The Providence of Fire (35 page)

To 'Shael with it,
Valyn thought.
No one's sleeping anyway.

They could be miserable on the horses just as well as on the ground. They could rest again when the weather cleared. For all that they needed a break, they were Kettral. A long night on horseback wasn't going to kill any of them. Besides, he didn't like sitting still when there was no way to mount an effective guard. They might stumble over someone on horseback, but at least they'd be mounted. At least they'd be ready.

He was just crouching down to rouse Annick when the drumming of the rain resolved, suddenly, horrifyingly, into the drumming of hooves. He spun about, desperately raising his blade as the mounted Urghul, lances leveled, soaked hair streaming behind, screaming and ululating, galloped down the low hill and into the miserable camp.

*   *   *

It was Huutsuu. Of course. But not just Huutsuu.

Laith and Annick had been right. Another
taamu,
much larger, five or six hundred at least, had found her far to the east. Everything Valyn knew about the Urghul suggested that they should have killed her, offered her up to Meshkent in some hideous ceremony, but evidently everything he learned had been worse than useless. Not only did they not kill her and her people, the larger tribe offered horses and help in hunting down the Annurians.

Valyn managed to kill two in the fury of the first assault, and Pyrre, somehow, took down four more with her knives. The rest of the Kettral were taken utterly off guard. Within heartbeats, they found themselves ringed with dozens of spearpoints, a sharp, shifting collar inches from their throats. Even then, they looked ready to fight, hands on knives or blades, Annick clutching her half-drawn bow, death in her eyes until Valyn, the words like stones on his tongue, gave the order to stand down.

*   *   *

In another place, captured by another foe, the fact that they were still alive might have been a comfort. Not here. Valyn remembered his training clearly enough: the Urghul took captives only to offer them later, as sacrifice to Kwihna. If half the stories were true, they might well wish they'd been killed instead of captured. There was a simplicity, a finality to a foot of sharp steel in the gut. The same couldn't be said of flaying, disemboweling, or burning, the standard fates that awaited an Urghul captive.

All the more reason,
Valyn thought grimly, testing his bonds for the hundredth time,
to get uncaptured.

Not that he'd arrived at any grand plan for escape. There were no prisons on the steppe, no brigs or dungeons, but the Urghul were thorough enough when it came to restraining their prisoners. Along with the rest of his Wing, Valyn was bound at the wrists and ankles, the rawhide cinched so tight he lost feeling immediately, then tossed over the back of a horse and tied in place. His head dangled down by the beast's belly, so low that the front hooves threatened to strike him when the animal broke into a canter, making it almost impossible to see anything except the dark mud as they rode. With every stride, the horse's spine battered his ribs. His wounded shoulder felt ready to rip from the socket. The Urghul had stripped their cloaks, and the frigid rain soaked him until he trembled uncontrollably.

The pain was constant, staggering, but the pain was the least of it. Over and over again as the horses cantered north through the night and storm, Valyn ran through his decisions: leaving the bird, letting the prisoners live, riding west rather than south. He'd made a mistake, that much was clear as a knife to the eye, but it was hard to know what, exactly, he could have done differently. Even lashed to the horse's back, he couldn't imagine killing the children in Huutsuu's camp. And the bird … if they'd tried to fly south, the Flea would have found them, killed them.

It's done,
he growled at himself after a while.
You fucked up somewhere. The question is what you do now
.

It was difficult enough just not to pass out, but, with much straining, Valyn managed to twist his head and half raise his torso, the joints of his arms screaming as he stretched up and back, searching for his companions in the driving rain. There were scores of Urghul, a mass of shifting horseflesh and riders, and though the storm had started to abate, he caught only a glimpse of Laith and Gwenna, trussed like sacks of grain over the backs of their own horses.

The Urghul finally called a halt in the chill gray hour just before dawn. When the horse went still, Valyn thought he was dreaming at first, that his mind had lifted clear of the constant stabbing misery of his body. Then someone sliced the cord holding him up, and he tumbled to the ground, unable to bring his dead arms up to block the fall. The Kettral, of course, had trained him for captivity. Though he was still bound at the wrists and ankles, he began flexing his legs, drawing them up to his chest, then lowering them, over and over. Then his arms. He knew how to fight with tied hands, and if the opening presented itself, he intended to be ready. His frozen muscles groaned in protest. The Urghul were laughing, he realized, watching him writhe on the ground like a worm. He ignored the sound, kept moving, though the action ground his face against the stones and wet earth.

Just when he'd gone from shaking to simply trembling, just as he'd managed to stop biting his tongue with chattering teeth, someone seized him by the neck, then wrestled him roughly to his feet. When he managed to straighten up, he found himself staring at Huutsuu. Or, to be more precise, at Huutsuu's horse. The
ksaabe
who had dragged him up stepped back, as though to offer Valyn and his captor a measure of intimacy, but the Urghul woman hadn't bothered to dismount. She sat her horse lazily, short spear balanced in the crook of her arm, the thin line of a smile creasing her face.

“I told you this. I told you I would find you.”

Valyn glanced at the spear, then the horse, gauging the distance between himself and the rider. Though his feet were still tied, he could probably grab the weapon, rip it out of her hands or pull her off the horse, maybe even plant it in her chest. He opened and closed his hands. They were still numb, but they seemed to work.

And then what?

He glanced over his shoulder, able, for the first time, to make sense of the milling bodies around him. Huutsuu had brought him to a sprawling Urghul camp many times larger than the one in which he'd found her. Valyn stared. Truth be told, the place was more like a town than a camp, with hundreds of
api
thrown up haphazardly among the cook fires and hobbled horses, men and women riding to and fro, even children darting about between the tents, pale legs and faces spattered with mud. The place reeked of burning horse dung and cooking horseflesh, wet hide and wet mud. Pennants of fur and feather whipped from long lances planted in the earth. Men and women gathered between tents and around fires, tended to their horses or their children, calling to one another in their odd, singsong language. There must have been a thousand Urghul, maybe more.

Valyn turned his attention back to Huutsuu, leaning back slowly on his heels, forcing himself to stay still, to check his own rage. Even if he managed to kill the woman, he'd still be tied up, trussed like a pig for whatever happened next.

This is not the time,
he told himself silently, repeating the words in his head as though rehearsing them again and again could keep him from folly.
This is not the time
.

“Where are we?” he asked instead, jerking his head at the surrounding camp.

Huutsuu smiled. “These are my people.”

“I thought your people hated large camps. I thought you lived in
taamu,
not nations.”

The Urghul woman shrugged. “We did. Not anymore.”

Before Valyn could make sense of that, other riders pulled up beside them, each Urghul trailing a horse with a sodden human shape lashed across the back. Relief mingled with fury, Valyn watched as, one by one, the other members of his Wing were cut from their horses, then dumped unceremoniously on the ground. The rest of the Urghul, like Huutsuu, refused to dismount, watching impassively as the horses shifted beneath them, their hooves making sucking sounds in the mud.

Annick was the first up, struggling to her knees, then her feet. She moved awkwardly, as though she had strained or torn something during the long ride, but Valyn could see her testing the rawhide at her wrists as she stood, searching for some weakness. Gwenna cursed the Urghul until one of the riders knocked her across the back of the head with the butt of his spear, sending her reeling into the mud once more. Talal got to his feet slowly, silent and intent. Valyn studied the leach, then flicked a sign:
Your well?

Talal made an almost imperceptible nod.

So,
Valyn thought, allowing himself a small smile,
that's something
.

Before he could respond, however, two new Urghul rode up. The taller of them handed a waterskin to Huutsuu without a word, and she, in turn, tossed it to Valyn.

“Drink,” she said as he caught it awkwardly.

He eyed the bladder. He knew from experience what a single day without water could do. If he was going to stay sharp, alert, he needed to drink. He locked eyes with Huutsuu, raised the skin to his mouth, then tilted it back.

At first, there was nothing but the delicious wash of cold water as he sucked it down, his body greedy for the drink. Only after a few swallows did he finally taste the adamanth, the root's bitter residue roughening his tongue.

Huutsuu smiled as she watched him pause.

“For the leach,” she said, gesturing to the waterskin. “My people, too, have such creatures.”

For a moment, Valyn contemplated draining the full skin, draining it or ripping it open on one of the Urghul spears. The adamanth wouldn't do him any harm, of course—it might even ease the ache in his shoulder, in his bruised ribs—but the strong infusion would cut Talal off entirely from his well. The Kettral used an even more concentrated form of the tea, but simply boiling the root would prove more than effective. Clearly, the Urghul didn't know which member of his Wing to be wary of, but it hardly mattered. They would make them all drink.

Valyn hefted the skin in his hands, testing its weight, then discarded the idea of destroying it. Adamanth was common enough—no more than a weed, really—and one could find it in ditches and swamps from the Waist to the steppe. If he threw away one skin, the Urghul would simply produce another. He glanced at Talal. The leach's eyes were wary, grave, but he just shrugged. Valyn turned back to Huutsuu, matching her stare as he drank long and full from the skin. At least he could deny her the sight of his own disappointment.

As the Urghul passed the skin among the prisoners, Valyn considered the camp once more, then his captors.

“What happens next?” he asked.

Huutsuu gestured at the forest of tents. “We pack, then we ride.”

“Ride where?”

“West.”

“What's west?”

“Long Fist,” the woman replied.

“What in Hull's name is Long Fist?”

“You will learn that when you meet him.”

So the Urghul weren't planning to sacrifice them right away. Of course, there was no telling how far west they planned to ride. It wasn't much, but it was something.

“Is that where the rest of the
taamu
are going?” Valyn asked. “West? To meet Long Fist?”

“Too many questions,” Huutsuu said, waving a hand at three of the younger Urghul. “Take them. Put them with the other one. Watch them close. They are a soft people, but fast.”

“The other one?” Valyn demanded, shaking his head, trying to make sense of it. “Who's the other one?”

Huutsuu smiled. “Go. See.”

The Annurian prisoner was tied up a dozen paces beyond the last row of
api.
The Urghul had bound his hands to his feet, forcing him into a hunched crouch. It wouldn't have been horrible at first, but a day, even half a day bent double like that would be enough to crack most men and women. Worse, despite the chill drizzle, they'd stripped him of his shirt. The man clearly hadn't eaten anything in days. Valyn could count the knobs of his spine, the ribs, could count the seeping gashes in his skin where he'd been whipped. The prisoner didn't look up as the horses approached. He could have been knocked out. Maybe he thought there was nothing to see.

“Who is it?” Valyn demanded, turning to the young rider, the
taabe,
who guarded him.

“Warrior,” the
taabe
sneered. “Great warrior. Like you.”

The other Urghul laughed.

“When we get out of here,” Laith said, shaking his head, “when we get a bird, I am coming back, and I am going to kill every one of these miserable bastards.”

“Might take a long time,” Valyn said, glancing over his shoulder. “There are millions.”

“I'll help him,” Gwenna growled.

“Me, too,” the prisoner said, without bothering to raise his head. “I bet we'd make a good team.”

Valyn froze, chill rain trickling down the back of his neck, making him shiver. The man's voice was hollow, weak, but there was something there.… He took a step back, looking for space, ignoring the sharp spearpoint pressing against his back.

“So you lived after all,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

Balendin Ainhoa raised his head. A massive bruise purpled the side of his face, half closing one eye. His upper lip was split, and, high on his shoulder, a mirror of Valyn's own wound, the half-healed scar left by Kaden's crossbow bolt leaked pus and blood. If the leach was bothered by his injuries, however, he didn't show it. “Of course I lived. What did Hendran say?
If you haven't seen the body, don't count the kill
.”

“You shit-licking whoreson,” Gwenna snarled, lunging forward, her Urghul captors forgotten. One of the horsemen extended a spear and she went down face-first in the mud.