Floreskand_Wings

by Morton Faulkner

  He was surprised that the soldiers seemed to have specific orders concerning his friends. Still, Ulran decided he had best make for Tritaalan under cover of dark.

  Tritaalan comprised one main street and four side-roads, each edged with cottages and ware-shops. All the streets were deserted. The festivities and torchlight came from the manderon end of the village.

  There, in the clearing, the village folk were dancing, drinking distilled liquor and singing to the zithering tune of a xagga.

  But the innman detected something amiss. The atmosphere was not one of gaiety and seemed forced. An undercurrent of dread coloured their voices.

  A great cluster of soldiers stood beyond the dancing villagers, in front of about four wooden cages, but the men themselves obscured the contents.

  Stalking through deserted garden patches, over wooden fences and cesspits, he neared the revellers.

  And, from this new oblique angle he could descry the contents of the four cages – red tellars.

  At least ten in each cage, so cramped that they could hardly move their wings at all. However, the majestic birds of the Overlord showed no signs of distress and seemed quite unaffected by their plight or the people about them.

  A small orchard curved from the dunsaron side of the village round behind the cages. This would afford him some concealment while he closed to release the poor creatures.

  Quite a few of the guards were well into their cups, so he should not have too much difficulty.

  Scudding clouds frequently blanketed the bright full moon and plunged the cage area into deep shadows. He would wait a little longer, till the festivities wore down.

  As groups broke off in twos and threes and others slumped in a stupor, he edged his way beneath the shadowy boughs of the apple-laden trees, careful to avoid any lusting couples. The few remaining villagers seemed to have abandoned all sense of modesty now, as though their dread were driving them to desperation, to forgetfulness.

  Ulran suspected they were more than a little concerned over the Wings of the Overlord being held captive in their village.

  Directly opposite the cages, he could see the four remaining sentries shambling around their charges. One of the four, however, was more interested in the wench he had pressed against the cage bars. The others leered for a while then left the lovers and joined in the revelry.

  A couple of villagers stumbled across Ulran’s line of vision and he took the opportunity to leave his concealment and join them. He quickly clapped his arms round their shoulders and laughed with them. They barely noticed his presence, save that their unsteady gait straightened somewhat, heading directly towards the nearest cage.

  Without compunction, as the three neared the lecherous sentry, Ulran slammed the two drunkards’ heads together with a bone-crunching smack! and lunged for the soldier.

  The girl froze on a scream as the soldier stood facing her, eyes staring without sensation. A red line appeared across his throat, welled up till the artery suddenly spurted, blinding her as the head toppled. She began to scream when Ulran’s gentle fingers connected with a pressure point in her throat: she slumped unconscious upon the prostrate soldier. Ulran stepped over them.

  Swiftly slashing the ropes that secured the doors, the innman looked about: as he had gambled, the girl’s scream had drawn no attention – any revellers who might have heard would simply have shrugged their shoulders, perhaps saying how fortunate some man was this night.

  Sheathing his sword, Ulran heaved at the wooden cage door and threw it in disgust into the darkness.

  Crouched low, he whispered to the red tellars and received an immediate response.

  To any other man the hushed, calmed flapping of giant wings as the great birds edged out through the doorway would have seemed eerie to the point of sinister.

  Five birds had made their way out and all encircled the cage, eyes scouring the surrounding darkness for potential intruders. A few waddled across to the other cages, keeping to the shadows.

  Tense moments passed by as two more red tellars joined their free brethren.

  Unlike Scalrin, these birds were unable to communicate with him in any way. He had hoped Scalrin’s ability was shared with his fellows. Now knowing this was not the case, he sensed the great bird’s loss more acutely.

  The sudden ear-splitting cry of the released birds momentarily numbed Ulran, seeming to pitch his nerves to screaming point. In an instant their cries had turned his body into a shivering wreck, covered in cold sweat. Instinctively, though with annoying slowness, he placed his palms over his ears, though to little effect, for the high-frequency cries were penetrating more than his ears.

  And then he looked about him and saw the reason for the red tellars’ shrieks. A band of about twenty soldiers – the majority appearing quite sober – was crossing the grass, encircling him and the cages.

  Still with his hands over his ears, he wondered why Yip-nef Dom’s men were unaffected by the screams of the birds – unless their cries were so highly pitched only a sensitive could hear.

  It was, obviously, a warning cry for him as much as for their kind.

  Well aware of the corpse to his left, he knew they might think twice about taking him prisoner. And in his present recuperative state following the effects of the now quiescent Angevanellian, he knew he could not measure up to ten men, let alone twenty.

  As suddenly as they had begun, the cries of the red tellars stopped.

  He backed towards the apple orchard when abruptly the cries began again – and he turned in time to see two soldiers charging him from the trees.

  These he could handle: one, he dispatched with a swipe of his smoothly withdrawn sword; the other halted and tried barring his escape, playing for time.

  Ulran heard the increased pace of footfalls upon the grass behind.

  Feinting with a quick stab of his sword, he swept his own legs from under and rolled full into the soldier’s shins. As they toppled together, Ulran’s opponent screamed so horrifically that his companions stopped in their tracks.

  Ulran did not dally, however, but leapt over the calfless body that threshed in its own life-blood.

  “Escape!” he yelled to the birds he had freed. “Flee now!”

  And he melted into the orchard and was soon lost to pursuit in the enfolding darkness.

  He returned about an orm later, stealthily approaching Tritaalan from the darker dunsaron side. He stayed only long enough to ensure that the newly arrived prisoners had not suffered any further injury since he last saw them.

  He overheard enough to ascertain Alomar and Fhord were not associated with the dark demon that had left a trail of slaughter in its wake.

  He smiled and left for Arisa – about 140 launmarks to the varteron.

  Fifteen days to go, he estimated, to the mysterious deadline.

  ***

  As he jog-trotted through the knee-length grass, the cool night-breeze wafting through the bowl of Arion, Ulran felt more refreshed than he had ever been since scaling the Sonalumes.

  He suspected the Angevanellian had seeped out as they had spent their second night on Saddle Mountain. He wished a thousand curses upon the astral spirit of Mirmellor, not for the first time, nor, he thought sanguinely, for the last.

  And as he loped across the land he was overflowing with memories, of Solendoral and himself as lads, when the Kellan-Mesqa were great. At dusk, he reached Irrea Taal and waded across to the island where he hid in lush undergrowth to sleep and regain strength.

  Daybreak penetrated the verdant foliage with a prism of colours and bright shafts of light. Ulran awoke as the first beams of sunlight pierced the undergrowth. An olive brown anjis newt convulsively gulped down a small nest of caddis flies near where Ulran lay quite inert.

  Soundlessly, he listened. Somewhere, wildfowl coughed and croaked, then a splash, followed by many similar noises, and their flock’s shadow passed over him. The silence that followed nibbled at his mind. The abrupt absence of the dawn chorus as the su
n rose on this, the Third Durin of Darous, seemed unnatural.

  He doubted that anyone could have followed him here. When he waded out here last night he hadn’t heard any unnatural sound. This small island had offered the ideal sanctuary – unless Yip-nef Dom’s men possessed more intelligence than he credited and they thought so too.

  Very slowly, he raised himself and crouched on all fours, head cocked as he listened.

  Still not a sound.

  High above, the grey-white clouds streamed in mares’-tails, splashed against the cobalt sky. Not one bird flew over the island.

  Raising himself a little at a time, he peered through a break in the vegetation, across the still metallic sheen of Irrea Taal.

  At least Yip-nef Dom’s men were persistent. They would have little problem tracking the swathe of grass and wheat he had left in his wake. From his slightly raised vantage point he could see the almost straight line that passed into the morning haze.

  And there, emerging from that same dew, black man-shapes, seemingly spread out in a thin line, slowly moving towards the taal.

  Time to –

  At first he thought it was some once-dormant fumarole spitting back into life. About a half-mark in front of him, the earth bubbled, caved in on itself then coughed into the air and splashed his fur cloak.

  In an instant, the spitting, bubbling eructation of mud surrounded him.

  Somehow, the ground all around him had softened into mud and was now boiling, spitting gobs of the stuff everywhere.

  Soon, he was spattered with the clinging muck.

  He considered leaping clear – but had no idea how wide the gulf of mud was nor, for that matter, how deep it might be should he land in it.

  He had the impression of a seething, boiling quagmire. But what he couldn’t understand was why the piece of land he crouched on hadn’t transformed as well.

  The answer shook Ulran bodily.

  Beneath him, the ground moved.

  There was an almighty snort and moan, then he was tilted side-ways, into the seething mud.

  His initial fears were unfounded, for it was barely warm. But it weighed upon him heavily, and pulled him down.

  Now, he understood only too well.

  With all of the island to choose from, he had by chance slept upon the back of a theakose, one of the largest of the mud creatures and now it was waking as the sun warmed the land.

  It surfaced at last, without benefit of teeth or eyes. Its enormous pink jaws dripped with thick streamers of mud. Its cavernous throat could easily accommodate Ulran’s head. It was a thick, broad yet sinuous creature, spurting mud and air out of two black bulbous nostrils beneath the mouth.

  Ulran unsheathed his sword as he fought to stay afloat in the tugging restricting quagmire

  Apart from the snorting and splashing, the creature was quiet, as he hoped it would remain. If the sound carried to Yip-nef Dom’s troops, they would finish him off if this beast didn’t.

  Wielding the sword proved awkward.

  Finally, its body buffeted into him.

  He submerged an instant and blindly thrust upward with all his might and felt the resistance to the blade gradually give.

  Still gripping the sword, he surfaced and gasped for air and half-choked on the slime.

  The mud paled, ceased its turmoil and, slowly, before his eyes, it whitened and formed dust.

  With renewed urgency, he hastened to the side of the mire, and dragged himself out, barely in time as the mud solidified into hard dusty ground without any trace whatsoever of creature or moisture.

  Ulran peered once more towards the approaching soldiers, clearly visible now that the dawn mists had lifted.

  Brushing off the white flakes that had so recently been clinging mud, he sheathed his sword and, crouched double, crossed the small island and entered the chill water of the taal.

  They would approach slowly because of their scrutiny of the grassland.

  He should be able to recapture the lost time and increase the gap between them.

  Emerging from the taal, he shook himself, and then ran on with the rise of the island between him and them. His clothes weighed him down slightly, but the sun soon dried them.

  It was arduous, running in a crouch. Despite being weakened by the after-effects of Mirmellor’s potion and the fight with the theakose, he kept up the punishing pace.

  Mind emptied, he concentrated on running and listening, and watching the horizon ahead.

  ***

  In direct and merciless contrast to the cold of the Sonalumes, the sun beat down upon them as their cage trundled along, pulled by great oxen commandeered from Tritaalan.

  It was quite a procession.

  Twenty sweating armour-clad soldiers trudged through the grass, flanked by their four captains on horseback, cloaks black and still, providing shade for their owners.

  Immediately behind the soldiers came the cage upon a wheeled platform with Alomar and Fhord jostled to and fro inside. Trailing them, four cages crammed full with red tellars, sinister in their collective silence.

  Apart from a half-dozen soldiers on each side of the single file of wagons, the remainder brought up the rear together with one wagon for their accoutrements, provisions and booty, for they rarely ventured into the pasture-lands without exacting some toll for their ever-grateful liege.

  And finally, amongst these last were a few camp followers, women of dubious virtue picked up in Tritaalan or elsewhere.

  Besides the jangling of metal weapons, armour and chains, there was much laughter, barking of orders and cursing.

  “Where do you think Ulran got to?” queried Fhord, trying to steady herself against the constant lurching. This proved awkward with her hands painfully tethered behind her back. Her wrists hurt, chafing against a rough wooden up-right bar.

  Ropes covered Alomar’s chest and pinioned his arms to his side. He wedged his shoulder between two bars and effectively stopped himself rolling over the spittle- and refuse-strewn wooden floorboards.

  “He’ll not risk anything just yet – though he’s obviously about. Their crowing over that black devil last night proves that much. So if he’s free, Fhord, he’ll find a way.” Alomar grinned. “You certainly burned those craven cretins!” His glinting eyes betrayed a question.

  “I don’t know how – I – I just felt so – so incensed, coming through that pass, the mountains, to get so near and then to be captured! It’s never happened to me before.” Her eyes glared whitely. She was blatantly unsettled about the incident.

  “Well, you’ve been changing ever since that cave, surely you’ve realised that. And, what about that night in the mountains, when you kept us all warm?”

  “I – I don’t know...” Her pale lips trembled. “May the good gods give me a sign, an answer,” she whispered fervently. “O, Osasor, help me, teach me!” And tears smeared her bruised cheeks.

  Alomar turned his eyes away.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  DISSENSION

  Between the dark and the daylight stands the Prime City.

  – Tsukcoldol Almanack

  Fourth Dekinma, Ulran estimated, crawling out from an animal’s burrow. The meadow-vole had tasted coarse and tough, but continuous masticating had created sufficient food juices to sustain him. He spat out the chewed meat when it yielded no more flavour, and concealed the evidence.

  For the journey so far Ulran had relied upon roots and berries. He travelled only at night and reckoned he had covered about a hundred launmarks over the last two evenings. In that time, and particularly through the hiding period of daylight, he had continually evaded troops returning from their sector of the Sonalumes. Many of them transported caged red tellars.

  Last night he stumbled upon a carcass, a once-magnificent red tellar torn limb from limb, discarded for carrion crow. He knelt by the corpse, surprisingly affected by it. The creature appeared to have died from a broken neck – the soldiers had required fresh meat and had not hesitated to slaughter the bird.
But what puzzled Ulran was why they hadn’t taken the bird with them, for there was at least another day’s supply of meat on the bones. He used his knife to cut a strip of breast away. He lifted it to his lips, and the pink-grey flesh darkened until it was black and flaked away from his knife. Burnt, without the aid of flame. The Overlord keeps whatever is His, he mused, half in remembrance.

  And now, tonight, he emerged from his vole-burrow quite close to an encampment of another group of soldiers.

  The sergeant-at-arms had already deployed sentries on the edge of the camp. There could be no more than twelve in the group, he reckoned. Their captures had been few, and not, it seemed, without cost: for three red tellars they had bartered two dead and three wounded comrades, now supine in death or sprawled in moaning heaps upon the only wagon, uncomfortable fellow travellers.

  The red tellars were shackled about their torsos, wings and necks to the rear of the wagon; they had to walk at the mule-drawn wagon’s pace.

  Any other man would have seethed with impotent anger at seeing the unkempt state of the three birds. Ulran doubted if all three would survive the final forty-odd launmarks to Arisa.

  Since he was now fully recovered, he believed the odds would be more accommodating tonight.

  Slowly, appraisingly, he circled the camp. Besides the sentries there were six able-bodied men, all of whom lay with their bed-rolls and saddles around the small fire, eating and joking.

  Apparently the sentries had instructions not to talk to each other and looked continually outwards, into the pitch night.

  Clouds obscured both stars and the last quarter.

  The baying of wild dogs reached Ulran’s ears and he smiled.

  These soldiers were not old campaigners but raw material who had probably never ventured far from the black walls of the Prime City. He thought of Cobrora Fhord and wondered how she fared, then crept towards the nearest sentry.

  Ulran attacked from the left side – a right-handed man’s weakest – and before the sentry could cry out or defend himself he was lying prostrate upon blood-speckled grass.