“We get one chance at this,” he said. “They’ll come at us in a wave. There will be a moment when the wave breaks, then another when it is past. That’s when we run for the river.”
Before Valyn could reply, however, before he could even nod, before the Urghul could kick their horses to a full gallop, a new sound carved the noon sky, slicing through the river’s roar and the cries of the horsemen, paring away the rumble of hooves and the hammering of Valyn’s own heart in his ears, a dagger of scream opening the world’s soft belly. Valyn stiffened, some animal panic older than all conscious thought striking through him, bellowing at him to run, to hide, to find some place where that bright, awful cry could never reach. It was the instinct of mouse and hare, of all small creatures naked beneath the sky, helpless and fleeing, the instinct of all prey when the predator finally arrives. And then, a heartbeat later, over that first instinct, a slower, greater thought: Kettral.
The Urghul horses pawed at the dirt, shifting unsteadily beneath their riders as the horsemen tried to bring them back under control. Valyn spun, axes in hand, scanning the horizon to the south, searching, searching, and then … there: screaming up the river valley, talons skimming just inches above the frothing water, wings almost wide enough to stretch from bank to bank, a bird, golden as the setting sun, black-eyed, wide-beaked, furious as vengeance itself.
This, too, the Flea took in stride.
“Change of plan. Ready for a smash and grab. Valyn, you’re with Newt-use the corpse-carry. Signal we’ve got wounded, need to run the grab at half speed.”
Valyn didn’t move. The bird was still a mile off, but he could see the figures on the talons, tiny silhouettes against the gray sky behind. Even with his sight, he couldn’t make out the faces, not at that distance, and so, for just a moment, he closed his eyes, found the darkness he had lived inside for so long, and listened. Behind the panicking horses and the cries of their riders, beneath the hiss of the wind and the river’s roar, laid beneath all the sounds of the world, or over them, a voice:
“… just ignore the fact that the whole fucking Urghul nation came out to play. We make the grab, and we’re gone.…”
“Holy Hull,” he breathed, eyes shattering open. “Holy fucking Hull. It’s Gwenna.”
“I told you,” the Flea murmured, bending to lift Sigrid into his arms once more.
Valyn shook his head. “Told me what?”
“Back on the Islands, when you were still botching your barrel drops. I told you they’d make a good Wing.”
* * *
The Urghul horses were trained for steel and fire, trained to charge a line of infantrymen with pikes, but no one had trained them to face Kettral. At the bird’s deafening approach most reared up so violently that even the Urghul riders struggled to keep their seats.
“Now!” the Flea growled. “Get to the river. We make the grab there, where the horses can’t follow.”
Valyn slammed his axes back into his belt, hurled the Aphorist over his shoulder, and ran.
Only when he’d reached the water, wading out as far into the eddy as he dared go, only when he’d shifted Newt from his back into the corpse-carry position and checked the bird’s angle of attack, did he realize that the Flea and Sigrid hadn’t made it. The horror stuck like a bone in his throat as he spun to find them still halfway up the bank, pinned down, surrounded by riders who had wrestled their mounts back under control. The Flea’s blade was a blur, hacking at the legs of the horses, chopping heads from the thicket of spears. Somehow, impossibly, he was holding the Urghul back, but he only had one hand, he was carrying a soldier who weighed as much as he did, and he was surrounded. Gwenna was coming, coming with the bird, but she was too late.
Quickly, gently, Valyn lowered the Aphorist into the current.
“What…,” Newt gasped. He had passed out during the run, come to only when the cold water reached his chest.
“I’m going back.”
Even as Valyn started moving toward the bank, slowed by the water as though lost in the depth of nightmare, he knew that he was dead. There were too many Urghul between him and the other Kettral, too many lances and swords. Regardless of the slarn’s strength running through his blood, regardless of his own uncanny speed, there was a weight of steel and horseflesh opposed to which no single soldier could ever hope to stand.
He felt no fear at the realization. No sorrow. There was only a bright bronze eagerness that tasted strangely like relief. After surviving Adare’s knife and the fall from the tower in Andt-Kyl, he’d gone to the woods, partly because he could see no role for himself in the war, and partly because he was horrified; horrified of what he’d become, of what he’d learned to do, of what he’d done. His blindness had awoken something in the slarn’s poison, something dark and vicious, and he felt certain that if he moved again among men and women he would commit some terrible, irreversible act for which there could be no forgiveness.
The most recent days with Huutsuu and the Flea had done nothing to diminish that feeling. Valyn could remember his hands wrapped around the Urghul woman’s neck, their naked skin washed in their own blood. In those burning, freezing nights, he’d almost killed her half a dozen times. And then there were the people he had killed, the dozens and dozens of Urghul. That was what he’d trained for. That was war. It wasn’t the killing that frightened him, but the fact that it felt so good.
It’s time, he thought, breath afire in his throat as he struggled through the shallows. Time to finish all this.
Maybe he could save Sigrid and the Flea, make just enough of a distraction that Gwenna could lift them free. Maybe he couldn’t. It didn’t seem to matter either way. A roar erupted in his throat, a cry that had been surging up through all the fabric of his flesh since Ha Lin died, rising and growing until it seemed too large for the body that contained it, as though that body had dissolved beneath the pain and the rage, leaving behind a man that was not a man at all, but a scream in the shape of a man, a sob of fury dying to shake free its last mortal bond.
Then something yanked him back.
An arm wrapped around his chest, a little weaker than his own but steadier, threaded through with some conviction he had long ago forgotten.
“Knock it off, you asshole.”
Gwenna’s voice at his ear, her whole body bent to the simple task of holding him back.
He strained against her weight, eyes fixed on Sigrid and the Flea. The Urghul were closing around them closer and closer. Of the golden bird, there was no sign. Valyn twisted in Gwenna’s grip, tried to bring his axes to bear, but she just pulled him nearer, her arms so tight around his chest he could barely breathe. Valyn raged against the embrace, but could not break it.
She was hissing in his ear, snarling the same words over and over. “… another bird. There’s another fucking bird coming, Valyn. Four of them. They’ll save the Flea. We have to go.”
Of the grab itself he remembered almost nothing, just one barren fact: that when they finally rose into the air, Gwenna’s arm still wrapped around his shoulders, when the hammering of the bird’s great golden wings lifted them up, away from the battle, away from all the danger, it didn’t feel like flight. It felt like dying.
53
For a full week, the Skullsworn ignored them almost entirely. A young man or woman arrived each morning with a basket of food-vegetables and cheese, sometimes a piece of smoked meat-and every evening someone came to take the empty basket away. Aside from that, the legendarily vicious priests of Ananshael left Kaden and Triste alone.
No one had told them to stay in the house, and so, on the second day, after a long, exhausted sleep, Kaden had started limping around the mesa, tentatively at first, then more boldly, wandering the open spaces between the white buildings, exploring the bounds of his open-air prison. The only time anyone stopped him was when he approached the bridge, that one path leading back to the rest of the world. A young woman was on her hands and knees-rag in hand, bucket of soapy water beside her-scouring the stone. She stood up as he drew close, met his eyes, then shook her head.