There was a passage buried in the middle of Hendran that Gwenna had always thought deserved more attention. Not really a passage, actually-just a couple of sentences: Change is dangerous. The change of guard on a fortress wall. A change of a prisoner from one cell to another. A change of command in the middle of the battle. In every case, there will be a moment-sometimes no longer than a single heartbeat-when everything goes slack, when no one is in control. Strike then.
Gwenna was waiting for that moment.
It hadn’t taken long for Rallen’s thugs to return to the warehouse pushing the barrel with Talal inside. Gwenna couldn’t see it. She was still pinned against the empty air by Rallen’s kenning, and the leach hadn’t allowed her the freedom to turn her head. She could hear the barrel rumbling over the stone outside, however, the staves protesting each crunch and jolt. She could hear it hit the ramp into the warehouse, then bump the threshold, then roll smoothly over the level floor before coming to rest somewhere off to her right.
Close now, she thought, trying to keep half a dozen possible scenarios in her mind at the same time. The kenning didn’t allow her to move, but she could flex her muscles against the invisible bonds, tensing, testing. Readiness is everything.
If they were going to crack out of Rallen’s trap, it would have to be in the next few moments, and Gwenna was the only one in a position to start the cracking. Talal didn’t know what was going on, not yet, and Quick Jak … She could hear his breathing behind her. The last glimpse she’d had of the flier he’d been kneeling, frozen, a knife against his neck. He’d appeared more ready to die than to fight. Even now, she could smell the panic pouring off him. The rank scent made her want to spit.
Another mistake to add to the growing list.
If she survived, she’d be able to write her own text, a rival to Hendran’s. She’d call it Error and Improvisation: How to Learn From a Total Goat Fuck. It was starting to look like she’d need an entire chapter for her idiocy when it came to Quick Jak. Handling him would be crucial when everyone started swinging steel.…
No, she told herself, pulling her focus back to her bonds, to the three guards readying their weapons. Jak was a problem for after she was free.
“Right there,” Rallen said, licking his lips warily, looking past Gwenna to the new arrivals. “Bows on the barrel. The leach inside has nothing like my power, but until he’s drugged, he’s dangerous.”
That was what Gwenna was counting on. Rallen might be strong, but he wasn’t invincible; he couldn’t look at everything at once. Standard Kettral protocol would have split the prisoners up from the very start, but Rallen couldn’t do that. Or wouldn’t. He didn’t trust his soldiers, certainly didn’t trust them to go toe-to-toe with real Kettral, and so here they were, all packed into the same space, and if Rallen was going to handle Talal, there would be at least a few moments when he couldn’t handle Gwenna herself.
“You three,” the leach said, waving his hand toward the soldiers ringing her. “Close in, but be wary. I’m going to put her down.”
As he spoke, the air around Gwenna slackened, as though some invisible rope had been cut. Then slowly, slowly, she began to sink toward the floor. The nearest of the three soldiers took an eager step forward, raising his sword.
“Not too close!” Rallen snapped. “You’re not here to fight her. You’re here to just watch the miserable bitch while I deal with the leach.”
That’s right, Gwenna thought, suppressing a smile as her feet touched the floor. Just watch this miserable bitch.
And then, as Rallen was shifting his attention and his kenning to Talal’s barrel, as the guards were still raising their blades, uncertain how to configure themselves, Gwenna hurled herself into motion. She smashed aside the nearest blade, aiming for the sword’s flat with the palm of her hand, hitting it slightly wrong, feeling the steel slice across her skin. The pain didn’t matter. She was inside the bastard’s guard, and she crushed his windpipe with a fist.
She turned into the collapsing body, shrugging the corpse over her shoulder with one arm as though he were a heavy coat, turning, heaving him around so that the desperate blows of the other two sank into dead flesh, lodging against the bone. When Gwenna dropped the body, it pulled the blades down with it, wrenching them from the hands of the baffled soldiers. She put two stiffened fingers into the eyes of the nearest man, pulled away as he screamed, then lashed out, shattering the kneecap of the other with her boot. As he lurched toward her, she stepped aside, stripping his belt knife from the sheath, cocking her arm, then throwing, watching the blade tumble over and over toward Rallen’s throat.
It had taken her only heartbeats to destroy her guards, but heartbeats should have been plenty of time for Rallen to hurl another kenning at her-to tie her in invisible chains all over again, to shatter her skull. Even as that blade hung in the air, as his glassy eyes widened, Gwenna was half waiting for his own killing blow, for that attack she had no way of stopping, the one that would smash the life out of her.
Only the yellowbloom saved her-those few extra swallows she had taunted him into taking. The tea might have given the leach power, but it had dulled his reflexes, and, sluggish with drug, his reaction was the most basic of any man facing his own death. Instead of attacking, or striking back, he flung up a desperate hand in the oldest motion of self-preservation. The knife careened off an invisible wall just feet from his face, then skittered off across the floor.
“Four men standing,” Gwenna shouted, turning toward Talal’s barrel and the stunned soldiers beside it, stooping to snatch one of the short blades from a fallen body. “Bows and blades…”
Before she could finish the warning, the roof fell on her. That’s how it felt, anyway-as though a crushing weight had been dropped onto her head and shoulders from a great height. Her knees buckled, then she caved, head smashing against the floor, darkness gnawing the fringes of her vision.
Rallen’s bellow, slurred and furious, filled her ears. “… kill you, Sharpe. I’m going to feed your blood to Hull’s twisted tree.…”
She fought the pain and nausea, tried to twist free of the leach’s grip, to find some break in whatever held her. There was nothing but air above, but she might have been lying under a pile of rubble. Breathing was almost impossible.
She’d fallen facing the doorway, toward Quick Jak. The flier was still on his knees, hands bound behind him, the knife still at his throat. The soldier guarding him was obviously shocked, distracted, so stunned by the sudden violence that it would have been a simple matter for the flier to roll free, kick the knife away, get on his feet, and start fucking fighting. Jak didn’t even try. Instead, his eyes fixed on Gwenna, wide and horrified, and though his shoulders strained against the bonds, it was just some animal impulse. He wasn’t actually trying to break away.
Gwenna tried to shout at him to go, but she could barely draw enough breath for a moan. Out of the corner of her eye she could see motion; Rallen, she realized, approaching her, his cup of yellowbloom discarded in favor of a naked blade.
“You thought you could defy me, Sharpe?”
She tried to growl something vicious and defiant. All she managed was a groan mixed with drool, and so she clamped her mouth shut.
“I was going to hurt you,” Rallen went on, “in order to learn what I needed to learn.” He waved the knife in the air between them in satisfied admonition. “Now, though? Now I’m going to hurt you for that, and then I’m going to keep hurting you just for the sheer-”
Before he could finish, the steel hoops ringing Talal’s barrel snapped. The sound echoed in the closed space of the warehouse, crisp as a series of cracked skulls, and then, a moment later, the staves split. Wood shattered, splintered, tore into jagged fragments along the grain, pushing up, and out, and away as Talal, sweating, bleeding, eyes wide, teeth bared, like something awful hatching from its massive shell, shoved his way clear, then stumbled to his feet.
The soldiers facing him reeled. One tried to back up too quickly, tripped, then fell, losing his sword, crab-crawling away from the leach, struggling to find his feet or his freedom or both. Talal took a step after him, belt knife half raised, then noticed the other threat, the woman in his blind spot who was also backing up, but raising her flatbow as she retreated, sighting hastily along the quarrel. He tried to turn.…
Too slow, Gwenna wanted to scream.
Talal’s movements were leaden, awkward-despite the violence with which he’d broken free-as though he’d forgotten how to use his legs. Like Gwenna herself, he’d been in the barrel too long. That he was standing at all, that he was fighting, was testament to his will, but you couldn’t will the feeling back into legs gone numb half a day earlier. You couldn’t will blood into starved muscle. Talal twisted halfway to face this other foe, then stumbled. The stumble saved his life.
The flatbow had been level with his chest. When the soldier pulled the trigger, however, she panicked, yanking the weapon back and up. As Talal dropped to his knee, the bolt just cleared his head. His eyes widened, then he lunged. It was fucking ugly-the sort of thing you’d see from first-year cadets in the ring-but Talal was no first-year. Unlike those kids fumbling with their wooden swords, he was fighting for his life, for all of their lives. He managed to snag the spent flatbow with one hand, wrench it free of the woman’s grasp, then smash it across her face. Once, twice, three times, quick and vicious, until her head snapped back, dangling limply from the broken neck.
That was enough to stop Rallen in his tracks. In less time than it would take to recite a quarter page of the Tactics, he’d lost four of his six soldiers. One was half crawling, half groveling in his effort to get clear, and the other, the one guarding Quick Jak, instead of watching the flier, was staring at the bodies sprawled across the floor, at the blood seeping into the dry, eager wood.
Talal glanced over at Gwenna. He couldn’t see the kenning holding her, but seemed to understand the situation all the same, and pivoted to hurl the bloody flatbow at Rallen. As attacks went, it wasn’t much. Talal’s aim was good, but if the other leach had been thinking clearly he could have blocked it, or simply stepped aside. Instead, he let Gwenna go, swinging his empty hand around, palm out, blocking himself from the bow with the same kenning he had used against the knife moments earlier.
Gwenna heaved in a breath, felt the life flooding back into her crushed limbs.
“He can’t…,” she tried, fell off coughing.
“I know,” Talal said, snatching up a dropped sword, then moving wide, away from Gwenna, toward the far wall. Her own stolen blade tight in her hand, she lurched to her feet, circling the opposite direction, forcing Rallen to choose a target, denying him the chance to hit them both with the same kenning. Rallen watched them glide to the flanks, his eyes wide, lips drawn back in a rictus. Gwenna debated hurling her blade, but she’d tried that twice already.
Time to be thorough. Time to finish it.
She took a step forward, keeping her gaze on Rallen, following Talal out of the corner of her eye. There was no need to talk. They’d been fighting side by side long enough to slide into the plan without any need for words. She took another step, another. Then, before she could close with him, Rallen bellowed and swung his arm in a wide, desperate arc. The kenning was like a massive hammer on a long chain swinging silently through the room. It hit Talal first, slamming him across the open floor and into the wall, then smashed into Gwenna a quarter-heartbeat later.
The corner of a stacked crate caught her in the ribs. She felt something break, but people fought with broken ribs all the time. She shoved the pain aside, twisted around-she could move this time, although it was like struggling through almost-frozen water-to find Rallen stumbling for the warehouse door. He was faster than Gwenna remembered, but then, he was also a hundred pounds lighter. Still, sweat streamed down his face. She could hear his breathing, labored, almost painful. She strained, trying to bring her sword to bear, to break free, to give chase, but Rallen was already framed in the doorway, and then he was gone.
The kenning shattered just half a dozen breaths later. Gwenna shoved herself off of the crates, was halfway to the door when she realized someone was shouting at her, the same desperate syllable over and over: Stop! Stop!
It was the last guard, the one with his knife at Quick Jak’s throat. He’d lost his chance to slip out in the madness, and now his fever-bright eyes darted from Gwenna to Talal, then back. He was shaking his head. His hand trembled, scraping the blade against the stubble of Jak’s neck. He hadn’t drawn blood, not yet, but he was so obviously terrified he could easily slit the flier’s throat without even noticing.
“Stop,” he said again, begging now, voice barely more than a whisper.
Jak’s face was bleak. His mouth hung half open, as though he wanted to protest, but couldn’t remember how. A wave of loathing washed over Gwenna. She and Talal had been fighting-getting their asses handed to them, but still fighting. Jak hadn’t moved, hadn’t even raised his voice. The soldier guarding him was so lost in his own horror that the greenest cadet on his first day of training could take him down, and yet the flier stayed on his knees.
And this, Gwenna thought bleakly, is why you should have brought Delka.
On any other day, she would have been tempted to leave the flier, to take Talal and go after Rallen. The ugly truth, however, was that she still needed him. The plan had gone straight to shit, but then, that was the nature of plans. It was still possible to win, but to win they needed Annick and the others. Which meant they needed a bird to go get them. Which meant they needed Jak.
She shifted her eyes from the coward to the man guarding him.
“Let him go,” she said slowly. “And I won’t kill you.”
“Don’t come any closer!” the soldier insisted, pressing the knife harder against Jak’s throat. A thread of blood ran down the flier’s neck. He closed his eyes.
Gwenna ignored the warning. “If you kill him, I will take out your eyes and feed them to you off the end of my knife. I’m not much for horse trading, but this seems like an easy one: let my man up, and I will let you walk out of that door.”
The soldier stole a panicked glance over his shoulder, out the bright rectangle into the open air. Rallen was getting away, but Gwenna forced down her own impatience. Part of any battle was picking who to fight and when. Choosing who to save and who to let die.
Slow down, she told herself, and do it right.
“What’s it going to be?” she asked the guard.
Horror etched the man’s face. “How can I trust you?”
“You can’t,” Gwenna replied grimly. “Now I’m going to count to one.”
“What?”
“One.”
The soldier shoved Jak to the floor, then hurled himself backward, stumbling as he reached the door. For a moment, he was just a silhouette against the sun, all detail blotted out in the glare. Gwenna waited for his second foot to clear the threshold before she threw the knife. It hit him square between the shoulders, and he tumbled to the ramp with a wet groan.
Jak stared at her. “You said…”
“I said he’d leave this room alive,” Gwenna replied. “He did. Now get the fuck up.”
The flier just stared at her.
She turned to Talal. “Get him. I can’t carry him, and we’re dead if we can’t fly out of here.”
She reached the doorway in half a dozen strides, then pulled up, blinking in the sudden brightness. Jak’s guard was dragging himself down the ramp, crawling toward the brilliant shape of his own death, leaving a smear of blood on the wood. Gwenna glanced at him, then looked away, scanning the land to the east.
Rallen’s fort wasn’t a single fort at all, but a compound of half a dozen buildings arranged in a vague L near the island’s edge. The warehouse from which she’d just escaped stood inland, back from the ocean, at the very end of the short leg of the L. A few dozen paces away stood a small, open-walled shed, and beyond that, a large, barnlike structure that Gwenna took for the livery. The long leg of the L stretched along the seaward cliff, and those buildings-thick, defensible stone structures-were surrounded by a stone curtain wall maybe twice as high as Gwenna’s head.
The leach himself had disappeared behind the walls. She could hear shouting-orders and questions-the urgent chorus of soldiers scrambling to meet an attack. Her lips tightened. Rallen had at least two dozen men back there, even after the soldiers she’d killed in the warehouse. From what she could hear, the whole fort seemed to be in momentary disarray, but soon enough the idiots would get their asses under them and come out swinging. Which would make it two dozen against three.
“What’s the play?” Talal asked quietly.
He was half a step behind her, holding Jak around the waist. The flier didn’t seem to be injured, but he was paralyzed, lost in his own fear.
“The livery,” she said, stabbing a finger at the low stone barn just outside the compound walls.
The original plan had involved more waiting and sneaking, less fighting and fleeing. For all the changes, though, everything still revolved around the kettral, and to have any hope with the kettral, they needed to find the whistles.
Every bird on the Islands was trained to respond to a particular pitch. Without that training, the entire Eyrie would have dissolved into chaos, kettral quartering the sky at random with no way to respond to their fliers. The whistles were a simple solution, louder than a human voice, more precise, small enough to carry in a pocket or on a thong around the neck, and almost indestructible. Those whistles simplified day-to-day logistics on the Islands, and in battle, their piercing shriek, higher than any human cry, could cut through the clash of swords and the roar of fire, calling the bird down at the crucial moment, saving soldiers’ lives. After nearly a year, the birds would be accustomed to Rallen’s soldiers, but they would accept new riders. All you needed was the right whistle.
When Gwenna first arrived on the Islands as a cadet, those whistles had seemed like an oversight, a weakness. “What if a soldier’s captured?” she’d demanded. “What if an enemy gets her hands on the whistle and calls the bird?”
The Flea had just raised his eyebrows. “And then what?”
“Calls a bird. Climbs on the ’Kent-kissing thing. Starts killing the wrong people.”
“Climbs on?” the older man asked, raising a bushy eyebrow. “Do you remember the first time you saw a bird? Would you have known how to climb on?”
That was the crux of it, after all. Kettral were accustomed to fighting a foe that was not Kettral. Accustomed to dropping unseen straight out of the sky, cutting throats, and disappearing beneath the beat of massive wings. There was no point in devising tactics to fight other Kettral, no point to guard against them. Until now. There were always extra whistles in the livery, hanging up beside the harnesses and barrel straps, each labeled with the name of the bird that would respond to its call.
That, at least, was the way it had been back on the Eyrie before the Kettral destroyed themselves. How Rallen handled things was anyone’s guess. Gwenna had hoped to have time to snoop around, to keep hunting if they came up empty-handed in the livery, but hope was a weak shield, one that had shattered the moment Rallen’s thugs started bashing the outside of her barrel.
Maybe the whistles weren’t in the livery at all, but one thing was clear-the three of them were sanding in the open, asses in the wind. Almost no vegetation grew from Skarn’s rocky soil, certainly no trees, nothing that might provide any real cover. Whistles or no, the livery was shelter, and they were going to need shelter soon-partly from the arrows that Rallen’s thugs were sure to put in the air, but mainly, crucially, from the patrol that would be circling somewhere above.
Gwenna glanced skyward. It took only a moment to find the bird turning in a lazy gyre around the island, a few hundred paces up and maybe half a mile to the north. Neither the bird nor the soldiers patrolling from her talons seemed to have noticed the violence breaking out below. They were searching the waves, most likely, if they were actually searching at all. A year of unopposed tyranny wasn’t likely to lend vigilance to the daily watch. Still, you didn’t need to be vigilant to notice the madness that was doubtless unfolding behind Rallen’s wall. You didn’t need to be vigilant to notice three assholes standing around looking confused.
“The livery is close to the fort,” Talal pointed out.
“It’s where the whistles are,” Gwenna said, breaking into a run. “And if we’re still out here when that bird spots us, we’re dead.” She turned to Jak. “Can you fly?”
He stared at her with blank eyes. Gwenna slapped him full across the face.
“You said you could do this, you bastard, and now I need to know: Can you still do it?”
Even as she asked the question, she was trying to find some way to tweak the plan. There were a dozen options, all equally bleak.
Jak stared at her. “I’m sorry. I don’t…” He shook his head.
“Oh, fuck this,” Gwenna spat. “Just get to the livery. It’ll buy us time.”
They barely made it. The airborne patrol noticed them moments after they started running, banked for a closer look, then dropped into a half stoop. The arrows started raining down-from the fort and the bird both-just a few paces later. Rallen’s snipers had nothing on Annick, but the range wasn’t bad, and the shafts were landing all around, steel heads striking sparks from the rock.
Gwenna kicked open the door to the livery, shoved Talal inside as a broadhead clattered off the stone a few feet from her head, then dove for the opening. She rolled into a crouch as Talal slammed the door shut behind her, then dropped to a knee, chest heaving as he shrugged out from beneath Jak. Gwenna seized the flier by the throat, dragged him to his feet.
“Time to start fighting, you piece of shit. You freeze again and we’re leaving you.”
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.
“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.