Shadow Page 19

  Finally the group was assembled.

  An eagle swooped in across the reservoir, braked, then landed awkwardly on the fiat grass. It stalked forward a few paces and stopped, its great bulk seeming to complete the arc and turn it into a circle.

  A full-face view of an eagle was still unnerving to Shadow, a sight he had rarely seen before he came to Allaban. This was an elderly female, brown with a few silver primaries, and on flat ground she stood twice as high as he would have done, glaring slowly around the circle. Her gaze finally settled on Karaman.

  High above, not much more than spots in the sky, hung two or three dozen others. Far away beyond human sight there would be others watching, and others beyond them. The talk would be reported all across Allaban.

  "Er...who speaks to the High Ones?" the president asked.

  "Me!" Potro said eagerly, jumping forward into a circle of disapproving glances.

  "All right," Karaman said, indulging him. "Sit here." The skinny form dropped cross-legged to the grass and faced toward the bird.

  The president stood up. He was a lanky, bony, middle-aged spice merchant, shabby in his work clothes and smelling strongly of coffee and cinnamon.

  "You want to do the talking, Ryl?" he asked hopefully.

  Karaman shook his head. He had half twisted in his chair, as though not too much concerned in the affair at all, but he had stayed next to Vindax, which was a hopeful sign, worth many votes if there were to be voting. "You do fine, Jos," he said.

  The president shuffled a toe at the ground, finally leaning back against the frame of the children's swing set and sticking his hands in his pockets. "Citizen Vindax," he mumbled. "When you arrived, we said that you were welcome to stay until you got better and then we'd send you back. With no conditions."

  Porto's fingers were racing and the eagle's fierce glance was following them, her comb moving as she passed the speech up to the watchers in the sky. Karaman was unobtrusively watching the translation but seemed to be satisfied with it.

  "Well, we meant that," the president said. "And that's still fine by us. But the death of...of your father...has made a bit of a difference. See, we got a letter from Ramo. Seems they still had a bird they took from Allaban, and they've sent this note to us and we've talked it over and it makes things a bit tricky, like."

  He explained at length, but Shadow had been told earlier by Karaman. Jarkadon wanted "the pretender Vindax" turned over to him. In return, he would renew the truce his father had made, to last for the duration of his own reign.

  "Well, we don't want a war," the president said apologetically.

  That was obvious--it would be a rout, although perhaps Jarkadon did not know that. "But we don't fancy turning you over--under the circumstances."

  He dried up for a while, looking around hopefully for volunteers and not finding any. "We thought if you wanted to stay, then maybe the king would settle for a letter from you," he said at last, uncomfortably. "Waiving any claims on his throne."

  "And Allaban," someone muttered.

  Vindax nodded and waited. Shadow wondered who would support him and feed him. The republic was not very good at raising taxes, even when the government voted them. Who would provide charity for a helpless cripple with no family?

  But certainly these politicians would have thought about finance, and eventually the president glanced toward Shadow. "We think we could find a house and a bit of land for you and your friend," he said. "If that's what you want to do."

  So Shadow would be peasant for two, would he? And also nurse. The damage to Vindax had been drastic, and nothing worked below his waist; he was not a pleasant patient to tend. Was this divine punishment for a failed bodyguard? A lifetime of exile and horrible drudgery?

  "Well!" the president said. "That's what we wanted to suggest. Who speaks for the church?" Again he looked hopefully at Karaman, but again the old man shook his head, and it was a plump, matronly lady who rose. The president sat down quickly. Even this apparent formality of having the speaker stand was observed only so that the eagles could tell which one was talking.

  Perhaps Potro was regretting his eagerness; he rubbed his fingers to ease them.

  "The church would be much against turning over a refugee!" the woman said fiercely. "We would rather hope to have Citizen Vindax's help in overthrowing this Jarkadon and freeing all the birds in Rantorra, as we should have done eight kilodays ago! Would you agree to that, Citizen? If we can put you back on your throne, would you free the eagles?"

  "Not the throne of Allaban!" two or three said together. Potro glanced around angrily.

  She started a lecture about moral obligations, and eventually the president suggested that perhaps they should hear from Citizen Vindax.

  Vindax raised one of his hand stumps, and the eagle's eyes flashed toward him.

  "Explain that I cannot stand, please," he said. His voice had changed tone but not timbre. It was still deep and commanding, but the arrogance had gone.

  "I did," Potro said. "I said your legs are broken."

  "Then I ask the representative of the church:Canyou put me on my throne? Is your army capable of it?"

  The woman rose again, looking pink. "We can probably persuade a lot of men to help. We would need the government to help us with money and weapons. But you would give up any claim on Allaban, wouldn't you? For yourself and your...successors?" She turned much pinker and sat down quickly; she had almost said "heirs."

  "Good archers?" Vindax asked.

  "They'd need practice," she admitted weakly.

  "And the mounts?"

  The president jumped up. "Let's hear from the eagles."

  Potro's fingers flickered and went still. He translated. "She says that the eagles should be free. It would be an updraft...a good thing to free all the eagles. The birds of Allaban mourn their friends who are slaves." He signaled, probably telling her to go more slowly. "But she says that you would kill them, not free them. The men would ride out on them to fight, and they would all die. Many eagles of Allaban would die also in the fighting. That would be a big downdraft."

  "Does she understand about law?" the prince asked. "How a royal command works?"

  "Gramps?" Porto said urgently.

  Karaman chuckled. "Tell her this. The-one-with-broken-legs is the highest man in Rantorra. If he goes back, then all other men will be lower than he and must do what he signals. He could tell them to free their eagles."

  "She wants to know why he doesn't," Potro muttered for the benefit of the rest of the company.

  "Tell her..." Then Karaman decided to tell her himself, and flickered his fingers for a few minutes. "I explained about the brother. It's a hard idea for them."

  The eagle was scanning the sky, studying the discussion going on up there. Then she put her menu-inspecting glare back on Potro.

  "She says would it be like the last time? Would many-many-many eagles die?"

  "Yes," Karaman said.

  "The High Ones say that that is a big downdraft to kill many-many-many eagles to free not-so-many eagles," Potro announced.

  Vindax seemed to shrink inside his homespuns.

  The president stood up. "We talked about this in the government. We can't fight, because we have no mounts. I think we need your decision, Citizen: go or abdicate as we suggested. The eagles won't help."

  "Shadow?" Vindax muttered. The gaunt and ruined face swung around to him. The heavy brows were still there, and the dark eyes had sunk back into the skull, pits of agony and despair. "What can I do? Advise me."

  "Jarkadon will kill you," Shadow said. Here was the loyalty test, then--he must make the sacrifice and the offer. "Accept the land and stay in exile."And I must tend that disgusting lump of flesh until eventually its life of pain comes to an end."Perhaps one day the kingdom will tire of his excesses and send for you."

  Vindax reached out a flipper hand to touch his arm; if there was expression on that mask of scar tissue, then it was compassion. "I will not impose on you, my friend. If I g
o to Ninar Foan? The duke would not hand me over, I think."

  That was a possibility; there would be many servants to care for the cripple, and surely the duke's conscience would be stricken by the sight of this horror his daughter had created. But it meant a once-proud prince throwing himself on the mercy of his disowned father. Where was the arrogance now?

  "We do not know that the duke is there," Shadow said. "He may be in Ramo; so may Elosa. And if Jarkadon has her as hostage, then the duke is a dry pond."

  Vindax nodded miserably and looked away. "I was just hoping," he mumbled, "that you might work one of those miracles of yours, think of something that no one else had. Some other way."

  Shadow shook his head. It was easy enough to display fake brilliance when surrounded by marble-minded aristocrats like Lord Ninomar, but these Allaban farmers were deeply practical souls themselves. Unless the equation would work in reverse...

  He was a skyman, a trooper, a soldier. Was there something that he should be seeing that they might have missed? He pondered and then realized that everyone was waiting for him, watching him. Yes, perhaps there was something.

  "I cannot restore your health," he said. "Within the limits of the practical, though, what do youwant?"

  The deep-buried eyes flamed with a fury as fierce as that of the eagles. "Justice!" said Vindax.

  "That's all?" Shadow asked.

  The eyes searched his. "What else could there be?"

  Karaman was peering curiously at Shadow. So were the others. Shadow stood up, thinking of Potro's arrival at Pharmol.

  "Can the birds understand experiment?" he said. "I would have to try something, and I'm not sure it would work."

  "No, they can't!" the old man snapped, as though he felt responsible for this failing in his beloved eagles. "They're nothandylike us, and their world is unchanging." He signaled. "I've told her you think there may be an updraft but you won't know until you go to look."

  Shadow knew that NailBiter's beak could reach almost any part of him except his head, but there was one movement he could not recall seeing in all his years of skyman training. "Ask her if she can put her head back like this," he said, looking straight up at the sky. Then he looked back at the eagle and recognized the flicker. "No, not chick signals. I'm serious."

  "Hey, good!" the busy-fingered Potro muttered, approving of his pupil.

  The eagle bent its head back briefly in imitation and then glared down at Shadow again.

  "Now--could she fly like that for a while? Could she land, maybe even just on the flat--but could she?"

  The humans seemed just as irritated and puzzled as the bird. Potro scowled and started to signal.

  "She says it could be done. Sometimes it would cause an accident, but it could be done usually. And why are you asking?"

  "They're inquisitive devils, Shadow," Karaman whispered. "You've got them all twiddling up there."

  "I have another question," Shadow said, mentally crossing his fingers. "Sometimes eagles will carry their kill in their talons. So they could carry rocks--if they dropped them, could they make the rocks land where they wanted them to?"

  "Holy Ark!" Karaman was staring at Shadow in stupefaction. "Sure they could! They don't think geometry, they live it. Why did I never see that?"

  Because he was not a fighter.

  "She says, 'cast,'" Potro announced in a puzzled voice. "What's cast got to do with it, Gramps?"

  Karaman chuckled, and he signaled to the eagle. "I've asked her to show us on that," he said, pointing to the children's swing set in the center of the circle.

  "That could be dangerous!" Shadow said uneasily, glancing around the group.

  "What the hell is 'cast'?" the spice merchant demanded.

  For a few moments no one spoke. Then Potro explained in a patient, superior tone, "Cast is what they throw up, the bits they can't digest in their crops. It's hard bails of nails and teeth and pebbles and stuff."

  NailBiter had stopped his preening. He and the six or so other eagles on the roof ridge were watching the sky, and so was Shadow, waiting for one of those tiny specks to start a dive, but nothing was happening. Perhaps the birds were having one of the songfests he had heard about and would make their choice in a kiloday or two.

  Then a clap of thunder showered the spectators with splinters and hoof fragments and a few sheep teeth--one of the swings had gone, leaving two wildly dancing ropes, each attached to half a plank. There were loud screams and belated raisings of hands in front of faces. Potro's shrill soprano shouted, "Gawrn!"

  "Holy Ark!" Karaman muttered.

  "Holy Ark yourself!" Shadow yelled. "From that height?"

  "I told you--they are spirits of the air!" Karaman insisted. "They know the air as we know the land."

  "She asks if that would kill a man," Potro said.

  "Yes!" Shadow said. "If he was sitting up, they could smash his head in with that. Even lying down, it would break his back. In fact, it would hurt the bird--it was harder than we would need."

  Karaman caught the next message. "She wants to know what the other chick talk was. They understand now that they don't need to carry archers."

  Shadow suppressed uneasiness--he had given the eagles a new weapon, something they had never had in their ancient war against mankind. They had never seen that they could use missiles as men did, any more than it would occur to men to kick at the birds. Whose side was he on? Fortunately his other idea needed human hands, so men could still retain some control...

  "I'm not sure," he confessed cautiously. "But I think it would work."

  "Hooks?" a voice said. The speaker was a small, dark, crinkled man who looked like a farmer.

  "Yes!" Shadow said. "We kill the rider and the reins go slack, blinkering the bird. If one of us flies in close with a long hook, then we could catch the reins and drop the hook, see? The bird holds its head back, like we saw, and the weight of the hook will hold the reins back--"

  "It doesn't work," the farmer snapped. "We tried something like that. You forgotten, Ryl?"

  "Why not?" Shadow demanded, suddenly deflated.

  The older man counted on his fingers. "First, there are a dozen other troopers shooting at you, lad. Second, it's almost impossible to get two birds that close in the air because they get in each other's wind. Third, there isn't time. A blind bird without human guidance panics and just drops," he finished triumphantly.

  "He's right, Shadow." Karaman sighed. "We did try something like that. It worked in rehearsal a couple of times, but not in practice. You use your ears to balance, did you know that? The birds have none. They need their eyes. Sorry, sonny. Nice try."

  Shadow sank back into his seat angrily.

  There had to be a way!

  "I do not wish to impose on your charity," Vindax said to the president. "I believe that I could write to...to the duke of Foan and he would send money. Then I could buy a suitable place and hire servants."

  Shadow stopped listening. He was a skyman--was he anything else? Was there any other way of looking at the problem which the farmers and merchants could not see, which Karaman had not seen when he led the rebellion? Karaman was a priest, a student of the ancient ways--wise but not trained to think of new things. He was emphatically not a fighter. He was a bird fanatic, of course, and had taught Shadow something of how the birds thought, although their way of looking at the world was so different from men's that it was almost incomprehensible.

  Up on the roof, NailBiter had inspected and approved every feather and was now standing on one leg, licking the talons of the other with that same tongue he had used to wash Shadow's hair. NailBiter thought that Shadow was his friend--the man who had unhooded him in the hellish dark of Dead Man's Pass and so freed him. So he thought. But it had been Karaman who had freed NailBiter. Shadow would not have known. He would have acquired another hood at the first chance he got and gone back to business as usual with a captive mount, a beast of burden.

  Not a friend. How could a man be friends with an eag
le? The affair in the pass had been an accident, caused by exhaustion, by carelessness, and by the wind.

  "You can't trust Jarkadon," Vindax was insisting.

  The president wanted that letter of abdication, and the sword was sliding slowly from the scabbard.

  The wind?

  "Wait!" Shadow shouted, leaping to his feet in excitement. "Maybe there is a way!"

  "Now what?" a man growled, standing between Shadow and the president.

  "Wecanfree the eagles!" Shadow tried to pass, but the man stared down at him without moving away.

  "Playtime is over, sonny," the president said quietly. "This is grown-ups business."

  Shadow felt blood rush to his throat, and his fists clenched. A tradesman speaking to the son of a baronet? An elected king speaking to a homeless exile?

  "Go ahead, lad," the spice merchant said, eyes glinting. He spoke not as a king or a tradesman, but as a big man speaking to a smaller one.

  Shadow spun on his heel and stalked out of the circle, face and soul burning. In Rantorra he was a commoner among nobles, and in Allaban he was a runt. There never was justice, he thought bitterly. He was nothing. All he had was his skymanship, and he should have gone Piatorra while he had the chance. Free the eagles? He was the last one who should want that.

  In his blind anger he almost tripped over a heap of old fence posts, broken farm tools, and rusted bicycles. Flailing arms to regain balance, he put up a flock of chickens, which rushed flapping and squawking in all directions. The flapping became a continuous roll of thunder and was joined by screams and huge shadows leaping over the grass as an eagle came slithering down the roof to sprawl onto the grass, wings wide, narrowly missing Vindax. Then two more filled the air, wings beating madly and loudly. The human screams were redoubled, and the meeting exploded into flight. Eagle Speaker reared tall and spread her wings, a living curtain shutting off the lagoon, her comb blurring in a silent shout. Feathers and dust filled the air. More giant birds went lurching noisily away, fighting for height...chickens shrilled madly among legs...

  What the hell?

  Up on the roof NailBiter had squared off with a young brown wild, both rearing as high as they could, wings thrashing, combs inflamed, beaks locked and breast straining against breast in a battle quite silent except for the drumming of wings and talons scraping on wood. Other birds were dropping from the sky, coming to restore order. Then IceFire dislodged the last of the other wilds, turned toward the duel, and took the brown from behind, leaping bodily on his back, and all three overbalanced and started to slide. The fight was forgotten in more thunder and clouds of dust...