*
“You’ve got an hour,” Fane said, tossing a map onto the bench where Valyn sat, still slightly stunned, with his newly formed Wing.
“An hour for what?” Gwenna demanded, raking her red hair back over her shoulder.
“Figure it out,” Fane said as he walked away.
“All right, leader,” Laith said, gesturing toward the map with a grin. “Lead.”
Valyn scooped up the map. He’d hoped there’d be a chance to talk things over with the group, to establish some basic protocols, but evidently the Eyrie belief in preparing for the unexpected didn’t end once you had your own Wing. In about a month, they would all pass probation and be sent out on missions of their own. Until then … he unfolded the paper, spinning it until the north end faced north.
“It’s an island,” he said, taking in the contours, searching along the bottom of the page for a scale marking out distances.
“He’s going to be a good commander,” Gwenna said, rolling her eyes. “He knows an island when he sees one.”
“Save it,” Valyn grumbled. “It’s Sharn—about twelve leagues south of here.”
“Means we’ll want Suant’ra,” Laith said, turning from the group, heading toward the massive rookery where the birds were tethered.
“Wait,” Valyn shouted. He wasn’t even sure what they were supposed to do yet, but the flier just waved.
“I’ll be back by the time you’ve got it sorted.”
“’Shael can have him,” Valyn said as he turned his attention back to the map. Gwenna was hovering over one shoulder, Talal over the other, and Annick seemed to be reading the entire thing upside down from her seat on the bench. “Everyone, just take a step back,” he snapped. “I’ll let you know when I’ve looked it over.”
“Oh yes, Your Radiance,” Gwenna said, recoiling with a look of mock horror on her face. “We didn’t mean to crowd you, Your Excellency.” She sketched a dubious curtsy. “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember your proper honorific. Do you prefer Sir, Commander, or My Most Noble and Honored Lord?”
Valyn tried to keep his temper. Maybe Gwenna was testing him, and maybe she just didn’t like the idea of taking orders from a Wing leader her own age. Either way, getting in a fight with his demolitions master on the day of Wing Selection wasn’t likely to improve their chances of success at whatever ’Shael-spawned task Fane had thrown their way.
“Commander will do fine,” he growled. “Do you have your kit? We don’t know what we might need out there. Maybe some moles, or some starshatters.”
Gwenna’s green eyes blazed. “Of course. Maybe you’d forgotten that the new Wings always have a test right after selection.”
Valyn silently cursed himself. Between trying to ferret out Lin’s killer and recovering from his exhaustion in the Hole, he had forgotten. Not that he could afford to let the others know that.
“Good,” he said gruffly. “Annick, you’ve got your bow.”
“We’re wasting time,” the sniper said curtly. She gestured to the map.
Valyn bit off a sharp response and returned his attention to the inked lines.
“It’s a grab-and-go,” he said. “There’s a target in the middle of the island—doesn’t say what. We go in, we get it, we get out. Basic.”
“What about the other Wings?” Talal asked. The leach wasn’t paying as much attention to the paper in front of them as he was to the surrounding knots of soldiers. They had maps, too, Valyn realized. Sami Yurl was hunched over, gesturing to his people, then back to the paper. They had the same map, and they were already formulating a plan.
“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.
“You know, all these years of you and Lin working together, I always thought you were the smart one.” He chuckled. “Funny. Now it turns out that in addition to having the sweetest ass on the Islands, she was the brains as well.” He shook his head in mock regret. “But you never managed to get into that, did you? And now she’s dead. What a shame.”
Rage burned in Valyn like acid, and he scrabbled to reach over his shoulder for the second of his two blades. Yurl’s boot came down on his wrist, grinding until it felt like the bones would break. “Don’t,” he said, his face growing serious. “It’s not that I wouldn’t kill you, but it would be a blemish on my record. You are another Wing leader, after all, at least until you get yourself killed.”
Valyn searched for something to say, for something to do that might buy him time, but Yurl never gave him the chance. The flat of his blade swung in a vicious arc, pain split Valyn’s skull, and the sky went dark.