The Last Mortal Bond (65 page)

“Get it closed,” she growled, dropping the bodies, then seizing the crate Quick Jak had moved aside, dragging it back into place as Talal slammed the door shut. “Another,” she grunted, gesturing. “Two more.” When they were piled three high, she drove the swords of the dead soldiers into the wooden floor just behind the crates, bracing them.

“It won't hold long,” Talal said, backing up, eyeing the barricade.

“You're welcome to build a fucking portcullis. I'm taking the high ground.”

Even sore, even tired, it was easy enough to climb the unmortared wall and into the rafters. Below her, Talal frowned, then made a little flicking gesture with his hand. The blades sunk deeper into the wooden floor, all the way to the hilts. He kicked them once, seemed satisfied, then followed her up. By the time he was standing in the rafters, she'd already hacked a hole in the thick thatching of banana leaves.

“Hold on,” Talal said, laying a hand on her arm. “Jak's up there, but so is the other bird. Shura'ka.”

“So let him kill her,” she snapped, slicing and stabbing at the stubborn thatch. “That's why we brought him, right? When it's time to make the grab, I want to be ready. Besides—we blocked the door, but there's about to be an armory's worth of arrows flying in those open windows.”

She'd barely finished the words when the first steel-tipped bolt thudded into one of the posts below. After a pause, two more followed. And then it was chaos. Rallen's men weren't trying to force the door, weren't even bothering to get close enough to pick targets out of the shadowy darkness. They were just filling the livery with arrows and hoping to get lucky. It wasn't much of a strategy, but then, you didn't need much of a strategy when you had your foe pinned down and outnumbered.

“They're not using munitions,” Talal said.

“Not yet,” Gwenna replied grimly. “I want out of here before they start lighting fuses.”

With a final, vicious shove, she cleared the last of the thatch from the ragged hole she'd hacked in the roof. There were no birds in the visible patch of sky.

“Come
on,
” Gwenna muttered, forcing her way up through the opening. She glanced down at Talal. “Stay clear. I might be coming back through, and fast.”

The leach nodded, then moved along the rafter.

It took her a moment, once she was up on the uneven thatch, to find the two birds. Shura'ka was low in the sky to the north, close enough that Gwenna could make out the faces of the men and women strapped in on the talons. They were leaning out in their harnesses, trying to see above them and failing. Like the rest of the Kettral, they'd never trained to fight a foe coming down from above, and that was just where Quick Jak and the King had positioned themselves.

The golden kettral was higher and behind the other, wings spread wide. As Gwenna watched, the creature shrieked, tucked those wings close, and fell on Shura'ka like a stone. The smaller bird, alert to the danger, ducked and twisted in the air, but she was barely two-thirds the size of the King, and lower, and heavy with the weight of the four soldiers strapped in to her talons. Allar'ra hit her hard, one talon tearing the rider from her back, the other raking across her starboard wing.

The women and men on the talons were shouting, screaming. They couldn't see past their own bird's wings, but they knew what was going on well enough, and they understood how it would end if Shura'ka didn't pull herself free. 'Ka twisted desperately, but Allar'ra held on, stabbing down with his huge hooked beak into the back of the smaller bird's neck, a vicious shredding motion, over and over and over, until his beak was slick with blood. On his back, Jak was shouting something, but Gwenna couldn't make it out, not at the distance. Both creatures were falling fast, crashing toward the stony ground of the island.

“Get free,” she growled.
“Get free.”

At the last moment, the King did just that, tossing the other bird aside, spreading his massive wings, and leveling out just a few paces above the stone. Shura'ka didn't. One wing flapped desperately, weakly, but the other had gone limp. All she could manage was to roll halfway over in the air before she hit. Distance delayed the sound, but Gwenna could see the creature's rib cage burst beneath its own weight. It was easy to forget, watching the birds soar on the thermals, that they were heavier than a dozen horses. Shura'ka crumpled on impact, crushing the men and women beneath her. She twitched once, half raised a mutilated wing, then fell still.

High overhead, the Dawn King's scream sliced across the sky.

Gwenna glanced over her shoulder. Rallen's soldiers hadn't realized that she was on the roof. Like her, most had been staring north, watching the violence play out across the sky. As Allar'ra broke free, they began to retreat, slowly at first, then sprinting toward the safety of Rallen's compound. It was a slim opportunity, but then, the Kettral were used to slim opportunities.

“Now,” Gwenna said, turning back to the golden kettral. “Come on, Jak—get us out of here.”

She had no intention of trying Jak's version of the smash and grab, but there was time to make a short touchdown. Allar'ra wasn't wearing talon straps, but she and Talal could hold on for the short flight back to Hook. The bird banked south, back toward the livery, and Gwenna reached down to haul Talal up through the hole in the thatch. When they were both standing on the roof, however, she realized that the bird wasn't coming for them after all. It was too high, winging out to the south and west. Gwenna stared as Jak took the creature down over the island's edge, out over the waves and away.

“He's going for the others,” Talal said quietly.

“Or running away,” Gwenna replied.

There was plenty to run from. Despite the carnage wrought by Jak and his bird, despite their obvious mastery in the skies, Rallen still had more than twenty soldiers at his disposal, soldiers with bows and explosives. Rallen's own kennings, if he managed to focus them, might be enough to cripple even the King, to bring the bird down, and then there were the other kettral, the ones that Rallen had summoned. Gwenna could just barely make them out, a handful of specks winging their way north even as she watched.

“He's not running,” Talal said, pointing toward the low-lying island where Annick waited with the rest of the Kettral. “He's picking up the others.”

Gwenna sucked air between her teeth. “It's gonna be close,” she muttered. “If the other birds get here while Rallen's still holding the whistles, we're fucked. I don't care how good Jak and his bird are, they can't go five against one.”

She shifted her gaze from the sky and the waves to Rallen's fort. After the undisciplined madness of the initial attack on the livery, the leach had finally done the smart thing, pulling his people back behind the walls. There was no point attacking Gwenna and Talal from the ground, after all, when they could wait just a little bit longer and then put five Wings in the air. From the top of the livery, Gwenna could get a better sense of the courtyard shielded by those walls.

“The birds can land in there, under cover. If that happens, we're done.” She took a deep breath, glanced over at the retreating figure of Allar'ra, tried to figure the angles and flight times in her head, then gave up. There was really only one play left. “We've got to force the gate. Get inside that compound.”

“We'll have a better shot when Jak gets back here with the others.”

“We don't have
time
to wait for the others. By the time they get back, Rallen'll have five birds loaded and airborne. Our people'll never even get a chance to land.” It was a nasty truth, but it had to be faced. She glanced down through the hole in the roof, then stepped through, dropping the twelve feet to the floor and landing with a grunt. The pain in her ribs lanced up through her chest. Talal was smarter—he landed on the rafters first, then leapt down from there.

“The door,” Gwenna said, grimacing as she straightened up. “Punch out the hinges.”

Talal looked at her, then nodded. While she heaved aside the crates, Gwenna heard a quiet
ping
as the hinges snapped beneath some invisible force.

Gwenna seized the door in both hands. The thing was heavy, but then, she'd be glad enough of that when Rallen's men started filling it with arrows.

“Get that,” she grunted, nodding toward the narrow wooden ladder leading into the loft.

Talal raised his brows, then sheathed one sword to free up a hand for the ladder.

Gwenna met his eyes. “Ready?”

“We've got a door and barn ladder to assault a fortified position. How could I not be ready?”

Despite his bruised face, despite the blood trickling down from his scalp, despite the fact that they were probably about to die, Talal smiled.

Gwenna found herself grinning back. “And all these years I thought you weren't funny.”

“It's all right. All these years, I thought you were a bitch.”

“A bitch, hunh? Watch this.”

And then she was out of the livery, wooden door held up and at an angle before her, heart thundering in her chest, boots pounding over the broken ground. She could hear Talal just behind her, running in the shelter of the door, his breathing heavy but steady. She could smell him. Whatever he'd said moments before, he smelled ready. The first arrows punched into the door, staggering her for a moment, but she found her footing and charged on, borne up by the bellow rising from her chest.

There was no way to see where she was going, and she wasn't about to stick her head into the thicket of falling arrows to look. She tried to run in a straight line, but ended up hitting the fort's wall at an angle anyway, hitting it so hard that the corner of the door cracked and her head smashed up against the wooden boards. The thing was riddled with arrows; they'd been driving down like a heavy rain in the middle of the insane dash. Now that they were close to the compound, however, the wall actually shielded them from the worst of the attack.

Talal threw the ladder up against the stone. The wall was a dozen feet high, and the ladder's top rung didn't quite reach, but then, that would be a problem to deal with if she ever got to the top rung.

“Go,” the leach said. “I can hold the door up above you for a few heartbeats.”

Gwenna nodded. When she released the heavy door, it didn't fall. Instead, it floated up a few paces, wavered in the breeze, and held, like a narrow roof just above her head.

“Don't drop that 'Kent-kissing thing on me,” she shouted as she started climbing.

A few more arrows and at least one stone showered down. The door lurched beneath the assault, but held. Gwenna glanced back. Talal was sweating, panting, eyes fixed on the slab of wood he held suspended above her.

“Go,” he growled.

She'd just reached the top rung and set a hand on the top of the wall when the leach groaned and the whole door lifted away and fell, as though tossed aside by the wind. Gwenna found herself staring over the wall into the courtyard below. Two of Rallen's guards had raced down the narrow walkway to meet her. She stabbed the first in the throat, twisting the blade free as he fell, then parried the attack from the second as she scanned the courtyard. There were at least twenty soldiers, half holding bows, all of which were aimed directly at her. Right in their midst, leaning heavily on his cane, stood Jakob Rallen himself. He was bleeding from a cut on his cheek, but his lips parted in a rictus of a grin.

“You're done, Sharpe,” he snapped. “You're a useless fraud, and you're finished.” He glanced at his men. “Shoot for the legs. I want her alive and twitching.”

Gwenna ducked under the guard of the second soldier, slid an arm around his neck, put a knife to his throat, then hauled him around in front of her, a crude human shield.

“Not done yet,” she called back.

Rallen spat into the dirt. “Shoot at will.”

A few of his soldiers exchanged worried glances. Evidently it was one thing murdering innocents over on Hook. When it came to killing their own, however, when it came to cutting down someone they'd lived, feasted, and trained with for the past year, things got a little more tricky.

“Not great leadership,” Gwenna shouted, “calling for the slaughter of your own men. But then, you're not really a leader, are you?”

“Leadership,” Rallen hissed, “is the ability to make hard decisions. Not that I would expect you to know anything about that.” He turned back to his soldiers. “The last one to loose an arrow dies.”

So much,
Gwenna thought as the bowstrings sang,
for keeping them talking.

The bolts and arrows sunk into the soldier's flesh in a series of wet, sickening thuds. The man groaned, choked up his own blood, tried to pull free, but Gwenna held grimly to him, even after the body stopped twitching, waiting for the first volley of shots to fall still. Then, in the momentary pause that followed, she shrugged the corpse away and leapt from the narrow wall.

She hit the packed earth hard, and rolled to her feet expecting to take a broadhead to the face. There was too much open ground to cover before she could bring her blade to bear. Rallen's men held too many bows.
No winning this one,
she thought, fixing her eyes on the leach. The man smiled at her.
Please, Hull, just let me carve that smile off his face before they bring me down
.

Before she could reach him, however, before the leach could speak, before anyone could loose another arrow, a great shape exploded over the compound's far wall. It was a bird, but seemed bigger than a bird, the twin golden wings wide as the sky, blotting out the sun, throwing the whole courtyard into shadow. Below, hanging from the talons by a tangle of makeshift rope, hung half a dozen Kettral, Gwenna's Kettral, the men and women she had trained or tried to train—Qora and Delka, Fruin and Chelt—their eyes wide with anger and horror, knuckles white where they clung to the madness of straps, and where they hung on, also, to another figure, small as a boy, utterly untethered to the bird's talons, relying only on the hands of the others to hold her as she leaned so far out it seemed she had to fall—Annick, her bow a blur in her hands, her eyes still as stone as she drew and fired, drew and fired, drew and fired, her bowstring's twang lost in Allar'ra's ear-shattering scream.