Halpum had outfitted Burch and his friends with all the food, drink, and weapons they could need. Despite his protests, Sallah had insisted on paying him with Thranite gold.
“Consider it my contribution to your cause,” he had said to her.
“This money comes not from your friends but from the coffers of the Silver Flame,” she said, pressing it into his hand.
“Well,” the lathon said with a smile as he accepted the gold, “why didn’t you say so?”
Kandler’s stomach warmed at the thought of not having to subsist on smoked horsemeat for the rest of the journey. He and the others had eaten well that morning, joining the lathon once more. Now it was time to go.
The justicar strode across the platform, feeling it sway under his feet, something like the way a ship moved in the ocean, or so he tried to tell himself. He stood next to Monja and waited for her to finish.
“You are ready?” she asked when she was finished checking over the last of the riggings.
“More than.”
The halfling shaman smiled and gestured for Kandler to climb onto the glidewing she had called Swoop. “Riding a glidewing is not quite like riding a horse,” she said, showing him the stirrups for his feet and the straps for his hands. “If you rode it sitting up, the winds might lift you right off its back. Instead, you must lean forward, lying on your face in the saddle.”
Kandler followed Monja’s instructions and ended up hugging Swoop from behind. His feet trailed behind him in the stirrups, and his hands wound into the straps atop the massive creature’s shoulders.
Even perched on the edge of the platform, Swoop stood taller than Kandler. As the justicar wrapped himself around the glidewing’s back, he realized that any creature he could ride would be able to snatch him right out of the plains if it wanted and carry him away to feast on his heart. He held the beast tighter. It had none of the warmth of a horse. In fact, its scales felt cool to his touch yet strong, like the grip of a good blade. He almost wondered if the thing was alive or perhaps some kind of magical construct like Xalt. Then he felt it breathe—like a cold bellows gobbling air and then blasting it back out. The sensation startled him but comforted him at the same time. If he had to risk his life in the air, he wanted to be on the back of a living thing.
“Why do we need to take off from here?” Kandler asked as Monja helped the others into their riggings one by one. “With wings like these, can’t the glidewings just flap into the air?”
“If they had to,” Monja said as she returned to tighten a safety strap around Kandler’s middle, lashing him to Swoop’s back. “Glidewings aren’t meant to carry people, especially ones as big as you. They normally take off by waddling down a hill until they get enough air under them to catch some sky. From there, they’re the most graceful things you’ve ever seen. On the ground, though, they’re worse than hobbled ducks.”
The shaman patted the back of Kandler’s hand. “Once you’re in the air, you use these to steer. Pull left to go left, and right to go right. Pull back to go up, and push forward to go down. If the glidewing starts fighting you, trust it. It knows how to fly much better than you.”
“Once we’re in the air?” Xalt asked from atop his own glidewing. The thing squawked as he squeezed it a bit too hard. “How do we get ‘in the air’?”
Monja smiled. “With luck, you’ll find out in a moment.”
The others secured to her satisfaction, the young shaman climbed atop the last of the glidewings. This one seemed to know her, reaching back to nuzzle her cheek with the top of its long, pointed head as she mounted it. As she rubbed its beak, Kandler noticed that she hadn’t bothered to strap herself to the creature. She perched in her saddle light and easy, looking as if she’d been born to ride such a beast. Perhaps she had.
“Just hold on and follow me,” she called to the others as her mount waddled up to the edge of the platform, its long talons scratching deep scars into the wood.
“Do we have a choice?” Kandler asked.
“Not unless you want to die,” Monja said.
Her glidewing leaped about a foot into the air and a couple of feet forward, not quite enough to clear the platform. It smacked its tail on the edge, slapping the platform back a couple of feet, and then it disappeared as it plummeted toward the earth far below. For a half-second, Kandler thought the platform would tip over and dump all of them onto the ground with it, but it righted itself soon after.
As the justicar clutched Swoop’s scaly, muscled neck, the breath rushing in and out of it like air through a blowgun, Monja’s winged reptile flung itself high into the air. Its long-stretched wings caught the air and sunlight in them and rode them both higher and higher into the sky.
Kandler watched for a moment, his own breath stopped cold in his chest. Then he gasped as the flying lizard rolled all the way around to the right until Monja—who’d been dangling free and unstrapped from its back, high over the Wandering Inn and the open plains beyond—sat upright in its saddle again, the western winds whipping through her long, sun-bleached hair.
Kandler started to wonder why she could ignore the advice she’d given the others to lean low on their mounts, but when she wheeled about in the sky and skated back through the air toward them, the sheer joy in her face told him why. Before he could marvel at it any more, though, she wound her fist in the air over her head and jabbed it forward.
As one, the remaining glidewings waddle-rushed for the edge of the platform, the entire thing shaking like a leaf in the wind as they went, then leaped off into the open air.
As Kandler stifled the urge to scream, a war whoop rang in his ears, a howl of triumph and delight that he later recognized as Burch’s voice. At that instant, though, he could think of nothing else but the bright-colored tops of the tents of the Wandering Inn rushing up at him at lethal speed.
Swoop stretched its wings wide, and the rushing wind caught in them and pushed them back from the ground, away from the tents and from certain death. For a frozen moment, Swoop and Kandler seemed to hang there in the air, caught like an insect in amber between two worlds. Then the wind grabbed Swoop’s wings and shoved them flying into the sky.
Kandler had flown before on the airship, but the two experiences didn’t compare. The airship handled like a boat in the water. It felt like one when you walked over it. If you stood in the center of it, you could imagine that you sailed along through the ocean rather than the sky. He understood that sensation. It made sense.
The glidewing pitched and bucked through the air enough to make Kandler glad he was strapped to it. Racing along on a horse galloping at top speed over rough land, hoping the thing wouldn’t find a hole, break a leg, and spill over on top of you as it fell—he would have preferred that.
As the momentum from the dive off the platform played out, Swoop settled into the winds and began a slow, steady climb to the north. Kandler’s internal organs all fell back into their places, and he felt like he could breathe again. He looked around to see all of his companions—friends, even, they’d been through so much already—stable atop their own flying beasts.
Burch and Xalt rode the winds to Kandler’s left while Sallah and Brendis sailed along at his right. He craned his neck around looking for Monja, who came zooming in from behind on her own glidewing to take the point and lead them all into the great unknown that spread out before them.
“Next stop,” the tiny shaman shouted, “Fort Bones!”
The middle of the next day, Burch shouted for Kandler’s attention. The justicar saw the shifter signaling toward a gray patch on the horizon, and he sighed with relief as he realized that Burch had spotted Fort Bones where the sky met the plains.
It had been a long, hard trip. At first, Kandler never dreamed he’d tire of flying or even become bored with it, but hour after hour of leaning forward atop Swoop had robbed the experience of any sort of excitement.
They’d made only three stops, each about eight hours apart. They couldn’t bring the glidewings
in to land on the ground, as they feared they might never get back into the sky on their backs again. Instead, they’d been forced to search out the few small copses that spotted the plains, often near a watering hole or along the edge of a shallow creek or stream.
Perched in the tops of these small trees, they ate and drank what they could fish from their packs. After they finished, they took to the skies again with yet another gut-wrenching takeoff. Kandler swore that his boots had scraped through the tall grasses on the last such embarking, but he preferred not to think about it.
At first, riding Swoop had been exhilarating, but as Kandler’s body grew sore from sitting—or leaning—in the strange saddle, the thrill wore off. Eventually, he braved sleeping atop the glidewing as it soared through the skies, trusting the straps around him to hold him in place. He hadn’t been sure he’d be able to manage it, but the great beast’s rhythmic breathing helped him nod off.
Xalt had tried starting a conversation a few times, but he stopped when Monja pointed out that sound carried far and wide from so high in the air. If they did not want to become a target of some wandering predator, they would do better to keep quiet. The few times Xalt had tossed caution to the winds, Burch had stared him down until he fell silent.
Now, though, their goal called to them from the horizon, growing closer with every passing moment.
From the air, Fort Bones didn’t look like much: a set of low wooden buildings surrounded by a high wall fashioned from baked clay. Even from this distance, Kandler could spy armored guards shambling about the crenellated top of the outer wall, forever gazing outward for threats from without—or above.
A hue and cry went up from the walls as a sentry spotted the glidewings. Flying in formation as they were, there could be little doubt that they were headed for the fort. Even if the soldiers in Fort Bones couldn’t spot the riders atop the lizards, the arrival of six such large creatures would be enough to rouse every soul—or body, at least—in the place.
“We land here!” Monja shouted back from her place in the lead, turning to be sure the others could hear her. “If we get too much closer, we risk being knocked from the sky.”
Kandler pushed down on Swoop’s reins, but as had happened every time in the past, the creature seemed to move more according to its own will than his. It followed Monja’s beast in a curving dive that came to rest a safe double bowshot from the fort’s walls.
Just like before, the landing jarred Kandler to his core, but he was so grateful to find himself on solid ground again that he didn’t give it a thought. Instead, he fumbled with the straps around him until they loosened, and he slid off the massive lizard’s back and into grasses tall enough to reach up to his chest.
“Everyone all right?” he asked, scanning the relieved faces of the others.
Xalt threw himself to the ground, disappearing in the grass. “I’ll never leave you again,” he said to the earth beneath him.
Brendis, who’d looked pale and green since the dawn, staggered three steps, then bent over and vomited loudly. The lizards all skittered away from him on their short, folded legs. When he stood up and wiped his chin, he said, “I’ve been waiting to do that since we left the platform.”
“Good thing,” Burch said, smirking. “Glidewings don’t like the smell. Might have plucked you right off its back.”
The young knight smiled, his color already returning to him. “Nothing could have broken the grip I had on that thing’s neck.”
“Where’s Monja?” Kandler asked. The little shaman had disappeared in the grasses, which rose a full foot over her head.
“Just gathering my things,” her voice said from off to the left. “You should all do the same. The glidewings will leave us soon.”
“Thank goodness,” Xalt said as he crept up to his mount to strip it of his supplies.
“They won’t wait for us?” Kandler asked.
Monja’s head popped up through the grasses, right behind her mount. Kandler guessed she was standing on its tail. “A grounded glidewing is easy prey for larger beasts,” she said. “As soon as we let them loose, they’ll make their way back to the Wandering Inn.”
Kandler said, “How are we going to get into Fort Bones? Just walk up and knock on the gates?”
Sallah, who stood out ahead of the others, shading her eyes with her hand as she stared at the distant fort, answered, “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”
Kandler peered out alongside the lady knight. The gates to the fort had been flung open, and a squad of twenty soldiers, each dressed in gleaming, black suits of Karrnathi armor, swarmed out of the place. A trio of what Kandler guessed had to be officers rode out after them astride massive, ebon-coated horses.
“Keep your swords sheathed,” Monja said. “We are here to talk, not fight.”
“Do they know that?” Burch asked.
As the Karrnathi troops grew nearer, Kandler saw glimpses of thin, white limbs peeking through gaps in the armor of the foot troops. Beneath their high-crested helmets, empty eye sockets stared back at him and the others, merciless and unblinking.
The officers, though, looked out at the newcomers with living eyes as they guided their steeds with their solid, well-muscled frames. Kandler nodded, happy that the Captain of Bones had sent out actual people for him to talk with. It was a good sign. Had there been nothing but skeletons in the greeting party, the only response they would have understood would have been cold steel.
Still, he was prepared to kill them all—every last one—if they stood between him and Esprë.
As the foot soldiers neared, they spread out in a long line that came wrapping around Kandler and the others until the skeletons surrounded them. When the circle of skeletons was complete, it parted on the edge nearest the fort, and the three officers rode their black horses into the gap.
“You have wandered into the lands of the Kingdom of Karrnath, ruled over by his beneficence King Kaius the Third,” the small, stout, broad-faced rider in the center said, her words clipped and efficient. “As his honored representative, the Captain of Bones welcomes you to Karrnath and inquires as to the reason for your visit.”
Monja started to reply but then looked to Kandler instead. The justicar stepped forward, reminding himself to keep his hand off the hilt of his sword. The display of Karrnathi force didn’t intimidate him as it was meant to, but he needed these people to help rather than hinder him.
“We’re pursuing my stepdaughter, a young elf by the name of Esprë. A changeling brought her in this direction aboard a stolen airship.”
The dwarf slid down from the side of her horse using an unusual set of double-stepped stirrups. Most dwarves stuck with ponies instead of horses, animals more suited to their stature, but this dwarf wasn’t the sort to let her size get in her way. She bounded over to Kandler, her hands stretched out before her in greeting, although she halted a sword’s length from the justicar.
“Are you Kandler?” she asked, a smile on her wide lips and a look of astonishment in her eyes.
Kandler froze, staring at the dwarf. He’d never been here before. He’d never met this dwarf. How could she know his name, unless …?
“Tell her, boss,” Burch said, slapping the justicar on the shoulder. The gesture snapped Kandler into action again.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s—I’m Kandler.”
The dwarf favored the justicar with an infectious grin. “Have I got some good news for you.”
Kandler couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so happy—perhaps on his wedding day, maybe on the day the Treaty of Thronehold ended the Last War, or not ever.
As he held Esprë in his arms, he felt tears welling up in his eyes. By reflex, he choked them back. He hadn’t wept since the Day of Mourning, when he’d realized that Esprina had been caught up in the mysterious massacre, and he wasn’t about to start up again now.
Esprë, on the other hand, had been sobbing openly since the moment Kandler and the others had come into the inf
irmary. Her whole body shook with relief as she let loose all the fears she’d kept bottled up since the changeling had stolen her from her bed in Mardakine. She seemed like she might never stop shaking, but Kandler resolved to hold on to her until she fell still.
After a long while, Burch came around and put a hand on Esprë’s shoulder, and she turned and threw her arms around him, leaving her body resting in Kandler’s lap.
“Good to see you again, kid,” the shifter said. “They feeding you all right here? Looks like the food’s so rotten most of the solders are nothing but bones.”
Esprë shoved herself back to stare into the shifter’s mischievous eyes, then started to laugh between her sobs. Soon the laughter took over the rest. Then it sloughed away too.
The young elf gazed at each of her visitors in turn: Kandler, Burch, Xalt, Sallah, Brendis—even Berre Stonefist. Then she hugged Kandler again.
“I thought I was all alone, that you were all dead.” The tears returned but softly this time, for joy.
“You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Kandler said, his voice raw with emotion. “I may be only human, but I got a few good years in me yet.”
“Decades,” Esprë whispered to him. “At least.”
Over Esprë’s shoulder, Kandler saw Berre smiling at the two of them. He reached out a hand to her, and she took it in a double-fisted grip. “I never thought I’d say this to a Karrnathi officer,” he said, “but thanks. I owe you.”
“Nonsense,” Berre said. “All we did was help a lost child find her parent. What civilized people would not do the same?”
Brendis spoke up. “The creatures who attacked Mardakine when Esprë was kidnapped wore Karrnathi armor. Some were even Karrnathi dead.”
Berre’s face fell. “I had not heard that.” She looked Kandler in the eyes. “I assure you that none of my troops would be involved in such a crime.”
The Road to Death: The Lost Mark, Book 2 Page 13
