by Peter Harris
Quickblade toiled on for an hour or more, heedless of the steepness of the way, immersed in happy day-dreams which for once included a Girl. Finally, when he was high up in the hills he stopped for a rest under an overhanging rock, safe from prying eyes. He remembered the amber-bat, and wrote a note to attach to its tiny leg:
The Shelley is not coming. I am. Hold the fort. We must break through!
You-know-who
He rolled the message up tightly and put it in the tiny pouch under the bat’s chest. Then he fed the tiny creature some honey for energy, and released it. After circling overhead for a few seconds, squeaking almost inaudibly, it flitted off towards Thorngate and the bat-hive.
But as it passed beneath the Mountains of Terror, a falcon swooped upon it, and clutching it in its talons carried it, squeaking piteously, high up into the Tor Enyása, where the dark falconer Hithemíth took delivery of the bat and read the message by the dim light of his blood-amber lamp hanging in his tightly-woven thorn-alcove. His thin, wrinkled face puckered. He contacted the Master himself through the Dreamweb; this was an urgent matter. ‘I hear and obey, Your Emptiness,’ croaked Hithemíth in his high-pitched, hawkish voice. Then he wrote a lying evil note to the Boy Raiders on a piece of thornbird skin in blood-amber ink:
Praise to the Void!
Your leader is lost. Surrender now, and you will have safe passage back to your own lands. Otherwise, death and torture await you.
For Rakmad, ruler of Aeden.
He placed the new message in the pouch and released the terrified bat.
The Boy Raiders were elated when Quickblade’s amber-bat flew in that night, but when they read it they cursed and stamped. And many began to say, ‘It’s hopeless now Quickblade’s dead! We should pack up while we still can, and go home.’
Willhard rebuked them, saying, ‘We don’t know if he’s really dead yet. It could be a trick. At least wait another day!’