Spirit Gate

by Kate Elliott

  He wasn’t even sure who had fallen, only that the man wore Argent Hall colors. The flanking flights turned wide. The Clan Hall flights split with a remarkable display of coordination, some stooping while others climbed. It was impossible to surround them.

  Arrows sped through the air. Reeves shouted curses. A javelin whistled past below Horas’s feet, and he twisted in the harness, trying to see who had come so close, but his view was blocked. Someone had gotten behind him, out of his range.

  Down. Down. Above, two eagles passed close enough for reeves to jab with their staffs. Tumna labored, found a thermal, and caught it. Rising, Horas tried to grasp the sprawl of the skirmish. As more arrows and javelins were expended, the fight came to the raptors themselves. Their natural instinct to drive any other out of the territory they claimed for their own goaded them. Two eagles would close, and strike with their talons. Another would calculate its distance and dive, but because all possessed an uncanny ability to judge distance and velocity, only once did eagles collide in midair, and that to disaster, for both raptors tore each at the other, one reeve was sliced loose from his harness, and all plunged to earth.

  Tumna shifted abruptly, beating out of the thermal. Movement flickered in the corner of Horas’s eye.

  Talons appeared over the eagle’s right shoulder and raked Tumna’s side The strike tumbled them. Tumna dropped, and Horas’s stomach lurched as they fell. As he struggled with the high jesses, he saw Reeve Joss wheel above.

  “Call them off! We have a common enemy!”

  Tumna fought, coming around.

  “There you go. There you go!” Horas cried to the bird.

  With two great beats, the eagle regained control and pulled up far too close to the fatal ground. By the way she was bringing up her talons, Horas could tell she wanted to land, but that of all things the reeve could not permit. On the ground, they were no better than a crippled deer caught in the open when a hungry eagle passes overhead.

  An arrow spun end over end and splintered against a spine of rock. A Clan eagle circled toward an outcrop, with an arrow in its wing. Tumna had gained stability, and Horas took a shot as the other eagle fought to control its descent.

  He had a good aim, and the bird was moving slowly. His arrow pierced its neck, yet still the eagle maintained control as it broke momentum for the landing and found purchase on a knob of rock. The reeve unhooked and swung out with bow raised, a standing target.

  Too late Horas saw the danger: he was close, and the other reeve, a woman whose face was contorted with rage, drew calmly and fixed him in her sight. But the sun was behind him, and she squinted against it, and the arrow went wide. He pushed over the ridgeline and flew into the grasslands stretching south to the horizon. They skimmed low. Tumna was obviously in difficulty. Each shallow slope of hill was a mountain barely surmounted, talons brushing tips of grass. Shadows pulled long in hollows. At last, he eased Tumna down and they hit hard and he unhooked in a rush and came down, twisting his ankle. Pain made his eyes sting. The eagle flopped forward, lay there for an instant, then drew herself up, too proud to collapse.

  “Oh shit.” Horas searched in his travel pouch for ointment, but the damned fawkners had neglected to replenish his supply. Blood oozed from the wound. When he stepped forward to inspect it, Tumna slashed at him, and he leaped back, cursing.

  Shadows raced over the ground. The eagles had followed him, and he was out of arrows. Only, as the first landed on the far rise, did he recognize his own Argent Hall compatriot. Another five landed, and ten more. A second flight passed overhead, seeking shelter. They had followed him.

  The exhausted birds sank to earth as the sun set. There came Weda, the bitch, running to him with a cut on her face and her skin gray with fatigue.

  “What now?” she demanded. “Did you see how they were toying with us?”

  Tumna flared, feathers rising. She backed away.

  “Here, now. Here, now. What’s wrong with your eagle, Horas?”

  “Injured.” Strange how his voice had been scraped raw, although he’d uttered barely ten words since he started. “How do you mean, toying with us?”

  “They avoided us.”

  “Nah. That was just clumsiness, just like us. Reeves don’t fight reeves.”

  “They do now. What do we do now?”

  But it was pointless. Darkness was nearly upon them. She wanted him to make the decision, because if he did, then she could blame him later. It was always like that, his whole life. How he hated them all.

  The third flight, almost intact, skated overhead and came to rest in staggered lines as night spilled over the rolling plains and ate the pale wonder of grass and the fading splendor of the sky. The first stars bloomed. As the blindness of night overtook them, the restless, angry, agitated eagles settled, but Horas could not. The fear and fury would gnaw at him all night.

  To Weda, he said, “Nothing we can do now. We’ll stick it out here until dawn. Pass the message. We leave at first light.”

  “And then what? Keep fighting?”

  “No point to it. Neither of us can win. Best we go back and report that Clan Hall is sticking its nose in Olossi’s business. Let him figure it out. He’s marshal, isn’t he!”

  “That’s what you’re going to tell Marshal Yordenas?”

  “You that scared of him?”

  “You should be. You are.”

  “He doesn’t even have an eagle. He just says he does, but I think he’s been lying all along, pretending his eagle is at nesting all this while. I think his eagle is dead. I don’t think he’s a proper reeve at all.”

  “No reeve can survive the death of their eagle,” she said in an anxious whisper. As though Yordenas could hear them from this distance! “What do you mean to do? Challenge him? You saw what happened with Garrard. You saw it all, Horas.” Her stance, seen as a deeper shadow within the gathering night, was tense, defiant, and fearful. “He can’t be killed.”

  It was true. They’d all seen it.

  No person could survive such a wound. But Yordenas had.

  “Will you challenge him?” she repeated, but the sneering anger did not hide her terror.

  He wanted to cut her yapping mouth off with his knife, but he dared not. She was a bitch, but he had to remember she was one of his few allies. One of the few people who had shown him a measure of casual kindness. She and the rest of the gang of four had approached him, allowed him into their councils, given him a part to play when Marshal Alyon’s whimpering, weakling sycophants had made their final attempt to grab power.

  “I didn’t mean it,” he said. “I didn’t mean it, Weda. I’m mad, and Tumna’s hurt.”

  “No. No. Of course you didn’t mean it. We’re the marshal’s loyal reeves.”

  “As always. We’ll go back to Argent Hall in the morning. That’s the best thing we can do, like I said. Let him worry at it. Have you any ointment? I lost mine in the battle. Tumna took some scratches.”

  She handed over a small leather bottle of salve. Then she walked away to pass the word that they would overnight here in the grass and return to Argent Hall at daybreak. Night swallowed them all. The sky was staggering in its brilliance because there was no evening moon. All around he heard reeves speaking softly to their eagles, calming them after the battle. Reeves had fought reeves.

  There were three things you learned your first day in hall, the first day after an eagle had chosen you.

  First. If your eagle dies, you die, so tend your eagle well and care for the eagle before you care for yourself, because your life depends on it. If you die, your eagle can claim another reeve, so tend your eagle well and care for the eagle before you care for yourself, because the strength of the halls depends on it.

  Second. Serve justice. That is the whole of your duty.

  Third. A reeve always comes to the aid of another reeve. To do otherwise is to cut away the heart of the halls.

  Tumna refused to let him come near with hood and salve.

  He wept.<
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  49

  It was the second worst day of Joss’s life. Worse than the day he’d learned his mother had died. Worse than the day his baby brother had succumbed to a fever. Or perhaps the emotion of those days, suffered as a child, had worn thin until he didn’t truly remember the intensity of his tears.

  Today he’d done what needed doing, as awful as it was. Reeves relied on authority and mobility, and on the intimidating presence of the huge eagles who could kill any human and were not themselves easily killed. Reeves did not train as soldiers. Their charter forbade their use as enforcers for any council or captain who might wish to hire their services.

  Yet today’s skirmish was done, and could not be undone. Clan Hall’s flights pursued Argent Hall’s fleeing eagles into the grasslands, at a distance, then circled back to set down in the grass for the night. As afternoon faded to dusk, Joss left Volias in command with strict orders to keep watch but not engage, and the Snake, troubled and pallid, accepted the order without even a sarcastic reply.

  Kesta was grounded, her eagle badly hurt. The young reeve from Argent Hall, Pari, was dead together with his wonderful eagle. There were at least two more dead eagles as well as other wounded ones, and a pair of dead men from Argent Hall whom Joss could not name, sprawled on the ground while their eagles walked around them.

  All this Joss surveyed as Scar ascended on the currents and they turned toward Olossi. The river’s lazy curves were visible to the north. There lay the line that was the road. Far to the west gleamed the salt sea, while in the forested lands to the east the river plain rose slowly into the high country of Sohayil, a gradual change in elevation difficult to discern from the ground with the night coming on. They left the southern plateau behind and worked the currents over the escarpment, rising first, and then hitting a high glide perfectly judged by the exhausted Scar to bring them with minimal effort across the mey to Olossi.

  The voice of a bass bell rolled out from the walls, crying its alarm across the shimmering waters and the darkening land. All day villagers within sound of the bell had streamed into the city with what belongings they could carry. Stragglers still struggled along the main road, converging on the gates in panicked crowds. Dust floated in clouds; this time of year, there was no moisture or vegetation to hold it down.

  He flew low over the outer walls. From below rose the clamor of many folk talking all at once, a roaring similar to the battering of waves on a storm-swept beach. Folk swarmed the paths and streets and alleys like ants poked from their nest. Children cried. Women and men shouted demands and questions. A beggar’s chime tinkled faintly, then was overwhelmed. At the gate between outer town and upper town, the throng slowed, crawled, stopped.

  “Hurry! Hurry! Move on!” A man’s voice spiked above the cacophony. “We must get inside!”

  So many were desperate to push within the security of the inner walls that they had packed together in that open space before the gate until no one could move.

  The inner city rose before him as he passed the walls. Children shrieked, pointing at the eagle flying so close overhead. In the courtyard of Assizes Tower, torches had been lit along every wall and even set at intervals to light his way to the perch. As planned, Anji and his troop had reached the city before him.

  “Time for one last trick, my friend,” he said, and despite the twilight, and the crowds seething along the avenues, and the tolling of that damned bell, Scar negotiated the approach with ease and pulled up neatly to land on the perch in the courtyard of Assizes Tower.

  Here—thank Ilu!—the Qin company waited in tidy ranks while clots of Olossi guardsmen kept their distance. The Qin had their horses with them. It seemed they had just ridden in. The square was slightly sloped, and backed by steeper roads leading down to the gates, with the tower built to overlook that open space and beyond it over the walls to the roofs and fields of the lower city. It was not as good a vantage place as Fortune Square, from which you could see in all directions, but Assizes Tower faced the busy gates through which flowed and ebbed the lifeblood of the town. Although he could see little in this gloom, he felt the presence of many hundreds of people pressed into the streets and avenues branching off Assizes Square. They were crammed shoulder-to-shoulder, held out of the square by the presence of militia, yet all desperate for news.

  Joss hooded Scar swiftly and sprang up the steps to the porch that wrapped Assizes Hall. Behind, the old stone tower blocked part of the night sky.

  The doors were already open, revealing the timber hall whose far end abutted the old tower. An argument raged in the crowd of council members, guild members, and other notables.

  “You got us into this! What promises did you make them?”

  “We did nothing except for the good of the city!”

  “Liars! Fools!”

  “You Lesser Houses stymied us at every turn! You forced us into a desperate bargain!”

  “It was your greed that led you on! Now you would abandon the outer city! And I’m sure that is because your goods have all been moved into your compounds up here. What of those of us who have no place within the inner walls to save our goods and livestock?”

  “Yes, what of us?”

  “All must be saved! Everything!”

  A long table stood to the right, under five arched windows. At one end of the table was placed a single chair on which sat the beautiful Ox girl, Mai. She had an almost heavenly shine, a “moonlit calm” that drew the gaze. Captain Anji was bent over, speaking softly in her ear; when he paused, she replied, lips barely moving.

  Midway down the table sat the clerk Joss had flirted with mere days ago, although it seemed like years. Jonit. Chief Tuvi and the scout, Tohon, flanked her, and she marked with charcoal on rice paper according to their direction. A young Silver man with hair hidden beneath a fine silk turban and silver bracelets halfway up both forearms stood a few paces away, beneath the middle window. An older Silver man with a full set of bracelets glowered beside the younger, arms crossed as he studied by turns the yammering crowd and the bare-faced women.

  Anji straightened, and stepped away from Mai. He held a quirt in his left hand. He marked Joss, nodded, then raised the quirt and brought it down on the table so hard that the slap of its impact made everyone jump. And stop speaking.

  “Enough!” He fixed one last chatterer with a stare that shut the man up between one word and the next that never came. “Enough of this. What happened in the past, or even yesterday, does not matter today. How you sort out your grievances is your own business, to be argued over later. If you are alive to argue. I guarantee that if you continue to accuse each other now instead of making ready, then you will fall, and this city will fall, and your grievances will be dust and your children will be slaves.”

  Fear settled them. His voice held them.

  “Against an army, we cannot protect the outer city. Once we defeat them, you can rebuild, but you cannot rebuild if you are dead. And lest you think that we are outnumbered, then wonder no longer. It is true. This reeve will tell you what he saw, as he told us earlier.”

  Joss nodded, but Anji did not wait for him to speak.

  “Stout walls give us an advantage, if we can hold them. Captain Waras, what is your report? You already received tasks, which we discussed yesterday. Have they been carried out?”

  Waras stepped forward, his color high and his face bruised as from a hard blow to the side of the head. His lower lip was split and still oozing blood. “I passed out the word that all able bodied folk were to be divided between those who will labor to strengthen the walls and those who can bear arms and fight. But then the council began squabbling this morning about what that meant, and which men would not sully their hands with digging and who did not want their sons risking their lives with swords and spears. That quarreling has gone on all day.”

  “If none risk their lives, then I guarantee all will be dead, and my men and I long gone, safely escaped.”

  None spoke to answer him. They were already c
owed by their fear and their helplessness. So many faces stared at the captain, their expressions as stark as those of a dreamer woken from nightmare to discover it was not after all a dream.

  “We haven’t much time. Therefore, all who can labor must labor to strengthen the walls. Runners must race this night to the villages too far to hear the bell. The watch fire must be lit, if it has not been already. If you have a watch fire, as all wise folk should. Every person, male or female, who is able to bear arms will muster at dawn. Those who can reach the walls will shelter within, in every courtyard and house and alley. Those who cannot reach the walls must hide themselves as they are able in their own village and fields.”

  He paused to let these words sink in, but he did not cease thinking and communicating. He gave a signal to Chief Tuvi, who answered with a lift of a hand. He gestured to one of his guardsmen, who took a whispered message and strode out of the hall. He did not look at Mai.

  “Master Feden. Master Calon. Mistress Ulara. See that competent people are assigned to oversee these tasks. Best you do so promptly. Get the work begun this night.” As though stunned, they nodded. Anji beckoned to Joss. “What report do you bring us, Reeve Joss?”

  Jonit looked up, hearing his name, and down again so swiftly that Joss winced. She was sorry to see him, with an expression on her sweet face that suggested there’d be no satisfaction to be found in that quarter. Aui! That was certainly a trivial matter best let fly to the winds!

  He addressed the crowd. “A brief report. Reeve fought reeve this afternoon, a terrible thing brought about by the corruption that has eaten away at our land. Of that, I’ll say no more except to tell you that it is one of the three pillars of the eagle halls that ‘A reeve always comes to the aid of another reeve. To do otherwise is to cut away the heart of the halls.’ If a reeve cannot trust another reeve, then how can any of us be trusted? So be it. The shadows have been creeping over the Hundred for a long time, and now it seems they mean to overwhelm us.”

  “And the battle?” asked Anji mildly.