Aerie

by Mercedes Lackey

  But Kiron already knew where he was going with this. His mind leaped back to the attack he and his original wing had made on Alta, to rescue Aket-ten. “By the gods, Thesis, you’re right! No need for just you, we’ll all go by way of Sanctuary! Because, yes, Heklatis does know all about it. He’s already made Akkadian Fire—and my old Wing knows how to use it!”

  Two wings of Jousters headed at dawn for the bandit nest. Yesterday, Kiron had taken the precaution of leaving one Jouster—the old veteran, Thesis—behind to keep an eye on the encampment to ensure that the bandits didn’t move it before sunset. They hadn’t, which was probably not surprising, since they were doing their raids on the nomad herds by night. Evidently, they had no fears of hungry ghosts in the night. Either that, or they reckoned that hungry ghosts were not as troublesome as empty bellies.

  In any case, they probably wouldn’t move the camp in the morning either. A night raid meant that they would likely be sleeping long past sunrise.

  Each of the Jousters carried two pots of Heklatis’ nasty Akkadian Fire concoction. Nasty—well, “vicious” was more descriptive of the stuff. Not something anyone he knew liked using.

  But the bandits were just as vicious in their way. The Blue People lived on the edge at all times, often no more than a few goats away from starvation. By stealing from their herds, it was possible that these raiders were condemning this tribe to a slow death. . . .

  Kiron hoped not, but the possibility was there. He led the way, the dragons laboring through the cool air of dawn. This was not a time of day he would have chosen to fly them into combat, had he intended them to attempt the sort of combat that they had been undertaking.

  But if this went well, this would not be the usual sort of fight at all.

  As the two wings approached the wadi, they split, one going “upstream,” the other, “downstream.” Although they were not flying particularly high, there was no sign that they had been spotted. And in fact, a very thin, threadlike stream of smoke arose from where Kiron reckoned the center of the camp was. The desert air held few scents of its own at this season other than dust. The scent of roast goat was faint, but clear. There was no sign of any lookout, and no indication that the dragons had been sighted. The bandits must be very confident that no one would find them here, so confident that they didn’t even trouble to leave a lookout.

  Kiron and Huras lined up their wings on the wadi and sent their dragons down to fly a little above the ground, above the rim. He felt Avatre’s relief as he gave her the command, and she went into a long, shallow dive. Flying this close to the ground took less effort than wing flapping at height. With no thermals to climb, she was already a little tired; she was strong, yes, and powerful, but she had just flown a long way, and done it on flapping rather than soaring. He leaned down over her shoulder, and peered along her neck; the wadi stretched out before them like a crooked snake.

  He looked back over his shoulder, making sure the rest of the Wing was lined up behind him. They had practiced this last night with bags of sand, with his original Wing showing the Jousters of his wing and Huras’ how to handle the jars of Akkadian Fire, how to drop them, and how to time the drops. The trailing dragons looked good; they were spaced properly without too much or too little distance between them. With the wind of their passage in his face, and as Avatre swiftly approached the wisp of smoke that marked the camp center, he loosened the first pot of Akkadian Fire in its bindings.

  The empty wadi ripped by beneath him, flashes of thin green from a patch of tough grass or the leaves of a tree. He sighted his way down ahead of him, watching for the regular shape of a tent, a bit of color from clothing, anything that shouldn’t belong. As narrow as this wadi was, the camp could be strung out along it for quite some distance. The jar was heavy in his hand, and he held it tightly by the “handle” of tough cord wound around its neck. Then—there it was, the shape of a tent! As soon as he saw that—he threw the jar as hard and straight as he could, and signaled Avatre to climb.

  He heard the crash beneath him as she banked to avoid Huras’ purple-blue Tathulan, passing the other dragon belly-to-belly as they often did in mock combat when ribbon chasing. He didn’t actually see the effects of his strike until he was high above the wadi; by then four more of his Jousters had sent their pots crashing into the camp, as had five of Huras’ wing, and the camp was ablaze.

  The screaming of men and animals mingled with the black smoke, as the rest of both wings dropped their first jars. Kiron felt a jolting, and a sick feeling in his gut. This wasn’t clean. Suddenly, what had seemed like a good idea wasn’t so appealing now. This wasn’t even remotely clean.

  The smell of burning hair, burning hide, and a sickly sweet smell of burning flesh wafted toward him as Avatre banked and climbed higher. His skin began to crawl. He reminded himself that these men were preying on people who had done them no harm; preying on those who had not, in fact, done anyone any harm.

  But it didn’t help. Yes, he had to be rid of these men . . . but . . . by any and all means? Did they deserve this?

  By then, both wingleaders were lining up for their second pass. This one was to ensure that no one escaped, at least not up or down the wadi; they all dropped their jars far earlier this time. Kiron forced himself to drop his second jar. And this time, at least, the blossoming fires were not punctuated by screams of anguish.

  As Kiron sent Avatre up again, the fires seemed to be going out; the plumes of smoke were thinning, flames no longer visible above the rim of the wadi. And there was no more screaming. Maybe the men hit with the stuff had managed to smother it; water didn’t extinguish it, but sand would.

  There wasn’t much to burn down there, perhaps a few cloth tents and shelters. It wasn’t going to become the kind of raging inferno a wooden house, a village of papyrus huts, or a ship would be. But anyone that stuff splashed onto—and from the screams, it had splashed onto a great many men—was going to have terrible burns.

  Without a healer, they would probably die of those burns.

  The only healers nearby were the Blue People. Kiron did not think that the bandits would find much of a welcome in the Bedu camp.

  Both Wings landed at the oasis to rest their dragons until there were good thermals, and tell the Mouth of the People, the individuals who spoke for each tribe with outsiders, what they had done.

  The Mouth seemed somewhat taken aback. Swathed in veils it was hard to tell what he was thinking, but he was silent for a long time.

  “This Fire—” he said at last, as the rest of the encampment went on about its business, with curious glances at the dragons. “It is a cruel thing.”

  Kiron bit his lip. He’d had second and third thoughts about this as he had led the Wings away from the burning wadi. “It is,” he admitted. “And it was not an—honorable sort of attack.”

  The Mouth considered his words. “Neither was theirs,” he replied finally. “They did not kill any of us directly—but there are children going short of milk, because they stole milch goats. And we will need to call upon favors from other tribes to make up for our losses. We will not starve . . . but we will not prosper either, for some time to come.”

  That was an extraordinary admission from a Mouth of the Bedu, who were so notoriously secretive that they generally had only one person in each tribe—the Mouth—to speak to outsiders.

  “Starvation is a cruel death,” the Mouth said, meditatively. “It is why we left the tents of stone.”

  And then he walked off, leaving Kiron puzzled at his meaning.

  Kiron sent his Jousters off one at a time to hunt. He also didn’t want the temptation of the nearby flocks to overcome the dragons’ training. Once they were all fully fed, they lazed about in the sun while their Jousters napped. It had been an early morning for them, with their flight beginning in false dawn rather than when the sun was well up and the flying was good, and it was catching up to them. The Bedu went about their business as soon as they were certain that the dragons weren’t goin
g to do anything or anyone a mischief. Huras gazed at them with curiosity, but at Kiron’s silent headshake elected not to approach any of them.

  By midmorning the thermals were strong enough for the dragons to take to the air again, spiraling up them lazily, looking for all the world like bits of debris caught in a dust-demon, only moving much slower than that. On a whim, Kiron decided to lead the wings a little off the direct route back to Aerie, to cover part of the route between there and the eastern border. Not that there was an actual road; there was not enough traffic for that. There might once have been a trade route, but that had ended when Aerie had been abandoned. Now anyone who wanted to cross that expanse of wasteland did so navigating by the stars and the sun, or went farther south or north to an established route. Even the garrisons of the army there went farther south, though straight across would have been far faster.

  He was glad that he had when they were roughly halfway home.

  The dot of color on the bleached earth caught his eye first; curious, he veered Avatre toward it. But as soon as he was able to make out what it was, he urged her to greater speed.

  Because the blot below that lay without moving was the combined bodies of a man and a camel, the man slumped over the camel’s neck, the camel collapsed sideways. And as soon as Kiron landed, slid down Avatre’s shoulder and ran to them, he knew that both were dead. But the most critical thing about the bodies, aside from the terrible arrow wounds, was that the man wore the simple kilt, headcloth, and arm-band of a Tian border guard. And the last of the trail in the sand made it clear that he had come from the eastern border.

  The rest landed, and stared with him at the poor victim, most showing at least as much alarm as he felt, if not more.

  “Who—who did this?” someone ventured at last.

  Kiron shook his head. The bodies were hit with several arrows, wounds that the victim had tried to bind up without much success. Kiron’s heart was thudding with alarm. There had been no stirrings of trouble from the eastern border in centuries. The position of border guard was, as a consequence, not sought for. The guards were far from most of the amenities of civilized life, and spent most of their time walking exceedingly boring patrols, and occasionally sorting out the altercations in tiny villages dotted along their jurisdiction.

  But now—

  This—this was a very bad sign. This did not look like the result of a private quarrel. If it had been—the man would have been tended to by his own garrison healer. If he had done murder, he would not have been trying to get back to civilization. Could it be the work of bandits?

  Well it could, but if they had gotten fierce enough to take down the border guards . . . it would need the army to take them.

  “Whoever did it, this fellow tried to get word back—” Huras ventured.

  They all looked at Kiron.

  “Huras,” he said finally, “you go to Sanctuary and get a priest to look at this body, or at least someone to fetch it back there. The rest of you go on back to Aerie. I’ll take word to Mefis.”

  No one argued. Kiron remounted Avatre and sent her up, his mouth dry, his heart pounding.

  It wasn’t that the man was dead. Kiron had seen dead men in plenty, far more than he liked to think about. He’d killed before today; not gladly, and certainly not easily, but he had done so. No, his fear was due to the fact that this was a sign, a sign that something was very wrong on the eastern border. If this man was the lone survivor of a massacre—

  Well, that was high on the list of what could have happened. He must have been the only one left, or the only one still mobile, otherwise there would have been someone else with him. Something had gone badly wrong out there, and it must have come with no warning.

  He stopped only long enough to claim a meal for Avatre at a temple; he was in such a hurry that he didn’t even notice which god the temple enshrined. Once she had eaten, he pushed her ruthlessly into the sky. She was in good condition; though tired, she was far from winded, and she obeyed his commands without a protest. She did keep glancing over her shoulder at him as she flew, as if she was picking up some of his anxiety. His mouth felt dry, no matter how many times he pulled at his waterskin, and he tried to reckon how long it would have taken that border guard to get to where he had been found. It didn’t look to Kiron as if he had been lying there for more than a day—and he would have thought, with all of the dragons in the sky, someone would have spotted him if he had been lying there for much longer.

  I wish someone had spotted him before he died, Kiron thought, and then, with a flash of anger at himself, he realized that someone might have. But lone riders crossed that stretch of desert all the time, and none of his Jousters had ever been instructed to examine or even make a close pass to try to identify them. If they had . . . they would have seen the dried streaks of blood on the camel, the man . . . they would have known both were dying, and might have been able to get the man to a Healing-Priest in Sanctuary in time to save him.

  Now all they had was a mystery.

  Just as the sun-disk touched the horizon, the first of the buildings of Mefis came into view, and recognizing that rest and food were close in reach, Avatre found a little more energy and pushed herself to a little more speed.

  He welcomed her effort and urged her on, leaning down over her shoulder to help her. She recognized her old pen and backwinged straight down into it, landing lightly.

  The two pens on either side of hers showed recent occupation, and those on the right both held blue-and-green dragons, two of the four he had sent here as couriers. Their Jousters were, as he had trained them, giving their charges the final grooming of the day—more for affection and bonding than for any practical purpose. They both ran into the pen as Avatre landed, clearly recognizing him.

  “Find me someone who knows who is in charge of the border guards,” he said without preamble, sliding down out of the saddle.

  “That would be the vizier—” said the first, Wesh-ta-he, doubtfully. “Nef-kham-het. But he is surely at his meal—”

  “Kiron would not have flown here if it had not been urgent, you goose!” exclaimed Aket-ten from the doorway. “Come on, Kiron, I’ll take you to him.”

  “Take care of Avatre!” Kiron ordered. “She has flown long since her last meal.”

  Aket-ten turned and trotted down the long, high-walled corridor between the mostly empty pens. Even though the complex was empty, someone had still stocked all the torch holders along the walls with torches, and as they turned a corner, they passed a servant lighting them. The passages had a haunting familiarity to them; the beautiful, larger-than-life-sized paintings of gods and goddesses and dragons, the flickering torches, the smell of hot sand . . .

  He wanted to ask Aket-ten what she was doing here, but she didn’t slow down long enough for him to get in a word. As soon as they left the Dragon Courts, she broke into a run, pelting down the broad avenue leading to the Palace as if she were a runner-courier herself.

  She headed not for the Palace itself but for the row of Great Houses near it, where important officials lived. Kiron almost balked at that; this might not be a matter for an overseer as important as that—

  But then again, it might. And it was not his call to judge.

  There were a few people out on the avenue in the dusk, one or two servants trotting along, and some of those important folks in their litters, borne aloft by slaves and lit by servants with torches. None of them even glanced at the two Jousters. Those servants had errands on their minds, and the important folk were likely thinking about what they were going to say and do at whatever banquet or meeting they were going to.

  Aket-ten slowed down and stopped at the gate of one of those houses, speaking briefly to the servant on guard there. By the time Kiron arrived, the servant had stepped aside, and Aket-ten waved him on to follow her.

  Another servant escorted them into the house, Kiron acutely aware of his disheveled and filthy state. He hoped that the servant was not going to take them to the dining
chamber—he was in no fit condition to be seen in such a place.

  But as they passed through the antechamber, lined with benches for those who would be waiting on the Vizier’s attention, and painted with murals of the Vizier supervising the Queen’s household, receiving the Gold of Honor, and dictating to a small army of scribes, another servant appeared at a door, followed by the Vizier himself.

  He was not someone that Kiron knew, but evidently Aket-ten did, for the man greeted her warmly.

  “I know you would not have summoned me from my meal if this had not been urgent,” he said, with a wry smile. “You are not given to hysterics.”

  “Actually, my lord, I don’t know what the situation is,” Aket-ten admitted. “But I do know that Kiron would not have flown all the way from Aerie himself if it was not a serious problem—”

  Now she glanced at him, and there was something else in that glance that made him uneasy. Something personal.

  Still nothing to be done about that. He saluted the Vizier. “My lord . . . while returning from an action against bandits, my wings discovered a body.”

  He went on to describe everything that he could remember about the body and its disposition while the vizier listened carefully, arms folded over his chest. Torchlight flickering over the murals gave them a strange semblance of life, making it doubly odd to be talking to one Vizier while four more went about their business.

  When he finished, the vizier nodded, face expressionless. Kiron’s heart sank. He had disturbed a very important man for nothing—

  “This could be of no consequence,” the vizier said, and Kiron’s heart sank further. “But—we cannot take that chance. The gods may have placed a warning in our laps, and we ignore it at our peril. You acted properly in bringing this to me.”

  Kiron felt a weight lifting from his shoulders. “Then I will leave it in the wise hands of Vizier Nef-kham-het,” he said. And he left it at that, bowing himself out, Aket-ten coming with him. He wanted to be sure Avatre had been properly tended, and he wanted a meal and a bath in that order.