The Last Mortal Bond (39 page)

“The timing is good,” Jak was saying. His voice reeled her back to the present. “The birds are hungry when they wake up. They usually hunt in the morning, take a little time lazing on the thermals while they digest, then come back here for some sport.”

“I thought the hunting
was
the sport,” Gwenna said, thinking of sheep carved in half, split cleanly from spine to sternum as though with a massive ax.

Jak shook his head. “Killing a cow on open ground? That takes about as much effort for the kettral as it would take you to open a coconut with one of your blades. The sport is between the birds themselves.”

Even as he spoke, he pointed south. Five kettral were gliding in, carried on some invisible shelf of wind, wings spread wide, pinions silently rippling. They might have been normal birds, small as Gwenna's outstretched thumb, until you realized they were still miles out and hundreds of paces up, that their scale was a trick of the eye, an untruth of the mind misreading the distance, a lie that made them, momentarily, a little easier to believe.

“Only five?” Gwenna asked.

“Six,” Jak said, pointing up at the bird circling the rocky island in a high, silent spiral. “Rallen keeps at least one in the air at all times. Flying guard patrol for his fort.”

Gwenna glanced up, then back at the approaching birds. “Even six. There must have been scores here a year ago.…”

“Eighty-seven,” Jak replied. “There were eighty-seven before the Eyrie killed them.”

The words were blunt, bitter. Gwenna could smell his grief. It made her mad.

“You realize,” she said, forcing herself to keep her voice low, “that there were
people
killed, too. That Kettral Wings were
flying
those creatures.…”

“There are plenty more people,” Jak replied grimly. “More than enough people.” He gestured toward the incoming birds. “For all anyone knows, these are the last of the kettral.”

Gwenna stared at him. She'd never considered that before. The destruction of the Eyrie itself, the mutual slaughter of nearly everyone she'd ever really known, that fact had eclipsed everything else. The birds were important, but important in the same way as munitions: valuable weaponry to be salvaged before it fell into unsavory hands. She'd never considered the kettral deaths themselves, never realized that the vicious battle on the Islands could well have scrubbed the creatures out of existence.

“There,” Jak said, pointing at the two birds in the lead. “Sente'ril and Sente'ra. Young birds from the same clutch. We've seen them before, flying patrols.…”

Gwenna glanced at the two birds, then scanned past them to a group of three birds trailing a little behind, her eye drawn to the center of the group, a mottled female with the slightest stutter in her wingbeat. “Holy Hull,” she breathed quietly. “She made it. Out of all of us, she was the first one back.”

Jak glanced over at her, reading the situation. “Your bird?”

Gwenna nodded. “Suant'ra.”

“I remember her,” the flier said. “She was barely fledged when I … left for Arim.”

“Laith raised her,” Gwenna said, the memory of the dead flier like a shard of glass lodged under her skin. “He trained her.”

“I remember him, too,” Jak said slowly. “Good flier. Reckless.”

Gwenna coughed up a laugh. “He was reckless, all right.” She shook her head, as though the motion might shake clear the thought of her slaughtered friend. “Always thought nothing could kill him. At least not while he was mounted up on 'Ra.”

“What happened to him?”

“He got killed,” Gwenna replied, her voice flat. “Doing something stupid.”

Jak glanced over at her quickly, then looked away, back to the approaching kettral. “And to her?” he asked quietly, gesturing.

“She took an injury fighting the Flea's bird up in the Bone Mountains. Something in her wing. Bad, Laith said. She couldn't carry us, and we were a seventy-foot target in the middle of the steppe as long as we stayed with her, so Valyn sent her south.”

Valyn, too. Another one who would never come back to the Islands.

Jak glanced through the long lens for half a heartbeat, then nodded. “Looks like a patagial tear. She's lucky it healed up enough to fly.”

Gwenna stared at 'Ra again. The wingbeat stutter was almost invisible, but she remembered Laith running his hands over his bird for what seemed like half the day, then coming up with the same diagnosis.

“You can tell that from this distance?” she asked.

Jak nodded slowly, half his attention on the remaining birds. “I was good at all of this,” he said, voice little more than a murmur. “Just not the fear…”

Gwenna shifted uncomfortably on the stone. It was bad enough to be a coward; you didn't have to admit it. Didn't have to say the words openly.

“What about the others?” she asked.

“Kei'ta and Shura'ka,” he replied after a moment. “I haven't seen either of them on patrols.”

“Why not?” Gwenna asked. “Why would Rallen hold those two in reserve?”

“Maybe he's not. We're in the Hole, mostly. They could be flying every other day, and I might have just missed them.” He shook his head. “It's a good thing I came. We have to get this right.”

Gwenna turned at the unexpected note of determination in his voice. “Meaning what, exactly?”

Jak frowned. “We have, at most, three fliers.”

“Including you.”

“Yes,” he replied, meeting her stare. “Including me. We're only going to have one shot at this, and we can't take all the birds. When the time comes, we need to make sure we get the right ones, the top flight.”

“Top flight?”

He nodded. “Some birds are better than others. Like soldiers. Faster or stronger. More tenacious.”

Gwenna nodded slowly. She'd heard plenty of chatter in the mess hall over the years, men and women comparing kettral, arguing endlessly over questions of maximum speed, talon length, beak strength. She'd never paid much attention. After all, if you were on a bird, and you were fighting someone who wasn't, the brute fucking fact of the bird itself was the deciding factor, not a few extra inches of talon. It had always seemed to her like quibbling over the raw tonnage of available warships when you were planning to go up against a nation whose best notion of a navy involved swimming.

Except that wasn't the case here. If she managed to find a way onto the island, if she managed to get the washouts mounted up, it would be birds against birds. The little differences suddenly mattered.

Jak just watched the kettral, panning back and forth with the long lens, sometimes taking it away from his eye to watch the whole group gliding toward them in loose formation. Then, as though responding to some unheard note on the breeze, he turned abruptly south, body stiffening as he stared through the wooden tube. Gwenna tried to follow his gaze, but she couldn't see much without a long lens of her own.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Holy Hull,” Jak breathed, ignoring her.

“Jak,” she snapped, reaching for the bow at her side.

“He's alive,” the flier said. He lowered the long lens finally and met her glare. There were tears in his eyes. “Allar'ra.”

Gwenna glanced back south. This time she could see a flash of gold in the high noon light.

“Another bird?” she said, shaking her head.

Jak nodded slowly. “My bird. The one I trained.”

He passed her the long lens, but she waved it away. The creature was at least a mile behind the others, but closing at a furious pace. Already, she could see it was gaining.

“Never heard of a bird with golden plumage.”

“Command didn't like it,” Jak replied. “Said he was cursed by Hull. Too easy to see, especially at night. None of the other cadets wanted to train him, so I did. I called him the Dawn King.”

Great,
Gwenna thought, blowing out a long breath.
The Dawn King. The bird almost as broken as the washout who trained him.

As Allar'ra drew closer, however, he looked anything but broken. He was larger than the others, for one thing, substantially larger, and though Gwenna was no expert on avian flight, there was something about his wingbeat, something horribly strong and smooth. It had taken him only a matter of minutes to catch up with the others, and she stared as they passed directly overhead, shivering momentarily as the dark shadows scudded over the ground, silent, and so fast. It was like some part of her remembered being a squirrel once, a mouse, remembered cowering in dense clover, willing the heart to stillness, refusing to look up as death passed on silent wings.

As the kettral drew closer to the cliffs of the rocky island, the golden bird suddenly beat his wings, just half a dozen powerful strokes, and he was a hundred feet and more above the rest.

“We want him,” Jak said simply.

“What about the eye-catching plumage?” Gwenna murmured.

“Everyone's got flaws.”

“Sure, but I'm not looking to add more to the group.”

“We want him,” Jak said again. “You have to trust me on this. I trained him.”

Trained
. It was not a word Gwenna would have used to describe the creature, not any more than she would when speaking of a crag cat or rabid brindled bear. Even silent, even gliding, the Dawn King looked wild, predatory, utterly unbridlable. Then he spread his wings, cracked his beak, and split the sky with a shriek that seemed one part challenge, one part rage. The two smaller birds behind and below, the siblings Sente'ril and Sente'ra, split apart, screaming their answer to the challenge.

“
This
is their sport,” Jak said, his voice soft with reverence.

It looked, at first, like a horribly lopsided contest. Sente'ril and Sente'ra set on the King from both sides at once, claws stretched out before them, raking, grasping. The larger bird, despite his altitude, looked cornered, caught as the siblings swept together. He couldn't face both at once, and if he turned to meet one, the other would have him. Gwenna had watched birds with fliers spar in the air, each trying to get behind and above the other, into a position where the Kettral stationed on the talons could loose their arrows at will.

That was nothing like this.

At the last moment, just as 'Ril and 'Ra closed on him, the King folded his vast wings and … rolled.

“What…,” Gwenna breathed.

“Most birds won't fight from that altitude,” Jak replied, unable to keep the pride from his voice. “He will.”

Suddenly upside down and just below his attackers, the huge bird could bring his own talons to bear. He locked claws with one of the siblings, then twisted viciously in the air, slamming one smaller bird into the other. Sente'ril and Sente'ra plummeted as the King pulled himself clear, righting himself as the water rushed up and his two assailants crashed toward the waves. They caught themselves at the last moment, swooping clear on outspread wings, no challenge this time, not even a glance back.

“He'll leave them?” Gwenna asked quietly.

“They're sparring,” Jak replied. “He's not trying to kill them.”

“Like blood time,” she said. “In the arena.”

“Considerably more civil than that, actually.”

“It doesn't
look
civil.”

“It does, once you know what to look for.”

The second fight was more protracted than the first. Rather than two birds ganging up on one, Suant'ra, Kei'ta, and Shura'ka all battled each other. None had the obvious advantage, at least not at first, and the avian brawl seemed to stretch on half the morning, a savage display of beaks and talons, wings frantically hammering, huge bodies locked together, falling, then breaking apart. Somewhere in the middle of the fight, the smallest of the three, Kei'ta, peeled away, climbing clear of the conflict, then coming to roost on the stone cliffs. Not long after, Shura'ka seized 'Ra by the wing, claws clutching hard enough to hold, but not hard enough to break or tear. 'Ra twisted, let out an agonized shriek. Shura'ka let her go.

“I've never seen that,” Gwenna said.

Jak shrugged. “Most Kettral don't. The fliers are interested, of course, but for the rest … it's a long swim over here, and for what? It's not like the bird's going to be doing any of this with a Wing strapped into the talons.” He frowned. “Like expecting a horse to gallop with a grown man tied to each leg.”

“So we want the King,” Gwenna said. “And Shura'ka, clearly. Who's the third?”

Jak hesitated, then shook his head. “Not Shura'ka.”

“She handled 'Ra and that other one easily enough.”

“She's limited,” Jak replied. “Slow rotation to the right, a stupid tendency never to check out and below her left wing. A dozen other things.…”

“And does any of it matter? I thought we were choosing the best birds, the ones that can
win
when things get bloody.”

“The bird that wins fighting alone isn't the same as the bird that wins carrying a Wing,” Jak replied carefully. “We want the King, Kei'ta, and your old bird.”

“She's injured,” Gwenna protested. “Even I can see it.”

“And she's smart. She's wily.”

“She lost.”

“She lost today,” Jak replied quietly. “Tomorrow is another chance.”

 

22

Kaden studied the tall man standing at the stone altar, the man who was not just a man, but a god clothed in mortal bone and muscle. Long Fist may have taken a different name here, in the steaming jungle north of the Waist, where the men and women knew him as Diem Hra, but there was no changing his skin, milk-pale beneath the web of scars, no changing the blond hair that spilled past his shoulders. The flesh Meshkent had chosen for himself could not have been further removed from the bodies of the jungle tribesmen, all of whom were short and compact, their skin and hair universally dark. Long Fist towered above them all—he must have been a full head higher than Kaden himself—a god in the form of a blue-eyed monster come to offer his bloody sacrifice.