time on the Islands.

“Aergad,” he concluded. “It's in northeastern Nish, near the headwaters of the Haag.”

He could smell Huutsuu's indifference. “Stones piled on other stones. People crammed so close they live in the shit of their neighbors. In this, at least, I agree with your leach—such places should be burned.”

“Balendin is here?” Valyn asked.

“He will be, either today or another day. He travels with his own guard now, joining the war at many places. The fiercest fighting is here, so he returns here often.”

“And you're hoping the Flea will come hunting.”

Huutsuu hesitated. “Your warrior friends strike in unexpected places, but never in the heart of our force. We will keep to the forests and hope that they find us.”

It didn't seem like much of a plan, but he couldn't think of another. According to Huutsuu, the Urghul had been trying and failing to track the Flea for months. Even in deep snow, he and his Wing seemed able to simply disappear. The woman could hardly expect that adding a blind man to the mix would lead to more success, and Valyn had kept quiet about his hearing, about the fact that he could smell anything—a fox, a man, a bear—more than a mile distant. Maybe he could track the Kettral Wing if he got close enough, and maybe he couldn't, but he wasn't about to reveal that secret to Huutsuu.

“We ride south,” Huutsuu responded after a pause. “Slowly. He hides, this friend of yours, in the deep forest. He looks for bands like this. If we present a target, he will come.”

“The problem,” Valyn observed, “is that he might cut all of our throats before you can tell him you've switched sides.”