01 - The Sundered Realm

by Robert E. Vardeman

  “We may as well give ourselves up as stand here any longer,” Fost said. Luranni gave him a narrow glance and turned to lead the way.

  Moriana let her get a few paces ahead before she asked, “What does this one mean to you?”

  “A way out of this wretched city, nothing more.”

  Moriana scrutinized him like a bird sizing up possible prey, then followed the brown-haired girl.

  “Faugh! It smells like bird droppings in here. Can’t we seek out more wholesome surroundings?” Erimenes’ voice rang with loftily disdain.

  “If he suggests a trip to a brothel I’ll use his jug for a chamber pot,” said Fost. A strangled sound emerged from the jug. Fost peered around the darkened passageway. Luranni led the way, holding aloft a crystal vial shaped like a dove, which cast a heatless illumination like that of the lightfool. “But he’s right. I do smell birds.”

  Moriana sniffed the air. “No common birds,” she said. They rounded a bend in the tunnel. Sunlight fell through a barred aperture and splashed the floor and walls of a chamber cut from the skystone of the City’s base. “It’s the scent of war-birds. Luranni, where are we?”

  “An ancient aerie, last used during the wars with the surface-dwellers. My family has known about it for generations; our cargo balloons moor near here.”

  “Why do we waste time here, then?” asked Erimenes. “Surely we’ve better uses for our time than a survey of historic sites. Of what interest is this abandoned …”

  A rustling noise came from the shadowed recesses of the aerie. Fost’s sword hissed free of its bird-leather scabbard.

  “Abandoned?” he said quietly. “I don’t think so.”

  A figure appeared, dim and monstrous in the gloom. Higher than Fost’s head it loomed, approaching with a lurching waddle. The hefty broadsword felt as inadequate as a lady’s poniard in the courier’s hand.

  “What kind of trap is this?” he hissed at Luranni, as he made ready to launch himself at the monstrosity.

  “Wait!” Her cloak flapping behind her, Moriana lunged at the creature. Fost shouted a warning. The cry died on his lips as the princess threw her arms about the giant shape and hugged it fiercely. “Ayoka!” she cried. “Oh, Ayoka, they told me you were dead!”

  Standing in the light, Fost saw a war-eagle of the Sky City, huge and deep of chest, its razor-sharp beak immense. But white cataracts crusted the saucer-shaped eyes, and the once-sleek body shed feathers in a constant molt. The bird was obviously an ancient creature, with few days left him.

  “He came to us here, the night Derora died,” said Luranni, standing at the courier’s side. The big man was acutely aware of the soft hip pressing into his. “A watchman heard noises and found him. The eagles lack man-speech, unlike the slit-tongued ravens Synalon favors, and none of us know the war-birds’ tongue. I recognized him as Princess Moriana’s mount, though, so we fed and watered him, and closed the gate to keep him safe from aerial patrols. My father says he’s sound enough to bear you to the ground.”

  Post eyed the creature dubiously. Ayoka had once been a mighty bird indeed. That much was clear. But his prime had long since passed. And for even a young bird to bear the combined weight of Fost and Moriana would be a considerable task. Fost sheathed his sword and shook his head skeptically.

  Moriana knelt on the ground, stroking the ragged feathers and sobbing, crooning to the bird in an unfamiliar language. The bird preened her long blonde hair with his beak and made some burbling reply.

  “He says that the night the queen died, a palace functionary named Kralfi came to warn him to flee,” said Erimenes. “‘Fly, O winged warrior; we human friends of the princess and true queen are lost, but still may you serve bright Moriana.’ Very poetic, if you go in for that sort of sticky sentimentality. Not to my taste at all. Give me a bawdy limerick any day. Have you heard this one? There was a maid of Medurim…’”

  Fost ignored the spirit. “Is that actually what he said?” Moriana turned a tearful face to him and nodded. “Can he carry both of us?” The princess spoke to the bird. The eagle threw back its head and voiced a cry that filled the chamber like a trumpet blast. For all the bird’s decrepitude, there was no denying the power in his call.

  “He says he can,” Moriana declared, standing. “And I believe him.” She turned to Luranni and asked, “Do you have a saddle for him?”

  The girl nodded and disappeared into the shadows. She came back dragging a pile of tack and other equipment. Fost stood idly by, fretting at his inability to be of any use, as Moriana selected a double harness and cinched it to Ayoka’s back. From the stack of gear, she drew two short recurved bows and two filled quivers.

  “No, thank you,” Fost said as she offered him one. “I couldn’t hit the Dowager Empress in the rump at three paces with one of those. A sword is more to my liking.”

  “A pity,” Moriana said with a grimace. “There’s little call for swordplay in bird-back combat.” She hoisted herself agilely into the front of the double-seated saddle and threw her legs forward around the eagle’s neck. “Here, climb up behind and strap yourself in. This is a training saddle. You’re not likely to fall out of it.”

  Gingerly, Fost clambered up onto Ayoka’s broad back. The bird grunted at his weight. He winced and fixed a sturdy strap around his middle.

  “How about you?” he asked Moriana.

  “I was born to the back of an eagle,” she replied haughtily. “I need nothing to hold me in the saddle. Nor would I ever use a strap. I need my freedom if we’re to make it past the patrols.”

  Fost blinked. It hadn’t occurred to him they might have to fight their way to the surface. The ride down would be harrowing enough without being beset by swarms of bird-riding Guardsmen. He fixed Erimenes’ satchel to the harness and loosened his sword in its scabbard, just in case.

  Luranni unlatched the circular gate and threw it wide. “Farewell, my Princess,” she said to Moriana. The bird walked forward, stooped under his double burden. Luranni stood on tiptoe, grabbed Fost and dragged him down for an impassioned kiss. “And you, my courier,” she said, eyes shining brightly.

  “Our thanks, Luranni, daughter of Uriath,” said Moriana. To Fost’s surprise she sounded sincere. “When we return, we shall bring with us the freedom of the city!” She nudged Ayoka. The bird reeled forward and pitched headlong into space.

  Fost shouted in dismay as the prairie hurtled up at them. It seemed he had left his stomach behind in the aerie. Nausea and terror fought for control of his senses.

  Huge wings burst from Ayoka’s sides. Their headlong plummet shallowed into a wide, circling dive. Fost clung to handfuls of feathers, only slowly realizing that their descent was controlled.

  Moriana’s cloak billowed in his face. He brushed it aside, allowing it to stream over his shoulder. He was rewarded with the sight of her slim, white back and shapely buttocks flattened against the high-cantled saddle. He had forgotten that the Sky City’s fugitive princess was still naked beneath the borrowed cloak.

  “What a vision of loveliness!” Erimenes caroled. “Doesn’t it stir your manhood, Fost? Why, if the delectable princess were to lean a touch farther forward, perhaps you could plunge your doubtlessly raging manhood—”

  Fost thumped the jar. Hard.

  Still, he thought, is it such a bad idea? Moriana does stir my manhood. The thought of making love a thousand feet in the air on the back of an eagle had a definite appeal. Fost was considering leaning forward to suggest it to Moriana when the princess turned her head and looked straight past him.

  “Hold tight,” she ordered. A hand reached behind her for one of the quivers slung across her back.

  Fost’s head snapped around. A trio of winged shapes drifted down toward them from the rim of the city. He thought he saw a flash of a pale face and arm as Luranni waved from the aerie. Then the gate slammed shut as the girl fell back to avoid drawing the attention of the bird riders who pursued Ayoka.

  A raucous cry reached their ears. More bir
ds appeared until half a dozen Guardsmen were swooping down on the fleeing pair. Fost felt his stomach tie itself into a knot.

  “A fight! Glorious!” Erimenes was plainly beside himself with glee. “Oh, what a memorable battle this shall be!”

  “I hope I’m alive to remember it,” Fost said sourly. With morbid fascination, he kept his head craned around to watch the pursuers approach. The nearer three were armed with javelins and bows. One held a long lance, its head designed to break away from the shaft when it struck, so that it wouldn’t drag its wielder to his doom. The Guards wore no armor. They depended on the speed and maneuverability of their mounts for protection. And in both those respects, their birds would hold every advantage over a half-senile eagle who bore three times the weight they did.

  Something whined past Fost’s ear. The rider on the left dropped his bow and tumbled from his saddle. Silently he spun groundward, arms and legs splayed.

  “Marvelously shot!” Erimenes cried. “As lovely a sight as your own naked limbs, Princess.”

  Fost didn’t think so. He knew it had been the bird rider’s intention to slay him and Moriana, or return them to captivity and torture beyond imagining. Fost had often reveled in the hot rush of a foeman’s blood as his blade bit deep, but the lonely suddenness of death in the air bothered him. Nor was he insensible that the bird rider’s fate could be his.

  The tactician in Fost appraised the peril they faced. He had no experience in aerial warfare, but it was plain to see that with their advantage in height, the pursuers could fall on their quarry whenever they chose. Moriana’s arrows might claim more of them. On the other hand, some of their opponents were armed with bows, too.

  Fost drew his sword. Moriana cast him an unreadable glance over her shoulder but said nothing. It might do him no good; still, the feel of the leather-wrapped hilt in his fist comforted him.

  The world suddenly spun through a quarter circle. A pressure of Moriana’s knees had sent the giant war-bird wheeling to one side to avoid the onslaught of the two nearest Guardsmen. A high wailing cry broke from a feathered throat as an arrow buried itself to the fletching in an eagle’s chest. The Guard shrieked as his lifeless mount began the last long fall.

  But there was no eluding his comrade. The gray-plumed war-bird had flattened its wings to its sides. Its rider lay along its neck, lance couched and aimed for the kill.

  Sunlight gleamed on the keen lance head. Moriana strove frantically to nock another arrow. Erimenes gibbered orgiastically in the fulfillment of blood. Neither could change the grim judgment of the steel arrowing at Fost’s heart.

  His senses dilated until all that existed was the lance point, glittering and hungering for flesh. Fury exploded within him. Bellowing, he swung his sword with all his strength.

  The blade bit. The lance head went cartwheeling away, its tip laying open his cheek in passing. The blunted lance struck him full in the chest.

  Breath burst from his body. Blackness and vivid stars whirled around his eyes. Instinctively his hand grabbed, felt smooth hardness, closed. An awful wrench sent agony stabbing from his abused shoulder, and he was thrown violently against the restraining strap around his middle.

  A howling beat through the haze of agony and breathlessness that wrapped his brain. Colossal wing-tips brushed his face. The war-bird rushed by, riderless. The man who’d sat astride its back a moment before was falling after his two comrades, unseated by the reflex that had made Fost grip the haft of his lance as it struck.

  Moriana’s head turned. Her lips formed words twisted by the rush of the wind.

  “What?” Fost shouted. His voice sounded rusty and as hoarse as if he had been inhaling smoke.

  “Are you all right?” she cried. He felt his chest gingerly before nodding his head. He felt as though he’d been hit on the breastbone with a sledgehammer.

  “Struck with your typical lack of chivalry,” said Erimenes sourly. “Not one drop of blood did I see spilled.”

  “That’s not true,” Fost said, touching his torn cheek.

  An arrow whirred by not a hand’s-breadth from his head. He yelped and twisted in the saddle to look behind, as Moriana drew her bow to return fire.

  One of the three remaining pursuers had forged ahead of the rest. His mount squalled battle lust not a hundred feet behind the tip of Ayoka’s tailfeathers. Even as Fost watched, the great bird-shape swelled. Moriana shot. Her arrow went wide. The eagle was too close for another shot. She slung her bow and gave all her thought to flying.

  Voicing his own harsh battle-cry, Ayoka sideslipped, evading another shot from the Guardsman’s bow. Still the archer’s mount closed with its prey. Ayoka was laboring now. His breath came in vast, heaving wheezes, and Fost could feel the bird’s heart hammering between his thighs. Moriana threw him into defensive turns, first to the right, then to the left. Ayoka’s size, immense even for a war-bird, served him poorly now. The smaller eagle behind matched his every maneuver effortlessly, coming nearer and nearer.

  The Guardsman held an arrow to his cheek. Fost saw the excitement and triumph glowing from the man’s dark, thin features. The courier guessed he was holding fire, hoping to cripple Ayoka and force him down. The reward would be great for presenting Synalon with the corpses of her sister and the outlander who had thwarted her; a thousand times greater would be the reward for whoever presented her with their living bodies.

  The wind of the attacking eagle’s wings pounded Fost. Their sound grew louder as the thump of Ayoka’s pinions ceased. A command from Moriana had made him press wings to his sides for a last, desperate dive. It was a futile ploy. The pursuing bird folded its own wings, swooping for the kill.

  Fost shook his sword in the Guardsman’s grinning face, shouting defiance even as he steeled himself for Hell Call. With a sound like stone striking stone, Ayoka’s wings broke from his flanks and seized the air. The giant bird slammed to a stop in mid-dive. Fost’s defiance turned to astonishment before he went face-first into Ayoka’s feathers.

  The pursuing soldier acted too late. His mount threw out its wings in a braking maneuver, but its speed was too great and the span of its pinions too small. The eagle slid beneath Ayoka and stalled. Moriana’s bow sang. The Guardsman uttered a choking yell as the broadhead arrow bit through his chest and pinned him to his mount.

  Ayoka gave a cry that Was half a gasp of pain. Fost snapped his head around to see a javelin sticking through the bird’s right wing. Bravely, Ayoka napped on but he now flew in a tight spiral. Only by some miracle did he keep from giving in to the anguish that filled him. As it was, the dart transfixing his wing interfered with its motion. All he could do was circle down and down.

  Shouting hoarse exultation, the bird riders orbited him. The ancient bird had put up an epic fight, but with the dart through his wing he couldn’t maneuver properly. The kill had become a certainty.

  Moriana loosed arrows as fast as she could, scarcely aiming, to keep their foes at bay.

  “Out!” she shouted at Fost. “You must pull it out, or we fall.”

  He started to protest. Undoing his safety strap at this moment seemed suicidal. And the kind of gymnastics it would take to pull the javelin out of Ayoka’s wing… he felt dizzy at the very thought.

  “Ah, such a fight,” Erimenes sighed. “Too bad that it must end so soon. I’ll almost sorrow to see your lifesblood shed, friend Fost. But what must be, must be.”

  That did it.

  “You’ve seen all my blood you’re going to today, demon in a jug,” the courier growled. Not permitting himself to think, he unfastened the strap that held him in his saddle, sheathed his sword and turned to crawl out along the weakly pumping wing.

  Understanding what the man was doing, Ayoka stopped flapping and held his wings straight for a glide. He sensed no updrafts on Which to kite. They kept corkscrewing inexorably downward, faster now that his wing-beating had ceased resisting gravity.

  The bird’s body canted as Fost’s weight shifted off-center. Fost clutched
the wing, felt the hardness of bone and muscle and probed for the javelin. A glimpse of the ground spinning madly below sent cold fire dancing along his nerves. He shut his eyes and groped.

  His fingertips bumped wood. He gripped the javelin’s shaft and tugged hard. Ayoka coughed. The eagle’s body jerked in response to the pain. Somehow, Fost had gotten tangled with the saddle harness. His body swung momentarily free of the sail-sized pinion, held only by his entangled foot.

  “Gormanka!” he grunted, wishing the deity actually could aid him.

  Realizing that intervention of a divine power wasn’t likely, and that he must rely on his own abilities, Fost reached back and drew his sword. Moriana’s harassing fire kept the Guardsmen at a distance, but she had to shoot too rapidly for accuracy. As usual, Erimenes was cheering both sides of the fray impartially.

  Fost lunged forward and caught the javelin. He began to hack at its shaft just above the barbed head, trying to keep from jarring it in the wound. He felt the tremors of agony shudder through the mighty wing-muscles.

  “Hurry,” came Moriana’s voice. “He cannot hold on much longer!”

  The barb came away. A heave threw Fost backward, pulling the javelin out of Ayoka’s wing with the same motion that sent the courier sprawling across the eagle’s back. Ayoka swung away to the left. Fost would have fallen, but Moriana turned to grab him. Then Ayoka’s wings were beating again. Their headlong plummet eased.

  Frustrated, the Guardsmen charged. With a jarring impact, Ayoka twisted to meet one. Fost managed to grab a convenient strap with his sword hand and almost dropped his weapon. He smelled new rankness. A shadow fell on him. He jerked himself against Ayoka, his cheek pressing into Moriana’s bare rump. Talons like heated wires raked his back.

  Cursing, he flung the beheaded javelin after the eagle that had clawed him. The spinning shaft struck its tail and knocked free a handful of its stabilizing feathers. The bird pitched forward, righted itself with a wild plunging of its wings, and went fluttering away, fighting to stay airborne as its rider clung helplessly to its back.