“Hounds?”
“Yes.” The griffin sighed, and his neck feathers rustled as he shook his head. “There is no time for talk. You will protect the Songkeeper?”
“Better than ye would, beast.”
“Then go. Just beyond the next curve, there is a crack that leads into a separate gully. It will take you past the soldiers. I will hold them off here.”
Amos nodded. “Do me a favor, beastie. Kill that brute Carhartan for me.”
The griffin’s features hardened—even beneath his fur, Birdie could see that—and a cold fire burned behind his eyes. The muscles tightened in his shoulders, deep cut lines accentuated by his tawny coat. “I intend to. But beware, peddler, if any harm befalls the Songkeeper, I will hold you responsible. And I will find you.”
He turned to Birdie. “Farewell, little Songkeeper, until we meet again. May Emhran protect you.” In a flurry of beating wings, he launched into the air and soared over their heads.
Amos grabbed Birdie’s arm and pulled her after him around the bend to a narrow crack in the cliff wall.
Rumbling hooves approached. Hounds bayed. The griffin screeched.
Then Birdie squeezed into the crack behind Amos, and all she could hear was the clatter of loose stones underfoot and the puff of her breath rebounding from the rock face.
13
“Get back. Stay down!” Amos hissed.
Birdie pressed her back against the cliff wall, wishing that she could melt into the stone itself. They stood at the far end of the crack Gundhrold had instructed them to follow. No sounds of pursuit came from behind. It appeared the griffin had saved them.
Or sent them into a trap.
“Bearded pikes and mottlegurds,” Amos said.
Birdie craned her neck to see around the peddler’s shoulder, anxious to find what had caused his exclamation. About a hundred yards away, a broad gash carved through the musty green of the woodlands that covered the mountainside. A dozen teams of horses leaned into their traces, leather straps creaking, straining to pull fallen logs out of the way. Black armored soldiers clustered at their sides, goading them on with kicks and prods.
There were soldiers everywhere—hundreds of them—driving the horses, standing sentry along the line, and wielding whips against the hunched backs of bedraggled souls slaving to fell trees and level the ground.
The slaves drew Birdie’s gaze. She could not look away. Men, women, and children from every corner of Leira, faces stained with dirt and blood and tears.
The dull thock of biting axes and the ping of hammers filled her ears. Chains rattled. Whips cracked. Human voices cried out in pain. Birdie clutched her head as the song assailed her mind. The five notes, beauty masked by suffering, were sung by a multitude of voices pleading for help. All hopeless, despairing, lost. Beneath it all, the black melody gurgled, a pit of quicksand awaiting the demise of its next victim.
“Poor devils.”
Amos’s exclamation broke through the dark cloud surrounding her. She startled back to the midmorning sunlight. Clutching a hand to her chest, she fought to control her wild breathing and the silent sobs racking her throat.
What was this? What was happening to her?
“I know that man.” Amos’s voice was a husky whisper. He pointed at a stout man wielding a pick. “I traded with him for years. An’ that woman—down there—she’s a Waveryder, sure an’ certain, from the far south by the look o’ it. Curse the Takhran an’ his wretched soldiers!”
Birdie shuddered. This might have been her fate. Though, remembering the unrelenting hatred in Carhartan’s eyes, she couldn’t help thinking that it was to have been something far worse.
“Come, lass, ’tis time we left.”
“Is there nothing we can do?” Even as she spoke, she knew it was hopeless. It wasn’t as if the soldiers would simply stand by and allow her and Amos to set the slaves free. But she couldn’t help hoping that maybe Amos, her Protector, would be able to think of something.
He shook his head, lips set in a firm line. “Afraid not, lassie. There’s naught we can do against a company of Khelari with only a single blade between us. Best we leave afore we’re spotted. Follow me an’ keep quiet.”
The peddler edged out of the crack and limped into the woods, moving westward away from the workers. Wincing at the twigs cracking beneath Amos’s heavy boots, Birdie crept after him, stepping on the balls of her feet to make as little noise as possible.
The forest seemed more open here, now that they had crossed through the gorge onto the northern side of the mountain. Clear patches showed through the trees. It made the going easier, though it also meant they were more likely to be spotted by the Khelari.
A grackleberry bush rustled to Birdie’s left, silver seed pods clacking together like clapping hands.
“Amos?”
“Shh.” He bent to investigate, fingers stroking the hilt of his dirk.
Raaakhkk.
Birdie jumped at the screech.
A raven shot from the bush at Amos’s face, pecking at his eyes. The peddler fell, swearing, blindly trying to bat the bird aside. Birdie snagged the raven’s left wing and yanked the bird away. Talons dug into her wrist. The bird transformed into a living tornado of flapping wings and clawing legs, then it wrenched free and soared toward the treetops.
Steel hummed through the air. A wet crunch, and the raven’s head flopped to the side, then the body crashed to the ground. Just beyond where the bird had been, the hawk’s head of Amos’s dirk stared back at Birdie, the point buried in a hallorm tree.
The peddler was already up and running. “Birdie, go!” He raced to the tree, yanked his dirk free, and tore through the forest. “Run!”
Shouts broke out behind. Birdie sprinted after Amos, twigs stabbing her feet. A tall plant thwacked her across the face, and a sharp minty smell filled her nostrils.
“Hold up, lass.” Amos grabbed the plant and snapped off four strands, tossing two to Birdie. “Tie ’em on.” He dropped to his knees and twisted the strands around both legs.
Shouldn’t they be running? Birdie looped the rubbery stems around her ankles, and tied them in place with a strip of root that Amos cut from a sapling. “What’s this for?”
“Havva plant. Smell disguises our scent.”
“From what?” As far as Birdie could tell, Khelari didn’t follow a trail with their noses to the ground.
A howl filled the air, drifting on the wind until it seemed to surround them.
“Hounds,” Amos cried. “Run!”
Birdie and Amos took off through the forest. In the terror of the chase, the peddler seemed to have forgotten his limp. At least, there was no sign of it now as he sprinted along, chin tucked, arms pumping, zigzagging down the mountain.
The forest faded into a blur of trees. Birdie could hear herself gasping for breath, but the sound seemed far away, as if it came from another. Her pulse throbbed to the rhythm of her feet.
But the rhythm grew louder, deeper, until it filled her ears and vibrated the earth.
It was the drumming of hooves.
Birdie risked a glance over her shoulder. Black figures flashed between the trees—mounted soldiers and a pack of hounds bearing down upon them. It was no use. She and Amos could run until their legs failed, and still they could not hope to outdistance their pursuers.
They would be caught, and then . . . what? She still didn’t understand why all this was happening. But she had spent her whole life yielding to the will of others, and now that she had tasted freedom—however short—she didn’t intend to be captured or controlled again.
And if that meant running until the soldiers wearied of the chase, or fighting until she could fight no more, than that was what she would do.
Amos jerked to a stop. Birdie staggered past him a few steps before she was able to halt as well. Her hea
rt plummeted.
About twenty yards away stood the strangest contraption she had ever seen. It was a sort of wagon, with the stern built up to form a deck equipped with all manner of strange devices. Her gaze skimmed over the wagon to the two black clad figures that stood atop the raised stern.
Black armor. Khelari.
Trapped again.
Birdie clenched her fists. This time, she would not go down without a fight. A fallen hallorm branch lay at her feet. Her hands shook as she snatched it up. It would have to do for a weapon—like the broom she had wielded against Kurt and Miles.
But Kurt and Miles were just two spoiled children, not fierce Khelari with armor and weapons.
“Get down!” Amos yanked her to the side and threw her to the ground.
She struck the earth hard, then Amos’s weight slammed onto her back, driving the air from her lungs and replacing it with panic. What was he doing? They couldn’t hide here. They would be crushed by the horses. Overrun. She was being crushed!
Her fingers tore into the loam. She tried to pull herself out from under his bulk, but she couldn’t move.
“Lie still,” Amos hissed.
A strange chorus of snapping and cracking broke out, then an odd humming, like a swarm of bees passing overhead. Screams filled the air, along with the sickening crunch of tearing flesh and breaking bones—the sounds of death.
She peered over a layer of dead leaves. The two Khelari in the wagon scrambled from one strange contraption to another, cranking, turning, and shooting a stream of arrows into the air.
Shooting at the other Khelari.
An arrow whistled past Birdie’s ear and thwacked into the earth beside her shoulder. She choked back a cry. But in that faint echo of music, the song came to her. The five notes were sung by two bass voices, slow and steady as the drip of time, immovable as the mountains. There was no sense of danger in the melody, no terrifying blackness that ate at her soul. The song was pure and fresh.
The last screams trailed away. The stream of arrows abated.
Then silence.
Amos ripped the arrow out of the ground and lurched to his feet, freeing Birdie of his weight. Glorious air flooded her lungs, and she rolled onto her back, gasping in huge breaths.
“Ye fiddle-faced, mealy-mouthed, slime-lickin’ slumgullions!” Amos snapped the arrow in half and chucked the pieces toward the wagon. “Ye nearly killed us.”
“Gracious me, it can’t be!” a deep voice replied. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Aye.” Amos snorted. “Who else? Get yer rotten hides over here.”
Footsteps crunched toward them. Birdie pushed up to her feet, still clutching the hallorm branch in one hand, as one of the Khelari approached. She tensed, ready for instant flight. The two strangers may have attacked the other soldiers, rescuing her and Amos, but she still wasn’t sure if that made them friends.
The Khelari reached Amos, and her surprise at his size drove all other thoughts from her mind. He was a . . . dwarf. His helmeted head barely reached Amos’s chest, but there were two swords strapped to his back, and he moved with a quickness and firmness that whispered dangerous.
“It is you,” the dwarf said, and his face wrinkled into a smile beneath his curly black beard. He spun toward the wagon where the other Khelari still waited. “Nisus, do you see who it is?”
“Indeed,” Nisus said. He leapt down from the wagon and dipped his head in salute, thudding a fist against his helm. “It has been too long.”
“Ah, ye’ve missed me, have ye? So the first thing ye do when we meet again, is try t’ kill me an’ the wee lass? Fine way t’ greet an old friend,” Amos said.
“Kill you?” The first dwarf snorted. “Well, how do you like that? And here we thought we’d saved your lives.”
“Do not bother asking for an apology, Jirkar,” Nisus said. “Or a thank you. That never was his way.”
Birdie watched the scene in growing bewilderment and fear. Surely Amos could not be friends with these Khelari!
“An apology?” Amos cocked his head back. “No. A thank ye? Aye, reckon I could manage that. Friends, I’d like ye t’ meet Birdie. Birdie, these are brothers Jirkar an’ Nisus, o’ the Whyndburg Mountains—”
“Come, come,” Nisus interrupted. “You know better than that. Introductions, of all things, must be done properly.” He marched toward Birdie.
She shrank from him, but he merely thumped a fist to his helm—just as he had done to Amos—and bowed his head.
“I am Nisus Plexipus Molineus Creegnan, Xanthen Chancellor to the Caran. And this is my brother—”
“Jirkar Mundibus Icelos Creegnan, Commander of the Fifth Cohort of the Adulnae,” Jirkar finished, with a helmet thump and a bow.
At a loss for words, Birdie simply nodded and studied the two dwarves. They looked almost identical with their weather-beaten faces, short-cropped, curly, black beards, and coiling strands of hair peeping out beneath their helms. But Nisus had dark red tints in his beard, while the criss-crossing smile lines woven around Jirkar’s eyes aided Birdie in telling them apart.
She turned to Amos. “But . . . their armor?”
“A disguise. Nothin’ more. They’re not servants o’ the Takhran, lass. Ye needn’t fear that.”
“Speaking of the Takhran’s servants,” Jirkar said, “it’s high time we left this place. More Khelari are sure to come.”
“And who was it said this would be an uneventful trip home?” Nisus chuckled and shoved a hand toward Jirkar. “Pay up. Two dicus as wagered.”
Jirkar sighed, tugged a coin pouch from his belt, and dropped two bronze coins into Nisus’s hand. “It would have been uneventful, if our old friend here hadn’t barged in. I think he should pay up instead of me.”
“I wish you the best of luck with that. Since when have you known him to have money?” Nisus pocketed the coins, then turned to Amos. “Where are you headed?”
“West. T’ my mother’s house.”
“That works out well, then. We can start you on your way,” Jirkar said. “Long as you promise the rest of the trip will be uneventful. Those were my last dicus.”
The two dwarves hurried toward the wagon with Amos at their heels, but Birdie followed at a slower pace, still hesitant to trust the strangers in their hateful garb. Disguise or not, it was the armor of the Khelari, the armor of Carhartan, and she wanted to stay as far away from it as possible.
She cast a glance over her shoulder, and her gaze fell on the bloody aftermath of the battle. Bodies littered the ground—men, horses, hounds—all bristling with arrows and lying in the pale, cold sleep of death.
So still. So silent.
A shudder seized Birdie’s limbs. She closed her eyes and shoved the horror inside. Deep inside, where she could ignore the numbing terror that slithered through her veins.
“Time t’ go, lass.”
She forced her limbs to obey Amos’s call and stumbled over to the wagon. With a grunt, Amos hoisted her up, then Nisus smacked the reins against the backs of the four horses hitched to the front, and the wagon jolted off into the forest.
Westward. Toward Amos’s mother.
And home.
14
Birdie may have thought the dwarves odd, but they were nowhere near as unusual as their wagon. She had never seen anything like it. She sat with Jirkar and Amos on the raised deck at the back of the wagon, while Nisus perched on the driver’s seat at the front. Unruly stacks of crates and barrels fastened with rope netting cluttered the space between, while the raised deck bristled with all sorts of odd levers, pulleys, and strange contraptions.
Amos whistled between his teeth. “What d’ ye call this thing?”
“It was a stonebarge until recently,” Jirkar said. “We made a few minor alterations so it would be more suitable for our needs.”
“Mino
r alterations? It’s practically a battle ship. Mounted crossbows, ballistae, catapults—small scale to be sure, but still . . . ye could fight off an army!”
The twinkle faded from Jirkar’s eyes. “Hardly. But if the Takhran’s forces reach my homeland, we may have to.”
The wagon lurched to the left and broke out of the trees onto a rough-hewn road lined with fresh stumps still leaking sap and fallen limbs clad in green leaves. Birdie’s mind jumped back to the slaves toiling beneath the lash to clear the road further up the mountain.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Amos chuckled. “The Takhran builds a road so his armies can destroy our people, but we use it t’ escape his soldiers. Fate has a curious sense o’ humor.”
“Fate?” Jirkar snorted. “Call it the mercy of Emhran. We’d be dead without it.”
Birdie turned away. Her head whirled from the events of the past few days, and every word out of Amos and Jirkar’s mouths only raised more questions. She needed time to think. She slipped over the side of the deck into the bed of the wagon where she would have more privacy.
Wedged between two barrels, she rested her arms on the side of the wagon. Below, beyond the marches of the forest, dunes rose in a succession of golden brown waves fading into dusky blue on the horizon. To the right, the mountain sloped and then rose again to join a chain of smaller mountains winding off to the east.
She released a trailing breath and slid back until she sat against the stern deck.
The world was so much bigger than she had imagined. So much more frightening too. Back at the Sylvan Swan, she had never dreamed of a world where Khelari roamed, griffins flew, and the swift flight of an arrow could snuff out a life before her eyes.
“Birdie?” Amos dropped beside her.
She pulled her legs in to give him room to stretch his out, and sat with her knees tucked up beneath her chin.
“Just think, lass, in a few short days, ye’ll be safe an’ sound at my mother’s house. An’ the only thing ye’ll have t’ worry about there will be decidin’ what sort o’ oatcake ye want for breakfast.” He grinned at her. “Though I reckon I should warn ye. It’s a more difficult decision ’n it sounds.”
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