My gorge rose. A warrior who has killed and is familiar with death I may be. Battle-hardened, I was. The blood I’d seen spilled could sink a battle-ship. Yet, the sight of so much death, so much horror, caused my soul to cringe. My mental connection to Rygel brought me the twin feelings from him, the same shock I felt. So Rygel is human after all, I thought wryly.
“Of course I am,” he snapped, annoyed.
“Sorry,” I replied, but inwardly I chuckled.
“Let’s get the deed done and get out of here,” he grumbled. “Before I lose my breakfast.”
“Well,” I mentally drawled. “Should that happen, I’m sure you could refill your belly rather quickly.”
Silence echoed across the mental bridge between us. “Princess, you are an evil woman,” Rygel grumbled after a long moment.
“I know. You love me anyway.”
His sense of humor hadn’t died, however. “That I do, Princess. That I do.”
We flew on, toward Soudan’s high walls. The walls themselves still stood, albeit with ragged chunks bitten out from their solid frames, and much of the palace had been badly damaged. We flew slowly over the massive gates Rygel blew into fragments the night we escaped Brutal’s trap. Shock at the utter devastation within the city killed the last of my humor. Many buildings still stood, built, perhaps, with the same love and knowledge as the holy monastery at Jefe left far behind us. Those not built as well lay in rubble, like so many mountains of piled rock.
Living souls waded through the flood and the wreckage of shattered buildings with teams and wagons, stacking the dead within the beds for burial. Burial, such as it was, I thought morbidly. With so much flooding, funeral by fire was out of the question. Yet, how will they bury their dead under a foot of water?
While many houses lay in ruins, far more homes sat battered but proudly erect. People came and went, orders shouted, wagons drawn by lumbering teams laden with food goods or corpses trundled through the streets. Though many sat and bemoaned their ill-fortune, plenty lent a hand to clear the city of the dead. If not taken away quickly, the bodies rotting in the stagnant water would spread disease. If Brutal didn’t care about the surviving populace, it appeared someone in charge did. Military officers rode, standing in their stirrups, and barked commands. Troops kept the peace, shot looters, and assisted old ladies.
Whether by luck or divine design, the royal palace itself seemed to have weathered Usa’a’mah’s annoyance without a hiccup. Well-armed soldiers paced across the battlements, peering down through the crenellations to the destruction below. Rygel and I flew amongst the many ravens, rooks and crows circling over the proud towers, craving a delectable meal of aristocrat or royal trooper. The other birds might feast, but I certainly didn’t relish the idea of snacking on a fat, bloated matron. By Rygel’s hurried mental retreat from the topic, he didn’t quite like the idea, either.
Battalions of Federate soldiers in purple and gold directed clean-up efforts, quelled the insurgence of the weak preying on the weakest, and maintained some semblance of order. Yet, we saw nothing of Brutal’s massing his armies to follow after us. If he gathered his forces, he did so either in secret or not within the city walls near his palace.
Whether curiosity bit me or something else did, a sudden urge grabbed hold. “I want to check out something,” I said.
Leaving him to follow, I winged across town, leaving the towers of the palace behind.
“Check what?” he asked, his wings beating in concert with mine, behind my right shoulder.
“I don’t know. But we need to go this way.”
Rather than the caustic response I expected, Rygel merely followed my lead without commenting. I learned well to appreciate the simple things in life: like Rygel not arguing or demanded answers I couldn’t give.
“I heard that,” Rygel remarked stiffly, offended.
Any rate, I thought, Raine would want to know.
“He’d want to know what?”
Rather than think of an answer, I concentrated on finding my way from the air. The vast confusion of rubble and intact buildings, choked streets and death offered a challenge for me, but I flew slowly forward. Often I circled, seeking the familiar, following the gut instinct within me, peering downwards. Flocks of ravens, crows and vultures fed on the death below. I hoped they didn’t have the intelligence to wonder why two ravens in particular weren’t interested in feasting. Or that any human, looking up, would wonder at a pair of ravens who failed to dine.
“They have enough on their minds,” Rygel replied.
Onward I flew, following the river toward the sea. The river’s banks were difficult to distinguish, with the influx of floodwaters and the floating debris everywhere. I banked lower, my wings fully spread to soar with the effortlessness ravens found natural. The merest flicker of my wingtip set me floating on the warm thermals, leaving my mind and eyes free to gaze below. Could that cluster of rubble be the place where Brutal trapped us?
Ah, there it was. Circling back around, I backwinged onto the remains of a shattered warehouse’s chimney, above the wreckage. There I roosted, peering down through my raven’s sharp black eyes.
“What do you see?” Rygel asked, dropping lightly beside me, furling his wings over his back. He shook himself, his inky feathers settling into place.
“Don’t you recognize it?” I asked.
“No,” he said, peering down through first his right eye, then his left. “What am I looking at?”
“Adhas’s house.”
Even as a bird, Rygel’s cursing in his own language sounded like cursing.
Once a house, it was no longer. Only bricks and rubble remained. Barrels floated nearby, bobbing lightly on the gentle wash of a newly formed lake. The River Soare, with the huge influx of rainwater and hail, overflowed her banks and not just crept inland, but roared in with full fury. No building for miles remained intact under the onslaught of the river’s power. The entire Harbor District lay beneath the deluge the Wrath of Usa’a’mah created.
Among the barrels of fish oil, a carcass bobbed in the wake of the river’s tide. A stream of black hair floated serenely outward from the corpse, tangled with sea kelp and river algae. Ghostly pale, its flesh had already bloated to twice its normal size under the sun’s savage power. A pair of seagulls winged closer to eye the body with bright avid eyes.
“Is that Adhas?” I asked.
“Sure looks like it,” Rygel replied grimly. “I reckon she’s paid full score for her treatment of Arianne.”
“The Wrath of Usa’a’mah?”
“Princess, I’m a healer, not a theologian. Ask a priest.”
“Had we been even a few days late—” I began.
“Don’t say it!”
His mental tone contained such anguish, I shied away in sympathy.
“Come on.”
I caught the light breeze and flew upward, away from the stench of the river. With the light wind beneath my wings, I soared inland, Rygel behind my right shoulder as though belonging there.
Beneath us, the devastation continued for as far as I could see. The neighborhoods below, mostly hovels and earthen huts, had not fared well in the storm’s onslaught. None I found remained intact. Bodies aplenty I saw, for the work crews clearing the city of its dead hadn’t yet reached this far. Genuine ravens and vultures found a delectable buffet of lower class peasantry and still lower class thieves and cutthroats.
What was that?
“What?” Rygel asked, following as I circled lower.
“That.”
“I don’t see what you’re talking about, Princess.”
Rather than answer, I perched precariously on the toppled bricks of the Dead Fisherman, its chimney towers offering a sturdy place for two ravens to rest. Rygel backwinged smoothly, and his toes gripped mortar and rock, to roost beside me. His black eyes peered across, rather than followed the direction of my own eyes.
Unease wormed its wicked way through my raven gut. I shook my feathers, tr
ying to dispel the sensation. Yet, primeval shivers took hold of me. Fear flooded my veins as quickly as the Soare took the Harbor. “Don’t you find that odd?” I asked.
“Find what odd, Princess?”
“Open your bloody eyes,” I snapped. “Look down.”
He did. It took a long moment, but in the end his mental voice came through puzzled and strained. “That’s just too weird.”
Below me and several hundred rods away, a building stood tall, all of its six chimneys belting out tendrils of healthy blue smoke. Rubble from a nearby brick warehouse had tumbled down, scattering stones and bricks in a long wall around and past the lone building. The rubble, piled high, formed what seemed to be a solid wall, protecting it from the raging floodwaters of the River Soare.
People—living, breathing people—formed lines into the sole survivor, patient, their feet wetted in what may have amounted to an inch or so of nasty flood. An inch, not feet or rods. A simple, uncomplicated inch. ’Twas not even enough to cover the tops of their boots.
On the opposite side, people straggled out, carrying bundles of what I surmised to be food, to wade out and disappear into the waste of Soudan city.
“I don’t get it,” Rygel said. “What is that place? How could it have survived when all else around it is gone?”
I knew. Only too well did I know. Fear niggled down my raven spine and set up housekeeping in my gut. The urge to fly, to fly far away from here and never look back took hold of my senses. Who cared what Brutal was up to? I wanted nothing more than to fly to Raine’s arms and stay there for the next year or ten.
“Princess?”
I croaked, yet I formed no intelligible communication.
“Princess, what’s wrong?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t answer.
People went into the intact, healthy building and emerged with food. Behind it, also protected from Soare’s flood, horse, mule and oxen drawn wagons lined up, men busily unloading goods into the inn’s backrooms. To begin the process of feeding and sheltering the shivering, hungry masses all over again.
“Ly’Tana, talk to me, dammit!”
“Don’t you see?” I stared wildly into Rygel’s black beady eyes, my wings half-furled in agitation. “Don’t you recognize it?”
He stared downward, his head cocked to read the sign waving gently in the breeze from a bad angle. “The Whoring Whale.”
“The place we waited for you to return with Tor,” I said, my gut aching with panic. “You weren’t there yet.”
“What happened?”
“I—I—”
I could not go on. Even my mental voice choked off what I dared not say.
Rygel sidled sideways, stepping closer to me, his beak rubbing across the back of my neck. His raven wing, acting as a human arm, lay across my back. I sincerely doubted real ravens behaved thus, but I felt his very human comfort and allowed myself to be comforted. I choked back my caw of fear, gulped and went on.
“You hadn’t gotten there yet,” I said, miserable. “The innkeeper came—I was dressed as Omisi’s priestess—he came- he asked for my blessing-”
Rygel stiffened, his comforting wing withdrawing. “What did you say?”
I breathed in fear and breathed out misery. “I wagged my fingers and I said ‘You’re blessed’.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all. Kel’Ratan laughed his ass off, of course, but that’s all.”
Rygel’s gaze left me and once more rested on the mass influx of people at the Whoring Whale. The only building that offered food, shelter and relief from the death and destruction the Usa’a’mah’s temper tantrum left behind. It was the only building protected by rubble from the rage of the Soare. It was the only place within miles that one may have a roof over one’s head and a warm meal in one’s belly.
“That innkeeper must be making a fortune,” Rygel said slowly.
“Because of my blessing.”
“That’s not possible.”
I rounded on him, my feathers ruffling in ire. “Who are you to say what is possible or not? How dare you! You, you, who spoke so freely of white magic.”
“White magic comes from the gods, through their priests.”
“I was dressed as an Osimi priestess.”
His beak bobbed in bird-like confusion. “Let me see if I understand you.” Rygel half-furled his wings in obvious agitation. “You, disguised as a priestess of Osimi, blessed this innkeeper at the Whoring Whale.”
“I did.”
“The storm came, leveled everything in its path, laying waste to miles around it, and the only building, and man, to survive, received your blessing?”
“Give that man a cigar.”
“That’s not—”
“Don’t say it!”
Rygel gazed out and down, toward the only business that flourished in miles, no, leagues upon leagues of destruction and death.
“Osimi answers the prayers of all her priestesses,” I said, my voices, aloud and mental, both soft. “Curses and blessings both.”
“But—”
“Something protected that inn and that man I blessed. How can you say ’twas not Osimi herself allowed other buildings to fall and protect the inn not just from rain and hail, but the flooded river? On my word alone?”
“You belong to Nephrotiti,” Rygel said, baffled. “Why would Osimi answer your blessing when you don’t belong to her?”
Raven shoulders didn’t shrug very well. “Perhaps Osimi thinks of me as hers. Maybe when I wear her white dress, she sees me as her priestess.”
“And what would Nephrotiti have to say about that? Eh?”
“I don’t know!” I shrieked, cawing and flapping my wings in panicky agitation. “Had I not been born heir to my father’s throne, I’d have been her priestess. I feel Her as few others do. Nephrotiti and Osimi are said by theologians to be sisters. Perhaps even now they fight over me.”
“I can see it now,” Rygel replied caustically, “a cosmic catfight over your body and soul. Get real.”
“Ignore it at your peril,” I snapped. “Something or someone wanted that inn and that man to live. Answer that, if you will.”
“I’m not—”
“A theologian. I know. I heard you the first time.”
“So then what?” Rygel asked. “When you wear the white dress, be cautious of whom you bless.”
I could hear his grin in his tone. “And watch your curses, please. I’d really hate to irritate you and discover one day my manhood didn’t work anymore.”
Grudgingly, I laughed. And shuddered to think of how close I came to cursing Kel’Ratan that night, in jest.
“That innkeeper is just fine without us,” Rygel said, leaping up and catching the breeze. “But Brutal is still missing. Unless he’s under water, he’s massing his soldiers to find us. And marry you.”
I chuckled, flying just behind his left wing. “Maybe I should curse him, instead.”
I caught the quick, fearful glance Rygel shot me over his shoulder. “Don’t. Not until you know what the hell Osimi or Nephrotiti or whomever are up to. The Whoring Whale’s survival and good fortune may have been your blessing, or it might be just a very weird coincidence. Let’s not go overboard thinking you have powers you don’t really have. Curses have a way of finding their way back to the curser.”
“You speak from experience?”
For a long moment, silence trailed from his mind, a black silence I wished I couldn’t feel. Sometimes his magical mind link was a very frightening thing.
“I am already cursed,” he said quietly, after a long moment. “When it’ll strike, I’ve no idea. But one day, it will. I just pray it takes only me.”
“You promised to tell us what happened,” I said.
“And I will, Princess. I swear it.”
He flew westward, back across the corpse of Soudan, back the way we had come. “I’m going to take an educated guess that Brutal will follow the river inland,” he said.
> “Why do you think that?” I asked, allowing the midmorning, rapidly heating air to lift me higher, away from the rotting stench of the city.
I caught an amused glance from his black eyes. “It’s what I’d do.”
Fearful need adding strength to our wings, we flew faster than we had on arriving. Soudan soon fell behind and the forest returned once we flew past her high walls.
What forest, I thought sourly, eyeing the desolation below. Further away from the city and the sea, the Soare’s banks flowed higher, contained only by small rocky cliffs to either side. Though the river’s waters had swollen dangerously, they seemed to meet the storm’s flood just beyond her banks. I saw the outline of the cliffs a mere few inches below the rapidly churning river.
Brutal would need high ground in which to camp his army, I mused, casting my keen raven’s eyes toward the hills. Rygel’s caw of agreement arrived at the same instant he dipped a wing and wheeled north. I followed suit, beating my way under the sun’s hot rays. The steamy, moist air arrived from the flood below to add lift to my feathers. I let it guide me, rising high against the sun, our shadows dark against the glimmering waters.
“And there he is,” Rygel said, his smirk of self-satisfaction made me wish for hands to slap him with. “Gods, I’m good.”
“That’s some ego you’re carrying around,” I commented, annoyed.
“I know, but it’s all right. It’s not heavy.”
Bloody hell, but sometimes I hated having a sense of humor. I know my laughter only encouraged him.
Just beyond Rygel’s heavy black beak rose several tendrils of blue smoke on the hilly horizon. Upon a tall hilltop, where the flood had failed to insinuate itself, I heard military sounds upon the wind. My keen raven senses picked up the many voices of men, the whinnying and snorting of horses, the jingle of harness, the scents of cookfires and roasting food.
Brutal’s war machine in action.
“Methinks a change of clothes is in order,” Rygel murmured as we winged silently toward the hilltop.
Catch a Wolf Page 13