Shadow Page 22

  The castle was battened down for siege. Eleven birds sat on the sunward side of the aerie, all hooded and still. Whoever was in charge had not ventured a sortie against the impossible odds. Shadow had made his orders plain: The army was to wait for him to return. Had his strategy not worked, then the battle would not have needed to be fought, for it would have been useless.

  NailBiter landed on the pyramid roof of the aerie itself, and Shadow slid carefully down the old weathered timbers toward the dark side. As he had expected, the wood was dried and ancient, exactly like that of the Vinok aerie, where the troopers had ripped out a few boards to cook a meal.

  He made himself comfortable on the awkward slope, just back from the edge. Below him was the terrace and the deserted perching wall, flanked by a thin litter of mute pellets. He had jumped from that wall once...He shivered again at the memory. He was well above the roof of the castle, safely out of bowshot, but NailBiter was exposed and a tempting target if anyone thought of it, so Shadow had to hurry.

  His arrival would have been heard by those below him.

  "Who's in charge down there?" he shouted.

  "God save King Jarkadon!" The voice belonged to Vak Vonimor.

  "It's Shadow."

  "I saw you. Come and get us, bird lover."

  "Vak, I owe you a debt," Shadow said without hope. "I don't want more bloodshed. Rorin is dead--there will be no message passed and no help coming. Give up the castle. Proclaim the true king and we'll go away and leave you alone."

  "Go lay an egg!" the voice below him shouted. "You're bluffing. Come and get us."

  No doubt the man assumed he was in a strong position. He would have archers, standing on a solid floor. The attackers had to come in against the light, in unstable slings which would seem ludicrous to an old skyman like Vonimor. Even if Shadow's men were to land on the roof and chop holes in it, they would still black out the light when they tried to shoot through those holes. If he set fire to the roof, he would kill the birds, which were on the downwind side. So Vonimor would be as confident as Rorin had been.

  "All right!" Shadow yelled. "When you're ready to give up, release the eagles."

  He clambered back up the slope to NailBiter, who was shivering with excitement. As they dived away from the aerie, a couple of arrows flew unpleasantly close.

  The army melted away to clear the air. Shadow signaled for a comb of rocks, then soared on a thermal in the distance and waited, watching.

  The first two went through the planks, making small holes but undoubtedly scaring the hell out of the defenders below as they shattered against the floor. The third rock struck a corner beam, and the whole roof shuddered.

  Then the final five struck simultaneously, and the ancient timbers on the darkward side collapsed, crumpling and folding and taking much of the barred wall with them.

  The hoods started coming off--and the battle of Ninar Foan was over.

  Shadow did not cheer. Never had there been a peace treaty in the Old Times struggle between man and bird--it had merely decayed into guerrilla warfare as the eagles abandoned the middle slopes and retreated to places where men could not follow. The killing had become random terror, when a wild saw a chance to take an unarmed man or the skymen a wild. There had never been a peace, and now the full fury of war was about to erupt again.

  Never before had the eagles captured an aerie. But this time they had a skyman on their side.

  A traitor.

  Bong!

  More like a prisoner than a victorious general, Shadow marched along a corridor with three swordsmen in front of him and another three behind. Each one of them was a head taller than he was, and most were twice as wide; he did not trust the hospitality of Ninar Foan.

  Bong!

  Instinctively he was keeping time. Every third step of his left foot coincided with a stroke from the great bell as it echoed mournfully through the stones and the passages, drifting out over castle and town, wafted away in the wind toward the Great Salt Plain.

  Bong!

  "This one, I think," he said. The door was opened, the room inspected before he could enter.

  It was well furnished yet cluttered with a lifetime of personal effects: paintings, shelves covered with souvenirs, inlaid wooden chests, a dozen trophy heads decorating the walls. The drapes were partly drawn. The air was stuffy and stank of death.

  Bong!

  Leaving his guard by the door, he advanced to the big bed and wondered if he was too late. The tiny mummy face was yellow, and the good eye closed; the dead eye was half-open and blank as usual.

  Bong!

  Then the eye opened slightly. "Why don't you turn that damned thing off and let a man die in peace?" the old voice wheezed.

  Shadow reached down and took one of the limp hands. It was cold as the High Rand. "I am sorry you are unwell, Sir Ukarres."

  There was a pause while the eye studied him. "I am sorry you are well."

  Bong!

  "I have a score to settle," Shadow said. "You tried to kill me. You sent me to Dead Man's Pass, but you did not tell me that it had never been done from this side."

  The old man stared at him contemptuously. "There had to be a first. But go ahead--settle."

  Shadow shrugged.

  "Pah!" Ukarres sneered. "You wouldn't settle anyway."

  "Probably not," Shadow agreed, and smiled. "Now the king will be proclaimed, and then we shall leave and not disturb you further."

  Ukarres licked his lips and gestured toward a table. Shadow reached for the beaker of water and held him up while he took a sip. In contrast to his hands, his body burned, but the water seemed to revive him a little. The funereal tolling had ended.

  Ukarres coughed feebly and sank back. "So you have liberated twelve eagles? How many left to go?"

  Shadow sat on the edge of the bed. "No idea. The king alone has thousands."

  "Vonimor is a fool," Ukarres wheezed. "You would not have had it so easy had I been there. Yes, the aerie, maybe; but not the castle itself."

  "It was only the birds we wanted," Shadow said. "We could have just bypassed the castle and gone on."

  Ukarres frowned. "And when Jarkadon comes, he will burn and pillage because we surrendered to Vindax. Such is war. Well, I shall not be here."

  "Jarkadon will not come," Shadow said. "The duke will not be returning either. You may never hear from the capital again, Ukarres."

  "Bah!" the old man said mildly. "Karaman may win battles, but he will lose in the end. How is my old friend?"

  That was better. "He is well, purring over a new great-grandson. He stayed in Allaban. But his health seems excellent."

  "I am glad," Ukarres said with surprising grace. "And your prince--or king?"

  "He was less lucky than you," Shadow said grimly. "He will not be visiting this place." Vindax had gone on ahead days before, strapped in a litter and well guarded by men and eagles. He would stop only at isolated farms, but would needs make slow time because of his weakness. He could traverse the sparsely populated Rand without other men knowing. Birds, yes; men, no.

  Ukarres did not speak, so Shadow said, "And Elosa? She has gone to court, I hear."

  "The duke forbade her to go with him, and we kept her shackled, almost. But the king's orders became more demanding." The eye glinted. "The last one was specific: Alvo would hang by his thumbs if the child did not go. Elosa was ecstatic, of course. She will be there by now."

  "Why?" Shadow mused. "What does Jarkadon want with her? To thank her, do you suppose?"

  Ukarres flicked his faint eyebrows in a sort of shrug. "A hostage for the duke's good behavior if he sends him back, perhaps."

  That made sense. The gaunt duchess had refused to discuss her husband or daughter. She would be down at the gate now, attending the proclamation of Vindax VII.

  Ukarres closed his eye as though the conversation were ended. Shadow waited. After a minute the old skyman's curiosity got the better of him, and the eye opened again.

  "You have taught
the birds to throw rocks--that is a dangerous innovation, lad. What if the wilds copy them?"

  "They are wilds! Karaman was right, and you have known it for years. You were keeping slaves, not beasts of burden."

  "So?"

  "No repentance?" Shadow asked sadly.

  Anger brought back some life to the shriveled corpse. "None! It is the eagles that make it possible. Do you think I would rather be a sheepherder in a hovel, or a skyman living in a castle with servants and comfort? How is it in Allaban? Did Ryl make his paradise?"

  "They have a republic. All men are equal."

  Ukarres snorted. "If you believe that, then I have some young lunks here to wager against you, pipsqueak. Arm wrestling? Boxing? All men equal? Feathers!"

  "They have no masters--put it that way." In truth, Shadow had found Allaban very strange.

  Ukarres was about to make some angry retort but was seized by a fit of coughing and then needed more water. He sank back weakly. "They eat lettuce, I suppose. Did you have much steak when you were there?"

  "I stayed with Karaman," Shadow confessed. "The eagles are constantly offering him kills. But you are right, I admit--most men in Allaban see little meat."

  "I knew that would be the way of it," Ukarres said with some satisfaction. "Who would tend livestock if he were not allowed to defend it against the birds? And what of us? There is not much grows up here except sheep and goats. The children are going to starve in Ninar Foan, boy, while your precious birds eat the meat."

  Shadow squirmed uneasily. The Range was fertile and could support its human population easily on its crops. The Rand, admittedly, was not. "There will be few birds around here for a while. You had better make your plans quickly."

  "I have only one plan now," Ukarres said. "And that is to die as soon as I can. But with luck the fighting will kill off most of the birds. We got plenty of them in Allaban."

  "I must go," Shadow said. "The proclamations will have been read--Vindax as king and no fighting against eagles, no more slave birds, elect a local mayor. I must be on my way."

  "Why the hurry?" Ukarres demanded, his warrior's curiosity aroused in spite of himself. "Tell me what you think you can do."

  Shadow hid a smile. "We are going leftward along the Rand as fast as we can, and that will be very fast. Every aerie will be emptied as this one was. I have shown the way; a few men left at each castle or town can handle it and then hurry on to catch up. Ramo will not know what is happening before we are upon them.

  "I stopped the messenger Vak sent," he added sadly. "It was young Rorin. He was the only casualty, apart from Vonimor's broken ribs."

  "No warnings?" Ukarres mused. "What of the singles? Jarkadon has good advisers--probably the duke, of course. He has scattered singles all along the Rand. Communications have never been better in my lifetime. You can't stop the Ramo singles going back."

  "That's good!" Shadow said. "As long as they carry no messages. Jarkadon will be able to map our progress. There are two things he can do--and I want him to do the wrong one."

  "So they will be waiting for you," Ukarres said. He closed his eye as though imagining the battle. "And you offer terms: Put Vindax on the throne and you won't release the rest of the birds. The Rand will be lost, of course, but the Range safe. I don't think you'll get very far with that ploy." He looked up with a satisfied smile.

  "You're wrong," Shadow said, content to discover that Ukarres had worked it out as he had expected him to. "What they must not know, and what you don't know, ishowwe are doing it."

  He stayed quiet until Ukarres demanded, "Well? Howareyou doing it?"

  Shadow told him, and his shock was obvious.

  "It isn't possible!" he whispered.

  "It is! Karaman went back to the old books. He discovered that the First Ones blunted the birds' talons. They used metal helmets--the birds could not remove those. When the war was won, men started using the birds for hunting and left their talons alone. He isn't sure. But over the ages the equipment has been perfected and made lighter, and the eagles never thought to try again. They were too smart! They thought they knew better." Eagles did not experiment--their thinking was even more rigid than Ninomar's.

  The old cynical smile briefly flickered on the pillow. "And over the ages we bred larger birds and smaller men! Do I detect an irony there?"

  "Possibly." Shadow smiled also. "It was just something very obvious that no one had seen. The birds never preen their own heads--they do each other's. But I knew that NailBiter could reach his beak with a talon, and I knew that the helmet had only the two straps and certainly the neck strap alone could not hold it firm in a strong wind."

  A helmet had to be a flimsy, pliable thing, for it had to slide up under the hood and fit around the comb and beak. So a helmet was only two pads of leather, joined by two straps at the top and fastened by two buckles below.

  Ukarres was staring in horror. "You cannot stop this thing, then? It is already too late?"

  "Yes," Shadow said. "The days of the skymen are over. The eagles will be freed, and they will take good care that no one ever enslaves another, by any means."

  Ukarres gave him a skeptical glare, then his gaze wandered away to the far distance. It was a while before he spoke.

  "The keeper of the Rand is the last of the skymen," he said quietly. "Did you get that lecture from Karaman?"

  "No. I thought I was a skyman."

  "No." Ukarres sighed. "You were a trooper, and the troopers are tax collectors. The real skymen were rulers. Once all the local lords ruled their own fiefs and defended the men against the eagles. But they were always quarreling and having little wars. The kings gradually pulled them all into Ramo and made courtiers out of them. Taught them revelry instead of rebellion, finery instead of fighting, madrigals instead of mayhem."

  "They are parasites!" Shadow said.

  "Yes, they are now," Ukarres agreed. "Only the keeper of the Rand remained. He is the last of the skymen. And the kings did all the ruling and became tyrants. That's what Karaman says."

  "I think I agree with that," Shadow said. "Perhaps you do?"

  "Perhaps a little. Why did you come to see me?"

  "I...to say good-bye."

  The creaky voice rose in fury. "Wanted to talk to a skyman, didn't you? Not many in Allaban! Tired of farmers and priests?"

  That might well be true; Shadow had not thought of it.

  "And you wanted my approval!" Ukarres said angrily. "You wanted to confess to me what you've done and see if I approve. Well, I don't. You've swallowed Ryl's rubbish about being nice to those killer flying monsters, and you've betrayed your own kind. You've freed the birds and taught them to throw rocks, and now they're going to rule us, instead of the other way around."

  "Most of the folk in Allaban seem to be friendly with the birds," Shadow protested. "They have a feathered friend or two who drops in and gives them a leg of mutton once in a while."

  "For what? Just for chat? You're saying that the birds are amused by the humans?"

  "Well..."

  "That's it, isn't it? Entertainment! Curiosities? In Allaban the humans are pets now?"

  Shadow rose. "I would rather be a pet for a bird than a slave to Jarkadon. Karaman is right: We were wrong to enslave the birds, and we paid for it. I hope you recover, Sir Ukarres."

  "Shut the door and let me die in peace," the old man said, and closed his single eye.

  Chapter 18

  "An eagle never forgets."

  --Skyman proverb

  BETWEEN the Rand and the Range lay a gap which the skymen called the "Big Jump." It was not especially deep--a drover road crossed it, snaking over the great monoliths, the cinder cones, and the jagged fault blocks like a snail track through a garbage tip, spanning chasms on ramshackle bridges and seeking always the highest ground. The herds and the ox carts crawled painfully along there, the men gasping in the heat and thick air, and they had another name for it.

  To the skymen, though, it was the Big Jump, and its wi
dth was always a challenge. The sunward crossing--from Rand to Range--was the easier, aided by the cold wind. For both mounts and wilds the technique was the same: Climb in the strong thermal which poured upward from a great sun-blasted cliff below Krant, and then glide. Ridden birds had a steeper angle of glide than wilds or spares, but in most cases they could all arrive safely at the little mountain called Rakarr, which marked the start of the Range.

  Against the darkward face of Rakarr, of course, the cold wind rose in an updraft, and skill was needed there: The rider had to gain altitude to be able to circle the peak and reach the thermal above the sunward face. After that his road to the Range was open, an easy line of thermals to Ramo and beyond, all the way to the end. But with too little altitude he would not reach the thermal, while too much would sweep him up into the turbulence of rain and storm that lay on the darkward side of every mountain in the Range. It was those clouds which kept the Range fertile, their precious rainfall seeping through the volcanic rock to emerge as springs on the sunward side, but they could be death for a bird and its rider.

  The darkward crossing from Range to Rand was harder, at least for the skymen. The wilds merely rode a convenient thermal up into the hot wind and let it carry them, and they were not even restricted to using the Big Jump--they could cross at wider places. But the men could not go that high, so they had to fight the cold wind all the way, and many a rider ran out of air before he reached the thermal at Krant. Then he would be swept back and down and suffocated in the desert, unless he was lucky enough to achieve a landing near the drover road and could hitch an ignominious ride for himself and his mount on an ox cart.

  So the Big Jump was the main obstacle between the Rand and Ramo, and it was there, obviously, that the battle must be fought. When Lord Ninomar had been put in charge of the Guard, he had seen that point at once.

  He had his promotion: full Marshal Lord Ninomar now. Of his two superiors, one was senile--well over thirty--and the other had rashly complained about the king's treatment of his granddaughter and had not yet recovered his health.