by Kate Elliott
Volias said, with real revulsion, “Lady’s Tit! They cut off the little wight’s hand!”
Earless scrambled back from the stream’s edge, and Eldest broke the bread into four pieces. They inhaled it, so it seemed, because it vanished in a blink.
“Look there!” said Volias, pointing to a spot behind Joss’s back.
On occasion Joss found himself confused by the way the ground changed when you were standing on it as opposed to when you were flying above it. Angles of sight shifted; blind in one place, you found you could see in the other; unexpected vistas revealed themselves because of the curve and elevation of the ground or when mist hid from the sky what, with feet on the earth, you could see perfectly well.
The woodland scrub had seemed, from the air, to separate the rocky ground from the stream, but in fact the land sloped down into a hollow where the densest growth took advantage of damper ground to flourish, and rose again to the stony ground. Seen from the ground, the rock formations were taller than they had seemed from the air, with a hundred hiding places and defensive posts. Seemingly oblivious of the reeves, their eagles, and the four children, a person bent, rose, walked the ground, bent and rose again. The figure was dressed in some manner of loose, black robe. From this distance, Joss thought it must be a woman, but he couldn’t be sure.
“That’s another like us,” said Eldest, seeing how they were looking that way.
“You’ve seen that person before?”
“Yes, ver. So we have.”
“She’s a scavenger, like you?”
“So she must be, ver. We come out here all the time. We saw her first time a few month back—”
“It was Fox Month,” said Broken Hand. “It was so cold at night, beginning of Shiver Sky. That’s the first time we saw her out here.”
“That’s right,” said Eldest. “We see her now and again. Not all the time.”
“You ever talk to her? Have any trouble with her?”
“Nah, she don’t talk, except one time she stopped us and asked us if we saw any strange thing that had an outland look to it. She’s looking for some dead person, maybe her lover or her son. I don’t know and wasn’t thinking to ask.”
“Someone she got to missing,” said Earless abruptly in the hoarse voice of a boy about to break into manhood. “Someone she want desperately to find.”
“How often do you come here?” Joss asked.
“As often as we need to,” said Eldest, who was relaxing a little. “Gleaning is all we got, you see. No law against it!” she added hastily, looking at the Snake, but he had a frown on his ugly mug and wasn’t looking at the children at all. He was tracking the movements of that other person up among the rocks.
“Then you sell what you’ve found.”
She shrugged. “We pretty much found everything I expect there is to be found. Sometimes a hand got cut off and rolled into a crevice. That’s how—” She almost said a name, but bit her tongue. “That’s how that one found the ring.” She nodded toward Littlest.
“Those dark holes could have snakes and biting things in them,” said Joss uneasily.
She rolled her eyes and said nothing. Snakes and biting things, obviously, did not concern her much compared with her other troubles.
“What’ll you kids do now?” he asked.
“What you think?” she demanded. “We told you all. Can we go now?”
They were skittish, and Littlest kept wiping away the green snot leaking from his nose.
“Have you nowhere else to go?” asked Volias suddenly.
“You ain’t been listening,” said Eldest. “Or you would have heard. You going to take us somewhere on those eagles? And then who will take us in? We got to wait here by Horn until Dad come to get us. That’s what he said. When it was safe again. That’s what he said.”
Joss shook his head. “You go on. You’ve got a long walk back to Horn.”
They lit out as if fire had been kindled beneath them.
Volias settled onto his haunches beside the rib cage, studying it without touching. “Is that it?” he demanded, glaring at Joss. “They cut off that kid’s hand!”
“What else can we do for them?”
“That’s why we keep running from fights? Because we can’t do anything else for them? What about those two dead men at that farm? Seems we reeves do a lot of looking, and a lot of squeezing available women, but we don’t do any fighting anymore.”
“You’re right,” said Joss.
The words took the Snake so off guard that he rocked back, lost his balance, and sat, kicking out reflexively. His foot jostled the rib cage, ripping it half out of the covering of debris that had begun to bury it. The mat of debris beneath it included decaying hempen cloth dyed a clay-red color that the Snake shied away from touching.
“This must be some manner of outlander,” said the Snake. “Wearing death cloth like regular clothes. Look here. His belt’s still in good shape.” He peeled the strip of leather out of the soil, whipping it away from the rib cage. A heavier object went flying to land on the nearby grass with a thud.
“Best we go talk to that woman,” said Joss.
“Why for, if we mean to do nothing about any of it?”
“Listen, Volias. The rot’s set in deep. We can get ourselves killed, or we can find the source of the rot and kill it. I don’t see any other way. But of ourselves, just us three, out here where we’ve no allies apparently and no idea who is our enemy and who regards us as enemy, what are we three to do? Or did you want to take on two cadres of armed men?”
The Snake ignored him, most likely because there was no answer. Joss trudged down into the hollow, pushing through brush, noting the way the battle had whirled and eddied into clumps of fighting, marked by collections of disturbed bones, and then streamed out again over open ground as one group fled toward the rocks while the other group, presumably, pursued. Why in the hells had a group of outlanders ridden into the Hundred? Who would have hired them? The other reeves ought to have passed along to Clan Hall news of such an unusual occurrence, but they hadn’t. Clan Hall had never heard about any battle fought in the Year of the White Lion near the city of Horn.
And it really was strange that the dead had been left out here, stripped and looted, just because no one could be bothered to carry the corpses to Horn’s Sorrowing Tower. Outlanders, bandits, clanless orphans might be abandoned in death. Just like those kids who, if they died in the fields beyond Horn, would no doubt be left lying with no one but that missing dad and uncle to care if their bodies ever received godly treatment. Yet it went against the law, not to mention simple decency.
The kites and vultures and bugs would scour them all to bone in the end, in any case. There were worse fates. In a way, to be left dead upon the earth was to be left on the gods’ most ancient Sorrowing Tower, because the rock that was the scaffolding of the earth had been erected long before the gods’ towers.
Just as Joss reached the outermost stretch of rock poking up out of a gaggle of thorn-flower bushes, the woman came around the pile of weathered boulders. She stopped, although she did not seem surprised to see him.
“I was just looking for you,” he said with his best smile. “I saw you from over there.”
She was dressed for riding in stiff trousers, light shirt, and sleeveless jacket, with a dark cloak of an almost weightless fabric curling down from her shoulders and wrapped over one arm. In one hand, she held an old spear that she used as a walking staff on the uneven ground. She wore a grave expression on a pleasant face whose years were difficult to count; she was probably his age, or older. Yet she did not look him over the way many women did, with an appreciative eye. She didn’t frown either. She wasn’t unfriendly. She looked past him, shading her eyes. “You’re a reeve.”
“So I am, verea. I was wondering what brought a respectable householder like you out to search a battlefield.”
That twitch of her lips was not as much a smile as a secret. “I was looking for something.”
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“Did you find it?”
“As it happens, I just did. Who is that following you?”
He looked back over his shoulder to see the Snake scrambling over the rugged ground to catch up to him. “My comrade.”
“There are three of you,” she said, tilting her head back to survey the sky.
“These days, it’s best to travel in the company of those you trust.”
Her gaze slipped to his, and away as quickly, but even so that glance caught him off guard. Funny, when you thought of it, how difficult it could be to know why you trusted some folk and not others. He trusted Peddo. He thought of how much he disliked the Snake, who was a bully, who made suspects cry for the fun of it, who liked to push around locals to see them cringe; who had lied more than once; who had ratted him out when he was trying to woo that merchant’s daughter, just because he was jealous. It wasn’t his fault that the Snake had no luck with women. The man ought to look to his own behavior to answer for that lack. And yet, Joss knew Volias would cover his back in a tight spot. Aui! He himself was the one who couldn’t be trusted. He’d gone wild after Marit’s death. He’d been reckless, crazy, defiant, impossible, even dangerous to himself and others. He’d fanned the flames until they got too hot. No wonder Marshal Masar had tossed him out of Copper Hall. He’d been named legate later to keep him away, not from any worthiness on his part, even if people had given him that nickname, calling him incorruptible when really it was only about doing your duty as you had agreed the day the eagle chose you, just trying to make right everything that had gone wrong.
How had the sun gotten so bright all of a sudden? He was staring right into the glare, eyes watering.
“Hey! Look here!” Volias walked panting up the slope and stopped beside him. “It’s a belt buckle.” He had wiped away some of the dirt encrusted in the wrinkles and crevices of the thing. When he held it up, metal caught sun and winked. “Good quality. A wolf’s head, I think. Never seen this manner of pattern before. What were outlanders doing here, do you think?”
“Come to fight, I suppose,” said Joss, looking around for the woman.
“Then they got what they come for. Unlike us.”
“Where’d she go?”
“Where’d who go?”
“I was talking to that woman, the one we saw.”
“You’re always talking to women.”
“Didn’t you see her?”
“I did, but it seems she took fright of your ugly face and crept off while I was coming up from behind those rocks. I lost sight of you for a bit. Serves you right! You’re not used to them rejecting you, are you?”
For once, the Snake’s taunting did not disturb him. Wind skirled through the rocks and spit dust at them. They tramped through the maze of outcrops and boulders, stuck their heads into shadowed overhangs, and poked their batons into deep crevices. Birds flitted around them, anxious at their presence, and various animals—rats, mice, rabbits, coneys, a veritable feast—scurried in the undergrowth or down into slits and cracks where they could not reach. Once, Joss saw a fox’s clever face peering at him out of a thicket, but when he blinked, it was gone. There were bones aplenty; Joss estimated that hundreds of people had died here, but the remains really were stripped out and there was nothing except skeletal remains and bits and pieces of useless scrap.
They found no sign of the woman.
At length, Joss scrambled to the top of the highest boulder, where he stood at a sheer edge about three body’s lengths off the ground. Searching the sky, he saw Peddo and Jabi approaching from the south. That was strange, too. Hadn’t Peddo been out of sight, too far away to mark as anything except an unidentified bird? How had the woman known he was there?
He set his whistle to his lips and called Scar, and signaled with the flag for Peddo to come down, but instead Peddo flew low overhead and, banking tight, blew the three short blasts on his whistle that made Joss’s whole body jolt just as a fire bell would, heard clanging within the city’s vulnerable streets.
Emergency.
He and Scar leaped aloft, Volias and Trouble not far behind. There was a slight updraft over the rocks, but the raptors strained, pushing hard, for they recognized the whistle call as well as their reeves did. Jabi flapped past, pushing hard back the way he had come, and Peddo whipped his flag in the up-and-down motion for crime in progress.
By the hells, it would be good to be able to act for a change.
He looked back over the outcrop as they lifted, but he still saw no sign of that woman. She could not have walked away so fast. She must have heard them, and hidden in the rock in some hidey-hole they had not noticed. How had the people of this region come to fear and hate reeves?
He did see the four children walking across abandoned fields in the direction of Horn. They hadn’t gotten far. They even looked up and one pointed their way while the others paused to stare.
Peddo glided alongside as close as any of them dared get to the other, and shouted across the gap. “Osprey attack! Merchant banners. On West Track. Looks bad!”
They found thermals and rose, and from the height the eagles immediately spotted movement a mey or more ahead of them on the road.
Scar and Jabi and Trouble put out a burst of speed. Only as they got closer could Joss make sense of the scene: a pair of wagons flying household banners marking them as respectable merchants, a dozen plunging horses, and men on the road striving mightily against a larger attacking group mostly on foot and directed by a pair of riders hanging back at the rear out of danger. One of those captains was carrying so much gear on his horse that the baggage distorted the animal’s frame, making it seem bulkier about the body than a normal horse. The other captain wore lime-whitened horsetail shoulder crests, and carried a banner strung with four narrow yellow and red flags.
For those on the road, who couldn’t have counted more than fifteen or so, it was clearly a losing battle against attackers who boasted over twice that number. Already about half of the merchants and their armed escort had fallen, while the others gave way until they were backed against one of the wagons.
This time he wasn’t going to walk away.
The eagles glided in silence and, when the angle was right, they stooped.
You never got jaded to this. The air screamed past; the ground leaped up at you, ready to punch you in the face and then flatten you. And yet your eagle would put on the brakes at just the right instant. Scar came down with wings wide and talons extended. The laden horse was already bolting with its rider clinging to its back, but the other man and horse did not react as quickly. Scar knocked him right off the saddle, and the horse reared back in a panic, shied, backed up, and broke for safety, following the other horse, which was already racing north along the road.
Joss unhooked his harness and jumped free, hitting the ground with legs bent to absorb the impact. He had his short sword drawn. Peddo punched back a pair of men with his spear’s stout haft while Jabi went at a clot of bandits who had pushed the beleaguered merchants up against their wagons. The raucous kek-kek of the huge eagle was a terrifying thing, wings beating and talons ripping. The bandits shrieked and cried out and scattered.
Where was Volias?
Scar yelped. Joss shied sideways, an instant before the blow hit him. His shoulder took most of it, but the tip caught him just behind his right ear. Then the man coming at him fell forward onto his own face, and Volias yanked his short sword out of the man’s back and shoved the body aside.
“Thanks,” grunted Joss, stung and shocked as he struggled to his feet.
“Doesn’t mean I like you any better,” said the Snake.
The fallen man was writhing spastically, blood spitting from his mouth. Joss’s head throbbed as a swell of nausea clogged his throat, but he gulped down the bile and tried not to blink, which made the pain worse. Volias yelled, but Joss’s ears were ringing and he couldn’t sort out the words. Then Scar was there, tearing into a man who had somehow gotten right in front of him. The eagle�
�s talons punctured the flesh, and the man screamed and screamed. Volias, glancing past them, got an awful look on his face and ran as if demon-ridden toward the mess by the wagon.
A pair of men leaped past Joss, having crept up from the left, and swung with halberds at Scar, but Joss spun up and met them blade-to-blade, holding them off until Scar pounced. Their fear killed them, because they hesitated. Scar tore the head off one while Joss stabbed another. The hot scent of death and blood flooded him, and the ache in his head, in that instant, cleared.
He swept the scene with a quick look to identify the danger spots. The last eddy of fighting had caught around the wagon. Peddo was on the ground curled up as into a ball with eyes forced wide by pain. Volias battered back the last two men standing, the ones who wouldn’t give up and run. A furious Jabi struck and struck and struck into the torso of one of the men, whose hideous shrieks hurt the ears. The other bolted, but Volias grabbed him from behind, jerked him back, and stabbed him, then shoved him away.
Joss ran, and dropped down beside Peddo. “Heya! Heya! Peddo! Let’s see it. Come on, now. It can’t be that bad.”
Volias appeared, his shadow giving them a brief respite from the sudden impossible weight of the heat. The sun was dizzying.
“Ah, the hells.” Volias stalked away to see if anyone was left alive.
“Eh! Eh! Eh!” gasped Peddo, trying to speak, trying not to cry out.
“The hells,” said Joss. “Just scream, damn you. Let me see it.” Jabi was circling; he hackled, and opened his wings impatiently. He was so damned big, a hundred times more intimidating than any twenty men and their weapons because of his ferocity and high courage. “He’s going to bate, Peddo. He’s scared for you. Don’t let me face that alone. He’ll rip my head clean off.”
Peddo set his jaw and with a roar flopped back. Blood pumped from the cut that had sliced just above his hip and down into his groin. Joss slit the leathers, pulled strips of linen and silk from his own rig, and set to bind it as tightly as he could, to stem the bleeding. All the while keeping up an idiot flow of commentary.
