A Flight of Marewings

by Kristen S. Walker

  Korinna put her hands on Sungold’s back and leaned onto her. She was already too tall for Korinna to get up onto her back on her own. She hadn’t realized, in the air, that Sungold was shorter than most of the other marewings. But the mention of age bothered her. “How long do marewings usually live?”

  “With good care, she could be active for the next thirty or forty years, long past the time that you’ll want to retire from the battlefield.” Varranor chuckled. “You’re already thinking like a rider, but don’t worry so much. You couldn’t have hoped for a better partner. I’m already predicting that you two will have a long and harmonious career together.”

  Varranor spent some time giving her instructions on grooming. He called his own marewing, Skyfire, to come demonstrate some of the techniques so he wouldn’t have to touch Sungold again. Skyfire patiently showed how she cooperated with the process, like raising her feet one at a time so he could clean out her hooves, and over time Sungold relaxed in the presence of the older mare and learned to copy her.

  Korinna was almost finished working the knots out of Sungold’s long tail when Galenos finally arrived.

  He walked up on the far bank of the stream and looked down at her with her marewing. He nodded his approval. “Well done, Korinna.” His face and his voice betrayed no emotion. “Looks like you got what you wanted.”

  Korinna tried not to glare at him, but Sungold caught her anger and shifted restlessly. “Yes, I did. And I’ll be there in the vanguard when we attack the capital.”

  Galenos turned his face away and looked down at the ground. Did she imagine that she saw regret there? “When you become a full rider depends on your training officer. When and where I attack depends on other factors.” He glanced at his brother. “I’ll need you back in Fort Ropytos after this.”

  Varranor bowed his head. “I understand.”

  The warlord walked away again.

  Korinna turned and looked at Varranor. “What was that?”

  Varranor shrugged. “He’s just telling me that I can’t hang around and help with all of the training. I can give you advice to start with, but you’ll have to get comfortable with the sergeant soon.”

  She threw the brush down on the ground and folded her arms. “That’s not what I meant.”

  He sighed. “Yes, I know. He’s been avoiding you and you’re mad. He’s probably too scared to approach you.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” She gestured to her short height. “Why would a powerful warlord be frightened of me?”

  Varranor shook his head. “If he cares about you, which I strongly suspect, then he’s just as scared of losing you.”

  Korinna went back to Sungold’s front and cupped her head in her hands. The marewing looked back at her with her deep red eyes, blinking slowly. Whatever happiness she found there, an animal couldn’t give her the answers she wanted.

  She took a deep breath. “Why would you think that he cared? He seems more intent on avoiding me.”

  He sighed. “He’s never had anyone else besides me that he could trust. He’s only ever focused on the Storm Petrels. You split his priorities and he doesn’t know how to handle that.”

  She bent to help him clean up. “I thought he was warming up to me, at least a little. He told me not to quit training a few weeks ago. He admitted that he doesn’t like fighting, and for a moment, he was so vulnerable.” She shook her head at her own naïveté. “I felt like he was finally opening up to me.”

  He gave her a leather pouch to hold her grooming tools, holding it out to her at an awkward angle so their hands wouldn’t touch. “Of course he was.” He shook his head. “And then he screwed up by losing your lands, which he still feels guilty about, so he had to back off again.”

  She snatched the pouch out of his hands. “It’s impossible to get through to that stubborn man!”

  He turned and smiled at her wistfully. “I think when you set your mind to something, there’s nothing you can’t do. I predicted that when I first met you. You’re almost too much like him.”

  “I am not!” She realized that she was protesting too hard, blushed, and looked away again.

  She reached out and touched Sungold again for comfort. Now that the marewing was brushed and clean, she felt very soft to the touch. In the midst of Korinna’s scrambled thoughts, Sungold was like a bright center of happiness and warmth. “What do we do next?”

  Varranor pointed Skyfire toward a nearby field and let her go. “That’s enough fussing over our girls for now. They’ll want to nap through the hot part of the day. Let’s go find you some spare tack, and I’ll teach you how to polish a saddle.”

  In total, ten new riders came back with marewings to begin their training: Douhyos and Oakheart, Itychia and Spiritwind, Orivan and Moonshadow, Korinna and Sungold, and six other men.

  The next day, Mkumba left with the rest of the riders when they returned to their forts.

  The new riders, Sergeant Navera, and the blacksmith stayed in the valley. The new riders weren’t prepared for a long-distance flight yet. Navera promised that over the next few weeks, they would practice riding and be back at Fort Ropytos sometime after the Longest Night.

  The reminder of the approaching festival brought Korinna back to reality. She missed the celebrations in Kyratia for the Shortest Night and the New Year. Now half a year had passed and everything had changed. At home—at Anoberesovo, she corrected herself, which was no longer her home—she would have been preparing for the holiday with her people. The fields would need plowing. A priest would visit the estate to bless the fields for protection against the wyld and cast the auguries to predict the most auspicious day to begin the planting. Without these annual hallmarks to count on, her sense of the passage of time was distorted, as if she existed in a sort of limbo state. The Longest Night pointed out to her that the rest of the world had continued living the same routine while she fought the trapflower and trained with Sungold.

  Korinna learned that marewing riders had to do everything to care for their mounts, from feeding and grooming to caring for their tack and shoveling their manure. Marewings wouldn’t tolerate the presence of any other person, so their riders were responsible for their all needs. The first things that she learned were how to brush Sungold’s coat until it gleamed and how to polish the leather on her hand-me-down saddle. Hardly the exciting life of a rider she had once envisioned.

  Sungold adjusted to her new life more easily. She greeted Korinna every morning by racing toward her at full speed from across the field and stopping short just in time to avoid barreling her over, then nosed her all over for treats. She took to her training with an eagerness to show off and earn Korinna’s praise, but at the same time, she had a knack for getting into trouble. No matter how much Korinna brushed her coat, Sungold managed to get it dirty again almost immediately; if any piece of tack or other equipment was left out in the open, Sungold was sure to drag it into the stream. She dug holes in the ground all around the riders’ camp.

  Korinna was eager to fly again, but Sergeant Navera made it clear that they wouldn’t be allowed to ride again until she said that they were ready.

  The first step was getting the marewings used to their tack. To the wild animals, even a simple rope halter was unfamiliar. The riders had to approach their mounts slowly and cautiously so they would accept the idea of something over their heads, and then when that was comfortable, a lead rope attached to the halter.

  Sergeant Navera emphasized over and over that the riders couldn’t simply win the trust and cooperation of the marewings with treats. “You have to control their diets, or they will get sick,” she drilled into them. “Colic is the number one killer of marewings. They have a very delicate digestive system and they don’t know how to control it, so you need to control it for them. That means limiting how much rich food they eat.”

  And when they could give treats, there was no cloudfruit. Korinna had to surrender all of the fruit she had gathered up in the tree, much to Sungold’s disma
y, because the pockets of her uniform kept a lingering scent. Navera promised that they would each be given their annual allotment of preserved fruit later, but only after they had graduated training.

  With the lead ropes, they could take the marewings through their paces on foot. All of the marewings, bonded with their riders, were amenable to follow signals, but they had to practice in order to learn what each signal meant. Navera made them all learn the same rigid system of signals instead of coming up with their own.

  “But we’ll never ride another marewing,” Korinna argued. “Shouldn’t we just use whatever works best for us?”

  Navera smacked her riding gloves on the palm of her hand. “No. We have a way of doing things that has worked for hundreds of years, and you can’t change that on a whim. You don’t want to be in the sky, in the middle of a fight, and have your marewing get confused because your signals are too similar or unclear. You will learn this system.”

  When she put the saddle on Sungold, Korinna still wasn’t allowed to ride. Again, she ran drills on foot, leading the marewing with the lead rope while the saddle bounced up and down empty on her back.

  The marewings instantly learned the trick of holding their breath while the girth of the saddle was being tightened, so the saddles would be loose on their backs. Navera watched the marewings run around in their drills and saw loose saddles sliding sideways. “See? Do it again!”

  The hardest part, though, was when the blacksmith set up a makeshift forge and fit each marewing with a set of iron shoes. The riders had to hold their nervous mounts while he hammered each shoe on with heavy nails.

  Sungold hated her shoes. She experimented until she found a formation of rocks that she could use to pry the shoes off of her feet. Every few days, Korinna had to chase her down and take her back to the physician to nail the shoes back on. The process warped some of the shoes too much, so the blacksmith was forced to make new ones. He complained that he’d only been able to carry a finite supply of shoes to the valley and it was quickly running out. He didn’t have the full-sized forge he needed to melt the warped shoes down for material to make new ones.

  But somehow they struggled through and at last the time came to ride.

  Korinna had been getting Sungold used to holding her weight by putting the saddle on, standing on a mounting block, and leaning on her back. Then the day came that, after a successful session of standing and leaning on the saddle, Navera gave her permission to finally mount.

  Luckily, the mounting block was high enough that Korinna could swing her leg over without any help. Sungold’s ears pricked up with interest. Were they finally going somewhere? Korinna tried to remember what Navera had said about her posture and adjusted her seat in the saddle. She felt like she had to think about every single muscle in her abdomen and legs.

  When she was sitting correctly, at the sergeant’s urging, Korinna gave the signal for Sungold to start walking. Sungold bounced forward at a trot.

  “Slow down,” Navera barked.

  Korinna sat back in the seat and Sungold slowed down to a walk. They circled around the open track once while Navera watched them closely.

  “Alright.” Navera nodded and started giving them more orders to stop, start, and turn in each direction.

  Sungold behaved for a while, but after a few more laps she got bored and increased her pace again.

  “Whoa, slow down!” Navera yelled.

  Korinna tried to stop Sungold again, but the marewing ignored her. She took her head and turned off the round track. She picked up speed across the open field.

  Korinna saw the golden wings unfurl beside her and realized what Sungold was about to do. “No, stop!” she cried, snatching for the reins and doing everything she could to make the runaway marewing slow down.

  She felt Sungold begin to gather her haunches under her. Korinna forgot all of her training about the proper seat, dropped the reins, and flung herself forward to hang onto Sungold’s neck.

  Sungold leaped into the air and carried them up into the sky. By now, the cloudfruit trees had lost their fruit and drifted back to the earth, so there was nothing above them to block her flight. She glided back in a circle, straight over the sergeant’s head, so Korinna could hear her yelling furiously up at them.

  At last, she persuaded the marewing to come back down. Sungold landed neatly next to the mounting block and let Korinna climb down on her own. She held her head up proudly.

  From the mounting block she stepped onto the ground, and then her shaking legs betrayed her. She fell into the dirt in a heap.

  Navera rushed over and knelt beside her. “That was a stupid stunt, recruit. Are you alright?”

  No angry lecture? Korinna looked up at the sergeant in surprise. “I—I think so. She just got away from me. I’m sorry.”

  Navera helped her to her feet. “You’ve got to make that beast listen to you. She’s testing boundaries to see how far she can take it. Tell her what you want, and mean it, or you’ll never be able to control her.”

  Korinna looked over at Sungold, who was trying to look contrite with a bowed head. But the moment Korinna put her hand out to touch her, the marewing began nosing her over again for treats. “She just wants to impress me, I think.”

  Navera shook her head. “She’s a monster, and don’t you forget it. We’re done for the day. From now on, you keep her on the ground until I tell you otherwise.”

  Korinna led Sungold away from the track to take off her tack and give her a rubdown. But after she got over the initial fright, she was secretly exhilarated by the flight. She spent extra time grooming Sungold and braided her mane into an intricate design.

  “We’ll fly again soon,” she promised the marewing. “We’ll own the skies together.”

  The new riders learned to fly with their marewings and make them obey their signals in the air. When Navera was reasonably sure that everyone could keep their seats safely while in flight, she ordered them to pack up their gear and prepare to leave Neusici Valley.

  Korinna found herself suddenly sad that they would have to leave. She knew once they got back to Fort Ropytos, their training would become more intense, with complex formation drills in the air and learning to handle their bows while astride. And though she was eager to find out how the war against Kyratia was going, she wanted this simple time with Sungold to go on for a little longer.

  She looked around at the camp that had become their home. There was the river where she bathed Sungold. There was the marsh full of cloudfruit trees, already putting their roots down to grow for another year. There was the track where they had trained together, and the hills that she was just getting used to seeing from the air on their practice flights.

  And Navera, the woman who had driven her hard through the last three months, saw the disappointment on Korinna’s face and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

  “I know you and your beast have made some good memories together while you were here.” For the first time, her voice was soft instead of the harsh bark of the drill sergeant. “Trust me, though, when I say that you have a lifetime of memories still to look forward to. You two will only grow closer.”

  Korinna looked up at Navera and smiled. “I appreciate your kindness.”

  Navera smiled back. “Even I have a heart. And I think that you may come to understand soon why I have to be hard. War isn’t easy for anyone, but the worst thing is letting you young warriors go into a battle knowing that some of you will die. And it will be my fault for not making sure that you were prepared.”

  She bit her lip at the thought. “I can’t imagine that. But I don’t think that you can protect us forever.”

  Navera sighed. “No. In normal circumstances, I would keep you as long as I could, and it would be a year or more before you saw your first fight. But the commander tells me it’s a point of pride that you want to be in the action when we attack the city.” She rolled her eyes. “On a head-strong two-year-old. You won’t be in the vanguard, but I can get you r
eady. You just have to be ready to listen to me, and to your commanding officer.”

  Korinna put her hand on top of Navera’s on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Thank you.”

  Later that afternoon, when it was cooling down, they secured their gear to the marewings and took to the skies. They would fly into the darkness of the Longest Night.

  38

  The Council IX

  Eutychon’s litter suddenly came to a halt in the middle of the street, although he hadn’t given an order for his servants to stop. He waited to see if they would rectify their mistake, but he remained unmoving. At last he raised his voice. “What is the meaning of this delay?”

  “Pardon, sir,” one man called back. “There is a—a parade on the road.”

  The Councilor paused to think of the date. The Longest Night had come and gone, and he could think of no other occasion for a parade, especially with the streets muddied from the beginning of the winter storms. He threw open the curtains and stuck his head out. “What do you mean, a parade?”

  The litter raised him above the heads of the crowd so he could see that all traffic had halted in the neighborhood. Farther down the road, he heard strains of music.

  He sighed and ordered his servants to set him down. He pulled himself out of the litter, wincing as the filthy streets squelched under his boots, and looked around for the nearest city guard. “You there!” he called, waving his hand. “What is going on? Who authorized a parade here?”

  The city guard recognized the Councilor’s badge of office and bowed. “Forgive me, sir, there is no authorization.” He shifted nervously. “The captain thought it better, in the interest of public safety, that we halt traffic to let—ah—the dancers through.”

  “What dancers?” Eutychon could hear the music clearly now, but he couldn’t see what was going on. “Clear the way. I want to see for myself.”