The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3)(15)

For a moment, Arin let himself imagine how they must feel. The wind screaming. Their skin dusted, lips chapped. Their fingers trembling over the rock until they found a hold. Relief when the grip was good. A jolt of fear when their toes slipped on glassy rock. Their feet cut away. They hung, arms blazing in pain. The rope held. Their feet found purchase and dug into the cliff. Hands bloody, mouths dry, they kept climbing.

Arin pushed back from the cliff. He stopped thinking about what the Rangers felt. They had come to steal his country and kill his people. He didn’t need his god to tell him what to do.

He had his small group of armed Herrani fall back and crouch behind nearby bushes that were stunted and twisted by high winds.

Arin waited until the first set of climbers had hauled themselves up over the cliff’s lip. They staked themselves to the ground, then began pulling up the rope as their partners below made the final ascent.

Once the Rangers were nailed to the ground and their hands were full, the Herrani emerged from the bushes.

Arin was the first to fall upon them, to show the other Herrani what to do.

A Ranger turned, brown eyes wide. He was still staked to the ground. Arin’s sword sliced the long, gathered rope in the Valorian’s hands. It zipped away, spun down over the cliff. A scream floated up from below.

Arin cut the Ranger’s anchor and set the point of his sword to the Ranger’s sweat-shiny throat. “The blade, or the rocks below?” Arin asked in Valorian. The words sounded airless, scratched raw by the wind.

The whites of the Valorian’s eyes showed clear around.

After one loud heartbeat, Arin realized the Ranger was too afraid to answer. Arin made the choice for him, and stabbed.

“I’m not talking with you,” Roshar declared as he dropped the flap of the tent’s opening in Arin’s face. Arin pushed through anyway.

“You’re bleeding on my floor,” the prince said. “That stain will be impossible to get out.”

Arin glanced down. The tent’s “floor” was sand. Blood was trickling from his side, darkening the sand in coin-size drops. A Valorian dagger had worked its way past Arin’s hardened leather armor, got in right at the ribs where the armor buckled. It had happened on the beach, after Arin had dealt with the Rangers and rode to meet the eastern army.

“You were at the back, I suppose,” Roshar said, “away from all the fun. That’s what you get for being late.” Roshar pulled his sweat-drenched tunic away from his skin. “Fugh. I stink.”

“Roshar—”

“Will you shut up? I said I’m not talking with you. You can’t do anything right, can you?”

“But the general—”

“Yes, retreated. Yes, without his precious Rangers. I heard what you did. Tossed them from the cliff, eh? Very sporting of you. But you were late to my battle when I needed you and I told you and whose land is this anyway that I just fought to keep?”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

The prince snorted.

Arin, unsure what to say, fumbled with his armor buckles. The cut along his ribs stung.

“I see that no one’s helped you out of your armor yet. Poor baby. Now, me”—Roshar gestured at himself, dressed only in tunic and trousers, arms bare and muscular and smeared with someone else’s blood—“I got out of armor as soon as the Valorians cast off from the beach, because I am a prince, and I told someone to take it off me, and people do as I say.”

Arin said, “That’s what you want from me?”

Roshar lowered his arms.

“Do you really want me to do every thing you say?”

No answer.

“Doesn’t it matter that I was right about the cliffs?”

Roshar winced. “Honestly, that makes it worse.”

“I’m not going to obey you. You’re my friend, not my master.”

Roshar looked away, his mutilated nose blunting his profile. He studied the tent’s blank canvas wall, which glowed in the sun. Roshar sighed, tugging on one cropped ear. Then he turned back and faced Arin squarely. His mouth was a long, tired line. “Here.” He jerked at Arin’s armor and began unbuckling it. “Stop bleeding. Oh, just look at you. Arin, you’re a mess.”

“I didn’t need you anyway,” Roshar told him as they rode back to the city, having left behind several battalions to keep the beach secure. “I happen to be very good at war. It’s because I’m so handsome. Like one of your gods. People see me and their minds go blank. I run my sword right through them.”

Arin tchicked at Javelin, urging him ahead of Roshar’s horse.

Roshar caught up. Like most easterners, he rode without reins, guiding his horse solely through knees, heels, and the shifting of his weight. This left him free to gesture expansively as he talked. “Are you listening?” He leaned to poke Arin in the shoulder. “I’m not sure you appreciate the magnitude of having a god in your midst.”

“Can I pray for you to go away?”

Roshar grinned. “We took a few Valorians prisoner.”

“Why?”

“For information, obviously. Not much has come out of Valoria lately. Our spies have been quiet. Yours?”

Arin hadn’t heard anything from Tensen or his Moth. He shook his head.

“Well.” Roshar rubbed his palms together. “Let’s see what a little questioning reveals. I’m sure the prisoners will be happy to talk.”