Rocco's Wings (23 page)

The Krakatoan’s lips were pulled back, revealing two rows of determined teeth. A spray of blood splattered against Rocco’s face. A warrior beside him was down. He couldn’t risk looking which side.

He struck his opponent’s chest, remembering to lunge hard. He wasn’t just nicking Vesta’s tunic. His blade must go deep. They flew up. The Krakatoan kept trying to back him into the thickest part of the fighting. Rocco dropped or flipped, forcing the Krakatoan’s own back into the range of a flailing battle-axe.

The Krakatoan’s head lurched sideway. He’d been struck in the neck. Rocco drove his sword, pulling it out as the warrior fell away.

‘Over here!’ Vesta was fighting two Krakatoans. Rocco zoomed over.

Clash. Clash.
Around and around he and Vesta turned, their backs together, but far enough apart that they had full range of movement. To Rocco’s left and right, as well as above his head, Shalites fought the Krakatoans.

A red flying jacket meant pull back. A muddy black, strike fast.

Rain began to patter on the ground below, interrupted by the occasional wallop as a warrior’s body fell to earth. Arrows whipped by, ricocheting off war shields or lodging fast in the flesh of the mucky earth.

The light grew dim. It might only be afternoon, but the rain cast an aura of grey on everything. The battlefield was a hole; they were locked in, drowning in endless swells of sky water.

War

Darkness fell. Rocco could barely lift his wings as he and Vesta flew back to camp. His new muscles ached. The shoulders of his wings felt as if they were on fire.

They settled with the other warriors around the cook’s fire. The vat over which the cook stirred endlessly was spattered in mud. So were the logs they were sitting on, as well as the warriors’ clothes and everyone’s faces.

Without speaking Dolerite sat down beside Vesta. His face was drawn tightly. Spoons clacked against bowls. The forest was mostly silent except for the patter of rain.

‘There’s got to be an easier way,’ said Rocco quietly to Vesta.

‘Harpia can’t be reasoned with. We’ve tried,’ answered Dolerite.

‘Do you know what happened to Feldspar?’ asked Vesta.

Dolerite shook his head.

Vesta’s shoulders sagged.

The next day proceeded as the first, only now Rocco’s limbs were so stiff they felt as if they were clamped in irons. He and Vesta didn’t talk much except to give each other brief shouts about where they would move next across the battlefield. The rain continued. It became harder to distinguish the Shalites’ muddy jackets from the Krakatoans’.

When they returned to camp that night Belarica and the Plymouthians had arrived. They’d been travelling in the rain. They weren’t dirty like the warriors coming off the battlefield, but their hair hung limply, and their clothes were drenched.

Around their necks they wore the Shalite collar of spiky feathers, a marker so the allied forces could recognize each other. If that was the intent, it wasn’t going to work very well, not in the rain. Most of the feathers lay flat.

The Air Commodore entered Belarica’s tent. Supper had just ended when they both came outside again. Their faces were fierce, as if they’d just received some bad news.

Belarica flew up to a stump. She was every bit as regal as she’d been on that first day, thought Rocco. A grey cape was draped over her shoulders. Her upswept hair, full of red and gold jewels, framed a long neck. She’d adopted the colours of the crowned crane, one of her spy birds.

‘The air trembles with the suffering going on inside Krakatoan,’ said Belarica, addressing the warriors. ‘We are here for the citizens of Krakatoan, but also to stymie the decay of urvogel life everywhere in Upper Terrakesh. Harpia must be stopped. Urvogels have a right to live in peace without fear of losing their wings.’

The warriors clapped.

‘We must now fight the weather as well.’ Belarica pointed at the sky. ‘We sleep in tents while Harpia’s army returns at night to their beds.’

A murmur went around the troupe.

Belarica raised her hand. ‘We are motivated much more than the Krakatoans. They grow lax in their comforts. We are hardened by our conditions.’

The Air Commodore stood up. ‘We also have word that Gabbro has arrived. They are now formally allied with Harpia.’

‘Can I say something?’ Vesta stood up.

Belarica nodded.

‘The Krakatoans, they are all under Harpia’s spell. She has drugged them by adding something powerful to her wing dust. If we could just stop her ability to spread the dust, then the Krakatoan warriors might realize they’re fighting on the wrong side.’

‘It’s a good point, Vesta,’ said Belarica. ‘But Harpia is barricaded inside the city. She doesn’t come to the battlefield. The Krakatoans will defend her to the death.’

Vesta sat down. ‘There must be something,’ she muttered.

On the following morning, the fighting continued. Now the sides were swollen in size. Gabbro was allied with Krakatoan; Plymouth fought with Shale and the rebels led by Dolerite. Warriors fought over the field of green.

Rocco and Vesta drew the enemy into the trees of Wildergarten.

‘There’s one,’ Rocco would call. Up they would fly together, driving one, two or even three warriors down. Inside the closely growing trees, Rocco and Vesta would apply their acrobatics. Small compared to the adult urvogels, they nimbly sprang from branch to trunk to thrusting a sword into an enemy’s chest.

Every evening the porters would come out to the field and carry those they could reach back to tents that had been set up as the infirmary. The dead were carried to a hillside some distance away and burned, according to urvogel custom, in a large fire. Wolves and other scavengers lurked at the edge of the trees, lured close by the stench of burning carrion.

There must be a better way to end the war, Rocco thought as he stood with the warriors paying tribute to the dead urvogels turning again to ash.

* * *

Rocco sat with Vesta, Iggy and Rummy around the cook’s fire. They were now in their fifth week of fighting. The battle line had not moved. It remained firmly entrenched in the field of green. Green no more, the field was brown with mud and variously red or black depending on how fresh the blood was.

‘Will the rain never stop?’ asked Vesta.

On the other side of the fire were warriors, heads pulled down into the raised shoulders of their wings. The warrior on the left had glassy eyes. The other’s face was sickly. Belarica’s camp had been successful in fighting separation sickness, but a flu had been making the rounds. No one talked of winning any more.

‘Lots of warriors are ill.’ Iggy picked a nit out of Rummy’s fur. ‘Rummy and I’ve been helping the Alchemist in the infirmary.’

Rocco nodded. ‘I have an idea.’

‘What?’

‘Later.’

As soon as the Air Marshals left, Vesta said, ‘Okay, what is it?’

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said that day Belarica arrived – that there must be a way to stop Harpia. That if only we could stop her wing dust, the Krakatoan warriors might change their allegiance.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You also said something that day on the flat rock, when we were all sitting there just before you flew out foolishly over the lake.’

‘You don’t need to bring that up again.’

‘Okay. Okay, that’s not the point. The point is what you said just before. You said there was a type of mushroom that put urvogels to sleep.’

Vesta nodded. ‘The dropsy mushroom.’

‘If we could put Harpia’s army to sleep long enough, we could bust into the palace and capture Harpia.’

Vesta frowned. She wasn’t convinced.

‘Harpia’s wing dust. The Krakatoans are used to smelling it, even breathing it. We could mix the dropsy into the royal dust and distribute it while everyone’s asleep. Then we’ll capture Harpia.’

Rocco kept talking, giving all the details he’d been thinking of. When he finished, Vesta wasn’t shaking her head, but she still looked sceptical. ‘If it doesn’t work, we’ll be dead.’

‘I know,’ said Rocco. ‘But look around. We’re just being killed off one by one anyway.’

‘Lots of the warriors are dying,’ said Iggy. ‘The Alchemist doesn’t let me watch, but I see the porters carrying corpses from the infirmary out to the burning pyre.’

‘Shouldn’t we tell Belarica? Get her to help us?’ Vesta’s face was thin. She was getting worn out like everyone else.

‘They’ll stop us. Belarica will, for sure. She didn’t even want us to join the fight.’

Vesta nodded.

‘You have to take me and Rummy,’ said Iggy.

‘It’s dangerous, Ig. We might not make it back,’ said Vesta.

‘All the more reason to take me. We belong together, don’t you remember? Everyone always forgets about me and Rummy.’ Iggy sighed and pulled Rummy into his lap.

Raindrops began pelting the top of the tents. Getting up, they walked back to their tent.

‘Well, what do you think, Vesta? Should we try it?’ Rocco asked as the flap on the tent fell shut.

Vesta agreed. She roughly described the mushroom. ‘But you have to be careful, there’s another one that’s poisonous that looks very similar.’

Early the next morning Rocco walked deep into the forest. He found two types that seemed to match Vesta’s general description. Both were spotted, but one had a more slender stem.

‘I can’t sleep at night; which one should I take?’ asked Rocco, holding his hand out to the cook as he stirred his vat over the fire.

The cook looked puzzled. ‘Don’t quite know. Go ask the Alchemist.’

Rocco found the Alchemist in the infirmary. He asked him the same question.

‘That one,’ said the Alchemist, pointing at the fatter stem. Tossing the poisonous fungus into the cook’s fire, Rocco returned to the forest where he gathered as much of the mushroom as his flying belt would hold. He returned to his tent.

‘You can grind it up,’ he said, dumping the contents of his flying belt on the ground. ‘Here’re some rocks too. Small ones for a pestle and the big two for a mortar. I’m going to get more.’

He returned again to the forest. What if they couldn’t find Harpia when they got there? What if she’d left the palace? Perhaps the Archurvogel of Gabbro had given her refuge while the war was on. Anything was possible, he thought as he searched the underbrush.

Every time he exited the tent, the cook looked up. Dropping his shoulders and wings, he clutched his stomach and grimaced. Let the cook think he was sick.

‘Bowels upset?’ asked the cook on his sixth trip.

Rocco nodded and ran.

The sun was barely up. Rocco stuffed a sack full of powdered dropsy inside his flying belt. He wasn’t really built for living outside, not in the rain. He needed to be covered in fur or feathers, or at least a thicker hide for shedding water.

The constant rain was sapping his strength. His fingers, which he didn’t want to smell too closely because of all the dropsy he’d been handling, were shrivelled and prune-like.

‘Got the tethers?’ asked Rocco.

Vesta flipped open her flying belt. She yanked out the end of the rope they would use to tie Harpia up with. Rocco nodded. With their flying belts packed up, they set off. Rummy jumped to Iggy’s shoulder. They walked until they were out of sight from the camp. They covered their wings in mud.

Gliding down the mountain, they landed by the northwest corner tower.

‘All clear,’ said Rocco as he fly-jumped the wall. He tried the latch of the door, the same door they had entered on the night of the clatch. He sighed with relief. The latch had clicked. The door was open.

‘Hurry!’ He motioned Vesta, Iggy and Rummy in.

The room where they’d had the clatch looked as if it hadn’t been touched. The broken pieces of the musical instruments – drums, bells and flutes – lay strewn about on the floor.

The plan was to travel in the catacombs under the city and come out in the Bathhouse where they would change into clean robes. From there, they would wait until dark and enter the courthouse.

They would find the cache of wing dust in the cupboards up under the dome. That’s what the gold robes had been pumping out that day, wasn’t it? Rocco had only seen the hoses.

What if the powder was something else? The whitening agent, perhaps? He’d always assumed Harpia ate a substance or chemical that turned everyone’s wings white, but what if the change was effected by adding a particular ingredient afterwards?

What if the hoses were gone? How would they dispense the dust?

Vesta had stopped.

‘Which way?’ asked Rocco. Having moved past the room where they’d had the clatch, they stared ahead at two tunnels.

‘I think it’s this one,’ said Vesta.

‘I think it’s there.’ Iggy pointed the other way.

‘Did you ever make the passage all the way from here to the Bathhouse before?’ asked Rocco.

‘Not exactly.’ Vesta walked into the left tunnel. ‘But we used to play down here. I know most of it.’

‘We’d better not get lost,’ said Rocco. He rubbed a bit more of his wing tip clean so they could see better. The air was dank. The wall, floor and ceiling were all grey. Everything looked the same.

Dripping water echoed in the distance.

‘Come on,’ said Rocco. Vesta had chosen the tunnel; they might as well see what lay ahead.

‘I’m scared,’ Iggy whispered.

‘You’ve been down here loads of times.’ Vesta tugged Iggy’s sleeve.

Rummy sneezed. Iggy pulled the monkey from his shoulder to his chest and held her tightly as they ventured in.

They rounded a corner. Up ahead the tunnel opened up into a much larger tunnel going the other way. The constant drip had turned into a slightly louder dribble.

Vesta stopped abruptly, her eyebrows pulled together.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Rocco.

‘I thought I heard something. Probably a rat.’