The Last Mortal Bond (64 page)

Slowly, the flier's eyes focused on her face. After a moment, he nodded unsteadily.

She wanted to say more, wanted to beat the blood out of him, actually, but there was no time.

“Let's just find the whistles. Talal—hold the door.”

The leach didn't need an order. He was already dragging a crate out from the corner, a wooden box large enough to slow anyone trying to force their way in. Gwenna left him to it, turning toward the gloom. The ranks of window didn't admit much light, but she didn't need light.

Dozens of flight straps and harnesses hung from the iron hooks set into the wall. Flight nets had been draped neatly over the rafters to dry. Reinforced cargo barrels lined one wall, two ranks deep. Above them were shelves packed with all the necessary apparatus of flight: training blinders and drag hooks, stitch kits and wet-weather slicks. All the necessary apparatus, that was, except the crucial whistles.

Outside, just above the thatch roof, the kettral screamed. The bird's cry was like a hot knife torn through the air. Something inside of Gwenna quailed at the sound, some childlike part that could never be entirely trained away.

Jak's head jerked around. “Shura'ka,” he said.

Gwenna forced aside her fear. “She's the patrol bird?”

He nodded.

“All right,” Gwenna said. “What does that mean for us? For the plan?”

The flier closed his eyes, dragged in an unsteady breath. “She's strong,” he replied finally. “Reliable.” Something about the conversation seemed to be bringing the man back to life. Or maybe it was just the fact that they were under cover finally, that for at least a few moments no one seemed likely to kill them.

“What about the others?” Gwenna asked. “Any chance they're here already? Roosting somewhere? Can we get to them without the whistles?”

Jak shook his head slowly. “Probably not. This time of day, they'll be feeding, all but Shura'ka and whatever bird's hauling the cargo over from Hook. We weren't supposed to be doing this until later.”

“I fucking
know
that. Just in case you haven't been paying attention, quite a few things have happened that weren't supposed to happen.”

The sound of shouting was louder outside, louder and more organized. Gwenna took a few steps toward the windows, risked a glance toward the fort. Rallen stood just outside his walls, furious, reeling, leaning heavily on his cane and screaming at his men. They were maybe twenty-five paces away. Gwenna didn't bother trying to count them. Twenty? Thirty? Too many. They weren't attacking, though. Not yet. A few were looking south instead. There was a high, clear whine, then another, and another, the whole dissonant chord pitched just at the edge of hearing.

“
They
have the whistles,” Jak observed quietly, “and they just put out the call.”

The abattoir where the kettral fed was miles to the south. Gwenna couldn't make out the low, fertile island behind the walls of Rallen's fortress, but she could imagine the massive birds perched on the bloody soil, beaks rending the sheep to ribbons.

“They can hear the whistles?” she asked. “Even at that distance?”

“Of course they can.” The flier followed her gaze out the open window. “There might be—”

Gwenna cut him off. She'd already done the quick math, not that she really needed it.

“We failed,” she said. The words hurt, but not as much as being torn apart by what was coming. “We need to get clear now.”

Jak shook his head. Uncertainty twisted his face. “I might—”

“We are
leaving,
” Gwenna snarled.

Talal studied her, his face grave. “How?”

She gestured toward the door. “Make a break for it. Get to the cliff and jump.”

The leach shook his head. “There are rocks at the base, Gwenna. There's no way we'd make it.”

“Not here,” she said. “Northeast, on the far side of the island. It's open ocean up there, and the cliffs are lower.”

“It's still fifty paces down.”

“You can work on your swan dive.”

“No,” Jak said. His voice was quiet, but surprisingly hard.

Gwenna rounded on him. “You're welcome to stay here.”

He shook his head. His brown eyes were wide in the darkness, frightened as he stared out the window, but the shock was mostly gone.

“There's another way,” he said.

Gwenna glanced out the window again. Another bird was approaching from the southwest, from Hook, a huge, black shadow backlit by the afternoon sun. It bore a single flier on its back and carried a net laden with barrels in its claws.

“Great,” Gwenna spat.

Talal followed her gaze. “We're not going to beat two kettral to the far side of the island.”

“We weren't likely to beat one,” Gwenna growled. “It's the only play we have.”

“No,” Jak said once more. “It's not.”

For a heartbeat, she considered hitting him again. Not just a hard slap this time, but a punch, a hundred punches, vicious blows to the face and stomach that would double him over and shut him up. They'd be faster without him anyway, and if it came to dying, she'd rather do it without a coward at her side. Something in his tone, however, brought her up short, some bleak determination that hadn't been there before.

“Talk,” she said. “Fast.”

He opened his mouth to reply, then broke off, shaking his head. “There's no time. It's Allar'ra.” He ran to the door, seized the crate, and, muscles straining, hurled it aside.

“Jak…,” Gwenna began.

The flier ignored her, wrestling instead with the rusted latch.

“Jak!”

Before she could finish, he slammed the door open, and stepped outside. For a moment he stood stock-still in the sunlight and the flashing steel of the arrowheads. Then he ran west, putting the livery between himself and Rallen's soldiers. Gwenna cursed, started to follow him, but Talal raised a hand.

“Wait.”

She stared at the leach. “For
what
?”

“You said we should bring him.”

“Yeah. And I was
wrong
.”

“Maybe not.”

“He's been less use than a side of rotting beef, Talal. He hasn't done a fucking thing since Rallen sprung his trap.”

“He's doing something now.”

Gwenna stared at her companion.

Talal met her gaze. “You said we could trust him. So trust him.”

She hesitated, then turned back to the window. The flier stood still as a post a few dozen paces from the cliff. Shura'ka, the patrol bird, was to the east, on the wrong side of the livery to see him, at least for the moment. That would change quickly, though, and there was nowhere to hide on that bare, sun-parched rock. Over Jak's shoulder, in the distance, she could still see the silhouette of Allar'ra. The bird was closing, closing fast, despite the huge load of cargo it carried in its claws.

“When this goes to shit,” Gwenna said grimly. “We run.”

Talal just nodded.

A quarter mile out, Allar'ra dropped the net. The bird screamed, flexed his claws, and then, to Gwenna's shock, rolled smoothly upside down. It was the same maneuver she'd seen weeks earlier when she and Quick Jak came to scout the fortress, only this time there was a flier on the creature's back, and the sudden twist flung the man free. He tried to hang on, dangled from both arms for a heartbeat, flailing desperately, then failed, fell. The bird had just reached the island, and the flier shattered on the uneven stone. The scream and the crunch reached Gwenna just a moment later.

“Holy Hull,” she said as Allar'ra righted himself with a flick of the wing and tail.

Quick Jak didn't flinch, didn't flee. Instead, he raised a hand even as he fell into a crouch. She couldn't see his face, but there was something in the motion, a confidence, a certainty that she'd never seen in him before, as though he were Kettral after all, had been Kettral all along, and she'd just never noticed. Then the bird was on him.

“That's it,” Gwenna murmured, stomach lurching inside her. “He's dead.”

She couldn't see exactly what had happened, but
dead
was the only real possibility. When it came to smash-and-grab maneuvers, fliers weren't very good to begin with. They were generally on the bird's back, after all—it was the other members of the Wing who had to be able to catch the straps in a hurry, and that was when there
were
straps to catch. Allar'ra was fitted out for cargo carry, not for human transport. The bird had come in far faster than Gwenna had ever seen, his claws at all the wrong angles—canted forward for attack, rather than backward, as they should have been for any sane mount. She couldn't see past all the kicked-up dust and shadow, but one fact was clear—Jak had botched the grab, and badly.

“It was too fast,” she growled. “Too fucking fast.”

Even the Flea couldn't make a grab at that speed, at
half
that speed. A human arm and hand and shoulder could only take so much. Gwenna couldn't see more than the narrow patch of land outside the window, the stone and the sea beyond, but Jak was gone. She processed the fact, then set it aside.

“Let's go,” she said, waving to Talal. “He gave us a distraction.”

The leach joined her at the open door.

“We run straight north,” Gwenna went on, “use the shed and the warehouse for cover from the kettral if we have to.…”

Talal, however, didn't seem to be listening. He was looking toward the eastern sky instead, shading his eyes with a cupped hand.

“Holy Hull,” he breathed after a moment.

Gwenna followed his eyes, half expecting to find Shura'ka circling back, low enough this time for the soldiers shooting arrows or hurling starshatters, or Allar'ra, those vicious claws outstretched. She found the huge golden bird all right, but it wasn't stooping for the kill. It was climbing, climbing hard, wings hammering the air. And there, clutched in one claw—Quick Jak.

“Holy Hull,” Gwenna agreed, wondering if she was really seeing what she thought she was seeing.

Kettral snatched up sheep and cows in their claws all the time, of course. That was how they hunted. Gwenna had seen the birds sink talons into a full-grown heifer and haul it screaming into the air as easily as their diminutive cousins might take a hare or a mouse. Allar'ra had snatched up Quick Jak in almost the same way, but unlike those bleeding, bleating beasts, the flier didn't seem hurt. In fact, it looked like he was … climbing, climbing free of the great bird's grip, moving nimbly, fluidly between the talons, then over them as his kettral soared higher.

“Have you ever…,” Talal began.

“No,” she said. Then, because it seemed worth saying again, “No.”

It was the kind of story you wouldn't believe if you heard it straight out of the Flea's mouth. Laith had always said that Quick Jak was the only flier on the Islands better than he was, but he'd never mentioned
this
. Gwenna had never even considered the possibility of letting a bird seize a soldier in its claws. No one had. The first shot at that would be the last; a human would be sliced into ribbons of meat—the end of a bold, stupid experiment.

Jak wasn't meat, though. He was alive, had even managed to climb out of the cage of claw. As Gwenna stared, he was holding on with one hand, leaning back and out, like a sailor hiking over the rail. Instead of waves beneath him, though, there was only empty air, fathoms of it, and hard stone at the bottom. Then he jumped.

For just a moment the flier seemed to hang, arms spread, caught between the speed of the bird's climb and his own inescapable weight. In that moment, Allar'ra screamed, twisted, tucked his wings and fell sideways, rolling into the empty air. Jak reached out, easily as if he were floating at the top of an ocean swell, and caught the harness that had held the other hapless flier. The movement was casual, almost lazy. Jak pulled himself in close, pressing his body against the bird's back, and then, as the Dawn King rolled upright once again, settled into his seat, tucking his legs behind the straps of the harness. The whole thing took less than five heartbeats. Gwenna had been raised on the Islands, trained among men and women who made a daily habit of the impossible, and it was the most astounding thing she'd ever seen.

“All right,” she said, still staring. “I'm glad we brought him.”

“Down!” Talal shouted, slamming into her from the side.

A few feet above, right where Gwenna's head had been, an arrow shivered in the wooden doorframe.
I guess Rallen's done waiting,
she thought, half crawling, half rolling through the open door, back into the dubious safety of the livery. Talal dove over her as a handful of arrows and crossbow bolts clattered against the stone to either side of the door. The archers had flanked them, venturing around the east and west sides of the livery to find an angle of attack.

“We're pinned down,” the leach murmured.

Gwenna eyed the archers, then shook her head. “No, we're not. Now we have a
bird
.”

And then, as though summoned by the word, Allar'ra fell on Rallen's men. One moment the archers had been moving steadily, warily closer, covering one another with heavy fire through the open approach. Then a massive shadow blotted the sunlight, a bird's predatory scream split the afternoon air. This time when the kettral swept past just a pace above the stone those claws
did
cut, slicing through muscle and bone, killing a soldier on the approach, then snatching two more, crushing them between the talons, tossing the limp bodies into the dry dirt.

The closest of Rallen's minions made a panicked rush on the livery. Gwenna stabbed the first man in the throat, kicked the second in the crotch, then watched as Talal's blade came down in a quick, sharp blow, smashing open his skull. Gwenna tossed her sword behind her, grabbed a corpse in each hand, hauled them inside, out of the way.