Taking Flight

Chapter Sixteen

“Now, how many heads are there?” Kelder asked himself, as he scanned the skies for Irith. “Nobody’s about to take a severed head inside his wagon at night, not if he’s sleeping there — that would be too creepy, just asking to be haunted.” He glanced down at Asha, hoping for some useful suggestion, but all he saw was that she was on the verge of tears. He quickly turned his gaze upward again.

“No one would take one inside,” he said, still addressing himself, “so they’re all out here on the wagons, and it’s just a matter of finding the right one, right?”

Asha made a muffled noise of agreement.

Kelder frowned. It was just a matter of finding the right one, but Asha was the only one who could do that, since she was the only one who knew her brother’s face.

Irith must have realized this by now — so where was she? Why hadn’t she come back for further instructions? All he could see was a small bird, silhouetted against the lesser moon as it climbed the eastern sky.

He shrugged, and looked down at Asha. “We’ll have to sneak up as close as we can, and see if we can find the right... uh... the right pike. Then we’ll tell Irith which one it is...”

There was a sudden flapping of wings, and Irith was descending, a few feet away.

“Kelder,” she said angrily, “I don’t know which head!”

“We just thought of that,” Kelder agreed.

“So what do we do?”

“Can you carry Asha when you fly? Then she could point it out.”

Irith looked the girl over, considering, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not a chance.”

Kelder had expected that. “All right, then,” he said. “We sneak Asha up as close as we can on foot, and let her look until she finds the right one.”

“Maybe Irith could get all of them?” Asha suggested. “Then we could go back and burn all the bodies...”

She realized that both Kelder and Irith were glaring at her, and her voice faded away.

“No,” Irith said. “Just one.”

“All right,” Asha said. “I’ll go look. But I can’t go alone.”

“Of course not,” Kelder agreed.

Irith glanced over at the wagons, the patchwork of light and shadow, the big man scraping away bits of wood with his knife.

“You two go ahead,” she said. “I’ll wait here.”

Kelder started to agree, then paused. Irith was the one who had to know just where the head was, after all. But it wasn’t worth the argument. “All right,” he said. “Come on, Asha.”

Together, the two crept closer.

There were a dozen wagons; the guard stood beside the seventh in line, by Kelder’s quick count, and they had approached near the ninth. “This way,” he hissed, beckoning Asha toward the front of the column.

After all, there were more wagons in that direction, even if it was farther to go.

The head on the eighth wagon was facing the opposite direction, but Asha shook her own head no; the hair was wrong.

The next faced them, but again, Asha indicated that it was not the one they wanted. They were both tiptoeing now; if the guard happened to look up from his whittling, and if he weren’t blinded by the tangle of shadows and torchlight, he would be looking right at them.

The head on the sixth wagon was facing away, and Asha was not completely sure, but didn’t think it looked like Abden.

Kelder was beginning to think they should have turned the other way and checked the tail end first when Asha made a strangled noise.

“That’s it,” she said, pointing. “That’s Abden.”

The fifth wagon was green trimmed with gold, and the Ethsharitic runes on the side said something about someone named Doran of someplace — Ship-something, safe place for ships, something like that; Kelder did not bother to puzzle the whole thing out. It was obviously the name of some Ethsharitic merchant. The pike at the front corner displayed the head of a young man, and Kelder thought there might be some resemblance to Asha, but he wasn’t sure he wasn’t just imagining it.

“All right,” he whispered. “Let’s go back and tell Irith.”

Asha nodded, turned, and began to scamper back.

Her bare feet slapped on the paving stones. Kelder started after her, and had taken perhaps three long steps when something registered.

He turned, and saw that the guard had lowered his knife and carving and was peering out into the gloom, following the sound of Asha’s footsteps.

Kelder decided that he didn’t want to be seen just yet. He fell back into a nearby shadow, under the overhang of a two-story shopfront.

“Irith?” Asha called. “Where are you?”

Kelder hissed to himself with exasperation.

“Irith?” Asha called again, more loudly.

She was standing, Kelder thought, at about the spot where they had separated, plainly visible in the light of the two moons. The guard was watching her intently now.

What’s more, another guard, whom they had not previously seen, had heard the sound and was peering between the wagons from the other side of the caravan. This one was tall and thin, with a black beard that needed trimming — it straggled messily down onto his chest.

There was no sign of Irith.

A cat meowed nearby, and Kelder turned for an instant, looking for the animal, but didn’t see it. He turned quickly back to Asha.

“Kelder!” a breathy voice said behind him, quietly.

He started, and turned to find Irith standing there, finger to her lips.

“How did you...” he began.

“Which one?” Irith whispered hoarsely.

“Which what?” For a moment he thought she was asking something about the two guards, and he tried to figure out what she wanted to know.

“Which wagon, stupid?”

“Oh,” Kelder said, collecting his wits. “The green one, right there.” He pointed.

Irith nodded, and spread wings that had not been there an instant before. “You go distract them,” she said.

Then she launched herself fluttering upward.

Kelder blinked and looked up, watching her ascent.

“Irith?” Asha wailed. “Kelder?”

Kelder frowned; the best distraction was probably the simplest, he decided. He stepped out of the shadows. “Over here,” he called. He trotted toward the little girl, who was standing alone in the street, on the verge of panic.

The first guard had stepped away from the pillar and tucked his carving under his belt. Now he slid his knife into its sheath and picked up the spear. The other guard was between two of the wagons now, facing away, scanning the little plaza on that side of the arcade.

Kelder tried hard not to be seen looking at either of them as he came up to Asha and said, a little more loudly than necessary, “Here I am, Indra.”

Indra was the first girl’s name he could think of, other than Asha or Irith.

“Kelder!” She spotted him, and dashed toward him, arms out.

At least that was one advantage of having the most common name in the World, he thought; nobody was ever going to track him down by using it.

He met Asha halfway and picked her up in a big embrace, then spun her around — which gave him a chance to look at the nearer guard without seeming to.

The man was standing, watching the two of them. He was not looking at the green and gold wagon. Kelder forced himself not to look at it, either. He lowered Asha to the pavement, and then glanced casually at the guard.

That individual was now looking either way along the row of wagons. He might, Kelder thought, have guessed that this little scene was being played out to distract him.

At least, that was why Kelder was doing it; Asha had apparently lost track of what she was supposed to be doing, and acting on impulse. In her excitement over finding Abden’s head she had completely forgotten everything else about the plan. That was fine, really; she was doing an excellent job of being a distraction, and probably acting far more naturally than she would have if she had remembered.

They did not, however, want the guard to realize he was being deliberately decoyed.

The other guard, Kelder noticed with a twinge of concern, was not in sight at the moment.

Spear in one hand, his other hand on the hilt of his sword, the visible guard was peering into the darkness.

“Looking for something?” Kelder called.

Startled, the guard turned to look at him silently for a second, and then shook his head. He said nothing.

“I’ve lost my wife,” Kelder said, pressing on. “The girl’s sister. She’s tall, with black hair, wearing a green tunic and a brown skirt — have you seen her?” He tried very hard to ignore Asha’s expression of surprise as she heard him tell such lies.

The guard shook his head again.

“You’re sure?” Kelder insisted.

“Haven’t seen anybody,” the man said, in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. “Except you two.”

“Well, if you do...” Kelder began.

“Excuse me,” the guard said, interrupting, “I’ve got rounds to make.” He began walking along the line of wagons, stooping every so often to peer under them, occasionally poking his spear into the shadows. He called something Kelder didn’t catch, and was answered by a deeper voice from the other side.

Kelder was very relieved indeed to see that the near-side guard had started out toward the back of the line, rather than the front. He hoped the other one had, as well.

“Well, if you see her,” Kelder shouted after them, “tell her we’ll meet her at the inn.” Then he turned away, taking Asha by the hand and pulling her along.

“Kelder,” Asha said, starting to protest.

He jerked viciously at her wrist, and she followed without further objection.

He led her quickly around a building, into an alley and out of the guards’ sight. Then he stopped, held a finger to his lips, and peered cautiously back around the corner.

“What is it?” Asha asked.

Kelder waved a hand at her, and she fell silent.

The heavier guard had reached the last wagon; the one with the sloppy beard met him there, and the two exchanged a few words — Kelder could just barely hear their voices, and could not make out any at all of what was said.

Above the arcade, orange moonlight shone briefly on a fluttering white wing, and a shadowy shape rose toward the heavens, something vaguely round cradled in one arm.

Kelder smiled.

“All right,” he told Asha, “now we go around the block and run for the gate, as fast as we can. Irith has the head.”

“You’re sure?” Asha looked up at him doubtfully.

“Just go,” Kelder said, giving her a shove.

He was destined to be Asha’s champion, but that didn’t mean he had to like her, and just now, tired and frightened as he was, he did not think much of her at all.