The Emperor's Blades by Brian Staveley

Author:Brian Staveley [Staveley, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Fantasy, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9781466828438
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2014-01-13T23:00:00+00:00

26

Valyn rose early, bathed in the cold water from the sluice outside his barracks, shaved with his belt knife, then donned his best Kettral blacks. A stiffness had settled into his joints overnight, the rigid ache of muscles used past the limit of endurance, then left to tighten, and his legs protested as he limped between the buildings, past the mess hall, past command, across the great empty muster ground at the center of the compound, and up the trail toward the small rise overlooking the harbor. On a knoll a few hundred paces to the east, the spreading tenebral oak clawed at the sky with its gnarled limbs, but today the Kettral would pass by the shrine of their patron and pay homage to a different god. The soldiers referred to the stone ledge at the top of this small rise as Ananshael’s Table, and it was here that they commemorated their dead.

Others joined Valyn as he went, all Kettral now, a small stream of black flowing uphill. Gent walked a few paces ahead, favoring his left leg heavily. Gwenna followed half a dozen yards behind, her right arm in a sling. No one spoke. After the strain of the Trial, the weight of words was too great, their purpose too feeble.

For eight years, when Valyn had imagined this day, he had imagined celebration, laughter, backslapping, and, capping it all off, tankards upon tankards of beer over on Hook. This was the day they were finally Kettral; after eight years, this was the day they had proved themselves worthy successors to the line of iron men and women.

More recently—since the mysterious warning from the dying Aedolian—he had felt an even greater urgency to be done with the test. Those who survived the Trial were assigned to Wings in the roles for which they had trained, which meant, after a brief probational period, he would be commanding his own small group of soldiers and free, finally, to leave the Islands. Provided he was able to secure permission, he would be allowed to go after Kaden, to warn him. He’d thought about little else, over the preceding five weeks; certainly he had worried more for Kaden than he had for Ha Lin. Never in his worst foreboding had he imagined the Trial would prove her end.

Oh, she would be battered, maybe. He would be battered, too. That was all part of the fantasy—conjuring up the vicious but impotent wounds they would flash and flaunt, trading the stories of tests overcome, trials met, foes defeated. As it turned out, life with the Kettral didn’t line up very well with the stories. In the stories the soldiers traded gibes and offhand jests while dispatching the enemy with casual grace. In the stories the soldiers fucking lived.

He crested the low hill and stared at the bier. The gravelly limestone of the Qirins wasn’t suitable for burial, and although the Kettral spent countless hours in underwater training and missions, no one wanted to be laid to rest in the icy blue black of the ocean depths.

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