Cry of the Falcon (Falcons Saga Book 4)

by Court Ellyn

  “I’ll show you my fists,” Drys grumbled but started off down the street.

  The rest dispersed through town. Laral saw the horses to the livery and nearly choked at the price of a bag of oats. “Granaries are running low,” said the hostler, “and our supplier was burnt out.” Laral might’ve believed him had the man not been glaring at the sigil on his surcoat.

  “You wouldn’t be trying to fleece me because I’m Fieran, would you?”

  “As to that, you’re lucky I don’t run you from my stable altogether, but times being what they are, I reckon I’d rather sell my oats to a Fieran than let the ogres have it. Pay up or get out.”

  Laral flipped the gold piece onto the counter and stalked out with his oats.

  “And may your nags get the colic!” the hostler shouted after him.

  With the burlap bag flung over his shoulder, he weaved through refugees crowding the town square. Someone hailed him by name. Tarsyn had claimed a piece of shade under an andyr tree surely as old as the town itself. Shelters for the refugees crowded beneath most of the other trees. The place reeked of standing sewage, but camps usually did. Tarsyn had stacked his purchases among the knotted roots and guarded them with a hand on the hilt of his rapier. He looked every bit the arrogant lordling, and it was serving him well. The commoners steered wide of him and tugged their forelocks. Laral frowned at his stash: a slab of salt pork wrapped in waxed paper, a tin of hard biscuits and two pouches of dried apples. Dropping the bag of oats beside them, Laral asked, “That’s it? For four of us?”

  Tarsyn glanced at the supplies, confused while he sorted out the cause of Laral’s displeasure. Then he puffed up, as prickly as Drys. “I traded my marmalade and my silk shirt for this, thank you very much. That’s all those misers would give me.”

  “You didn’t bring any coin?”

  “I didn’t think I’d need it. My plan was to be your guest at Brengarra.”

  “Laral, it’s fine,” Kalla said. She walked up behind them, her arms stacked with thick wool blankets. The mountains were bound to be cold, even this late in spring.

  “Do either of you realize that this may be the last town we encounter for … Goddess knows how long?” Laral tugged the coin pouch from his belt and tossed it. Tarsyn caught it against his chest. “Go back. Buy at least three times that much. No fancy stuff. No wine, no sweets, just trail food.”

  Tarsyn’s shoulders slumped and his jaw clenched, but he struck off across the square.

  “You could admit you like him and go easy on him,” Kalla said, laying the blankets atop the bag of oats.

  “Why? To give him false hope?”

  “Is there no way he can prove himself to you?”

  “Proving himself doesn’t matter one whit.”

  “Hnh, you’re Lander’s son, all right.” She about-faced with a flash of red hair and beat a path for the nearest tavern.

  Once Laral was satisfied with their purchases, he and Tarsyn lugged them to the tavern and found Kalla reserving a small table for them. The common room was crowded to the bursting point. A fire crackled in the hearth, and the hot air smelled of sweat. Conversation hinted that most of the patrons had been burned out of their homes. The rooms upstairs were full, the stew was getting a bit watered down, but the bread was piping hot and flecked with herbs. A sweaty barmaid brought round a tray and clapped three mugs onto their table. “Three bits.”

  Laral smelled the ale. He suspected it, too, was watered down, and the mugs were warm to the touch. “Is this the last of it?” he asked.

  “With this crowd, the master’s opening the common barrels. They don’t mind, why should you?”

  Laral laced his hands on the table and smiled up at her. “Because I might die tomorrow, and I’d like something fine. Bring your master’s best.”

  She huffed. “Only if you’ve got the coin.”

  Laral pressed a stack of silver into her palm. She swept up the thin ale and scurried off.

  “I’m surprised at you,” Kalla said, smiling. “You sound as if the end is upon us.”

  He looked at her a long time and watched her smile slip away by degrees. Tarsyn watched the exchange in taut silence. At last Laral said, “We’ll be heading into the mountains tomorrow. That’s ogre territory. They’re invaders down here, but up there they’re right at home. Once we leave Locmar, I don’t expect we’ll see another friendly face.”

  “But dwarves live there, too.”

  “And according to Thorn, the dwarves and ogres have been at war for twenty years. The dwarves were unable to hold them back. They’ve been annihilated, or they’ve secured themselves deep inside the mountains. What good will they do us?”

  Kalla opened her mouth, but her argument died before it formed.

  The barmaid returned with three frosted mugs and three bottles of an amber beer. It smelled of figs and was spiced with clove. Aye, it would serve.

  Laral’s mug was nearly empty when he glanced up and saw Drys clearing a path with his stocky shoulders.

  “Sods, the lot of ya!” he declared angrily. “I’m up there kissing arse—and kicking it—and you’re down here guzzling ale.”

  Kalla raised a coppery eyebrow. “Ladies don’t ‘guzzle’.”

  Drys shook himself as if he’d climbed out of a slime-filled cesspool, swept up a chair as soon as someone stood, and plopped down next to Tarsyn. He claimed Laral’s mug, seemingly in reparation for his distasteful errand. “I remember why I stopped accepting Lord Locmar’s invitations to socialize. Of all the pompous bastards in the world, Lord Henrel is the … pompiest.” He glanced around the common room to see if anyone wanted to take issue with his assessment of their lord. “Why in hell did King Rhorek give Locmar to him? What’s-His-Name wasn’t half that irritating. I even liked him. Damn, what was his name? The one who died at Nathrachan, the one with the crazy ghost for a wife.”

  Laral raised a finger, summoning the barmaid and another mug. “You forget. Lady Bysana killed herself well after Athlem died.”

  “Athlem, that’s right.” Drys guzzled.

  “And the current Locmar is his nearest cousin or something, hell, I don’t remember,” added Laral. “But you convinced him?”

  Drys wiped his mouth with his sleeve, made a face. “What the hell am I drinking? It’s disgusting.”

  “Beer from Heret,” Tarsyn explained, affronted. “It’s exotic.”

  “And expensive,” Kalla tossed in.

  “Well?” prompted Laral.

  “Well, I shook Locmar up a little. Don’t know what good it did. Pompous and cowardly. He’s the kind who deserves to be tossed on the front line, center charge.”

  Laral chuckled darkly at that.

  By the time they filled their bellies with the first hot meal they’d had in days, the sun was setting. All three inns were full; the loft in the livery, too, and Laral refused to pay the hostler another copper. “We could always impose ourselves on Lord Locmar,” Kalla suggested, a hopeful gleam in her eye.

  “No!” cried Drys. “I prefer cold, hard ground to that jackass’s company.”

  “But feather beds and hot baths,” Kalla pleaded.

  “A bath would be nice,” Tarsyn hinted.

  Drys gestured wildly. “There’s the lake. Or pick a river!”

  In the end, it was Laral’s longing to find his family that won out over mattresses and soap. “Cold hard ground it is, then.” By the time they crossed the Ristbrooke and rode onto Fieran soil again, only twilight remained. The highway wound up, up into rugged foothills. Ahead, the horizon reared into the sky. Wooded slopes gave way to snow-patched peaks and impossible cliffs. “There’s no way Andy could climb all that,” Laral said and immediately regretted it.

  When Andryn was barely old enough to run steadily and string two words together, it became clear that he lacked breath and stamina. “His heart is small,” the doctor said.

  In a fit that surprised him even then, Laral had struck the poor man. “No, you’re wrong!” But the king�
��s physicians, the best in the land, had examined Andy, too. They confirmed the doctor’s prognosis. “Unless the boy is extremely careful and exceptionally blessed, do not expect him to see manhood.”

  Riding beside him, Kalla put a hand on his arm. “He has his mother and sister to help him.”

  Laral nodded to appease her, all the while thinking, And if he doesn’t?

  Nightfall brought them to a burnt-out logging village and the end of the highway. In the lee of a collapsing mill, Drys slept soundly. Tarsyn and Kalla paced on the edge of camp, as high-strung as cats, remembering Laral’s predictions in the tavern. Even after they handed off the watch to Drys, rest evaded them. Laral lay wide-eyed under the new heavy blanket, his hand aching, so hard did it clutch the haft of his sword. He glimpsed Kalla blinking up through pine boughs, and Tarsyn stirred at every scuffle of leaves and snap of twigs, real or imagined.

  They started out again well before dawn. Thyrra had risen by then. She lit the way with a smile broad enough to count her teeth. Narrow, ill-kept logging roads followed the path of the Ristbrooke. White water roared in a deepening gorge. Laral couldn’t say when the sun rose, for they rode in the shadow of the mountains now. He only knew that the sky turned from black to gray to blue.

  Drys, scouting ahead, reported a confluence of waters and a bridge. “Dwarf-made, by the look of it. Though I don’t relish the idea of crossing it.”

  When they came upon it, Laral saw why. Cliffs plunged down on their left; at the bottom, the Ristbrooke was a rumpled white ribbon. A tributary flowed into it. Where the rivers met, thunder churned. The bridge, a massive thing of steel and stone, crossed the lesser river. Arches marched along its length, and between them loomed heroes in gray granite, each wielding a hammer whose broad heads were the size of horses. “Is it guarded?” asked Laral.

  “Shimmer-free,” Drys said, holding up his hand as if to take an oath on it. “I think this is the Mist River,” he added as they ventured onto the bridge. “Or maybe the Fox. In truth, I have no idea where we are.”

  “I do,” said Tarsyn. Amid the bridge he pointed across the gorge of the Ristbrooke. Through a V between cliffs the roofs of Locmar stretched out in mockery of their arduous ride.

  Kalla groaned, “Have we come only that far?”

  On the far end of the bridge, a flagged road continued to follow the Ristbrooke northward. The dwarves had built it broad and level, likely to ship ore or deploy troops quickly. The trail of bones and discarded clothing, however, led them east, upon a path of pressed earth and exposed rock. It cut back and forth across the shoulder of a mountain, and on its right-hand side, the Mist River gorge echoed with the voice of water.

  The horses puffed and sweated and tripped. It was safer to lead them than ride. After a couple miles of trudging up another switchback, Laral’s lowland legs complained loudly. His lungs screamed and his throat burned.

  “Ah, Mother spare me!” Drys cried, sinking onto a boulder, gasping. “This accursed mountain means to kill me. Let’s stop a while, eh?”

  “No!” Laral nudged Drys’s horse aside and took the lead. So close. They could be so close. He would have led his companions throughout the night if the sky had remained clear. But clouds scraped the peaks, and by late afternoon sleet pelted them, soaking them to the skin and turning the path into a treacherous, sticky yellow mess.

  They found a recess in the crags and hunkered inside their blankets for the night. “Glad I kept my coat,” Tarsyn said, ever the optimist.

  The next morning, the trail curved around the mountain’s shoulder, and at last, the haze from Locmar’s chimneys receded from sight. A green valley opened up below them, though it took them half a day to traverse the switchback down into it. Across the gulf, the Middle Ranges stretched out in an endless panorama. The chain of teeth sawed at the sky and passed out of sight to the north and south. Higher peaks still towered beyond them, as white and lofty as the Goddess’s underskirts.

  Only Tarsyn’s knees were young enough to handle the jarring descent with little complaint. Once they reached the valley floor, Laral stopped for his companions’ sake. A bright, singing stream meandered through lush grass and nodding flaxenmane. A pair of falcons screeched and grappled overhead. White columns of aspen trees lined the trail, forming a vault of shimmering green light. The valley was ideal but for the firepits and mounds of bones.

  As horrible as the bones were, the lack of them would be worse. A gruesome truth, Laral thought as he led his horse to the stream. Yet he couldn’t take it back. If the bones stopped, the last of the prisoners was dead and his search became pointless.

  Tarsyn doled out hard biscuits and dried apples. Kalla filled the waterskin in the stream, then passed it around. Drys paid her no mind; he laid on his belly and drank from the stream beside his horse.

  Though Laral’s legs were as wobbly as boiled celery, he was soon fidgeting, restless. Time to move on. He tried to mount up twice and failed twice. Boiled celery, it seemed, was no good at stepping into a stirrup. “Tarsyn, for the Mother’s sake, give an old man a hand?”

  The youth chuckled, laced his hands, and gave Laral’s foot a boost. “You’re not old, m’ lord.”

  “Don’t butter me up. It only makes me feel older.”

  Tarsyn helped Kalla, too, but Drys waved him away and unfurled a rope ladder that was tied below his saddle. At that, Tarsyn’s laughter bounced between mountain peaks. Drys replied with an obscene gesture that only made Tarsyn laugh harder and swipe at his eyes. And so it was terribly satisfying when the youth had trouble mounting up as well. Groaning, Tarsyn said, “Remind me why I’ll never vacation in the mountains.”

  All too soon they had ridden past the cold firepits and discarded bones. They no longer bothered looking for clothing they recognized. As long as there were people to be rescued, it didn’t matter whose mothers and sisters and sons they were, they must be found.

  At the far end of the valley, the trail climbed into a thick cloak of spruce, dark with indigo shadow. “Drys?” Laral prompted, nudging him to take point. At the same moment, the shadows lurched. A spruce quivered. A snow elk leapt into the sunlight. Tufts of white hair clung to her reddish hide after her spring molting. She loped straight toward the startled humans, terror ripe in her liquid eyes. She was nearly upon them before she caught their scent, sprang to the left and darted into the aspens.

  “Aye, that was a rare treat,” Tarsyn said, watching her go.

  Laral searched the shadows from where she’d come. “No, something spooked her. Shimmers?”

  “I can’t tell,” Drys whined. “It’s too dark under those trees.”

  The horses heard what Drys couldn’t see. Their ears swiveled toward the spruce forest. Something was coming.

  Laral dismounted and led his companions off the trail and deep into the aspens. Among tall ferns, they pulled their horses to the ground and lay across their necks, then peered through the fronds and bone-white trunks. Laral realized he was holding his breath.

  Branches rustled. A canine yipped. A voice like boulders bouncing down a hillside barked an order. Two ogres emerged from the trees. One was nearly half the size of the other, almost slender. The larger brute wore a wolf’s head for a helm and clenched onto a chain. A wolf strained against it, tugging its master from the shadows and into the valley.

  “What is that?” Tarsyn whispered, voice taut with terror. That’s right, he hadn’t seen his enemy until now.

  “That’s what will eat us if they catch us,” Drys replied.

  “Shut up,” Laral hissed.

  The wolf sniffed the air, the ground, and led the ogres along the path. The slender one pointed at the elk’s tracks in the soft earth. Don’t breathe, just a little longer, Laral told himself, praying the horses made no sound, no sudden movement. The wolf came to the spot where the humans had left the trail and circled, confused. Its master snarled, baring long scarred tusks.

  The slender one cried out in a guttural language, pointing excitedly. Horse
shoe tracks. He must’ve seen horseshoe tracks. The wolf-master wildly searched the surrounding trees.

  At the same time the wolf raised its head, and its yellow eyes met Laral’s. “Shit,” he muttered and reached for the pommel of his sword.

  “How do we fight those things?” Tarsyn cried, caring little for camouflage.

  Laral gathered his knees under him, ready to spring to his feet. “You don’t. Hold the horses.”

  The wolf lunged against the chain, nearly strangling itself. Its master clicked the latch. The animal sprinted into the trees, muzzle retracted in a snarl, ears pinned back. Laral leapt from the ferns. His horse lurched up from the ground in a panic at the smell of wolf. Drys and Kalla followed, baring blades as they scrambled away from their horses and out of the wolf’s path. Laral poised his sword, the wolf sprang, and for an instant he saw straight down the animal’s throat.

  Tarsyn dived upon it. He and the wolf rolled into the ferns. The wolf rebounded quicker and pounced. It found a mouthful of flesh, shook its head, tearing and snarling. Tarsyn cried out, and for the love of the Mother, he sounded like Leshan before the blood filled his throat and drowned him. Laral kicked the wolf in the ribs, sent it rolling, reached for Tarsyn, but only his forearm was bloodied. His good arm freed the rapier faster than Laral could blink. As the wolf lunged for another bite, it impaled itself on the skinny blade.

  The wolf-master howled, enraged, and charged. He whirled his pet’s chain over his head and lashed it toward Drys. The slender ogre had bared a stone hatchet and circled wide to flank Kalla. Drys intercepted the chain on the tip of his sword. The links pivoted around the blade and struck him in the chin. The ogre tugged, yanking the sword from Drys’s grasp.

  Kalla shrieked a war cry and dived into a furious assault. The smaller ogre had no training, that was clear, for he sprang away, red eyes wide, and dropped the axe. He shouted a word and vanished.

  The chain-wielding brute repeated the word. Kalla looked around in alarm, having no idea where to point her sword, but Drys sprang forward emptyhanded. “I see you!” he bellowed. “Slimy bastards, I see you!”