Darkwind released his link with Vree, and his hold on the trunk at the same time, running along the flat branch and using his tool as a balance-aid, and leaping to the next tree limb a heartbeat later. In his first days with Vree it had taken him a long time to recover from a linkand some never did, especially the first time. Caught up in the intoxication of the flight and the kill, they never detached themselves. And unless someone else discovered them, they could be lost forever that way-their bodies lying in a kind of coma, while their minds slowly merged with that of the bird, diminishing as they merged, until there was nothing left of what they were.
That had never happened in Darkwind's lifetime by accident, although there had been one scout, when he was a child, who had a lightning-struck tree crush him beneath its trunk. He had been far from a Healer, and had deliberately merged himself with his bird, never to return to the crippled and dying wreck of his body. He remained with k'sheyna within his bird's mind, slowly fading, until at last the bird vanished one day, never to return.
Slower death, but death all the same. Darkwind thought pragmatically, climbing a pine trunk by hooking the stub of a broken branch above him to ascend to a crossover branch. He preferred to avoid such a nonchoice altogether.
He slowed as he neared the strangers, and dropped to all fours, stalking like a slim tree-cat along the branch and taking care not to rustle the leaves. Not that it would have mattered to the intruders, who called to each other and laughed as if they had no idea that they were being observed, or that they were in forbidden territory.
His jaw tightened. they are about to find out differently. And they're damned lucky that it's me who found them. there are plenty of others-including Father-who would feather them with arrows or make ashes of them without waiting to find out if they're ignorant, stupid, or true hostiles. Not that they'll ever know enough to appreciate the difference, since I'm going to throw them out.
There were seven of them, however, and only one of him, and he had not survived this long as a scout by being incautious. First he called to Vree, for his Mindspeech was not strong enough to reach to the two nearest scouts.
"Call alert," he said shortly. Vree knew what that meant. He'd contact the birds of the two scouts nearest, and they, in turn, would summon their bondmates. If Darkwind didn't need their help, he would let them know through Vree, and they would turn back. But if he did need them, they were already on the way.
He followed the intruders for several furlongs as they blundered along the game trail, their clumsiness frightening all the creatures within a league of them into frozen silence, leaving behind them a visible trail in the scuffed vegetation, and an invisible one in the resinous tang of crushed pine needles and their own human scent. Two of the men bore no visible weapons; the rest were armed and armored.
Vree's scorn, as sour and acidic as an unripe berry, tempted him to laughter. "Cubs," the bird sent, unprompted, images of bumbling young bears and tanglefooted wolf pups.
Well, this was getting him nowhere. Nothing that the intruders had said or done gave him any idea of their intent. With a sigh, he decided that there was no choice in the matter. He was going to have to confront them.
Decision made, he worked his way up ahead of them, climbed down out of the branches, restored his climbing-tool to his back, limbered his bow, and waited for them to catch up to him.
They practically blundered into him; the one in the lead saw him first; an ordinary enough fellow, his brown leather armor marking him as a fighter rather than a forester. He shouted in surprise and quite literally jumped, even though Darkwind had not moved. Of course, Darkwind's own intricately dyed scouting gear and hair dyed a mottled brown made a near-perfect camouflage, but he wasn't that invisible.
Citymen, Darkwind groaned to himself. I ought to just let the ice-drakes do my job for me...Except that there were no ice-drakes in k'sheyna territory, nor anything else large and deadly enough to eliminate them. Except the gryphons or the firebirds-but that might well be what brought them here in the first place. Darkwind did not intend to have either his friends or his charges wind up as some fool hunter's trophies.
Instinctively, they closed ranks against him. He spoke before the strangers recovered from their startlement; using the trade-tongue that the Shin'a'in favored in their dealings with Outlanders. "You are trespassing on k'sheyna lands," he said, curtly. A bluff, but I doubt they'll know how thin we're spread. And let them wonder if they'd have been taken by Tayledras, or something else. "You must leave the way you came.
Now." They certainly couldn't miss the bow in his hands, his hooked climbing-staff on his back, or the steely menace in his voice. One of them started to object; the man next to him hushed him quickly. The fellow in the lead narrowed his eyes and frowned, looking him up and down as if measuring him.
"There's only one," the objector whispered, obviously unaware of how keen Tayledras hearing was; his silencer cut him off with "Only one we can see, you fool. Let me handle this." The man stepped forward, moving up beside Leather Armor. "Your pardon, my lord," he said, with false geniality. "We didn't know, how could we? There are no signposts, no border guards-"
"Tayledras have no need of signs," Darkwind interrupted coldly.
"And I am a guard. I am telling you to leave. Your lives will be at hazard, else." Did that sound as stupid as I think it did? Or did I convince them they don't dare chance M I may not be as f~bk as I'm pretending to be?
"I shall not permit you to pass," he warned, as they continued to
hesitate.
The Objector plucked at Speaker's sleeve; Leather Armor frowned and turned his head to listen to the others' whispered conference without taking his eyes off Darkwind. This time they spoke too softly even for him to hear, and when they turned back to face him, Speaker wore a broad, bright-and empty-smile.
Damn. they've seen through me. I look like a lad, and I didn't feather one of them before I stopped them. My mistake.
"Of course we'll leave, my lord," he said with hollow good humor.
"And we're very sorry to have trespassed." Darkwind said nothing. Speaker waited for a response, got none, and shrugged.
"Very well, then, gentlemen," he said and gestured back down the path. "Shall we?" They turned, as if to go-I've seen this before. They somehow know-or guess only one of me right now. They think they're going to catch me off-guard. Idiots. He alerted Vree with a touch, dropped, and rolled into the brush at the side of the trail They were making so much noise they didn't even hear him move.
They turned back, weapons in hand, and were very surprised to see that he wasn't where they expected him to be. Before they managed to locate him, he had popped up out of the brush, and the one Darkwind had mentally tagged as "Speaker" was down with an arrow in his throat.
He dropped back into the cover of the bushes as Vree dove at the unprotected head of one of the men in the rear of the party, the one who had been making all the objections. The man shrieked with feminine shrillness and clapped both hands to his scalp as Vree rose into the branches with bloody talons.
That's one down and one hit. I think that takes out anyone who might be a mage.
It didn't look as if the rest of this was going to be that easy, though.
Leather Armor was barking orders in a language Darkwind didn't recognize, but as the rest of the men of the party took to cover and began flanking him, Darkwind had a fairly good idea what those orders were.
Do they want a live Hawkbrother, or a dead border guard? The question had very real significance. If the former, he could probably take them all himself; they would have to be careful, and he wouldn't. But if the latter, he was going to have his hands full.
His answer came a few moments later, as an arrow whistled past his ear, and no rebuke from Leather Armor followed. A dead border guard, then. Damn. My luck is simply not in today...There were at least two men with bows that he recalled, and he was not about to send Vree flying into an arrow. He told the forestgyre to stay up in the bra
nches and worked himself farther back into the bushes.
That proved to be a definite tactical error. Within moments, he discovered that he had been flanked. just my luck to get a party with an experienced commander. Now he had the choice of trying to get to thicker cover, or taking on one of the men nearest him.
Thicker cover won't stop an arrow. That decided him. He put aside his bow, and slid his climbing-staff out of the sheath at his back.
He rose from cover with a bloodcurdling shriek not unlike Vree's, the staff a blur of motion in his hands. The man nearest him fell back with an oath, but it was too late. He had misjudged the length of the staff, and the wicked climbing-hook at the end of it, designed to catch and hold on tree bark, caved in half his face and lodged in his eye socket.
Darkwind jerked the hook free and dropped, as another man belatedly aimed an arrow at him. It went wild, and Darkwind took to cover again.
That leaves four.
"Brothers come," Vree said. And, hopefully, added, "Vree hunt..."No, dammit, featherhead, stay up there!"
"P: Vree replied.
Darkwind swore at himself Got too complicated for him again. He thought emphatically, "Arrows!"
" replied Vree, just as rustling in the dry leaves told Darkwind that he was being stalked.
He Mindtouched cautiously, ready to pull back in an instant if it proved that the stalker had any mind-powers.
Ordinary, ungifted-but this one was Leather Armor. Darkwind knew he wasn't going to take him by surprise with a yell and a hooked stick.
He worked his way backward, wondering where the other two guards that Vree had called for him were. His Mindspeech wasn't strong enough to hear them unless they were very near, but Vree and the other bond birds of the scouts patrolling nearby were in constant contact. Vree was trained to serve as a relay point-if there was anything to relay.
The rustling stopped, and Darkwind froze so that he did not give himself away. They remained where they were, he and Leather Armor, for what seemed like hours. Finally, just when Darkwind's leg had started to cramp, Leather Armor moved again.
Meanwhile, Darkwind had an idea. "Vree, play wounded bird. Find a
man with no arrows, and take him to the brothers." It was an old trick in the wild, but it just might work against citybred folk. After a moment, Darkwind heard Vree's distress call, faint with distance, and growing fainter. The rustling stopped for a moment; someone cursed softly, then the rustling began again. that's four.
Darkwind moved again, but the cramp in his leg made him just a little clumsy, and he overbalanced. He caught himself before he fell, but his outstretched hands brushed by a thick branch and it bent, shaking enough to rustle the leaves, and betraying his location.
Damn!
No hope for it now, he half-rose and sprinted for the shelter of a rock pile, pounding feet and crackling brush not far behind him. The woods were too thick here to afford a good shot; it was going to be hand-to-hand if Leather Armor overtook him.
Ill luck struck again; just as he reached the rocks, something shot at ankle-height out of the shadows. He leapt but couldn't quite avoid the tangle-cord. It caught one foot, and he tumbled forward. He tucked and rolled as he went down, but when he came back up, he found himself staring at the point of a sword.
Behind the sword stood Leather Armor, frowning furiously. A few moments later, panting up behind him, came the man with the bloody, furrowed scalp.
"No spindly runt is going to tell us where we can go," sneered Leather Armor. "One little brat to play guard-man, hmm? So much for your big bad Hawkbrothers, milor-" Two screams from out in the woods interrupted him, and both their heads turned for a fraction of a heartbeat. just long enough for Darkwind to reach the kill-blade he had hidden in his boot-and Vree to begin his stoop.
"What made you think I was alone?" he said, mildly. Leather Armor's head snapped back around, giving Darkwind a clear shot at his eye. A quick flick of the wrist, and the knife left his hand and went straight to the mark, just as Vree struck the second man from behind, his talons aimed for the neck and shoulders, knocking the mage to the ground with the force of the blow. As Darkwind's victim toppled over, Vree's talons pierced the back of his target's neck, and he bit through the spine, the powerful beak able to separate even a deer's backbone at need. It was over in moments.
Vree flapped his wings and screamed in triumph, and Darkwind licked the blood away from his lip; he had bitten it when he fell. The taste was flat and sweet, gritty with forest loam.
He rose slowly and brushed himself off, waiting for Vree to calm down a little before trying to deal with him. Like all raptors, the bondbirds were most dangerous just after a kill, when their blood still coursed hot with excitement, and they had forgotten everything but the chase and strike.
When Darkwind's own heart had settled, he turned, and called Vree back to the glove. The bondbird mantled and screamed objection at him, still hot with his hunting-rage, but when Darkwind Mindtouched himcarefully, for at this stage it was easy to be pulled into the raptor's mind-he calmed. Darkwind held out his arm and slapped the glove again, and this time Vree returned to his bondmate, launching himself from the body with a powerful shove of his legs, and landing heavily on Darkwind's gauntlet. The wicked talons that had so easily pierced a man's neck closed gently on the scout's leather-covered wrist.
Darkwind pointedly ignored the second body, Vree's victim, and stooped over the first corpse to retrieve his knife, Vree flapping his wings a little to keep his balance. Admittedly, it was no uglier a death than the one he had just delivered, but it was easy to forget that the Tayledrasbred forestgyres, largest of all the bondbirds other than the eagles, were easily a match for many wild tiercel eagles in size, and fully capable of killing men. And when Vree did just that-sometimes the realization of just what kind of a born killer he carried around on his wrist and shoulder every day came as a little shock.
At least he doesn't try to eat them, Darkwind thought with a grimace.
In fact, Vree was even now fastidiously cleaning his talons, his thoughts full of distaste for the flavor of the blood on them.
The bird looked up, suddenly. Darkwind tensed for a moment, but "Brothers come," the bird said and went back to cleaning his talons.
Even to Darkwind's experienced eyes it seemed as if a man-shaped piece of the forest had detached itself and was walking toward him when Firestorm first came into view. The sight gave him a renewed appreciation for the effectiveness of the scouts' camouflage.
He'd heard somewhere that one of the Outlanders' superstitions about the Tayledras was that they were really all mirror-copies of the same person.
I suppose it might look that way to strangers...The scouts all dressed so identically in the field that they might well have been wearing uniforms; close-fitting tunic and trews of a supple weave and of a mottled, layer-dyed green, gray, and brown. There were individual differences in the patterns, as distinct as individual fingerprints to the knowledgeable, but to an Outlander the outfits probably looked identical. And their hair was identical, except for length. Hair color among the Hawkbrothers was a uniform white; living in the Vales, surrounded by magic, hair bleached to white and eyes to silver-blue by the time a Tayledras was in his early twenties-sooner, if he was a mage.
The scouts dyed their hair a mottled brown to match their surroundingsthe rest of the Clan left theirs white.
I suppose Outlanders have reason to think us identical.
Firestorm's bondbird was nowhere in sight, but as the younger scout came into the clearing, Kreel dove down out of the treetops to land on Firestorm's casually outstretched arm. Kreel was a different breed from Vree; smaller, and with the broad wings of a hawk, rather than the rakish, pointed wings of the falcon. Neither bird had bleached out yet; since Darkwind no longer used his magic powers, and Firestorm never had been a mage, it would be years before either bird became a ti'aeva'leshy'a, a "forest spirit," one of the snow-white "ghost birds," with markings in faint blue-gray.
Too bad, in a way. the white ones frighten the life out of Outlanders who see them. We could use that edge, Vree and I If this lot had seen him first, they might not have chanced taking me on.
Vree's natural coloration was partially white already. His white breast sported brown barring; the same pattern as the underside of his wings.
His back and the upper face of his wings were still brown, with a faint black barring. Kreel was half Vree's size, with a solid blue-gray back and a reddish-brown, barred breast. Kreel's red eyes had begun to fade to pink; Vree's eyes had already faded to light gray from his adolescent color of ice-blue.
"I got one of the bastards, Skydance got one, and Skydance's Raan got the third," Firestorm said, ruffling the breast-feathers of his cooperihawk.
He shook his head in admiration at the gyre on Darkwind's wrist, as Vree fastidiously preened the blood from his breast-feathers.
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