The Last Mortal Bond (89 page)

“The goddess will guard us,” Lehav said. “Think of the Everburning Well. It was only in your last, most dire moment, when you had committed yourself fully to the cause, that she showed herself.”

Adare nodded. The memory was still vivid as a dream from which she had only just awoken—the spear in her hand, a scream sharp on her lips, lightning carving apart the sky, and that single command offered in a voice larger than the whole world:
Win
.

I'm trying,
she'd argued back almost every day since.
I'm fucking trying
.

Nira spat onto the stones. “Far as I've seen, faith's about as much use as a piss bucket with a hole punched in the bottom. Ya need something people can
see
. When the faith wears out, people believe what they've
seen
. Sometimes, girl, ya gotta make your own miracles.”

Lehav's face hardened at the old woman's outburst, but he knew better than to take the bait. Instead, he turned back to Adare.

“Another question remains. We have yet to determine the structure of command.”

Adare glanced around the tower's top. The sad fact was that these were the only people in the city she came anywhere close to trusting. Lehav, Kegellen, and Nira. A religious zealot, the queen of all thieves, and an undying leach teetering on the verge of madness. It hardly made for a reassuring coalition, but then, even this unstable alliance was better than the council. When the council fled, Adare didn't even bother trying to stop them. At least the small group assembled on the tower's top was willing to
fight
. The problem was that they didn't trust each other.

“You have the command,” Adare replied, nodding to Lehav. “You're the closest thing we have to a general, so you're in charge.”

Kegellen pursed her lips. “While I appreciate this young man's fine…” She let her eyes rove over his legs and chest. “… qualities, I'm afraid that many of Annur's less savory characters might chafe if they are told to take their orders from him. It is a sad fact that many of the most dangerous men and women in this city, men and women whose help we will dearly want if the horsemen come to call—they are dissolute, anarchic, unaccustomed to true military discipline. If I ask them to salute, and march in step, I fear they will rebel.”

Adare looked at the woman. Kegellen smiled blithely back.

“What do you want?” Adare asked, voice tight.

“Want?” Kegellen asked. She blinked once, as though shocked by the question.

“This is a negotiation. You know it, and so do I. So what do you want?”

Lehav stepped forward, addressing himself to Kegellen. “The prophet of Intarra does not negotiate, nor does the Emperor of Annur. I know the scum of Annur as well as you do, woman. I grew up on your streets.” He turned to Adare. “We don't need thousands of killers and thieves playing havoc up here on the battlements. They're scavengers, not warriors. We're better off without them.”

Kegellen raised her brows, but Adare cut in before she could respond.

“Yes,” she said flatly. “We do need them. Look at this wall.” She gestured to the stone walkway stretching away into the distance, the bustle of normal commerce to the south, a smoking, blackened wasteland to the north. “The Sons cannot hold it all. The Sons cannot hold one-tenth of it. Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but the Urghul broke past the
entire Army of the North
.”

“Only after il Tornja left,” Lehav pointed out. “The legions were compromised.”

Adare stared at him. “And you don't think we're compromised?” She swept a hand over the smoking rubble. A quarter mile to the north, well out of bowshot, men and women were picking through the wreckage. Adare had given orders against it, but there was no time to enforce those orders, no men. If the scavengers got too close to the wall, the soldiers would take a shot. Otherwise, they were free to pore over the destruction, to search for something left in the wreckage.

“We are miserably compromised,” she said again, more quietly. “We do not have il Tornja. The only fighters on these walls will be the fighters we put there, and I will not leave whole sections undefended because we were too squeamish to make use of Kegellen's people.”

“Oh,” the woman replied, pressing a palm on her broad chest. “They are not
my
people. I am just a fat, slow woman.…”

“Save it,” Adare growled. “We know what you are. We need the bodies you can put on this wall. So
what do you want
?”

To Adare's surprise, Kegellen's smile, when it finally came, was almost sad.

“You're a smart woman, Your Radiance. But you're young. It would be well for you to remember that you don't understand the world as well as you think.”

As Adare blinked, Nira stepped into the gap. “And just what the dolled-up fuck's that supposed ta mean?”

Kegellen kept her eyes on Adare. “It means I don't want anything. Not for myself. I only ask that the women and men I send to this wall operate in their own groups in their own ways. They are not accustomed to military structure, military discipline. It will get them killed, will keep them from killing.”

“Impossible,” Lehav said.

“No,” Adare said, shaking her head. “It is not impossible. Here is what will happen. I've named you general, and so you will decide the deployment of Kegellen's people. You will give them their position and their orders, then you will leave them to carry out those orders in their own way.”

Lehav shook his head. “You don't understand how an army functions, Your Radiance. Units shift in battle, cover for one another, reinforce one another.”

“And that would be wonderful,” Adare said, “if Annur's cutthroats and thugs were organized into units. They are not. You might train them if we had three months, but we have three days. You will give them a clear task and you will let them fight in their own way.”

The soldier's lips tightened, then he offered a stiff salute. “As you say, Your Radiance.”

Adare turned to Kegellen, who was watching her between narrowed eyes. “Is that enough for you?”

The woman nodded slowly. “I will get all those who can carry a sword.”

“Do better,” Adare said. “Get me anyone who can still bite.”

Before the woman could respond, a commotion erupted down below. Men were protesting on the wall to the west. Protesting, then shouting, angry, then afraid. Steel rang against stone. In all the madness of soldiers and masons coming and going, it took Adare a moment to find the cause of this new disturbance.

“There,” Lehav said, leveling a finger at three figures in black advancing down the walkway at the wall's top. As he spoke, he dropped his hand to the sword at his belt. Even Kegellen had formed her lips into a pout, had slipped a fan from her jeweled belt and snapped it open. The black-clad figures were still a hundred paces distant, but the caution seemed more than warranted.

The leader was a woman Adare had never seen before—young, muscular beneath her blacks, red hair caught in the northern wind and streaming out behind her like flame. The Sons stationed on the walkway had moved to block her approach, barking orders and baring swords, squaring up across the path. The red-haired woman ignored them, if
ignored
was the right word.

One of the Sons stepped forward, leveling his sword at her chest. She swatted it aside with the flat of her hand, slammed the other into the soldier's throat, then stepped past him as he dropped. The motion didn't even seem violent. It seemed—sensible, efficient. She hadn't even bothered to draw her own weapons.

“Kettral,” Lehav said grimly.

“Kettral indeed,” Adare replied. “The question is,
whose
.”

“Well, obviously they're not fucking
ours,
” Nira snapped, “since we don't know them, and they're gutting our men.”

Adare watched a moment longer. “Not gutting them,” she said. “They're not even hurting them.”

The red-haired woman looked up as though she'd heard the words, found Adare's eyes, and spread her hands. “Call off your dogs,” she shouted. “We're here to talk.”

Another man came at her, spear extended. She pivoted, grabbed the shaft, and tossed him half a dozen feet onto a flat-roofed building just south of the wall. She caught the next soldier's sword on the spear, kicked him in the crotch with a booted foot, knocked his blade away as he fell, and stepped past him. They were maybe forty paces off now. The woman didn't look frightened. She didn't even look winded. She looked pissed off.

“If they keep this shit up,” she shouted, “we're going to have to hurt someone, and I don't like hurting Annurians.”

“I will deal with this,” Lehav said grimly.

“No,”
Adare growled. “Call back your men.”

The commander glanced at her, face unreadable, then barked out the order. The Sons remaining between the Kettral and the tower—maybe a dozen all told—hesitated, then inched backward, blades still drawn. They might have ceased to exist for all the attention the red-haired woman paid them. From somewhere in the streets below, an arrow flashed up, but before Adare could shout, before she could even flinch, it glanced aside, as though striking an invisible wall. The leader of the Kettral didn't pay attention to that, either, but behind her another woman, not much more than a girl, really, drew her own bow and fired back, three times in quick succession. There were no more arrows from the street.

“Enough killing,” Adare said.

“We're not killing anyone,” the woman snapped. “Annick's shooting stunners, and I'm relying on my fucking palms.” She held them up, as though to make the point.

“You are perpetrating violence against my men.”

“Your men are idiots. I told them I needed to talk to you. They were unhelpful.”

Kegellen chuckled merrily. “It is not often that people live up to their reputation, but I'll admit to being charmed by these Kettral.”

The Sons of Flame had fallen back almost to the tower itself, and Adare studied the Kettral as they approached. It was possible that il Tornja had sent them; the man was the titular commander of
all
Annurian military orders, after all. On the other hand, it seemed a strange sort of assassination attempt that would take place here, in the full light of day, in the middle of a thousand soldiers.

“Leave your weapons with the soldiers at the tower's base,” Adare said finally. “Come up, and we can talk.”

The Kettral leader nodded, but Nira was grumbling at Adare's side. “Not sure if ya just saw that pale-skinned bitch slap her way through half your fucking army, but I don't think the not havin' of weapons is really gonna slow her down.”

Adare glanced over at Lehav and Kegellen. “They're armed.”

Kegellen spread her hands. “I am a slow old woman with a fan.”

“This woman is fast,” Lehav said, watching the Kettral intently as they approached and surrendered their weapons.

The three of them seemed to be carrying enough steel to arm an Annurian legion: twin blades and belt knives, throwing knives and bows and arrows. It all went into a glittering heap. If they were worried about disarming, it didn't show. The Sons, on the other hand, for all that they had the numbers and the weapons, looked ready to leap from the ramparts.

It was only when the red-haired woman finally stomped up the stairs that Adare was able to see how young she was. Despite the scars and the muscle knotting her frame, she looked younger than Adare herself, although the look in those eyes was anything but naïve.

“Your Radiance,” she said, nodding so shallowly the motion barely qualified as a genuflection. “My name is Gwenna Sharpe. I knew your brother. Both of them, actually. Where's Kaden?”

Adare's heart thundered inside her. She kept her face still. “You were on Valyn's Wing.”

“All three of us,” the woman replied. She studied Adare boldly. “Not sure if you got the news, but he died. Up north in Andt-Kyl. Heard you were there, too.”

Adare tensed, and Lehav, hearing something dangerous in the woman's voice, took half a step forward.

The woman glanced over at the soldier. “Nice sword. Get any closer to me, and I'll put it in your eye.”

“Gwenna,” said the man standing behind her. He was as dark-skinned as she was pale, as soft-spoken as Sharpe was brash.

“This is Talal,” she said, nodding to him. “He thinks I need to have a better attitude. Walk more softly. Keep the blades sheathed. That sort of thing.” As she spoke, her eyes never left Adare's. Her smile was almost feral. “Thing is, I've had pretty good luck with the blades so far.…”

 

48

“We missed,” the Flea said grimly. “He's not dead.”

“How do you know?” Valyn asked.

“I saw it. The explosion blew open the crown of the hill, but Balendin had moved off the crest a few minutes before. The blow hit him hard enough to knock him down. He was bleeding pretty bad, but he was alive. They carried him off while you were trying to fight the entire Urghul nation by yourself.”

Valyn closed his eyes. It was cold inside the chamber at the heart of Mierten's Fort, cold in the darkness of his own mind. The savage joy that had borne him up all afternoon had vanished. His bones ached. His muscles felt strained beyond their limits. Dozens of shallow cuts burned on his skin. When he shifted, he could feel the scabs break open and the blood start weeping again.

And he was in better shape than some of the others. Of the six who had gathered just after the sun set to pound out the next day's strategy, none had escaped unscathed. Belton walked with an audible limp. Newt kept coughing over and over, blood rattling in his chest as he bandaged a wound to Sigrid's arm. The Flea and Huutsuu both smelled of blood, although Valyn had no way to gauge their injuries further. And they were, comparatively, the lucky ones. Outside of the old keep, sprawled out on the grass in the shelter of the crumbling wall, wounded legionaries were groaning, or cursing, or just dying silently.