Traitors' Gate (76 page)

“Let her come with me,” said Nekkar.

The whip's snap laid open his cheek.

Fala screamed and stumbled away into the interior. The women who had been watching from within scattered like mice.

Nekkar let the blood drip as he hobbled away, his bad ankle wobbling, while the sergeant shouted angrily at his women
and his slaves and his attendants. No whip, no arrow, no spear followed the ostiary to the gate that opened into the courtyard in back, but the cursing, laughing guards refused to let him in to check on the lads imprisoned in the pens.

With such dignity as he could gather, he set off on his usual resting day round, only today he had to tell each compound expecting a rations chit that today there would be nothing and that he did not know when the next rations chits would be available. He did not tell them that the sergeant was hoarding all the provisions and handing them out to a few select merchants to sell at inflated prices.

Folk certainly saw his bleeding cheek and marked the whip's slash, but none asked. He was glad of that, because had they asked he would have to tell them the truth: He was whipped because he could not spare a young woman from abuse, a grandfather from starving, young men from being enslaved to the army or cleansed on the post, rice and nai from being stolen, children from dying in the brickyards.

He walked his round as always. Today, empty-handed.

He returned before the curfew to the temple, and Vassa cleaned the dried blood off the cut but did not ask him how he had come by it. He counted his people, and on this evening every single one came home, all except Kellas. He led the dusk prayers, then sat on his porch as the night bell tolled.

“What humiliations is Fala enduring?” he asked Vassa, who sat cross-legged beside him shaping a basket with her cunning hands. She needed no light to do this work, having woven all her life. If she did not keep her hands busy, she often said, she would go crazy. “Will Grandfather's spirit pass the gate tonight? What will happen to those sent south?”

“They have come to love cruelty because it feeds them,” she said.

“Must I ask one of mine to go to the barracks and offer herself in place of Fala?”

Her handwork did not cease. “What makes you think they will honor the bargain? They may just take the other one as well, and then two will suffer.”

“That is a story we tell ourselves. So we can sit here, and eat what we have, and listen to our young ones sleep at peace. Yet if we opened our ears, we would hear nothing but weeping.”

“True, but it doesn't change the truth of what I say,” said Vassa. “When people see you in the street, they discover their hearts are still strong. Thus they can endure another day.”

Another day. Even another month. For how long before they succumbed to despair and obeyed while telling themselves it was for the best? Yet to voice such thoughts aloud was to start down that terrible path, so he kept silence.

C
URSED ROCKS
.

Nallo could not imagine a more idiotic training regimen, yet here she was flying sweeps with her new wing hauling a cursed basket of cursed rocks, each rock about the size of her fist. Poor Tumna took most of the strain, although the motion of banking or rising caused the basket to bump so heavily against Nallo's legs she was sure she'd end up mottled with bruises.

As if hauling a gods-rotted basket of rocks to lob at miscreants would do any good.

They flew out in wings of six: From her position she could see Warri and his eagle Dogkiller out on the right flank of the wing. She was next, flying at slightly higher elevation, and inside of her but lower flew Pil with Sweet in the second striker position. First striker, and head of the wing, was Peddonon with Jabi, flying yet lower beyond and in front of Pil. The third striker and left flank were Kanness with Lovely—a worse-tempered raptor than Tumna—and Orya with lazy Candle. The eagles tolerated each other—they had to, or no reeve hall could function—but Peddonon had had to try several different formations with the eighteen reeves left to him at Law Rock in order to send out wings whose eagles wouldn't take territorial swipes at one another. Even so, Tumna was cursed suspicious of Candle, enough that Nallo felt a tug whenever the raptor looked that way.

They had taken off from Law Rock midmorning and pushed south, practicing maneuvers and resting between times on powerful high thermals. That the land should look so peaceful astonished her. With the sun shining above, the river flowed like a spill of light away to their right. The variegated colors of the dry season gave the landscape an intense texture: fields stubbled with gold stalks not yet turned under; ponds fringed with a wrack of withered weeds and cracked dry soil where the waters had retreated; orchards and woodland seeping green. Dusty irrigation ditches and empty paths and minor roads netted the land, seeming almost to have some deeper pattern when seen from on high.

A whistle caught her ear. Pil was flagging with an orange cloth:
Alert! Follow close!
She tugged on the jesses, and Tumna, sighting an object on the ground, followed Sweet and Jabi. Nallo grabbed her own orange flag on its stick, thumping a knee against the basket while she was at it. Eihi! Pain throbbed, a lump blossoming beneath the skin.

This new formation was total rubbish, a cursed stupid plan.

Pil flagged with the orange and white stripe that meant:
Attack!

The hells!

Tumna dropped, wings outstretched, and they sailed over woodland broken with clearings, unturned fields, and distant villages in the midst of rings of cultivated land. When she saw what Peddonon was aiming for, her heart seemed to rise up into her throat so she could not breathe. A heavily loaded cart pulled by two dray beasts was being coaxed across the ford of a substantial stream, a tributary river that wound toward the River Istri, now out of sight to the west. The dray beasts had decided they would rather wallow in the water, because they were trying to pull off the gravel bar that sliced partway across the ford and on into deeper waters where they could relax. One soldier was whipping the dray master; two others were whipping the animals. Another pointed at the eagles, alerting his fellows. There were too many to attack, twenty at least.

Yet Peddonon cut low, Kanness approaching from behind. Pil climbed, circling back.

Were they really going to try to hit this cadre?

Peddonon swooped over the ford as the dray beasts took advantage of the soldiers' distraction to pull hard for the wallow. The wagon began to slide off the gravel bar.

Peddonon upended his basket. Two arrows flashed upward through the hail of stones. Unlike the rocks, the spent arrows fell harmlessly back to earth.

Splashes, shouts, and the panicked blundering bellows of the dray beasts marked the impact of the first volley. Kanness came right behind, dumping his basket. A stone struck a dray beast right on the head, and the animal staggered violently, snapping its yokes as it collapsed to its knees. The cart yawed, tipped, teetered; the ox toppled, and the second, still bellowing, thrashed to try to break free and keep its head above as the cart tumbled over and into the deeper water.

Nallo had overshot. She tugged so hard on the jesses that Tumna objected with an outraged chuff, but the raptor had her hunting blood up; she banked sharply, returning for the kill.

The dray master was chest deep in water, trying to free the beasts. One soldier floated facedown in the water as Orya's basket, cut loose, spun earthward in the wake of a spent volley of rocks. Another man fled toward the far shore, his bow arm dangling limply, his weapon lost as he tried to drag his sword free with the other.

A group of captives cowered on the road, roped together, unable to move. The soldiers bolted back the way they had come, heading for the safety of a copse several hundred paces away. Nallo released her basket, but she had cursed totally misjudged their speed and her angle and distance and the entire gods-rotted pummel of stones rained uselessly on dirt.

They tucked their heads and kept sprinting. None saw Pil and Sweet stooping from above, or Peddonon and Kanness coming in at an angle.

Sweet struck with such breathtaking precision that Nallo shouted. The talons gripped, plunging right into a man's torso as he screamed. Then the raptor, beating its wings, rose; none of the soldiers even attempted an attack. They were too
stunned. Pil, turning in his harness, released first one arrow, then another, and a third and fourth in quick succession as Sweet rose. Two arrows hit their mark. Sweet released her prey.

Kanness's Lovely struck, talons raised and wings battering, as if she was taking a deer. The men scattered, one uselessly flinging a spear in the direction of the eagle's tail feathers. Peddonon slammed a javelin into the back of the bold spearman as Jabi grazed another man, missing the strike and pulling up hard as Peddonon released his grip on his javelin. One soldier had the presence of mind to nock an arrow to his bow.

Nallo had overshot again. She passed over the ford. The captives struggled at their bonds, and the dray master out in the current had grabbed a dead man's sword and cut free one beast. He was now diving in and out of the tangle to try to save the other while the prisoners shouted at him to come cut them loose instead while they still had a chance to run.

Warri and Orya remained aloft, and that cursed idiot Warri hadn't even released his stones, which when you thought about it described him very well.

The hells!

Two soldiers ran up a path on the far side of the ford. Seeing her, they scrambled for the nearest bushes, any scant cover that might protect them.

She felt Tumna's attention like a burst of fire in her own body, a powerful spear of hunting hunger. Eihi! She hadn't cut the basket free; the cursed thing was in her way, but Tumna was already diving. She grabbed one of the four thin javelins stowed in a quiver to her right; no time to fumble for a knife and cut the basket loose.

How did she ever get to be such a gods-rotted slack-minded lackwit?

One man dove sideways into a crackling mass of thorn-berry.

Tumna struck the other.

Her wings flared; she thumped down so hard that Nallo
pitched sideways and slammed into the raptor's body, then stubbed her foot on the hard dirt, but Tumna's powerful talons pinned them—and the soldier—to the earth. He twitched. He didn't yet know he was dead. He croaked, struggling to get free, and Nallo plunged her javelin into his back, right where she thought the heart must be. He sagged and went slack.

A howl. A roar. Behind her, the other soldier attacked.

In the instant, she thought:
He'll kill me from behind. How do I fight?

All her lessons and training scattered like dross.

Tumna was faster than either of them.

She struck in one movement, piercing the man through the chest as Nallo drew up her legs and dangled in the harness watching a man die an arm's length from her face. He looked like a rabbit caught out in the field, too stunned to understand what was happening. His mouth opened and shut as if he had forgotten what he meant to say. Bubbles of blood beaded at his nostrils, sucked in and out. She grabbed her knife, unhooked the harness, and dropped into a crouch beside him. His gaze did not follow her movement, but Tumna squawked irritably.

“Hush!” Nallo snapped. “Do what you want with him.”

She ducked out from under the raptor's wings and circled around to the other man, who amazingly was not yet dead. Somehow, he was trying to pull himself up the path. She got a foot under his body and shoved him over. She bent, grasped his chin, and held it back to get a full curve. Then she cut deep to sever the windpipe, the foodpipe, and the blood vessels in one strong stroke, as she'd learned to do growing up among goat herders in the Soha Hills.

Battle wasn't much different from slaughtering goats, when you thought of it that way. You killed when you had to, not for any joy you took in it.

Tumna shook the other man loose. She bent her head and nudged him.

“Heya!” shouted Nallo.

By now the cursed basket was half crushed. She cut the gods-rotted thing free, wiped her knife's blade such as she could in
two swipes on the weaving, then shoved the blade back in its sheath. Pulling her reeve's baton, she approached Tumna brandishing it as the training regimen had taught her, as if anyone believed eagles actually feared the little stick of a baton that the reeves used to “train” and “control” the huge raptors. Tumna, anyway, was perfectly able and willing to rip off the head of her reeve, if her reeve annoyed her. But Nallo had been told time and again that it were better for a reeve to sacrifice herself than to allow her eagle to feast on human flesh.

Yet Tumna was only playing; she wasn't hungry, or inclined to eat; she rolled the body around and gave up, impatient with the corpse's lack of activity. It was only fun when they tried to escape.

“Aui!” muttered Nallo, hot and cold at once.

She heard folk calling, “Cut us loose, you gods-rotted—”

A dray beast bellowed. A man cursed.

She would have run down to slap some order into them, but Peddonnon had been clear in his instructions: Do not stay on the ground.

Flight gave the reeves their advantage; on the ground, they were easy to kill.

She whistled, and Tumna stretched her wings, looking around as if hoping for more entertaining hunting. Nallo ducked under the shadow of her wingspan and hooked in.

“Up!”

Up.

The eagle's majestic strength carried her. The unbelievable sight of the skirmish unfolded beneath her: the dray master had finally gotten both animals out of the water and was helping the captives free themselves. Some had plunged into the water to recover weapons or gear; trails of red spun out in the water, marking dead soldiers in the current. Three women were coming up the path in Nallo's direction, and Nallo gestured to them, waving an arm to indicate where they should look for the fallen.