Valyn glanced west to where the sun had set beneath the low Nishan hills. Already, night was lowering over the old fort like an iron bowl. The soldiers’ pupils dilated in the growing gloom. They moved over the bloody walkway atop the wall more hesitantly, uncertain of their fading footing.
“Sir?” someone asked.
Valyn turned to find Brynt facing him. The legionary’s shoulder wound was wrapped in a rough bandage. Somehow he’d made it through four days of fighting with just one hand.
“What is it?” Valyn asked.
“The Urghul,” Brynt replied, gesturing over the lip of the wall.
Valyn didn’t bother to look. Today, as on every other day, there would be hundreds of Urghul dead, and among them, the wounded. The riders never made an effort to come for them. According to Huutsuu, this, too, was their way, their sacrifice to Kwihna. Even now, Valyn could hear the living crawling, limping, scrabbling across the churned-up no-man’s-land between the wall and the Urghul camp. Those who managed to drag themselves back to the roaring fires would be honored with song and dance. Those who didn’t … would not.
“The wounded…,” Brynt said, gesturing wordlessly over the wall.
Valyn turned back to the soldier. “What about them?”
The young man stared at him. “I don’t know. It’s just … shouldn’t we do something? Put arrows in them … or send someone out with an ax.…”
Valyn shook his head. “Leave them. This is what they chose, and we have our own to care for.”
Few enough, as it turned out-barely twenty, when you counted Huutsuu’s surviving Urghul and the Flea’s Kettral. There was a makeshift infirmary set up in the shadow of the wall, little more than a scrap of canvas to keep off the worst of the wind and cold. Each night, Valyn and the other Kettral labored by the shifting light of two lanterns to stitch the gashes that could be stitched, to scrub, then cauterize the wounds. They weren’t trying to save anyone. That wasn’t the point. The point was to find a way to keep each man who had survived the day’s madness on the wall for another day, to keep the dying, for just a little longer, from joining the dead.
That night, when they were finished, the Flea beckoned to Valyn. The legionaries, exhausted from the vicious battle, had mostly collapsed at their posts atop the wall, each man falling into his own stunned sleep. Later, woken by hunger or pain, they would rise, cook the last of their remaining rations over low fires, stare silently into the blaze or exchange the day’s grim tales. For now, however, they slept.
“Inside the fort,” the Wing leader murmured, gesturing.
Valyn raised his brows.
“We need to talk about the next steps.”
No one had bothered to light a lantern inside the stone chamber at the heart of Mierten’s Fort; the wan starlight lancing through the crumbling roof was more than enough for Kettral eyes. Valyn glanced over his companions as he entered. None of them had escaped the battle unscathed. The Flea’s right eye was almost swollen shut, Newt had acquired a limp, and an Urghul sword had taken off the two smallest fingers on Sigrid’s left hand. The bandage seeped blood, but the woman ignored it. For the first time Valyn remembered, she didn’t smell of delicate perfume. Her blacks were filthy and wrinkled. Like the rest of them, she reeked of blood.
“Just us?” Valyn asked, glancing over his shoulder toward the door.
“Just us,” the Flea agreed. “Kettral business.”
“I’m not sure I’m Kettral anymore.”
“Neither am I,” the Flea agreed, “but you might be important in what has to happen next.” He looked around the room, studying each of them in turn. “We can’t hold another day. We don’t have the soldiers left. Tomorrow, probably well before noon, the Urghul will take the wall and the fight will be over.”
Newt pursed his lips. “No man can stand against the tide. So what do you want to do?”
To Valyn’s surprise, the Flea laughed. “What I want to do is to take off these ’Shael-spawned boots, dig up a barrel of ale, sit down somewhere with a view of the river, drink ’til I’m numb, then fall asleep for a week.”
The admission seemed uncharacteristic, but Newt chortled, and even Sigrid’s lips twitched incrementally upward. It was more spasm than smile, gone before it began.
“Wrong question,” Newt agreed, still grinning. “What I meant was, ‘What are we going to do?’”
“Ah,” the Flea said, scrubbing his face with a hand. “That. That’s less pleasant.”
Sigrid licked her chapped lips, then hacked out a series of mangled syllables.
“My lovely and talented companion,” the Aphorist began, “points out that this is as good as any other place to die.”
The Flea shook his head slowly. “I disagree. For one thing, it’s dark and cold and we’re out of food. More importantly, we can still do some good if we survive.”
Valyn stared. “You want to abandon them.”
“As I said,” the Wing leader replied, meeting his gaze, “what I want doesn’t really come into it.”
“When?” Newt asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“Tonight is better,” the Aphorist pointed out. He seemed to have no qualms about leaving behind the men beside whom they had fought so desperately and for so long. “A lot more hours to get out, get clear.”
The Flea nodded. “I thought about that. I’m still hoping, though, that Balendin shows himself one final time. We stay until the last moment, and then we bolt.”
Sigrid laughed, then shook her head.
“As the lady points out,” Newt said, “we are well past our best running.”
“We’re not running,” the Flea said. He nodded west, toward where the river’s roar echoed between the banks. “We stay here, we fight, we hope for one more shot at Balendin. If we don’t get it, we swim.”
The Aphorist raised his bushy brows. “With that current? I believe the word you’re searching for isn’t swim. It is drown.”
The Flea shrugged. “Maybe. I scouted it last night. I give us even odds.” He turned to Valyn. “That’s why you’re here.”
Valyn shook his head slowly. “I haven’t swam in better than a year.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re half our age, almost uninjured, and stronger than anyone I’ve seen. I might ride out the current and get free. You definitely will.”
Unbidden, the thought of Huutsuu filled Valyn’s mind. She was probably asleep atop the wall somewhere, or curled up in the lee of the wall. The Annurian way of war, she would call it. Escaping just when the struggle peaked.
“I won’t go,” he said.
The Flea just watched him for a long time. “You think it’s bravery to die here on this wall.”
“I think we owe it to the men.”
“What about them?” the Flea asked, jerking a thumb to the south.
Valyn narrowed his eyes. “Who?”
“Everyone else. The kids. The farmers in their fields. The grandfathers sitting on porches. What do you owe them?”
Valyn gritted his teeth.
“Dying is easy,” the Flea said. The words were hard, but his voice was gentle. “When the time comes, we’ll do it. It’s just not time.”
“It is for those poor bastards standing on the wall tomorrow.”
The Flea nodded. “Yes. For those poor bastards, it is almost time.”
* * *
Chilten, a sword.
Jal, an ax.
Yemmer, who fought with two swords, another sword.
Sander, a spear.
Fent, an arrow to the throat.
Dumb Tom, an arrow to the gut.
Ho Chan, who killed the rats, a spear in the eye.
Belton, four arrows before he dropped.
Brynt, a spear, and Ariq, a spear.
Kel, a fall from the wall’s top, then hooves.
Gruin the Brick, who knew so many poems by heart, a slender Urghul knife.