Raven's Wings

by Colin Lindsay

  She strolled purposefully, fingering her whip. Kaia looked up at her sister’s approach. Good girl, Dhara thought. Kaia’s eyes widened when she recognized her sister, but Dhara shook her head imperceptibly to warn her not to draw any attention. Kaia’s eyes darted toward the enormous pyramid facing the open square. Dhara nodded subtly and then she was passed.

  From the other side of the square, Dhara examined the pyramid. It was truly remarkable; even she had to admit that. It would have taken generations of slaves to build. Stone steps ascended the side facing the square, but on closer examination, she observed that there was no other easy way up the other sides. Atop the pyramid, there was an altar surrounded by an irregular circle of pillars. This would be where Kaia would be sacrificed at the height of the blood moon, which by Dhara’s reckoning was only one night away.

  Dhara bided her time until dark, then ascended the pyramid from the back side. It was an effort, but it could be done. She carried with her a rope that she’d stolen from a storehouse she’d scouted earlier. That prize had necessitated another kill, and she worried that if people kept going missing, it would alert them to her presence. For now, however, the pulse of the village seemed the same, and she concluded that death must be as common here as it was in her village.

  A single guard stood atop the pyramid as Dhara peered over its lip. It wasn’t a large space, with room for only a few people. That would make her task somewhat easier. She descended the pyramid, leaving one end of the rope she’d carried on her way up tucked in a crevice, out of view of the guard. She uncoiled it carefully during her descent. She only to wait for the next night.

  The next evening, the village was abuzz with energy. Dhara watched from her hiding place in the jungle as two guards dragged Kaia from the cage. Even though she didn’t resist, one of the guards punched her in the stomach, and the other slapped her across the face. Dhara bit down hard. They’ll pay for that with their lives. The guards moved to either side of Kaia and dragged her up the wide steps of the pyramid. Dhara could guess the rest and moved toward her selected position. The village priestess would assuredly wait for the moon to be at its zenith before plunging a dagger into Kaia’s heart.

  Dhara climbed the back side of the pyramid and hid just below its lip. She panted from the exertion and tried to control her breathing so it wouldn’t give her away. Gradually her racing heartbeat slowed. She glanced over the edge to take in the scene. The top of the pyramid was well-lit by torches secured to the columns. Kaia was tied to the altar by ropes. She lay calmly with unshakable faith in her sister. The two guards that had dragged her up the steps now flanked the altar but stood as far back and away as the limited space would allow.

  The crowd quieted, and Dhara knew that the ceremony had begun – the priestess was making her way up the stone steps. Once atop the pyramid, she stood before the altar and raised her hands to quiet the crowd. She told them of the need to appease the gods so that they might be blessed with rain. She took her time, savoring the attention and building the suspense. Finally, with the moon at its apex, she circled behind the altar and mounted a wooden step that allowed her to be better seen by the masses below.

  She pulled a curved dagger from her belt and raised it to the sky. The crowd hushed as she prayed to the gods in a voice that carried to those below. Dhara waited for her moment. The priestess finished her prayer and gripped the dagger in both hands. She raised it high over her head to bring it down through Kaia’s heart. She hesitated, and the crowd held their breath; then, she slumped over, revealing Dhara standing behind her with her knife in the woman’s back.

  The crowd erupted in a fury, and the two guards atop the pyramid pulled out wicked-looking blades and closed on Dhara. She smiled and hurled her knife into the chest of one of the guards. She ducked under the swing of the other guard and used her momentum to send her sailing off the top of the pyramid. Her impacts made a sickening sound as she repeatedly struck the stone. The crowd surged up the steps past her.

  Dhara raced to the first guard’s body and pulled her knife from her chest. She spun and hurriedly sawed at Kaia’s restraints. The crowd was halfway up the steps and roaring for blood by the time Dhara had cut Kaia’s hands free. She handed her the knife to cut the ropes that bound her legs and turned to tie the rope she’d hidden as high as she could around a sturdy-looking pillar. Kaia joined her a moment later, just as the crowd crested the top of the steps. Dhara handed her sister a length of leather she’d cut from the whip she’d taken from the first guard she’d slain. Dhara flipped her own piece of leather over the rope and slid down it into the jungle below. She looked over her shoulder to see Kaia do the same just as the angry villagers reached for her. Several tumbled off the pyramid.

  Dhara flew toward the trees below, and it occurred to her that she hadn’t thought ahead as to how to arrest her speed. She twisted the leather tightly around the rope, and it succeeded in slowing her enough that she wasn’t torn apart by the branches that she crashed through. Hitting the ground and rolling, she looked back to see that her sister had figured out how to slow herself more quickly than she had and was coming to a more controlled stop. Kaia always thought faster than her older sisters.

  Dhara jumped up and began sawing at the rope. Cutting it free, she heard the thump of several bodies falling to the jungle floor.

  Kaia hugged her sister tightly. Dhara hugged her back but pulled away and grabbed her by the arm. “Stay close,” she said and tore off at a run. They could hear sounds of pursuit and could see the glow of torches close behind.

  Kaia had no footwear and told her sister, “We can’t outrun them.”

  “We don’t have to. Just stay close.”

  Dhara swore that she could feel the breath of their pursuers on her neck as she led her sister between two black pillars. The sound of pursuit was abruptly cut off, although Dhara didn’t assume that meant they were no longer followed. She handed her sister a fistful of leaves. “Stuff these in your ears, then cover them with your hands.” Dhara did as she’d instructed her sister and resumed moving forward, looking back to ensure that her sister followed. The villagers were so incensed that Dhara doubted that even this evil place would dissuade them.

  She ran until she came to the obsidian wall. She felt increasingly like throwing up, and her head pounded. She shouted to her sister, “Close your eyes and stay right behind me.” Her sister did as she was told but looked sick to her stomach. Dhara felt along the wall with her shoulder while Kaia bumped into her from behind. Dhara saw flickers of torchlight reflecting in front of her, telling her that the villagers had indeed followed them. She guided her sister forward until she found the opening in the wall.

  Her mind revolted, and terror overwhelmed her, but she threw her sister into the yawning darkness and dove in after her.

  28

  Forest

  Forest walked into the marauders’ camp. It filled the plain before her. She carried her load of wood like a cloak of invisibility as people tended to ignore someone carrying out a menial errand. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to keep up the ruse forever. Eventually, she’d be expected to deposit her wood at one of the many fires that dotted the camp and then find herself without an excuse to be wandering about. Carrying wood past a fire that needed resupply would similarly draw unwanted attention. She needed a solution quickly.

  She took a meandering path between tents, steering clear of fire pits until she spotted a wagon laden with blankets. She veered toward the closest fire and placed her load of wood beside it, then on her way past the wagon, picked up an armful of blankets. Where the blankets might be needed would be less obvious, so she counted on it as a safer justification to be moving through the camp.

  She began to walk a giant spiral through the camp in order to never walk past the same tent twice. She kept her ears open to the discussions around her. Much of it was heavily accented, but she picked up names and random pieces of information as she went.

  On the far side of the camp, she wa
s shocked to find a graveyard of airship hulls laying among deflated balloons. A few men wandered among them, examining them or hammering them with axes. In the distance, she saw a team of oxen dragging an airship across the plain to the graveyard with men atop it hooting uproariously. A man hammering on one of the nearer airships noticed her gawking, and she hurried away.

  Her load of blankets felt heavier as she walked, so she held them tight to her chest. As she wound through the tents, she began to have an uneasy feeling of being watched. Glancing around, she couldn’t see anyone who was looking too closely at her, just a girl with blankets, which made it more jarring to feel eyes boring into her. She frequently looked around as if deciding between routes, but actually just trying to find her watcher or watchers. Once or twice, she thought she saw someone duck into the shadows when her gaze caught them. She moved more purposefully.

  On one of her outer circles, Forest passed by an enormous store of wood for the fires, which she memorized the location of in case she had to pretend later that she was fetching firewood. A party of captives, made obvious by how dirty and scared they looked, were being driven out of the camp toward the woods by a troop of guards, presumably to add to the stock of firewood. Forest was thankful that her recent bath in the stream made her look more akin to the captors than the captives.

  She walked past corrals of horses and oxen. She’d never seen a horse before, and they struck her as majestic. A stable-hand threw a blanket and saddle over a horse, hopped up on its back, and rode it into a roughly-constructed building adjacent to the pen. The harmony between the rider and his mount captivated her. There were oxen in her village, and drunk youth sometimes tried to ride them, but it rarely ended well. A stable-hand watched her gaping at the horses and tapped a colleague on the shoulder while pointing at her. She turned toward the center of the camp and hurried to put some distance between herself and the stables. They just want my blankets for beneath the saddles, she reassured herself.

  Once away from the stables, she resumed her slow circling. She reckoned that she hadn’t missed much of note in her hasty detour as the broader camp seemed mostly an assembly of smaller camps grouped by tribe. She tried to memorize the characteristics of each tribe and file them by the standard they flew. The people of the mailed fist seemed harder than most, purposeful in their movements. The people of the rearing bear laughed and drank more than most. The people of the wolf’s head sat around their fires sharpening their weapons; and so on. She repeated the details to herself over and over to etch them into her memory.

  As she drew closer to the middle of the camp, she caught glimpses of the larger tent at its center. Its standard seemed to be a raised fist throttling the wind, but it was fluttering, and until she got closer, she wouldn’t be able to tell for sure. She came across more pens, but these held captives, huddling together. Several muscled guards entered the pens to round up a work party, shoving their way through their prisoners while looking for the least sickly-looking among them. The guards were ambivalent about their poor state. Forest had thought that these people had been the lucky ones not to have been slaughtered outright, but now, judging from the look of hopelessness in their eyes, she wasn’t so sure. A particularly cruel-looking guard noticed her and pushed off of the post he was leaning against and began moving toward her.

  Forest tried to walk away briskly but still appear nonchalant. She heard cheering ahead and hoped she might lose herself in whatever crowd was making so much noise. She heard footsteps behind her matching her own, but with a longer stride, so she knew they were drawing closer. Rounding the tent that had obstructed her view of the crowd, Forest saw a circle of people cheering two fighters who were slugging it out. Every blow that landed was met with a cheer from the crowd and a flurry of wagering.

  Forest pushed her way into the crowd, hoping to lose whoever was closing in on her but struggling to hold her load of blankets in her leaden arms. She neared the front of the crowd and made to angle off through it to the far side. In response to a drum beat, the fighters broke apart and headed for stools at opposing sides of the circle they fought in. The red-haired fighter spied her and called out to her, “Girl!”

  The crowd went silent, and all eyes fell on her.

  “My bed goes over here.”

  The crowd erupted in laughter.

  “Drop those stupid blankets and bring me some water,” he commanded, collapsing onto his stool and waving toward a nearby barrel.

  Forest shuffled over to the barrel and placed the blankets carefully on the ground. Cups lay on the ground, so she picked one up and did her best to rub it clean with the edge of her blouse. She dipped it in the barrel and carried the water to the waiting fighter, who took it from her and drained it.

  “Perhaps my new-found squire will bring me luck,” he declared to the crowd, which was vocal in its skepticism.

  Forest was pinned by the eyes of the crowd as she scanned it for her pursuer. She couldn’t see him and voiced a silent prayer that he’d hopefully lost interest.

  “Fight!” the crowd roared, and the red-haired man rose wearily from his stool. The fighters faced off and resumed exchanging blows that made Forest wince. Her fighter seemed to be getting the worst of it and was even knocked back into his stool, which splintered beneath him. He rose to his feet slowly and winked at her. He shook his head to regain focus and reengaged his opponent. He punched the man hard in the side and, in the briefest of openings it created, delivered a thunderous punch to the man’s jaw that felled him like a sack of flour.

  The crowd roared its disappointment and coins changed hands. The red-haired man stood in the ring, checking to see if he still had all of his teeth. Content that he wasn’t leaving with fewer than he’d entered with, he walked up to Forest and put a meaty arm around her shoulder, “I knew you were my lucky charm.”

  The crowd lost all interest in the victor and had none at all for Forest, so she turned to recover her blankets.

  “Leave those and come with me,” he ordered her.

  At a loss for a reason for why she couldn’t, she abandoned the blankets and followed the man. He walked through the maze of tents with Forest at his side, waving as he went to men that he knew. He was hailed by as many men as he hailed, and Forest felt comfortably invisible beside him.

  He made his way up to an enormous tent and announced, “We’re here.” He lifted a flap to allow Forest entry. She entered fearfully, and he followed her. In front of her, the people inside were preparing a meal and stopped when they noticed her. Forest stood uncomfortably under the gaze of so many eyes.

  The man proclaimed to the air, “Bria has returned to us!”

  The tribe within the tent began to beat a slow staccato with shields, cups, or chests. It rose in volume to a thunderous sound.

  The fighter turned to Forest and said, “Welcome home, niece.”

  29

  Kala

  Kala crossed the blades of her daggers and readied herself for the monks to make the first move, but the only movement came from the skull-adorned banners fluttering in the wind, and the only sound from their flapping.

  The rows of monks parted as a woman in flowing black robes walked up. Her face was hidden in the shadows of a hooded cloak as she surveyed Kala dispassionately, then casually signaled a monk on either side of her. They drew wicked-looking swords and rushed at her in unison.

  Kala sprung toward the onrushing monk on her right with raised daggers. He swung his sword in answer, but she leaned back out of range and slid beneath his legs. She reached behind her and stabbed her blades into the back of his thighs, then used them for purchase to launch herself in an arc over his back toward the second monk. She pulled her daggers free and used them to shield herself from his upraised sword. She kneed him in the face as she crashed into him.

  She rose, leaving the two men sprawled on the ground. Their brethren pulled them away. Kala faced the robed woman, holding her daggers at her sides, and waited. The woman gestured again, and two monks on eit
her side of Kala advanced toward her. This time, the four of them didn’t rush her but moved to form a slowly-tightening circle around her. Kala flipped her daggers into the air, reached for and hurled a second pair, then caught and threw the first pair. She drew her arms to her sides as the four men dropped their swords, clutching the daggers that had struck each of their sword arms.

  The four men took a step back and melted into the sea of monks. The surrounding wall of monks took a menacing step forward to tighten the circle around Kala. She reached behind her and slowly drew her short swords.

  “Enough,” commanded the robed woman, and the sea of monks lowered their weapons and stepped back. The woman lifted her hood to reveal long black hair threaded through with strands of silver filament, high cheekbones, and darkly shadowed eyes. She gestured to Kala. “Walk with me,” she said and turned her back to her.

  Kala looked from the woman’s back to the swords in her hands but decided instead to return them to their sheaths. She walked briskly to join her. It surprised Kala that the monks didn’t form a guard around them. The two women walked unescorted from the platform on which the airship was tethered.

  “Do you always assault your newly-arrived guests?” Kala asked.

  “Only the ones that require testing.”

  “I assume I passed.”

  “Perhaps. Tell me, you could have killed those six men, but you didn’t.”

  “It seemed like poor form and a way to make a bad situation worse.”

  “Are you sure that you weren’t simply being merciful?”

  “No. Just tactical.”

  “It pleases me to hear that.”

  “Even if it means you could have had six dead men?”

  “We all die sometime. You would have honored them.”