by Tim Lebbon
And reinforcements.
Chapter 19
DEATH BEGAN AS a dust mote in his eye.
Jayke Bigg rubbed at his eyelid, blinking fast, thinking that perhaps the sea breeze had blown grit along the beach and into his face. He looked down at his feet and lifted his eyelid, giving his tears a chance to carry the offending grit away, seeing the broken shells scattered across the sand and wondering if anyone would ever see them again. And the dust in his eye, intruding into his senses like an uninvited ghost, where had that come from? A splinter of stone from a statue to some forgotten god? A shard of bone from an ancient sea creature, long gone and unknown to anyone alive today? Jayke was prone to such musings. Being alone at Land’s End made them inevitable.
He sighed, held his hand palm-up before him and stared at it, shifting his vision left to right. There was nothing in his eye. Perhaps it had been an illusion. He looked north again, at the place he was always meant to watch, and the sun shimmered the horizon into haziness.
Jayke resumed his stroll along the beach. He came down here from the cliffs every morning, leaving the old stone house that had been bequeathed him by his parents and theirs before them, enjoying the freedom of the wilds. He felt at peace most in the morning, when the sun rose from the end of the beach and the day’s worries and loneliness were still coalescing from the remnants of his dreams. Ring turtles flapped their way back into the sea farther along the beach, their eggs safely buried once more, and Jayke took his time walking that far. He wanted them to be in the sea and away before he dug up one of the nests and took the eggs for breakfast. He knew how they would taste: salty; mysterious; filled with tales of the seas that he could savor, but never know.
Gulls called from above, perhaps afraid that he would scale the cliffs and steal their eggs as well. Cave snakes sang from small holes low down in the cliffs, serenading in the new day before they slithered back into darkness to sleep the sun away. Bubbles the size of his fist blew in the sea-smoothed sand, exhalations of things buried deep.
Jayke paused and looked north again, an unconscious action that he probably performed a thousand times each day. It was as natural as the beating of his heart. This place was a dividing line between worlds, a true wilderness, where the known world of Noreela ended and the unknown, endless North Seas began. It had always been a wild place but, ironically, safe as well. He was here to keep watch for the direst danger of all. Jayke could not recall any real threats for him and his parents in all the years they had lived here. There were natural dangers, true: storms throwing gigantic waves at the cliffs; the extremes of weather through the seasons, crushing them with snow and baking them with sun; an occasional sea tiger, stalking from the waves and sniffing around their home, its tentacles never happy until they entwined around some warm, living meat. But no threats or malign influences.
Jayke reached the place where the turtles had spent the night laying eggs. He glanced to the north again, then bent and burrowed into the disturbed sand. He found five eggs, flaccid leathery sacs that would harden in his oven and taste wondrous with sea salt and lashings of soured sheebok milk. He stood, pocketed the eggs, turned back the way he had come, glanced north—
And there it was again, that speck in the sky that he had thought to be windblown dust. He paused, held his breath, looked slightly left and right . . . and the speck remained in the same place. Just above the horizon, shimmering in the morning heat-haze, a smudge on the clear blue sky.
Oh no.
Birds, perhaps? A flock of gulls?
It couldn’t be.
Too far out for gulls. Too steady.
Eyeglass!
Jayke dug his eyeglass from a pocket and opened it, cursing when he realized it had misted up against his sweaty skin. He wiped the lenses carefully on his shirt, never taking his eyes from the blemish in the sky just above the horizon. The fear was coming quickly, as it always did whenever he thought about why he was really here, why his family had lived in this place for generations. He went cold, sweat cooling him further, his heart stuttered, his stomach lurched and he was almost sick.
Dropping to his knees in the sand he brought up the eyeglass and stared to the north.
And then he ran.
No gulls, these. They were too far away to be certain, but they looked like hawks. Dozens of them flying in a loose formation, their massive webbed tentacles stroking the air almost gently, only needing a few swipes per minute to keep their bodies aloft.
Jayke sprinted along the beach, his footprints illustrating his panic. The turtle eggs bounced from his pocket and one of them broke on the sand. It was a bad egg, putrid. If he had eaten it he would have died.
He had read of hawks in one of the many books his family had accumulated. How they were spied only very rarely, how they normally remained way above the clouds, living there, eating, loving, mating, dying, disintegrating on the high breezes that kept them aloft even as they wasted away. He was heading for the path up to his house, and his weapons, and the doves that sat ready to be released with their warning. Because the only time hawks had ever been seen in a group was when they were controlled, harnessed and ridden like horses of the skies. And that was most common during the Cataclysmic War. Back then, the riders had been Krotes, the Mages’ warriors.
Jayke only turned to look again when he reached the foot of the steps leading up to the top of the cliff. He had dropped his eyeglass but he did not need it; the threat had closed in all too fast. In doing so the truth had seemingly manifested from his fears. These really were hawks, huge hawks, and although they were still miles out he could see the figures seated upright behind the creatures’ heads.
He started climbing. His life was over. He had never thought it would come to this—after so long he had come to believe that the Mages were dead—but now that it was happening he had purpose, meaning, a mission to fulfill before he died. Death was not a frightening prospect for Jayke. He had been here alone for so long, and he saw enough life and death in nature to know that it was an important consequence of existence. Not even the manner of his death worried him unduly; however unpleasant, the death moon would take him to itself and give him to the Black. The only thing that terrified him was failure.
He had spent his whole life here for one purpose: to give Noreela warning should the Mages return this way.
He was halfway up the cliff when he first heard the screams. Perhaps they came from the hawks, he thought. Or maybe the Krotes sitting astride their necks were calling out in glee at the prospect of spilling blood. Either way, Jayke ignored the noise. To turn around now he would have to stop, and that would admit defeat.
If only I’d stayed at the house, not gone for breakfast.
But he had to eat.
If only I could have enjoyed sitting and watching as much as I enjoyed walking!
But he had been here for forty years. He could not punish himself with thoughts of disgrace. Whatever happened now, he had already fulfilled his charge.
Jayke kept climbing, wishing himself higher and closer to the house. There were weapons in there, but first he had to free the doves. There were a hundred birds in all, fit and healthy, trained from birth to fly east and south until their message was delivered into human hands. And that message, tied ready in leather pouches on their legs, was stark and simple: The Mages are coming.
That scream again, assaulting his ears and echoing from the cliff face. He could not help glancing back, and he saw that the hawks had spread out just above the water. There were dozens of them—maybe a hundred in all—and Jayke could not help comparing that number with those messenger doves he was desperate to release.
The Krotes started shouting as the hawks approached the beach. There was no meaning to their words, no language other than bloodlust.
Jayke was almost at the top of the cliff. He was exhausted, but fear kept him moving. Thirty paces, that was all, thirty paces to the house, and then he could do his best to give warning to the land. He looked back again in tim
e to see the hawks sweep up from the beach and rise above the cliff, a living wave breaking violently against Noreela’s shore.
The flying things were even larger than Jayke had believed. Their hides were speckled black, partly transparent, hideous organs pulsing vaguely inside. They were fat and bloated with gases that aided buoyancy, and their beaks were as big as a man, serrated, yellowed and streaked with the remains of old victims. The downdraft from their movement sent Jayke sprawling to the ground, kicked up dust, blew grit in a whisper against the windows and walls of his house. They rose along the whole length of the cliff, rising on thermals as if blasted straight up from the beach, and most of them immediately headed south, across the island of Land’s End and toward Noreela.
Between here and Noreela lay the Bay of Cantrassa, four hundred miles of open ocean. Jayke wondered how fast those things could fly. And whether the doves would fly faster.
A dozen hawks dipped down and came at him, their riders screeching, raising bows and letting fly arrows. One struck Jayke in the shoulder and he spun and fell, cursing, Not yet not yet not yet. He found his feet and staggered to the door, pressing through as more arrows struck the walls around him, the door, his leg. He stumbled inside and kicked the door shut with his good leg, unable to turn in the narrow corridor because of the long shafts protruding from his shoulder and knee.
He was dizzied already by blood loss . . . and something else. His throat was swelling, his airway blocking, and he knew that the arrows were tipped with poison.
There was more screeching from outside. The sound of the hawks’ venting was like thunder against the house, and one of them landed on the roof, smashing broken tiles down onto Jayke’s head. The monstrous creature pecked at his home, and its disregard for his history made him mad.
A hole appeared in his roof, a ragged rent battered and enlarged again and again by the creature’s vicious beak. As Jayke leaned against a wall and slid himself along, vision blurring, a Krote peered through the hole.
“I haven’t killed for too many moons,” the Krote said, her voice surprisingly gentle and calm.
“Fuck you,” Jayke muttered, and the Mage warrior laughed as Jayke fell into the back room. His leg was a block of wood, his shoulder stiff and burning with shed blood, and as the poison coursed through his veins it was only rage keeping him moving. Rage, and duty. He had to release the doves, to warn the neighboring islands along The Spine if nothing else. He snatched a primed and loaded crossbow from the wall, glancing at the shelves of books he would never read again, and staggered to another door, this one leading into the aviary where the doves were waiting.
They were in tumult. A hawk had landed in the vegetable garden behind the house and it sat there snorting, blood and mucus dripping from its beak. The doves fluttered and fought to back away from the monstrous vision, pecking, crying, and when Jayke appeared in their midst they turned on him.
“No!” he shouted. He hissed to the birds, sounds and words that could communicate concepts and direction, and as the Krote sitting on the hawk started to laugh, the doves immediately settled.
Jayke fell on the handle that flipped open the enclosure. The screens fell away, the Krote raised his bow in a lazy, dismissive gesture and Jayke brought up his crossbow and let fly. The bolt struck home in the Krote’s left eye. Mortally wounded, poisoned, half-blinded though he may be, Jayke had lived alone for forty years, hunting rabbit and pheasant with his crossbow. Target practice was something he’d had a lot of time for.
The warrior let out a surprised gasp and tipped sideways in his saddle. The hawk seemed not to notice its rider’s sudden death, and it pecked listlessly at the ground as the Krote tumbled from its left flank and hit the dirt.
“First blood,” Jayke whispered. He hoped that it was a good omen for Noreela.
He hissed and whistled once again to the birds. They turned to look at him and it was almost as if they knew of his wounds, knew that this time they would not fly home. They cooed, their throats swelled and vibrated, their small leather message pouches so full of hope and desperation. And then, as one mass, they took flight.
Jayke slid down the stone wall, crying out as the arrow in his shoulder was snapped off. It had been morning when he found the turtle’s eggs, he was sure, and yet dusk now seemed to be closing in. The sky was growing dark. His vision was fading. And with a hundred doves in the air, it looked as if it were snowing.
The birds parted immediately, some darting south toward the Bay of Cantrassa, others heading east to the neighboring island of Bethwitch, thirty miles distant. The theory had always been that if the doves never made it directly to Noreela, the message would be carried back along The Spine by the communities living there. Now, close to death and near to warriors of the dreaded and despised Mages, Jayke wondered at his people’s naïveté. So much more could have been done, surely. So many more precautions.
Hawks swooped down, plunging through the clouds of small white birds and spilling them to the ground. Dozens fluttered and fell, twitching as they hit earth and rock, feathers exploding from smashed wings and burst bodies.
“All of them!” one of the Krotes commanded. It sounded like the gentle-voiced warrior from the roof. “Every single one!” The hawks swooped down and another dozen doves were shattered in mid-air. Some of the Krote riders took pleasure in the target practice, skewering birds with well-placed arrows. One of the hawks seemed to be in a feeding frenzy, following a small flock of doves, snapping at them, showering bloodied white remnants to the ground.
A Krote appeared before the open screens, short, thick sword drawn. The metal caught sunlight, and Jayke was glad for the brief spear of pain the reflection drove into his eye.
“Dove stew tonight,” the Krote said.
“Fuck you.”
“How erudite.” The Krote stepped inside, trying to tread softly. “This place stinks of shit!”
“Fuck you.”
“So you said.” She leaned forward and slashed Jayke’s throat.
“DID YOU CATCH them all?” Lenora asked.
“We think so, sir.”
“You think so?” She swiped quickly at the corpse’s ear and strung it on a chain around her waist. There were others dried and desiccated there, many others, of all shapes, sizes and colors. But this was the first Noreelan ear to ever grace her belt.
“Sir, I’m positive.”
“Good. Then we still have surprise on our side. Get ready to move out!” The Krote hurried away and Lenora looked around her. And here we are, she thought. This is where it ended three hundred years ago, and this is where it begins again today. She stroked the wet ear on her belt, and smiled.
“I’m home,” she said. And a long-lost voice echoed her words: You’re home.
Chapter 20
RAFE BABURN WAS tired. He sat in the cave mouth and watched the witch out in the rain, her arms outstretched as she communed with the skull ravens. The downpour was tremendous, and yet Hope seemed unconcerned. One raven had its beak pressed hard against her temple. They looked like one merged creature.
Rafe’s eyelids drooped again, the rainfall soporific, his limbs and shoulders aching, his eyes stinging from exhaustion. Whatever he had done the night before had drained him. He felt hollowed out, distanced from everything—the danger, his parents’ deaths, these people around him—and even the voices and whispers had grown quiet.
The Shantasi warrior who had been prepared to die to save Rafe’s life—her skin slashed and torn, her ankle shattered, her face a mask of drying, poisoned blood—was slumped farther back in the cave. Kosar the thief sat watching over her, dripping water into her mouth. She moaned in her sleep and sometimes cried out, but the noise of the storm drowned her voice. She was unconscious. The poison was gone from her system. She bled only good blood now. Rafe had cured her.
The touch had not been his own. The surge of something through his arm and hand had risen up from somewhere so deep inside that it was beyond him. There had been a stench as the
poison was drawn from her system and scorched by the fresh air, the smell of something rank dying on the breeze, and Rafe had fallen away from the injured Shantasi, vomiting. The witch had caught him and lowered him to the ground, so gently. Like a glass sculpture.
He remembered little since then, other than occasional glimpses of moonlight and the sensation of being carried through the night. There had been whispers around him, amazed muttering, tones of disbelief and faith, anger and relief, pain and epiphany. He had felt as if he was being carried out and away from his old life at last, and transported toward something new and wondrous. Sometime in the night the rain had come, and they had found the cave. Since then it had been quiet.
Rafe supposed that, like him, his companions were trying to come to terms with what had happened.
HOPE SHOOK THE last skull raven from her shoulder. It screeched as it flew off, merging quickly with the night, mocking her with one last cry. She cursed, stooping to pick up one of the raven’s feathers from the mud. It was smooth and silky. The moonlight caught its perfect edge and it glinted like a knife. The witch put it to her nose and inhaled, but it revealed nothing more.
