Wings Over Talera

by Charles Allen Gramlich

  I noted that the reins were attached to a black iron collar that fit snugly to the bird’s neck. From there they ran to an elaborate metal bit that locked around the beak, serving not only to guide the beast but also to keep its hooked and deadly mouth closed.

  “Left and right reins are the same as in a horse or tasaber,” Valyan continued. “Up and down are just what you’d expect. Don’t get them confused. The sharpness of a turn depends on the amount of pressure you exert. Haul back on the reins to slow and stop. Release them for speed.”

  I nodded.

  He handed me the “wing-stick,” a blunt-headed prod about two and a half feet long, with a wrist strap at the other end.

  “You can use this to help guide him,” the Nakscherii warrior told me. “Or at worst you can beat him about the head with it if he tries to eat you.”

  I glanced at him to see if he was joking. If there was a smile, it was well hidden.

  “Thanks...ever so much for the advice,” I told him, as I took the prod.

  The bird squatted when I touched its throat with the wing-stick and I climbed into the small saddle, which sat just forward of the massively thewed pinions. I locked my feet in the attached stirrups as Valyan showed me how to hold the reins, down and left reins in the left hand, up and right in the right hand. It was awkward to have to use the fingers of the same hand independently.

  The green Llurn strapped me in and then raced for his own bird. Graye and Kreeg were already mounted. As Valyan saddled up, the morning bells pealed out and my heart caught. Now the city would begin to awaken.

  “Haih Kerang,” Graye shouted, and his sabrun took two steps and leaped from the roof of the keep. I heard the snap of wings and the bird rose, Graye clinging to its back, working the reins. Kreeg followed, looking distinctively ill. And then it was my turn.

  “Haih Kerang,” I shouted. “Let’s ride.”

  Now my bird took its two steps and leaped. For a blink we were in free fall, my heart hammering, the earth rushing fast to meet us as I jerked the up-rein taut. Massive wings spread and snapped against the foggy air. The jolt nearly took my breath as the sabrun’s fall was arrested in an instant and we were rising instead.

  I saw Kreeg and Graye above me, their birds still climbing, and already the lifting sun was upon them as it burned through the night’s mist. Behind and beneath me, distantly, I heard Valyan shout and knew he was coming.

  A patrol flyer drifted around the far corner of the keep. Its sleek outline and slanted prow marked it as a pursuit craft. There were two men on board with the pilot. One would certainly have a signal horn.

  I worked my left hand reins, bringing the sabrun around in a tight curve toward the flyer. We leveled out and I let both sets of reins trail down over the bird’s neck, giving the creature the slack that signaled for speed. Its wings stroked; we leaped forward. My right hand dipped alongside the saddle and came up with one of the steel lances that are habitually sheathed there on riding birds.

  The three men in the flyer looked shocked as they saw the bird coming at them with me on its back. In another moment they would have detected our small group anyway, and would have kept us in sight while calling for the pursuit that would surely overtake us. There was no way short of killing all three of them to keep a signal of our escape from going out. And I would not have their murders stain my soul. But perhaps....

  The bird and I swept toward them, our shadow blotting across their sky. I saw one man darting for their ballista. The other hefted a crossbow. I half stood in my stirrups, the lance rising in my hand, poising itself for a strike, and as we passed above them, scarcely a dozen yards over their deck, I hurled that strike. The lance seemed to shiver in the air, and then it hit, tearing deep into the rotors that channeled power from the energy wands to the ship’s drive. With a tortured shriek those rotors locked up.

  I grabbed the sabrun’s reins again, wheeled the bird to the right just as a crossbow bolt flashed past my cheek. It did no more damage than the curses that lifted from the airship’s crew. They wouldn’t be trailing us now, and even though they would signal an alarm we had a good chance to elude any blind pursuit that would follow.

  Suddenly, Valyan was there beside me and we both put our birds into a climb. We found Kreeg and Diken Graye up above, and as the sun ascended fully over the horizon the four of us arrowed away through the gathering brightness, toward the city of Trazull on the Rosjavik Peninsula.

  I glanced back, saw the rose and coral buildings of Timmuzz blushing under the morning sun, and the finality of it sledgehammered me. I was leaving. The life that I’d thought awaited me in Nyshphal was over. But that was hardly the worst.

  Rannon Jystral was gone from my world.

  CHAPTER TEN

  CITY OF OUTLAWS

  We landed in a flurry of wings in a bustling marketplace of the city of Trazull. People and chickens scattered. Tavarels bleated. Vulls and terthins whirled up in a thrumming cloud from where they pecked and fought over garbage. We dismounted our sabruns among the gaping onlookers, not all of whom were human.

  Diken Graye had argued for a quiet approach to the city, for slipping in under the cover of darkness. I’d vetoed him. We would go in boldly. If my brother were here, I wanted him to know of our arrival. And if there were enemies of Nyshphal who wanted us dead.... Well, let them try. Despite my rejection by Rannon and her family, I had determined to find out who was attacking their lands and put a stop to the plundering. If I could.

  Somewhere in this city we would find news concerning the “who” and “why” of the recent raids on Nyshphal, and tangled with the answers to those questions was the fate of my brother. Because of him, the goad of impatience bit me deeply.

  Handing the reins of my sabrun to Kreeg, I strode a dozen paces past stalls and carts and awnings and people, the sounds and odors a bright assault on my senses. This was only one of the bazaars of Trazull, but at this time of the day it was the most heavily trafficked. The crowd nearly filled the smallish square and spilled over into the surrounding streets. There were half a dozen races among them, but mostly I saw humans and Kaldi and Ss’Korra. They all made way for me as I reached the central fountain and stepped up on its rim.

  Gray stones, worn and scuffed by years of use, seemed to welcome my boots. A mist-spray of water filmed over me, cutting through the burn of cook fires that tingled in my nostrils. Dogs yapped, circling widely around the sharp black beaks of the sabruns and the raw eyes of Kreeg, and Valyan, and Graye. The people fell silent and watched. There were hard beings among that crowd, beings with old scars and fresh bruises, beings with swords ready for callused hands. Even they watched.

  “I am Ruenn Maclang of Nyshphal!” I shouted. “I seek my brother, Bryce. Or any that know of him. I will ask you all to send word.”

  I glanced around. Directly across from me hung the thorn-wood sign of a tavern. I pointed to it.

  “Tell Bryce Maclang!” I shouted again to the crowd. “Tell Bryce to meet his brother at the sign of The Rattling Saber. Tomorrow at the tenth dhaur.”

  I stepped down from the fountain, strode back to the saddle birds. The four of us mounted. Broad wings spread and flattened against the air, and the sabruns took the sky with cries of “Haih Kerang” cracking across the square. A cart overturned in the buffeting wind, sending copper pots clattering like thunder in a gathering storm.

  The sound seemed appropriate.

  * * * * * * *

  I gazed down upon the lights of Trazull. It was now near the twentieth dhaur, the Taleran midnight, and we were encamped upon the brush-dotted ridge that curves around the sprawl of the city from the southern shore to the northern shore of the Temeri Sea.

  It is said that this ridge is not natural, that it was once a wall. I believe it, for in scrounging for firewood I had nearly fallen into a narrow, stone stairwell that descended into the ridge. Trazull is a very old city, bu
ilt long years before and settled by men unlike the pirates and outlaws who inhabit it now.

  Diken Graye coughed and I turned toward him. Kreeg and Valyan were asleep. It was my watch. Graye had not even tried to seek his blankets. He squatted, this man who had once been a Thorn Nomad, and stared into the fire as if he searched for solace there. I strode over to him, squatted across from him and poured myself a cup of fragrant verhlis tea. He glanced up.

  “Why have you not fled?” I asked him. He was, after all, a prisoner of sorts. And yet there were no bonds holding him; he even carried weapons. A dozen times he could have escaped us aboard his sabrun. I wondered why he had not.

  He shrugged in answer to my query, his black eyes finding and holding mine. Then he looked away.

  While I sipped my tea, the mercenary glanced down the ridge toward Trazull. Even to this distance the occasional raucous shout carried. Trazull is not a city that goes early to bed.

  “I once thought I belonged with such men as those,” Graye said abruptlly, jutting his chin toward Trazull’s harbor where pirate brigs rubbed wooden shoulders with sloops and caravels manned by outlaws.

  I did not speak, letting him find his own way through his thoughts.

  “I told myself that my home was a deck or a saddle,” he continued. He shook his head. “But it isn’t enough.”

  His gaze met mine again. “Do you understand?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, and I thought of Rannon and felt a pain that I was suddenly sure Diken Graye knew something about.

  He sighed, and I changed the subject. But it was for my sake rather than his. “Did you ever,” I began, “hear of a man named Eric Ryall? Perhaps linked in some way with my brother?”

  He frowned. “The name is not familiar. Why?”

  I started to answer, but he clicked his teeth at me as it occurred to him. “The other member of your family!” he blurted. “He of whom you spoke before. Without naming him.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “He, too, is lost.”

  “I do not know of him,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  We both remained silent for a bit. It had drizzled earlier, a barely chilled drizzle that meant the coming spring was almost upon us, and the damp wood crackled in the fire as we sat there. I pulled a blanket around my shoulders, for winter still owned this night at least.

  “I apologize, also,” Graye added, “for my behavior in Nysphal’s dungeon. I should have been grateful for the rescue. Even if it was not friendship that motivated it.”

  “We were both frustrated,” I said. “My own anger was uncalled for.”

  He nodded, and after a bit: “Do you think it will be your brother who meets us tomorrow at the Rattling Saber?”

  “I think it will be men trying to kill us. I’m not sure why I think that.”

  He nodded. “Your brother seemed...an important man among them. He did not....”

  I waited for him to continue, and when he held his words I prodded. “He did not what?”

  “He did not seem much like you.”

  “How so?” I asked, not sure that I truly wanted to know.

  “He was cold. I judged him brutal. And thought he needed no reason to show it.”

  I started to protest but he rushed on.

  “He resembled you greatly, though his hair was dead white and his face tattooed, like the ritual scarrings of the Thorn Nomads. But done in ink.”

  “Bryce’s hair is nearly as dark as mine, I said. “He has no tattoos.”

  “Then you have a second brother on Talera,” Graye retorted. “And his hair is white and his face tattooed.” He frowned as if something more had occurred to him. “There was something...odd about his markings, too. Something I don’t know how to name.”

  “Tell me,” I demanded, leaning forward, fists knotted against legs. “What about his marks?”

  Graye met my gaze and did not flinch. “They moved.”

  I shook my head. “They could not have.”

  “But they did,” he said, and now he looked down, into the fire, and he spoke so softly I could scarcely hear. “His eyes were the worst, though. The very worst.”

  I reached out to grab his collar and he caught my wrist, held it as he lifted his head and the shadows and fire played on his lean face.

  “His eyes were red. Like pearls. Bloody pearls. He had no pupils. It wasn’t...human.”

  I shook off his hand. “You lie!”

  His lips twisted. “I am still enough of a nomad not to lie. And you and I both know that I speak the truth now.”

  My shoulders slumped. The blanket and fire were suddenly not enough to warm me. “What has happened to him?” I asked to no one, and wondered if my voice sounded as hollow and empty as I felt.

  Diken Graye shrugged, rose to his feet to loom over me.

  “I will stay until you find your brother,” he said. “Or,” he paused, scuffing a furrow in the dirt with his boot, “until it is clear you will not.”

  Then he turned and sought his blankets, leaving me alone in an overwhelming darkness.

  “Brother,” I murmured. “Where are you? What are you?”

  There was one other question that I did not voice. Even in a whisper. But I thought it.

  The parchment note that Rannon had shown me in Timmuzz, the one that had done so much to discredit me in her eyes and in the eyes of her father: why had Bryce written it?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE “RATTLING SABER”

  Alone on my sabrun, I landed in the market square of Trazull where yesterday I had announced the search for my brother. It was deep into the Spring Passage by now but still there were no celebrations underway here to rival the kind of city-wide festivals that would be taking place in Nyshphal and many other lands. I suppose a government is needed to plan such affairs, and there is no government in Trazull save the will of mercenaries and pirate captains.

  Fewer people were in the square today than before, but it was clear that most knew who I was. Fingers pointed; I heard whispers as I led the saddle bird to the hitching rail in front of the Rattling Saber tavern and tied him off. From beneath the stirrup at the right side of the bird’s saddle, I drew out an eight-foot lance of steel. My left hand gripped the scabbard of my sword, just behind the quillions where I could push the blade forward to draw it quickly if needed. At my right hip, and in a sheath sewn into my boot, there were daggers.

  The door to the tavern stood open. Even in the fresh sun and the salt air I could smell stale odors from past spills of wine, and ale, and kumiss. I stepped onto the wooden walkway in front of the tavern and strode inside. Six beings sat at the tables, not all at the same table. Bryce was not among them. Nor Eric. I had not expected them to be. Finding Eric here was a fool’s hope anyway.

  My glance found the stairs and followed them to the second floor. A balcony and railing circled that floor but I saw no one there. I nodded to the bartender, who poured a pewter mug full of ale and passed it to me. I took a sip as I turned toward the larger part of the room.

  “I’m looking for my brother,” I said. “He was supposed to meet me here at the tenth dhaur.” At noon, my mind translated.

  “You are Ruenn Maclang?” a voice asked.

  I glanced toward the speaker, not letting myself forget the corners of my eyes and the others who watched. The being who rose and faced me was too large for the chair that had seated him—nearly seven feet in height. He was of that race called the Nokarra, who are superb warriors, who are cat-like in appearance and grace. His eyes had a strange crimson sheen, though primarily they were blue, unlike most of his race who have gold or green eyes—or both. His fur was short and bristly and almost black. That color, too, was unusual. He smelled like cloves.

  The haft of an axe protruded over the Nokarran’s shoulder, and he wore twin short swords scabbarded behind a thick black belt that held up
russet leathers. The Nokarra are humanoid—two arms, two legs, two eyes. The fur of this one’s chest was partially shaved and bore an inked symbol consisting of a solid sphere inside another circle, with lighting bolts connecting the two at six separate points. Something about the symbol struck me as familiar, but now was not the time to worry over it.

  “Aye,” I said, in answer to the Nokarran’s question. “I am Ruenn Maclang. Who are you?”

  “Your master,” he replied, drawing the axe over his shoulder and seating it firmly in both massive fists.

  “Perhaps,” I said, shrugging. I made no move to reach for my own blade. My left hand was filled with a mug of ale; my right still held the lance. Its tip pointed at the floor.

  The Nokarran did not even glance at the other five occupants of the tables. By that I knew them all for his allies. I took a swig of ale, half felt and half saw a shifting of bodies to either side of the Nokarran. My muscles tensed and from the corner of an eye I glimpsed something that flashed toward me. I batted the wheel-dagger aside with my mug, sending the weapon spinning and clanging away in a spray of bitter ale. From the balcony above, there leaped a blurred streak of light that materialized as an arrow through the chest of the knife thrower. He went back and down, dragging a chair with him.

  The Nokarran glanced up, wildly, looking for the archer. The other four assassins were on their feet as well, but held for an instant by the threat of feathered death. I silently thanked Valyan for his aim as I tossed the warped mug aside and drew my sword left handed. Two of the remaining assassins were human, one was an outlaw Klar, the fourth a burn scarred Ss’Korra.

  The Ss’Korra leaped toward me, shouting: “Kill you, human!”

  I put my lance through him with a savage cast and he vomited blood as he fell backward. Then I switched hands with the saber and attacked, charging the Nokarran, who I judged the most dangerous of the bunch.

  The axe-wielder swung his weapon desperately to keep me off, his timing thrown by Valyan’s unexpected presence. I dodged, not blocking with my sword. His axe was of the type sometimes called blade-breaker, with twin, crescent-moon heads of polished steel that curved and hooked viciously toward the haft. I slashed at him above his guard and cut one cheek to the bone, but missed the eye as he hurled himself backward, agile as a lynx.