The Providence of Fire (75 page)

“Neither am I,” Gwenna snapped, “but we need archers, and you're the fucking sniper, so follow Bridger and figure it out.”

*   *   *

The
kenarang
's scouts arrived just a few hours later, a dozen hard-eyed men in light legionary armor who looked as though they'd been on the losing end of a battle with about four hundred feral cats. One of the villagers—Apper? Went?—brought them to Gwenna at the western end of the central bridge, where she was overseeing the building of yet another barricade, a fallback if they lost the east island.

“She's in charge,” the logger said, pointing to Gwenna.

The lead scout, a thin man with a hawk's profile, narrowed his eyes, glancing over her blacks.

“Kettral?” he asked, obviously surprised. The men behind him shifted warily at the revelation, as though they expected to keel over or explode just from coming close. A few fingered the hilts of their short swords, despite the fact that they were all supposedly on the same side.

“No wonder someone made you a scout,” Gwenna said. “You can recognize the color black.”

The scout's lips tightened at the crack, but his voice remained level. “The
kenarang
told us there was no military presence this far north.”

“Sounds like the
kenarang
needs to brush up on his intel,” Gwenna replied. “He
does
know there's a massive Urghul army headed this way, doesn't he?”

She tried to keep her tone light, but her heart was hammering. It all depended on this. The presence of the scouts was good. It suggested il Tornja had been moving even before the Flea got to him. On the other hand, there was no telling how far ahead of the main body of the army the men were scouting. Even with the bridge destroyed, Gwenna had no illusions that she could hold the town forever. Long Fist was a bloodthirsty savage, but he wasn't an idiot, and he had the numbers. Eventually he would find a way across.

“The Army of the North is pushing hard,” the leader replied. “My name is Jeril. I have orders to take control of the town. To prepare it against attack.”

Gwenna tensed. She'd known it was coming from the moment the scouts arrived. Sending an advance guard was standard legion procedure: fifty or a hundred men unencumbered by all the apparatus of war, trained to travel light and move fast, men who could scout the necessary terrain, begin preparations for battle, and send back word to the bulk of the army behind. To the general. That was the ticklish bit. For all Gwenna knew, the men were here as much to deal with her and Annick as they were to prepare for the Urghul assault.

“Where are the rest of you?” she asked warily.

Jeril grimaced. “We're it.”

“Twelve to hold off the whole Urghul army?” Gwenna asked. “You must be really fucking good.”

“You haven't seen the terrain south of here,” Jeril replied, shaking his head wearily. “It's a nightmare. The western track is flooded out with the runoff, and everything else is worse. It was tough enough getting a dozen men through, let alone a hundred.”

“But somehow il Tornja's going to get a whole army up here?”

The man grinned for the first time. “The
kenarang
's got his ways.”

Gwenna raised an eyebrow. “Care to share?”

Jeril hesitated, then gestured toward the lake. “There's a dam at the south end. He's destroying it, probably has it destroyed by now.”

Gwenna looked out over the lapping waves, trying to understand how blowing a dam fifty miles off was going to get the army north. She'd thought maybe the
kenarang
planned to use boats, but draining the lake would only …
Oh
. She shifted her eyes from the water to the shoreline. A glistening width of mud and stone was visible just below the tangled bank. It was hard to be certain, but she didn't think it had been there earlier.

“He's draining the lake,” she said, impressed in spite of herself.

Jeril nodded. “Not the whole thing—that would take weeks—but enough to march his army up along the coast.”

Gwenna eyed the uncovered shelf of stone, sand, and mud once more. “It's wet,” she said. “He'll have to wait at least a day for it to firm up.”

Jeril nodded tensely. “It's going to be close.”

Despite the genius of the plan, something about it bothered Gwenna, like a stalking shape half glimpsed through the trees. “The Urghul,” she said, seeing it at last. “The Urghul will be able to use the same strip of land to press south along the eastern bank. They won't
need
to cross here.”

Jeril nodded again. “But there are two things stopping them. First, they don't know the
kenarang
's plan. As far as they're concerned, this might just be normal fluctuation in the water level. They might ride halfway down the eastern bank and find the lake rising again.”

“Pretty fucking thin,” Gwenna said, shaking her head. “Long Fist has enough men to spare a few thousand on a hunch.”

“He can't,” Jeril replied. “Not yet. A man on horseback is almost ten times heavier than one on foot, and the Urghul won't leave their horses. As the fringe of the lake bed starts to harden, the legions will be able to use it days before any cavalry.”

Gwenna blew out a long slow whistle. “Holy Hull,” she muttered, “he really is a genius.”

Jeril smiled wearily. “No one sees his way through a battle like the
kenarang
. Sometimes I almost pity the bastards who have to fight him.”

His last words dug at Gwenna like a dull knife. There was no knowing where Valyn was, or whether he'd even managed to intercept the army. It was possible he'd already murdered il Tornja, possible he'd tried and failed, was captive or dead, his head impaled on a pike in the center of camp as a warning to would-be traitors. The thought made her sick to her stomach, and with an effort she shoved it out of her mind, turning instead to the half-finished barricade rising at the end of the bridge.

“Higher,” she called to the men lifting a log into place. “Those Urghul horses can clear that.”

They looked at her skeptically, then nodded.

“How are you here?” Jeril asked, frowning. “If the
kenarang
didn't send you…”

“The legions react to problems,” Gwenna bluffed. “It's our job to anticipate them.”

The scout narrowed his eyes, then glanced over the work. “Well, you've made my job easier, for which I thank you, but we'll take it from here.”

“Actually,” Pyrre said, stepping out from behind the barricade, “Gwenna's doing a nice job. I'd recommend letting her keep at it.”

Jeril frowned. “Who are you?”

“Pyrre Lakatur,” the assassin replied, sweeping into a low bow. “I realize it's customary to add ‘at your service,' but you Annurian military folk make the habitual mistake of thinking I work for you already, and I don't want to confuse matters.”

Jeril started to respond, then shook his head, turning back to Gwenna. “Doesn't matter. I have orders to take command of the town.”

Gwenna was half tempted to let him have it. She'd done her part. The eastern bridge was gone, the villagers were warned, the barricades were mostly built. She could hand the whole defense over and slip away before the
kenarang
arrived, figured out who she was, and put her head on a pole. She hesitated. Problem was, whatever the scout's background, he wasn't Kettral. She knew the training that legionary scouts went through, and, rigorous though it was, it paled beside her own. The Flea had put her in charge because he thought she could hold the town, and she found, to her surprise, that she intended to do just that.

“I have the command here,” she said, knowing the words sounded cold, aggressive, but unsure how to warm them.

A grumble passed through the scouts behind Jeril. A few shifted wide, making room to draw swords, to fight.

“I can use you,” Gwenna said, wincing inwardly at her own tone. “I'm glad you're here, but the command is mine.”

Jeril's jaw tightened. “I have orders to remove—”

“The thing about orders,” Pyrre said, stepping forward, arms crossed over her chest, “is that they absolve a woman from the responsibility of thinking her own thoughts.” She glanced over at the scouts, then frowned. “Or a man, for that matter.” She raised her eyebrows. “Have you fought against the Urghul, Jeril?”

The scout hesitated, then shook his head.

Pyrre shrugged. “Gwenna has. She infiltrated their camp, met with their commander, gauged their strength, then fought her way free.”

Gwenna concentrated on keeping her mouth shut. The assassin's claims were barely true, but they seemed to be having an effect.

“Do you know the people of Andt-Kyl?” Pyrre continued, gesturing to the folk building the barricade behind them.

Another shake of the head.

“Gwenna does. She's been working with them for days now. They trust her. Which leads me to my third question: Do you love Annur?”

Jeril nodded tersely.

“Then why don't you do what's best for Annur? When your general gave you your orders, he didn't know that the Kettral were already here. If he had, your orders would have been different. Use that brain that Bedisa gave you. Hm?”

The scout glanced at the men behind him. By the hard set of their faces, they didn't care for either the assassin's tone or her suggestion, but they were military men. They would obey their officer.

“All right,” Jeril said, turning to Gwenna. “I need to send two men back each day, one at dawn, one at dusk, to bring a report to the
kenarang
. The rest of us are yours.”

*   *   *

Gwenna looked into the predawn mist and steam rising off the bogs and ponds, streams and lakes to the east. It threaded through the balsams and pines like smoke, draped thick over the lake, brightening slowly as the sun rose from a wooly gray, to white, to dull orange, as though the whole forest had caught fire. Each morning for three days, she'd climbed the beacon tower, in part to survey the town's fortifications, in part to hunt for some sign of the Urghul, but mostly because it allowed her to be alone, to step outside of the throng of people for a few minutes, to leave behind the unending questions and requests, demands and complaints and pleas.

The whole thing was less of a shit-show than she'd expected, actually. The East Bridge had been hacked to kindling, save for the four final pilings thrust up from the channel like dead trees. Jeril and his scouts had been useful in overseeing the movement of all food and relevant supplies off East Island. Despite her hesitation, Annick had built up an impressive set of earthworks and barricades on the eastern shore of the island, and even now had half the village making arrows. Andt-Kyl's two forges had been ringing day and night as the blacksmiths pounded every scrap of extra metal—pot iron and scrap steel, barn hinges and old nails—into arrowheads. Some people had griped about that. Annick sent them to Bridger, Bridger sent them to Gwenna, and Gwenna sent them back to their homes with a few choice words and orders to scare up more steel.

It was exhausting trying to think through every aspect of the defense, and infuriating arguing with the loggers over every little point, but the hardest part was the worry, a sick, corrosive acid in her gut, a never-silent humming in her brain that refused to let her sleep more than a few hours each night, that made it hard to keep down anything more than a biscuit and water. Truth be told, she'd been frightened for weeks, ever since quitting the Islands, but that was a different kind of fear, one for herself and her Wing. The trainers had prepared her for that—
When you fight,
went the motto,
sometimes you die
. There had been no motto, though, for people who didn't expect to fight, for the loggers and farmers and fishermen who would end up on Urghul lances if Gwenna failed. The Eyrie had told her all about killing, but there hadn't been much about keeping tiny little villages at the end of the empire alive.

“Sir?” It was Bridger, stepping up through the trap onto the broad platform atop the tower. Above them, the flimsy wooden roof creaked. She glanced at it: the beams were rotted with damp, just about ready to collapse, but she had more pressing worries than the roof on the beacon tower. The battle wasn't shaping up to take place there.

“What?” she asked.

“We've moved the boats from the docks and anchored them just off the western shore of the lake, as you requested.”

Gwenna turned. The fog had lifted enough for her to see the hulls bobbing peacefully as the water lapped up against the steep bank. She had no idea what to do with the boats, but it seemed like they might be useful and she didn't want them falling into Urghul hands if she lost East Island. That was strategy in a nutshell—doing things you didn't understand with the hope they might pay off later. And there were so many things she didn't understand.…

“You ever been in a fight, Bridger?” she asked.

The man hesitated. “Couple of times, down at the Duck. Had to get firm with some boys from down the south end of the lake.”

Gwenna shook her head. Bar brawls. The whole Urghul nation hammering down on them, and she was leading a few hundred people whose best approximation of battle came from bar brawls.

“You ever kill anyone?” she asked.

He shook his head slowly. “I know you're worried, sir, but we're strong folk up here. Logging's hard work. Breeds hard men and harder women. I figure putting an ax in a man can't be that different from putting it in a tree.”

They were brave words, given the circumstances, but they filled Gwenna with rage. She wanted to scream at him that felling some mountain pine was
nothing
like killing a man, wanted to tell him how it had felt when she stabbed the young legionary in the eye during the Kwihna Saapi, how he'd sobbed and pleaded before she killed him, and then, worse, sagged against her, slack, limp, like something that had never lived. She wanted to tell him about the Urghul camp, and the blood on her sword, in her eyes, sticky between her fingers. She wanted to tell him that even after eight years on the Islands poring over corpses and beating people bloody in the ring she still wasn't ready for it. He was watching her, dark eyes nervous.