The Last Mortal Bond (59 page)

Others could learn, of course, once they'd taken back control, but in order to
do
that, in order to kill Rallen and his batch of thugs, Gwenna needed fliers
now,
needed someone she could nail in a barrel, who could take control of a bird as soon as they broke out over on Skarn.

She'd almost chosen Delka. The woman was older than Jak, weaker and slower, but she was steady, reliable. When Gwenna went to talk to her, however, Delka had convinced her otherwise.

“You're in command,” she'd said, shaking her head, “and if you tell me to go, I'll go. But I think you're making a mistake.”

“The mistake has a name,” Gwenna'd spat. “Quick Jak. He'll start shitting himself the minute someone draws a sword.”

“But no one's supposed to draw swords. That's the plan, right? Sneak in, get the birds, sneak out. Jak freezes when he has to fight, but there shouldn't be any fighting.”

Gwenna ground her teeth. “
Shouldn't
isn't the same as
won't.
I can't be certain what's going to happen once we get over there.”

“Of course you can't,” Delka said. “You play the odds. I was already over on Arim when Jak started his training. We heard the stories, even over there. A flier like him comes along once in a generation, if you're lucky, and if Rallen comes after you while you're in the air, you're going to need the best flier you can get.”

Gwenna glanced the length of the cave. Quick Jak was in the shadow of a large stalactite, working through his sword forms over and over. The moves were good, fluid, but it was easy to be fluid when someone wasn't hitting you back. “Fuck,” she said.

To her surprise, Delka smiled. “Fuck, indeed.”

“You think he can do it?”

The older woman shrugged. “I don't know. But there's one other thing, right? That bird, the huge one?”

Gwenna nodded slowly. “Allar'ra.”

“It's Jak's. He trained it.”

And that settled the question, to the extent that it could be settled. Gwenna spent the next nine days swinging between irritation and impatience, trying to beat a little last-minute training into the heads of the men and women newly under her command, trying to hammer out a plan that wouldn't get them all killed, and all the while worrying that right now, when they were so close to go-time, Rallen would discover their hideaway, blow shut the entrance in the stone above, and leave them all to rot. It was almost a relief to climb finally into the barrel. At least the time had come to
do
something, even if doing meant sitting in the hot, cramped dark, trying not to vomit from the smell.

When the bird finally arrived, that relief had faded to a dull ache pervading muscle and bone. There was no real way to mark time inside the barrel. For a while she tried counting heartbeats, but they were too loud, too jarring, and after a hundred or so, she tried focusing on something else—the waves washing the rocks, the indignant screeching of the gulls, anything to take her mind off the staves squeezing her from every side.

Even focused on the world outside her tiny wooden prison, she almost missed the bird's approach. Kettral tended to screech when they stooped—a habit encouraged by most fliers—but there was no need for such a precipitous dive to pick up a load of cargo. The bird came in low and quiet from the east. Gwenna caught the
whrrr
of wind feathering the great wings, then felt the barrel's sickening lurch as the kettral caught the cargo net in its claws, lifting the whole load into the air.

It took a few moments to get used to the motion, to the creak of the heavy ropes, and the groaning protestations of the cargo. The load was too large for one bird, and there was no way of knowing whether Gwenna had been bundled into the same grab net with Talal or Quick Jak. Not that it ought to matter. The whole stack of goods was bound for Skarn. They could rendezvous when they arrived.

The flight was short, a lot shorter than the swim, and there was no more warning for the drop than there had been for the pickup—just half a heartbeat of sick, sudden weightlessness followed by a tooth-rattling thud.

Gwenna twisted inside the barrel, trying to ease the pain in her cramped legs. Hours of motionlessness had wrapped a thick strap of tension across the muscles of her back. It would be a bitch drilling her way out, and she could already feel the lead-heavy ache that would make an awkward mess out of her first few steps. Those were problems she'd anticipated, however, problems she could solve. The first hurdle was behind her.

She wondered how the others were faring. Talal was slightly taller than Gwenna, but Jak would have the hardest time of it. He'd gone in first, knees, then elbows, then shoulders scraping against the barrel's rim. Gwenna had watched him, trying to decide if he'd make it through half a day trapped inside the thing, trying to read his face for any hint of panic, any sign that he'd lose it once they hammered the lid shut. The flier grimaced silently as the rough wood tore open the slarn scab on his upper arm, then, as though feeling Gwenna's gaze upon him, glanced over. He didn't do anything when she met his eyes. Didn't scowl, or nod. Didn't even blink. If he looked ready to be locked inside the barrel, it was only because he looked half dead.

But he's here,
Gwenna reminded herself. He'd managed to remain silent during the long wait and the short flight. The rest of it, the stealing of the birds, the flying … that was the shit he was supposed to be
good
at. That was why she'd risked bringing him in the first place.

She shifted, trying to get a better grip on the hand brace, then froze at the sound of voices approaching. Three of them. All male.
No,
she realized, listening more intently.
Four.
The fourth wasn't talking, but she could hear his footfalls alongside the others': soles scuffing over rough stone. The men paused just a few paces away. She imagined them standing at the edge of the piled barrels and crates. Slowly, silently, she pressed her hands against the wooden staves, bracing herself for the jostling to come.

“Which ones you want to start with?” A deep voice, and loud. The man sounded amused for some reason.

“Up to you, Ren. We gotta move 'em all in the end.”

“Not necessarily,” said a third voice, high-pitched and sly. “We could just … lose a couple. Right over the edge of the cliff.”

A pause, then laughter all around.

Gwenna tensed. They were joking, clearly. There was no point in hauling supplies all the way from Hook only to chuck them off the limestone cliffs. Even Rallen's thugs couldn't be that lazy.

“That's our food, you fuckin' fool. Whatta'ya want to get rid of it for?”

“Not all
our
food, is it? Rallen's going to eat half a' what's here. I'm not sayin' we chuck anything good, but surely we can do without half a ton a' … say … squash.”

Squash
. That was Jak's barrel. The rebels had filled two burlap sacks with the yellow and green vegetables in order to make enough room for the flier. She tensed, a slow, cold dread creeping up her spine. Suddenly, horribly, she felt the full weight of her helplessness. Training didn't matter if you couldn't move, and combat nerves weren't worth much if you couldn't get to the actual combat. Worse, she wasn't the only one listening to the lazy banter. Quick Jak would be able to hear the men as well as Gwenna herself. He'd know better than she did that six letters—S Q U A S H—were stamped in bold red ink on the lid of his barrel.

Stay cool, Jak,
she prayed quietly.
They're just joking. Just fucking around. Stay cool.

“I like squash,” one of the men was saying. “You're not tossing my barrel of squash.”

“We're not tossing anything,” the first voice cut in. “We're going to do what we're told to do. Let's go. One man to a barrel. Get 'em rolling.”

Something was wrong. A voice was screaming inside her skull to abort, abort,
abort
. Only there was no aborting. There was no doing anything. As the barrel lurched onto its side, she tightened her grip on the chisel. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it would kill a man quick enough if you put it in his eye.

The 'Shael-spawned thing almost ended up in her own eye when the barrel lurched into motion. Whoever was pushing it wasn't making any effort to save the wooden staves, and the whole thing bounced over the rough ground, jolting against the rocks, jostling into larger obstacles, all with Gwenna spinning inside it, trying not to vomit into her own mouth. They couldn't have covered more than a hundred paces, but by the time it was done, she felt bruised in a dozen places, battered at the knees, back, and elbows.

While Gwenna tried to sort up from down, a door creaked open, salt-rusted hinges shrieking. She just had time to locate the ocean behind her, waves breaking against the stone, and then she was moving again. There was no light inside the barrel, but the shift from uneven stone onto smooth wood planking told her all she needed to know—they'd entered the warehouse.

Suspicion and unease still coiled around her chest like a huge snake, constricting each time she drew a breath. She kept the chisel clutched in her hand, but clutching it was about all she could do as she listened to the other barrels jolting over the stone, the cursing of the men as they hauled in other crates and containers. Then there was only silence, thick and hot. Then a voice, Jakob Rallen's, that sullen anger of his as instantly recognizable as the sound of the waves.

“Which one is the leach?”

“Not here, Commander. Must be in the next load.”

He knows,
Gwenna realized with horror.
He knows the whole fucking thing
.

“You're sure?” Rallen demanded. “He didn't slip away?”

“I don't think so, sir. The bastard's nailed inside a barrel. Hard to slip away from that.”

Rallen just grunted his agreement, then, with an imperious gesture Gwenna couldn't see but could picture perfectly, pointed at her barrel.

“Get her out.”

The blows started before she could come up with anything resembling a plan, before she could even protest. Someone was hitting the barrel with a heavy hammer, two or three people really, the brutal blows landing over and over, splintering the wooden staves, driving the shards of oak into her skin. The heavy steel hammers came down again and again, bruising her hips and shoulders. One particularly vicious strike sent a spike of pain shooting down her leg. There was nothing to do. No way to fight. Even as the hammers smashed holes in the barrel, the metal hoops held, trapping her inside. She wondered if Rallen intended to see her beaten to a meaty pulp right there on the wooden floor, struggled to cover her head with her arms, then realized that for all their ferocity, the men wielding the hammers were avoiding her head. They weren't trying to kill her. At least not yet. Not quickly.

With some difficulty, she brought her arms down, tucking her hands into the safe space in the hollow of her knees, protecting them. If there was ever a weapon close to hand she wanted to be able to grab the fucking thing. It was tempting to close her eyes, but closed eyelids weren't going to stop an eight-pound hammerhead, and she forced herself to keep them open, trying, through the haze of pink pain and the barrel's wreckage, to piece together the layout of the cavernous room.

The space was large, but dim and windowless. When her head stopped spinning long enough, she caught a glimpse of wooden boxes stacked all the way to the eaves. So they
had
brought her to the warehouse. She stifled a grim laugh. At least that part of the plan had worked out. Of Talal, there was no sign. A few paces away, however, stood the tall barrel stamped
Squash
.

Not only did Rallen know we were coming,
she thought as the hammers rose and fell,
he knew which 'Kent-kissing
barrels
to go after
.

Finally, after what seemed like an age, the staves around her collapsed. She could hear Rallen's panting, hear the hammering hearts of his soldiers, and below that, another sound, a low, angry groaning. It was her own voice, she realized, and she went to work stopping it.

Three steel hoops still ringed her folded body. She tried to straighten her legs, failed, strangled a scream before it clawed its way out of her throat, then tried again.

Between the long, motionless hours and the beating, she wondered if it was still
possible
to straighten her legs. She'd seen ex-Kettral before, men and women who took a bad fall during barrel drops or on a botched extract, who couldn't move from the waist down. Terror at the prospect took her by the neck, tried to shake her, but she forced it away, focused on her legs once more. At last, agonizingly, she managed to get them to twitch. They burned, throbbed, but she kept going, trying to loosen tendons twisted to the breaking point.

These assholes better watch out,
she thought, twisting her neck, hoping that the exploding pain there didn't mean anything important.
At this rate I'll be able to attack some time around the middle of next month.

Rallen, however, was taking no chances. “Get back!” he snapped at his men. “
Back!
All of you. She is not some useless washout, she is Kettral.
Real
Kettral.”

Gwenna might have taken more satisfaction from the warning if she'd been able to stand up. She rolled onto her side, managed to get her bloody knees beneath her, then to lever herself up onto her elbows, raising her head enough to look around. Rallen had left nothing to chance.

Two soldiers in blacks—one man, one woman—covered her with flatbows from five paces away. Too far to lunge at before they got off a shot; too close to even hope that they might miss. And they weren't the only ones. Two other men had put down their hammers and drawn their double blades. They'd been enthusiastic enough in breaking her out, but now that she was free, they watched her as they would a viper, eyes fixed on that chisel in her hand. She debated throwing it. She could kill one of them, at least, but there wasn't much point in killing just one.