Spirit Gate

48

The worst came just after dawn when he heard thrashing in the trees. By then, he could not feel either hands or feet. He could not protect himself. And he looked like such a damned fool idiot. Sometimes death was better than shame.

But, after all, the impulse to live was stronger.

A man beat a path through the woods. He had a knife out, and the remains of a soldier's kit, leather scale coat, empty sword sheath, sturdy boots, baggy trousers sewn of stiff cloth, all torn and bloodied. Seeing Horas, he stopped dead, and like an eagle he gaped, showing his tongue.

"What are you?" he asked.

"A reeve from Argent Hall. Cut me loose."

The man looked at the trussing, and the clothes, and he scratched his chin in a puzzled way, trying to work it out. He had worn a helm once; a leather strap, sliced clean, dangled where one end had gotten caught in the neck of his coat.

"Cut me loose!"

He shrugged, and cut him down.

Horas collapsed.

The man pawed through the pile. "No offense, reeve, but I'll be taking this string in exchange for my trouble." He tucked the string of vey into his sleeve. "And this knife."

Horas groaned. Hands and feet came alive with a flaming agony that made him weep. He could do nothing to stop the other man, who finished his theft with a satisfied smile. Back within the trees, a branch snapped, and the man's eyes flared with fear. He cursed under his breath and took a step.

"Wait," Horas said, his voice a croak. "Before you run-what happened?"

"We were attacked at dawn. They weren't taking prisoners, I can tell you. I haven't an eagle to fly away like you do, just my own two feet." He spat on the ground, the old country tradition of expelling bad fortune. Without a spare glance, he took off into the woods.

Horas soon lost track of the crash and rustle of the man's flight. He lay there, teeth gritted and eyes watering. In the end, he crawled to his clothing, and he dressed. In the end, he staggered to a clearing, and set the whistle to his lips. In the end, Tumna came for him. Together they circled until they found the carnage left on the road and saw the company-the very mercenary company that had marched away yesterday!-marching double-time on West Track back toward Olossi. The council had lied to him! They had betrayed their own allies!

That Devouring woman had used him, lured him, shamed him, and then hadn't even had the stomach to kill him afterward.

Furious, fuming, and still hurting like the hells, Horas set his course for Argent Hall.

MIDMORNING HE CIRCLED a leaden-winged Tumna over Argent Hall, and landed. Leaving the eagle for the hall's fawkners, he shouted at some stray lagabout to ring the alert before walking to the marshal's cote, where he was refused entry. The alarm bell jangled twice, but quit after that. He was just about to push past the old slave who blocked the steps and shove the door aside himself, when the senior reeves hurried into the garden.

"Are you insane, Horas?" whined Toban. "You'll get us all punished."

"Too late. The strike force was attacked at dawn and wiped out."

"Why didn't you warn them?" demanded Weda. The bitch.

"Nothing I could do," he said, "you cursed fool ass-lickers. While you sit here and feast and the marshal pokes his merry pigs, Olossi's council is betraying us. I flew past on my way back here. The whole population is afoot, fleeing into the walls. They know what's coming, and they're making ready to fight."

The door slid open. Marshal Yordenas appeared, looking weary but composed. His cold gaze made the reeve suddenly wish he were an ant, beneath notice. He wiped sweat from his neck.

"Why did you not return last night?" asked the marshal in that dull, quiet voice.

The lot of them were fools twice over, and all his shame and anger boiled up just thinking of it. "Captured, that's what! They're a damned sight cleverer than any of you are. It's mere fortunate chance I escaped and got back here to warn you."

The gang of four watched the marshal carefully. It struck Horas for the first time that they watched the marshal in the same way they would keep their gaze fixed on a poisonous snake.

"Best you gather two flights and rid us of these troublesome gnats."

"You going to fly with us?" Horas demanded.

Toban gasped, and Weda flinched. They cowered, waiting for the marshal to bite. They were all afraid of him, but he was only an opportunist who had moved in and worked promises and threats to get himself elevated to a position he did not deserve and had not earned.

Those blank eyes were turned on him. "Did you know, Horas, that I never sleep? I am burdened by such dreams as would drive a sane man into madness."

Horas stepped back, anything to get farther away from him. For obviously, the dreams had already done their work. Why hadn't he seen that before? Toban grabbed his arm and yanked him another few steps back.

"Nay, make it three flights."

"Uh, uh."

"Speak up, Toban. I can't hear you."

"Marshal, we're sorely understrength. Three flights aloft will leave us only one to cover Argent Hall."

"Three flights," said the marshal as if he were discussing the night's menu. "It will be three flights. Olossi's Greater Houses must not be allowed to betray the agreement they sealed with us. And there is a rumor-she is looking for the one who escaped her-she'll be angry-"

He broke off, and went back into the cote without explaining who "she" was, who the one who escaped her was, and why she would be angry or her anger matter to anyone.

"Three flights," said Toban. "You'll lead them, Horas. Time you had a command."

He looked at them, who had cosseted and praised him. They were all rotten. They hated him, just as he hated them and everyone.

"Three flights," he said. Why not? A man with the knack for command could win the loyalty of reeves who might then join him when, as in the Tale of Change, it was time for new leadership.

THREE FLIGHTS TOOK time to launch, and they struggled once in the air to find a formation. The eagles did not like to fly so close together, nor had Master Yordenas flown them in drills as often as he ought, given so many were eagles who had migrated into new territory. He had preferred to send constant small patrols into the Barrens.

Looking for what? For the nest of my missing eagle, he'd said, but also, for signs of habitation in high isolated reaches. Any place, it seemed, a person might hide where only eagles could reach. Maybe what she was looking for, the person who had escaped her, whoever she was. For some reason, he thought of that mild clerk who had interviewed him at the army camp, of the way her gaze had burned right down to his cringing heart, curse her.

Enough! Circling above Argent Hall, he fixed his attention on the landscape below. He didn't love the sight of the land unrolling beneath, not as many reeves claimed to. The people were too small, reminding him of bugs, and perhaps it was best most folk be squashed for they would be gnawing and biting at him, ill-tempered as they all seemed to be. Paths and roads threaded through dry fields. The irrigation canals were emptied, nothing more than scars scratched into the dirt. Yet there was a smell in the air, a taste like a kiss of spice on a Devouring girl's tongue: the rains were coming soon. The new year would green out of the withered stalks of the one passing away. The Year of the Red Goat was waiting to germinate, bloody and stubborn. Jealous, passionate, fickle, like that damned Devouring girl. If he ever got his hands on her again, she'd not be laughing at him afterward.

At length, his flights were assembled in the air. Flanks stretched far out to either side. With the first flight, he took the lead, striking out for Olossi and West Track. Fields poured away below them. Soon enough he saw people on paths hauling carts and wagons piled high with possessions. From out of the walls rose the clangor of a bell. They had been warned. They were running for the safety of the walls, curse them.

The wind was hot, and the afternoon sun hotter yet. They circled Olossi a pair of times just for the pleasure of seeing so many faces upturned, so many pointing, shouting, weeping. It was good that the crawlers were frightened of reeves. They ought to be.

A flag flashed off to the left south flank, forward of his position. He banked, and the lead flight followed, with the other two keeping a prudent distance. Villagers hurried down the road, all in a jumble, some clots passing others, some resting, some splitting into two while others joined up. These were no threat. The flag whipped its signal again. His gaze caught on a distant group that, like ants, crept along the road in something resembling order. An eagle circled high aloft, watching over that company.

He slipped loose a flag and signaled to the rest to "stay back." He beat higher. The company on the road sparkled in their ranks. They were armed with swords and spears, although their dress was dark. What seemed at a height to be creeping was in truth a brisk march, eating up the mey.

As he banked, he got a good look at the reeve who was guarding the troop, and damned if it wasn't the very reeve who should have been dead. Joss, his name was. The other reeve's eagle was a big, old, experienced bird, and Tumna clamped down her feathers, not wanting to approach.

The other raptor pulled in close enough that that damned smug reeve could shout across the distance. "What do you intend?"

"Go back! Go back! This is our place!" Then he saw what waited to the south.

Two flights of reeves, in tight formation, seen as specks over the escarpment where the thermals were strongest.

"Reeves do not war on other reeves!" called Legate Joss. "Let us make an alliance."

Three flights, to the enemy's two.

His bow was strung, clipped to his chest harness. He got it into his hands, pressed to the end of its tether, and nocked an arrow. Swinging wide, he released the arrow, but what would have been a fair shot on the land went astray in the currents and missed wide. The other eagle beat its wings, calling a challenge, and swung talons up as though to close and grapple in midair.

Horas tugged on the upper jesses, and Tumna dove out of the way. They twisted back and returned, flying hard, to their flight.

Reeves had no signal for attack. They were not soldiers. Using two flags, he gave two signals.

Crime in progress.

No quarter.

Perhaps the reeves of Argent Hall had simply been waiting for action. Still, it surprised him how they bent with a will, eagles ready to defend their territory and reeves eager to take out their frustration on Clan Hall's enforcers. Many of the Argent Hall reeves had, like him, been driven from their original places by the spite and envy of others. Now they could get their revenge.

They flew over West Track and, continuing south, grabbed height as they could, but Clan Hall had already taken advantage of the good updrafts along the high ground. As Horas and his flights moved in, Clan Hall's eagles shifted, in disciplined ranks, toward the west. He turned his group to follow, but at once the glare of the westering sun got in their eyes and made it difficult to aim.

Again, he signaled. No quarter.

Numbers would tell. Seeing what they were up against, Clan Hall would break and flee.

That's what he would do, in their situation. He wasn't a fool.

The lead flights closed. Some were too high and some too low; all the lines were staggered at irregular intervals. They almost seemed to be flying through each other, as the chanters in talking lines may shift places by weaving in between their comrades. A few arrows flew harmlessly. Some reeves grabbed an updraft, while others stooped to get out of the way.

The escarpment was a jumbled blanket of gray stone outcrops and grass dried almost white by the heat of Furnace Sky. Far to the south, a trickle of dust rose, marking movement, but the high plains were otherwise empty except for the eagles circling here along the spot where the earth thrust up from the river plain.

Horas found himself beyond the fray. He cursed at Tumna and turned her, although she protested. They banked steeply, losing altitude but getting back around where he could see the wheel of raptors in the sky above him in a silent gyre so beautiful that you might believe, for the space of a breath, that the gods had intended it exactly that way.

Then it happened.

An eagle faltered. Bated. Plunged.

It was difficult to imagine that the arrow in the eagle's eye was a carefully aimed shot, but it proved lethal. Everyone watched as the reeve struggled, trying to get his eagle to respond to his frantic pulls on the jesses, but they tumbled regardless. There was no sound when they hit. They merely became a motionless discoloration on the earth.

He wasn't even sure who had fallen, only that the man wore Argent Hall colors. The flanking flights turned wide. The Clan Hall flights split with a remarkable display of coordination, some stooping while others climbed. It was impossible to surround them.

Arrows sped through the air. Reeves shouted curses. A javelin whistled past below Horas's feet, and he twisted in the harness, trying to see who had come so close, but his view was blocked. Someone had gotten behind him, out of his range.

Down. Down. Above, two eagles passed close enough for reeves to jab with their staffs. Tumna labored, found a thermal, and caught it. Rising, Horas tried to grasp the sprawl of the skirmish. As more arrows and javelins were expended, the fight came to the raptors themselves. Their natural instinct to drive any other out of the territory they claimed for their own goaded them. Two eagles would close, and strike with their talons. Another would calculate its distance and dive, but because all possessed an uncanny ability to judge distance and velocity, only once did eagles collide in midair, and that to disaster, for both raptors tore each at the other, one reeve was sliced loose from his harness, and all plunged to earth.

Tumna shifted abruptly, beating out of the thermal. Movement flickered in the corner of Horas's eye.

Talons appeared over the eagle's right shoulder and raked Tumna's side The strike tumbled them. Tumna dropped, and Horas's stomach lurched as they fell. As he struggled with the high jesses, he saw Reeve Joss wheel above.

"Call them off! We have a common enemy!"

Tumna fought, coming around.

"There you go. There you go!" Horas cried to the bird.

With two great beats, the eagle regained control and pulled up far too close to the fatal ground. By the way she was bringing up her talons, Horas could tell she wanted to land, but that of all things the reeve could not permit. On the ground, they were no better than a crippled deer caught in the open when a hungry eagle passes overhead.

An arrow spun end over end and splintered against a spine of rock. A Clan eagle circled toward an outcrop, with an arrow in its wing. Tumna had gained stability, and Horas took a shot as the other eagle fought to control its descent.

He had a good aim, and the bird was moving slowly. His arrow pierced its neck, yet still the eagle maintained control as it broke momentum for the landing and found purchase on a knob of rock. The reeve unhooked and swung out with bow raised, a standing target.

Too late Horas saw the danger: he was close, and the other reeve, a woman whose face was contorted with rage, drew calmly and fixed him in her sight. But the sun was behind him, and she squinted against it, and the arrow went wide. He pushed over the ridgeline and flew into the grasslands stretching south to the horizon. They skimmed low. Tumna was obviously in difficulty. Each shallow slope of hill was a mountain barely surmounted, talons brushing tips of grass. Shadows pulled long in hollows. At last, he eased Tumna down and they hit hard and he unhooked in a rush and came down, twisting his ankle. Pain made his eyes sting. The eagle flopped forward, lay there for an instant, then drew herself up, too proud to collapse.

"Oh shit." Horas searched in his travel pouch for ointment, but the damned fawkners had neglected to replenish his supply. Blood oozed from the wound. When he stepped forward to inspect it, Tumna slashed at him, and he leaped back, cursing.

Shadows raced over the ground. The eagles had followed him, and he was out of arrows. Only, as the first landed on the far rise, did he recognize his own Argent Hall compatriot. Another five landed, and ten more. A second flight passed overhead, seeking shelter. They had followed him.

The exhausted birds sank to earth as the sun set. There came Weda, the bitch, running to him with a cut on her face and her skin gray with fatigue.

"What now?" she demanded. "Did you see how they were toying with us?"

Tumna flared, feathers rising. She backed away.

"Here, now. Here, now. What's wrong with your eagle, Horas?"

"Injured." Strange how his voice had been scraped raw, although he'd uttered barely ten words since he started. "How do you mean, toying with us?"

"They avoided us."

"Nah. That was just clumsiness, just like us. Reeves don't fight reeves."

"They do now. What do we do now?"

But it was pointless. Darkness was nearly upon them. She wanted him to make the decision, because if he did, then she could blame him later. It was always like that, his whole life. How he hated them all.

The third flight, almost intact, skated overhead and came to rest in staggered lines as night spilled over the rolling plains and ate the pale wonder of grass and the fading splendor of the sky. The first stars bloomed. As the blindness of night overtook them, the restless, angry, agitated eagles settled, but Horas could not. The fear and fury would gnaw at him all night.

To Weda, he said, "Nothing we can do now. We'll stick it out here until dawn. Pass the message. We leave at first light."

"And then what? Keep fighting?"

"No point to it. Neither of us can win. Best we go back and report that Clan Hall is sticking its nose in Olossi's business. Let him figure it out. He's marshal, isn't he!"

"That's what you're going to tell Marshal Yordenas?"

"You that scared of him?"

"You should be. You are."

"He doesn't even have an eagle. He just says he does, but I think he's been lying all along, pretending his eagle is at nesting all this while. I think his eagle is dead. I don't think he's a proper reeve at all."

"No reeve can survive the death of their eagle," she said in an anxious whisper. As though Yordenas could hear them from this distance! "What do you mean to do? Challenge him? You saw what happened with Garrard. You saw it all, Horas." Her stance, seen as a deeper shadow within the gathering night, was tense, defiant, and fearful. "He can't be killed."

It was true. They'd all seen it.

No person could survive such a wound. But Yordenas had.

"Will you challenge him?" she repeated, but the sneering anger did not hide her terror.

He wanted to cut her yapping mouth off with his knife, but he dared not. She was a bitch, but he had to remember she was one of his few allies. One of the few people who had shown him a measure of casual kindness. She and the rest of the gang of four had approached him, allowed him into their councils, given him a part to play when Marshal Alyon's whimpering, weakling sycophants had made their final attempt to grab power.

"I didn't mean it," he said. "I didn't mean it, Weda. I'm mad, and Tumna's hurt."

"No. No. Of course you didn't mean it. We're the marshal's loyal reeves."

"As always. We'll go back to Argent Hall in the morning. That's the best thing we can do, like I said. Let him worry at it. Have you any ointment? I lost mine in the battle. Tumna took some scratches."

She handed over a small leather bottle of salve. Then she walked away to pass the word that they would overnight here in the grass and return to Argent Hall at daybreak. Night swallowed them all. The sky was staggering in its brilliance because there was no evening moon. All around he heard reeves speaking softly to their eagles, calming them after the battle. Reeves had fought reeves.

There were three things you learned your first day in hall, the first day after an eagle had chosen you.

First. If your eagle dies, you die, so tend your eagle well and care for the eagle before you care for yourself, because your life depends on it. If you die, your eagle can claim another reeve, so tend your eagle well and care for the eagle before you care for yourself, because the strength of the halls depends on it.

Second. Serve justice. That is the whole of your duty.

Third. A reeve always comes to the aid of another reeve. To do otherwise is to cut away the heart of the halls.

Tumna refused to let him come near with hood and salve.

He wept.