Unhewn Throne 01 - The Emperor's Blades(127)

“Fine,” he said, trying to slow down his thoughts and his pulse, failing at both. “We’ll come in from the north—”

Annick shook her head, a curt, clipped gesture. “Not good.”

“Why not?” Talal asked, turning to the parchment.

“Sharn is to the south,” Valyn pointed out impatiently. “The interior is all jungle, too heavily forested to make a drop there, which means we need to put down on a beach. The closest is to the north, and the route overland to the target is shorter.”

“Except it’s overland,” Annick said, her eyes locked on his. “If we come in from the east, we go a little farther, but we can take this ravine—” she pointed to a crooked line on the map“—all the way up. No getting lost. We walk in the water. No tripping over roots or hacking through brush.”

Valyn eyed the ravine. He didn’t like the thought of following the low ground, but the sniper was right—they would move faster out of the jungle. A good commander didn’t just command; he listened as well. Valyn took a deep breath and swallowed his pride. “Thank you, Annick. I think you’re right. Let’s take the eastern approach.

“Talal,” he went on, turning to the leach. “What’s your well?”

The youth drew back, his dark eyes narrowing. “I don’t … I don’t tell anyone that.”

Gwenna rolled her eyes. “This isn’t just anyone. This is your commander, and he wants to know your well.”

“Gwenna,” Valyn said, raising a hand. “Please.” He turned his attention back to Talal. “I need to know,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. Yurl’s Wing was already moving toward the harbor, and Essa was gesturing vigorously to her map and her soldiers, evidently putting together some sort of attack. “We’re Wing mates now. You can share that sort of thing.”

The leach shook his head. “I can tell you that I’ll have access to it on the island, but it won’t be very powerful.”

“What is it?” Valyn demanded, more heatedly than he’d intended.

“I’m not telling you.”

Annick looked from the leach to Valyn and back again. “You’re acting like a fool,” she said flatly. “You’re hurting the Wing.”

“I’ve told him what he needs to know,” Talal insisted, his voice quiet but hard. “We can waste time arguing about it, or we can get on with the planning.”

Valyn locked eyes with the leach. It was a direct challenge to his nascent authority, but the other Wings would be airborne shortly and bungling his first exercise as Wing commander might be even worse.

“We’ll talk about it later,” he said curtly, turning his attention back to the map. “Talal, you’ll take point; hopefully whatever you can do will be enough if we’re surprised. Gwenna will be a dozen paces back. I’ll be moving through the trees to the right of the stream. We’ll have Laith on the left bank. Annick, you’ll be in the water, shallow enough that you can still shoot. If we flush out someone, hit ’em with a stunner.”

The sniper nodded curtly.

“Here comes the bird,” Gwenna said, gesturing over her shoulder, and then Suant’ra was upon them in a flurry of wings and wind.

*

The exercise did not go well. The river was deeper than anticipated, the current stronger. Valyn’s Wing was forced out of the water into the thick brush along the banks, and even with their swords out hacking a path, they made horrible time and put up enough of a racket that anyone listening would have plenty of time to flee or attack, as they saw fit. Yurl’s Wing chose to attack.

It was a standard rattrap ambush: three men high in the trees on the right bank, two in the water dead ahead. Laith went charging off before Valyn could give an order to consolidate, and one of Hern’s stunners dropped him in his tracks. Valyn called for smokers to cover their retreat, but the wind was blowing the wrong way, as Gwenna pointed out in a fusillade of profanity. Whatever Talal’s well was, he never made visible use of it, and after Annick had loosed her first arrow, something hard and invisible crunched into the side of her head, depositing her in the murky water. In the end, Valyn resorted to a pathetic, useless charge up the center channel, tripping a flash-and-bang, ending up on his back in the mud, staring up at Sami Yurl’s grinning face while he tried to rub the stars from his eyes, to clear the ringing from his ears.

“Tough break, Malkeenian,” the youth drawled, spitting a gob of phlegm into Valyn’s face. “I have to say, I’m not surprised that you managed to bugger the attack, but I am impressed that you did so so adeptly.