The Providence of Fire (43 page)

The ensuing days proved a repetitive itinerary of agony and endurance: struggling not to cry out each morning in the predawn dark as his nameless captor kicked him awake; refusing to wince as he was lashed across the back of the horse, tight cords biting into his bloody wrists and raw ankles; shivering in the icy rain or sweating beneath a brutal sun while the horse's relentless gait bruised his ribs and battered the organs beneath; tucking his chin and holding his tongue whenever he was whipped across the back or shoulders; ignoring the famished ache that seemed to be boring a hole through his stomach.… And the days were the fucking good part. Every night, bound hand and foot and tethered to a stake, he shivered on the cold, broken earth, watching the flames of the surrounding campfires lap at the sky, listening to the strange cadences of chanting and song.

Valyn had his own chant and his own fire. His fire was the crackling rage inside him, a heat he fed with his hopes and vows, his shame and resolve, stoking it until it seared, even on the coldest nights. His chant was simple:
Don't quit. Don't quit, you fuck. Don't ever quit.
He managed to break his captor's nose one morning; to bite off a good portion of thumb on another, but, lashed tight as he was, there was no way to follow up the small victories, and each petty revolt ended with him curled on the ground, kicks and punches raining down. The struggle was pointless, but it was all he had, so he kept at it, looking for the openings, the little chances when he could get in his useless licks.

In between, the Urghul set an astounding pace, hammering westward from well before dawn until hours past dark, stopping only to switch horses, an excruciating process during which Valyn was untied, shoved to the ground, then, before he could do anything to stretch his legs, hurled onto another horse and lashed down once more. He tried to keep track of the days. There'd been at least ten when he was still with his Wing, and probably double that since they were separated. He had no idea where they were going, but there couldn't be much steppe left.

Occasionally—when they crested a hill or rode along a ridgeline—he caught a glimpse of the entire Urghul strength. Each time, the sight of it staggered him like a fist to the face. The Eyrie trainers had described tribes of fifty or a hundred, little more than extended families, really, nothing like the group in which he rode. There must have been tens, maybe hundreds of thousands, the herd of horses stretching out over the steppe as far as he could see. There was no column, no order of march, just a pounding, thundering mass of horseflesh and riders flowing over the hills like a shifting blanket. No one set up tents, not anymore—the Urghul were in too much of a rush—and some nights, when Valyn could see out over the black hills, he felt as though he were adrift on the night sea, that each of the campfires was a star reflected in the chilly water, that, bound hand and foot as he was, he might sink beneath the surface and drown.

He tried to gauge numbers, to count fires or horses, but there was no way to keep track. Not that it mattered. Even when he was lashed to the horse's back, even when he could see nothing but clods of dirt, sweaty flanks, and streaming tails, he could hear the sound clearly enough, a thunder louder and deeper than thunder, the very ground trembling with the Urghul passage. It was not a
taamu
that he rode with, not a tribe, but a whole people.

Old Fleck back on the Islands had insisted that the Urghul could manage fifty miles a day, riding hard. The figure had always struck Valyn as inflated, but he was starting to understand how it could be possible. The riders ate on their horses, pissed from their horses, slipped a knee through the crude girths and slept on their horses when necessary, yellow-white hair streaming behind them. Valyn had even seen some of the younger
taabe
and
ksaabe
leaping from the back of one cantering beast to another, as though the ground itself were anathema. At one point he caught sight of an enormous herd of bison darkening the plains to the north. The nearest beasts swung their stupid, noble heads ponderously toward the passing horses, and a few score riders peeled off, lances held high, voices eager in the morning air. The rest of the mass continued west, hammering relentlessly across the steppe.

Just when he thought they would never stop, they did. One moment he was jolting along, rehearsing yet another possible escape attempt, the next his horse slowed to a walk. He half raised his head, realizing they were on the outskirts of an enormous camp, the
api
packed as closely as trees in a forest. His
taabe
led the horses through the tents, pausing occasionally to trade words with the other Urghul, to banter or ask a question. People seemed curious about the prisoner tied up and slung across the horse, and more than once Valyn felt his ribs prodded by the butt of a spear.

When they finally stopped, he was cut free with the same lack of ceremony as always. Legs numb, arms numb, shoulders screaming in their sockets, he rose slowly to his knees, then staggered to his feet. When he finally raised his head, he stared.

On every hill in every direction, the Urghul were shouting to one another as they hobbled horses and unloaded the poles and hides for their
api
. This was new. Valyn spat a bolus of blood, crouched, then stood once more, trying to work some feeling back into dead legs. He expected his
taabe
to punch him in the gut or sweep his legs with a contemptuous kick. Instead, the youth seized him by the hair and dragged him through the throng of people and horses. Valyn staggered behind, refusing to fall, trying to see through the haze of his exhaustion and pain, to understand what was happening. For weeks he'd been waiting for a break in the routine, a new sort of opportunity, and now it had come.

When they'd traversed half of the unfolding camp, the
taabe
finally shoved him to the earth with a grunt, kicked him in the head one final time, then turned and stalked off without a word. Valyn hauled himself to his knees to find Huutsuu leaning on a long lance, head cocked to one side, blue eyes fixed on him. She smiled a slow, vulpine smile.

“Still alive,” she observed.

Valyn nodded silently.

She lowered the lance in a fluid motion, leveling the shining tip at his midsection. With a casual motion she prodded lightly at his ribs, his shoulders, his stomach, his crotch, drawing blood with each contact, lifting his blacks from his emaciated frame.

“We have Hardened you,” she said. “Kwihna will be pleased.”

“Kwihna can fuck himself,” Valyn replied wearily. “Where's my Wing?”

“They, also, we have Hardened.”

Valyn debated seizing the lance as it loitered around his chest, using it to pull the woman off-balance, then wrapping his bound hands around her throat. Huutsuu was fast—he remembered that from the first night in the rain—but he was faster. Or he had been, before spending the better part of a month lashed to a horse. Now, he wasn't sure. He'd managed to stand, but his legs wavered beneath him and his fingers felt weak and stupid when he tried to clench them into fists. His belly might have been made of mud. The weakness and helplessness were infuriating—years of training scrubbed out in a few weeks—but they were real. He'd managed to stay alive this long. Little point in getting himself skewered now. Besides, Huutsuu had said the others were hardened. Hardened wasn't killed.

“Where are they?” he demanded.

She nodded past his shoulder, and he turned to find a young
ksaabe
prodding Gwenna forward, a bared knife at her back. For the first time in what felt like years, Valyn smiled. Gwenna was filthy and battered. Both eyes were swollen half closed, the sockets fading from purple to brown, one cheek crusted with blood. She was battered but awake. She was walking. Valyn glanced at the
ksaabe
behind her, and his smile widened. The Urghul woman had a fresh bite mark on her own cheek, a gash closing above her eye, and fury in her eyes. When they reached Valyn, she smacked Gwenna across the head with the pommel of her knife, then kicked her legs out from beneath her. Gwenna twisted as she hit the ground, lashing out with her own foot, but the
ksaabe
danced back, spit in her face, then snapped something angry at Huutsuu.

“I am going to slaughter that little Urghul bitch,” Gwenna snarled, rolling to her stomach, then shoving herself to her knees. “I'm going to kill her, then eat her.”

“Looks like you already made some headway,” Valyn observed.

Huutsuu just laughed and flicked a dismissive hand at the younger warrior.

“You look like shit,” Gwenna said, turning her attention to Valyn with a frown.

“You're no princess,” Valyn replied. “You seen any of the others?”

The others, as it turned out, were in similar condition—beaten, battered, but alive. One by one they appeared out of the turmoil, each escorted by an Urghul. Talal seemed the most hale, which made sense—he would have offered the fewest insults. Laith's captor, on the other hand, had leashed him with a length of rawhide, the cord leaving angry welts ringing his neck. Despite his wounds, the flier still managed a fierce grin.

“This is my liaison, Amaaru,” he said, gesturing to the iron-jawed
taabe
behind him. He turned to the warrior. “Am I pronouncing your name correctly?” The youth took a swing, but Laith ducked. “He tells me that his name means ‘Horse Anus' in the proud tongue of his people, and he has been a most gracious host.”

Annick showed up with a rough sack over her head, which spoke eloquently to her level of resistance, but Pyrre, evidently, had rattled the Urghul worse than any of them. She arrived last, arms lashed to her sides, preventing all movement save the slightest twitching of her fingertips. Instead of one guard, she had four, two men, two women, all older than those assigned to Valyn and his Wing, ringing her with daggers drawn.

“All right,” Laith said, raising an eyebrow at the woman. “It galls me to say this, but clearly you win.”

“What did you do to earn them?” Valyn asked, gesturing to the warriors.

She tried to shrug, but her bonds truncated the gesture. “I introduced a number of our newfound friends to the god.”

“Which god is that?” Valyn asked. “I've had about enough of Kwihna.”

Pyrre's face hardened. “So has Ananshael.”

“Five,” Huutsuu interjected with something that might have been admiration. “Three
taabe,
two
ksaabe
. She killed five.”

“It's not as though you're going to run out,” Laith said, nodding to the thousands of Urghul milling around them.

“And yet, one must draw a line somewhere,” Huutsuu replied, eyeing Pyrre. “Five,” she said again, shaking her head. “I could grow to like this woman.”

“And you haven't seen the half of my talents,” the Skullsworn replied, raising a coquettish eyebrow. “You've been wasting your time dallying with these … boys of yours.”

Huutsuu laughed, a rich, full sound. “If I took you to my
api,
I might never come out.”

“You could tie me,” Pyrre suggested.

“Tying you has failed several times already.”

“Enough of this horseshit,” Valyn cut in. Guilt throbbed in his bones, guilt for allowing his Wing to be captured on his watch, for failing to do anything to break them free, and meanwhile Huutsuu and Pyrre were trading smiles and innuendo as though they were browsing the Lowmarket on a lazy summer afternoon. The Skullsworn, for all her sleek urbanity, was no better than the Urghul savages. They were blood-drunk killers, all of them.

“Pyrre, let me handle this,” he continued. “Why are we stopping? Where are we?”

Pyrre frowned at Huutsuu apologetically. “Valyn forgets from time to time that I am not a part of his Wing. He takes his work very seriously.”

“
I
haven't forgotten that you're not on the Wing,” Gwenna said, “and if you don't stop talking, I will stop you.”

Huutsuu looked from Pyrre to Gwenna, considered the amused quirk of the Skullsworn's lip, then the open fury in Gwenna's eyes. “This,” she said, shaking her head, “seems unlikely.”

Before Valyn could cut in, two more Urghul shoved their way out of the crowd, dragging Balendin between them. The leach didn't resist, not even when they tossed him to the ground at Huutsuu's feet, but Valyn saw the way the
taabe
watched him, eyes wary, almost frightened.

“Ah. Valyn,” the leach said, elbowing his way to his knees. “I've missed your playful banter each evening.” The words were light, but Balendin smelled weary, wary.

“I'm glad the Urghul didn't kill you,” Valyn replied.

Balendin raised an eyebrow. “Reconsidering my offer of cooperation?”

“Not at all. It's just that I'm planning to put the blade in you myself.”

“An easy thing to say when there are no blades around.”

“Just wait,” Valyn replied. “Just wait.”

Huutsuu was shaking her head. “Civilized people. This is how you speak to one another?”

Valyn turned back to the woman. “Where are we?” he asked again. “What is this?”

The Urghul woman gazed over the encampment, as though considering the question herself. Thousands of fires smudged the sky with their smoke. Valyn could smell burning dung and burning meat, horse shit and human, turned-up earth and wet hides. Thousands of voices murmured in his ears, so many he could never hope to untangle them. He hadn't been around so many people for years, not since leaving Annur.

He turned back to the Urghul woman. “What are you planning?”

“I will let Long Fist explain,” she replied. “He is eager to look upon you.”

“And just who in Hull's sweet dark is Long Fist?”

Huutsuu remained silent a moment, as though there were no easy answer to the question. “A priest. A shaman. The one who binds us together,” she replied finally.