The Providence of Fire (64 page)

Before Adare could respond, Fulton kicked his horse forward, forcing his way between her and a small group of men and women rounding a bend in the road, emerging from the trees a hundred paces or so ahead of them. Two other Aedolians, part of the full guard Fulton had recruited back in Annur, nudged their horses forward until they were flanking her.

“Keep well back, my lady,” Fulton said grimly, limbering his sword in its sheath.

Adare hesitated a moment, then shook her head.

“It's a family,” she said.

There were two men, one old, one young, both bearded, both carrying axes in their hands. Behind them, a group of barefoot children slogged doggedly ahead, chivvied along by three women dressed all in leather and fur. The children, obviously weary and bedraggled, perked up at the sight of the approaching army, shouting and pointing. The oldest, a girl of ten or so, attempted to dart forward, but her father caught her by the elbow, dragging her off the road along with the rest of the family.

When Adare reined in alongside them, she realized that the younger of the two men was wounded, his arm slashed viciously from the elbow to the wrist. Someone had made a feeble attempt to bind the cut, but the dirty cloth had soaked through with blood and pus.

“Best hurry,” he said, jerking his head to the north.

“Why?” Lehav demanded, pulling in his horse beside Adare.

The soldier had initially been reluctant to march north, pointing out that while il Tornja was gone, they could occupy Annur itself, install Adare on the Unhewn Throne, rehabilitate Intarra's Church, and spread word of the
kenarang
's treachery, word that would make it all but impossible for him to return. It was a tempting vision, but a false one. As Nira pointed out, “Ya ain't gonna last long running an empire if the first thing ya do is ta sit still while the Urghul take a shit all over it.”

The words rankled, but the woman was right. If the Urghul posed a legitimate threat, Adare needed to be a part of the solution, regardless of the
kenarang
's treachery. More, as she pointed out to Lehav, if the Sons of Flame were to win the trust of the empire's population, they, too, would need to march north.

The logger spat into the mud. “Urghul,” he said curtly. The smallest child began sobbing. “Burned our house, field, and half our forest. Killed anyone couldn't run.”

Adare stared. “This far south?”

“Nah, we're from up north. Way up past the north end of Scar Lake. Thought about stopping in Aats-Kyl, but the army camped there ain't gonna stop what's comin'—I'll tell you that for free.” He glanced down the ranks of the Sons of Flame. “Hope you got more where these came from.”

“What is the army doing?” Adare asked. “The one in Aats-Kyl?”

“Didn't stop to ask,” he replied. “Been talkin' to you too long as it is.”

The logger started to move, but Lehav brought him up short.

“One more question, friend. The army in Aats-Kyl: which way is it facing?”

The logger shook his head. “Not facing any 'Kent-kissing way at all.”

“They're not dug in for an attack from the south?”

“What would they do that for? Just got done tellin' you—the Urghul are comin' down from the
north
.”

Adare waited until the loggers were well behind them to turn to Nira and Lehav.

“Sounds like the Urghul really are coming.”

As she said the words she realized that she'd been praying ever since leaving Annur that the whole thing was a trick, a hoax. If il Tornja had lied about the threat, it would just be one more crime to hang around his neck when the time came. She could fight him, hopefully kill him, and have done with it. The handful of filthy farmers, however, that gash across the arm, changed everything.

“The family could have been trumped up,” Lehav observed, jaw tight. “A few coins in their pocket to play a part, to make us complacent.”

Nira chuckled. “It'd be a good trick.”

“I'd prefer to be the one playing the tricks,” Adare said, trying not to glare at the woman.

“And I'd prefer to have a brother who wasn't busted in the head,” Nira replied. “Turns out, though, that preferrin' don't have much to do with things.”

Lehav, as was his habit, ignored the old woman entirely. “We'll know more when the scouts return.”

The scouts, as it turned out, confirmed the logger's account, at least the latter part of it. The men had come across no sign of the Urghul, but they insisted that the Army of the North was peacefully encamped just to the east of Aats-Kyl and that more refugees were headed south, some on the main road, some on the crooked forest tracks.

“The
kenarang
hasn't barricaded the road?” Lehav pressed. “No earth walls?”

The lead scout shook his head. “There's just the normal palisade around the camp itself, the kind of thing every army on the march puts up. There are a few score men working on the dam, but the rest are just encamped.”

“The dam?” Adare said, shaking her head. “Why would they be working on the dam?”

“No idea,” Lehav replied grimly. “And I don't like not having an idea.” He turned back to the scouts. “You swept the forest? It's dense on either side of the road.…”

The scout nodded wearily. “Went up on the east, came back on the west. Nothing. No ambush, no snipers. Nothing but hemlock and deer shit. Up near the village we got close enough to listen to a couple men chopping wood at the edge of camp. They know we're coming, know we're close, but they think we're coming to
help
them.”

Lehav frowned. “Maybe we are.”

It was late afternoon when they finally broke from the damp shadows of the pines into ruddy sunlight. For the first time in days, Adare could see more than a few dozen paces, although the world was so bright that for a moment she wasn't sure just what she was looking at. She blinked, shaded her eyes with her hand. They'd reached a lake, she realized, a wide lake stretching north so far she couldn't see the opposite shore. Sun shimmered like golden coins on the surface.

“Scar Lake,” Nira said, “and Aats-Kyl.”

A good-sized town of log homes with roofs of turf and shingle had forced back the forest at the south end of the lake. A tall palisade of rough logs ringed the town, wooden towers at the corners. Outside the wall, a rugged patchwork of fields held back the forest, wet ground drained by a ragged network of ditches. Even at a distance, Adare could smell the woodsmoke rising from the stone chimneys, could hear the farmers urging their horses and oxen over the broken ground. Farmers around Annur had begun plowing weeks earlier, but here, with the cold wind scudding down over the Romsdals, planting seemed to come late.

“Well,” Adare said, considering the town, “no one's tried to kill us yet.”

“Give it time,” Lehav replied.

“Where does the road go from here?”

“It doesn't,” Fulton said grimly. As the day wore on, he had guided his horse closer and closer to her, checked his broadblade more and more often. Now, he kicked the creature forward a few paces, putting himself between her and the settlement below.

“What's past here?” she asked.

“Forest tracks and logging camps. Trees.”

And the Urghul,
Adare thought, trying to come to grips with the nature of the threat all over again. She'd left Olon expecting to battle il Tornja in the streets of Annur and instead she found herself in a forest on the very edge of the empire preparing to hold off an Urghul attack. Not for the first time she prayed that she was making the right decision, that she wasn't committing some idiotic mistake that would doom them all.

To her marginal relief, there was no sign of the horsemen, no indication that they'd even come close. Just as reassuring, the Army of the North clearly hadn't deployed to meet her own force, either.

A good 'Kent-kissing thing,
she thought,
given the size of the army.

The men were encamped, all of them, across several of the largest fields, tents and cook fires laid out in a grid so neat it might have been carved in the earth with a straightedge. Despite Adiv's urgency back in Annur, despite the harried march north, despite the refugees on the road south, none of the soldiers in the camp looked to be in much of a hurry. No one seemed to be drilling or fortifying. Knots of men clustered outside their tents, some seated, some lying down, heads propped on their helmets. She could smell the smoke of the cook fires and burning grease hazing the air, as though the whole camp were set up for a festival rather than a war.

Anger and confusion rose inside her. She and Lehav had been flogging the Sons northward for days, Adiv's account of a full-scale Urghul invasion ringing in their ears. Every night she'd prayed to Intarra to hold the horsemen back for one more day, just one more day. Meanwhile, il Tornja had his men lolling about in the sun.

She squinted, trying to make the camp out more clearly. Something wasn't right. No one had attacked them. No one looked likely to attack them. Those facts alone should have calmed her nerves, but clearly there was more to the situation than she understood.

“What are they doing?” she asked, jaw tight.

“Looks like they're resting,” Nira replied. “Maybe there isn't such a hurry with this Long Fist, after all.”

As Adare watched, an Annurian rider emerged from the nearest gate of the town, and came cantering up the road. Fulton drew his sword well in advance of the man's approach, then leveled it at him as he drew near. The messenger, a gaunt, balding soldier with peeling skin on his scalp, pulled up short at the sight of Fulton's sword, took a deep breath, then turned to Adare and bowed low in his saddle, face pressed against the withers of his horse.

“Your Radiance,” he began. The imperial title made Adare shift uncomfortably in her saddle. It was no surprise that Adiv had sent ahead word of her demands, but hearing the words spoken by an Annurian legionary was another matter altogether. On the ride north she had begun to grow accustomed to the Sons calling her prophet. Some even went so far as to touch the hem of her robes as she passed, or to pray outside her tent each night. The reverence was both uncomfortable and disconcerting, but at least it was her own. When soldiers used the imperial title, a part of her wanted to look over her shoulder for her father.

“The
kenarang
instructed me to escort you into Aats-Kyl,” the messenger was saying. “A pavilion is being erected for you in the camp itself.” He nodded toward a bustle of activity close to the center of the Annurian camp. “But the
kenarang
has suggested that you meet in town to discuss your defense of the empire. He has requisitioned the finest tavern, if you would care to follow me.”

“I'm not sure she would,” Fulton said, voice hard. His sword remained leveled at the man's throat.

The rider swallowed uncomfortably. He was clutching the reins as though they might offer some protection if the Aedolian lunged with his blade. “I'm sorry?”

“I think,” Fulton replied, speaking very slowly, “that Her Radiance would prefer to meet on ground of her own choosing.”

“But,” the man replied, glancing over his shoulder in confusion, “the
kenarang
's orders…”

“It's all right,” Adare said, pushing past Fulton. “Lower your sword.”

It was a risk, going into the town, maybe a foolish one, but then, the whole 'Kent-kissing expedition was a risk. If il Tornja wanted her dead, he wasn't trying very hard. He could have had her killed before she fled the Dawn Palace or after she returned to Annur. He could have set men to ambush her on the forest road. Instead, his own army lounged in the northern sun. None of it made any sense. He had murdered her father, had
admitted
to murdering her father, and yet the man seemed unconcerned that she might come to extract her revenge.

He's in for an unpleasant surprise,
she thought grimly.

It was tempting to refuse the offer to parley, to insist that the
kenarang
meet her in a place of her own choosing, as Fulton suggested. And yet, as she squinted down into the camp below, she could already see that scores of soldiers had stopped in their work, shading eyes with their hands as they stared up at her. If the scouts were to be trusted, the Army of the North believed she had come to help, and if the Urghul were really massing to the north, they would need to present some kind of unified front.

Not that a unified front required the
kenarang
. In fact, facing the Urghul would prove trial enough without worrying that her own general might stab her just before the battle. Whatever il Tornja's strange game was, she had no intention of letting him see it through. She would meet him in his tavern, try to glean what useful information she could from him, and then see him killed. It would have to be quiet, of course. She couldn't afford to spread distrust through the very men she might have to send into battle, but armies were filled with sharp steel and soldiers died accidental deaths all the time.

She kicked her horse into motion.

“Your Radiance,” Fulton hissed, “I must protest.…”

“Less protesting,” she growled. “More protecting.”

Lehav rode up beside her, studying her askance.

“You're sure about this?”

“Of course not,” she snapped.

He hesitated, then nodded, as though the answer made sense.

“I need you to stay with the Sons,” Adare said. “In case things go wrong in town. Set up camp, but stay ready. Keep them separate from the legions. I want a full field between the two armies with nothing in it but turnips or radishes or whatever it is they grow up here. I don't want a battle. I don't want a fight. I don't even want an unpleasant look. I don't intend to have Annurians fighting Annurians because some idiot starts quarreling with another idiot over who is flying what flag. Is that understood?”