Spirit Gate: Book One of Crossroads (31 page)

As the sun kissed the zenith, the troop assembled outside the gates of the caravan market. Astoundingly, a long line of wagons, slaves bound by rope, outriders, and peddlers pushing handcarts waited in marching order. The caravan master presented a hastily drawn-up manifest of merchants and goods to Captain Anji. They were ready to go, and eager, it seemed, to travel under the protection of such a menacing company.

“I can’t believe they’re agreeing to the captain’s terms, just like that,” muttered Shai to Tohon. “Aren’t they suspicious? They have no idea if he’s really what he claims to be.”

Tohon chuckled. “A piece of advice, lad. When you talk, people hear that you don’t understand what you see. Best to keep your eyes open, and your mouth closed. Look at them. They’re scared. Fear tramples prudence. The captain tells them to obey, and they want to believe that if they obey they’ll be safe, so they obey.” He grinned in the friendliest manner possible, twisting the wispy strands at his chin that were all he had of a beard. That smile almost took the sting out of the words. “Are you any different?”

Chief Tuvi lifted the banner that signaled departure. Shouts and cries rose from among the merchants and wagon drivers. The vanguard pushed out, and the front of the caravan lurched after them as men and slaves all along the line braced themselves, getting ready to move.

North, to the Hundred. There, surely, they would find a safe haven.

“I’m sure we’re not yet facing the worst,” said Peddo with a rare look of disgust.

“That’s what you said yesterday.”

Joss had climbed up a stunted pine tree, scraping his hands in the process, and now angled his body out over the edge of the drop-off. Yes, indeed, the pack of men who had started shooting arrows at the two reeves yesterday at dusk had tracked them down and assembled at the base of the rock on which Peddo and Joss and their eagles had taken refuge for the night. The company below had rope, axes, and
plenty of arrows. They had torches and, here in the tail end of the dry season, more than enough parched vegetation to get a conflagration going.

“I said it yesterday,” said Peddo. “And I was right, wasn’t I? But I was only thinking of what the Commander said—when was that? The hells! That was almost a year ago. Do you remember it? We had to do that escort duty along the roads for the first time, and then the town of River’s Bend was burned down. ‘Not yet facing the worst.’ Truer words were never spoken.”

Joss shinnied back, scraping his hands again on the bark, and jumped down beside Peddo. “Good thing they didn’t find us while it was still night, or we’d be smoked with no way to fly out. Anyway, you weren’t at that meeting. That was for legates only. How do you know she said that?”

Peddo had lost weight over the course of the Year of the Silver Fox. He looked hunted, harried, and worn, but when he grinned, you just had to grin with him. “I got you drunk and you spilled every word said in the meeting.”

“You didn’t get me drunk.”

“That’s true. You talked without being drunk. It must be part of your charm. Not that I can see it, mind you.”

The first soft tendrils of smoke rose on the updrafts swirling around the huge rock formation. Peddo shaded his eyes and scanned the heavens, east against the rising sun, north, west, and south, but neither raptor—perched well away from each other at opposite ends of the highest spur—had seen anything in the hard blue sky, so that meant no reeves from Iron Hall could possibly be within human sight.

“What do you think?” Peddo asked more softly. “Those Iron Hall reeves swore to meet us near this landmark. Think they ran into an accident? I fear me—” He hesitated, rubbing his left shoulder where he’d taken an arrow wound two months ago. Glancing toward the edge, he did not attempt to look over at their assailants. “I fear me that they might have.”

“Best move out, and fly upland. See if we can spot them, or they us.”

“How far?”

Joss shrugged. “All the way to Iron Hall, if we must.”

“Eagles are getting touchy. We might be attacked by one of our own for flying into their territory.”

“We have to try. Anyway, that accident—four months ago, was it?—with that Copper Hall eagle was completely unexpected. That’s the first time in years one eagle has attacked another for flying through its territory. Everyone—reeve and eagle alike—we’re all agitated. We have to try, Peddo. We haven’t had a messenger out of Iron Hall for a month.”

And they’d been too overwhelmed to send a messenger of their own, just to trade reports, get up to date on the worsening situation across Haldia and the lowlands. Not enough reeves, and far too much violence.

We’re helpless, but we have to try.

Below, enough brush had caught that the sound of fire crackling could be easily heard. The two raptors were getting anxious. Scar yelped. Jabi shifted restlessly, and as soon as Peddo fastened into the harness, the eagle thrust upward, beating hard. Arrows spat up from the ground below. Joss unhooded Scar, but then stepped away
to the opposite side of the rock, to the lip where it tumbled straight down. He scanned the landscape, splendid to survey but pitted with traps for the unwary eagle: copses in which folk could hide, gulches into which a man could duck, clearings in which archers could raise their bows, sight, and loose, as they were doing now, knowing they had the shelter of trees nearby. There were many more men out there than he had first imagined. He sucked in smoke, coughed, but held his place, watching as arrows sped up from the ground in the wake of Jabi’s flight. Jabi had served through three reeves; he was smart enough to gauge his distance, and keep clear, but those men would keep shooting and it was obvious to Joss that there were at least a hundred men scattered within eyeshot of the outcropping.

Scar kekked. Joss spun just as a scrape and rattle of stone betrayed the man scrambling up and over onto the height. Some damn fool had climbed, risking everything for the chance to kill a reeve.

Scar was a big bird. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t move fast.

The man shrieked, seeing that massive form as it struck. He stumbled backward. Scar’s foremost talons raked over the thigh, hung in the flesh. Then, as the man slipped, flailing, into the gulf of air, the flesh ripped free, and he was gone over the edge, screaming.

“The hells!” swore Joss.

He heard the crash of the body as it smashed into rock and rolled over dry brush, and then a shout from wherever the fallen man had come to rest. A yammer rose from the men below like that of hungry dogs circling in for the kill. It was definitely time to go.

Scar was furious, head lowered, feathers raised along the back of his neck. He was twittering angrily, and although the sound seemed incongruous, coming from such a huge bird, Joss knew what it meant: A blooded eagle who had lost his prey was a bad-tempered eagle, roused and dangerous.

But the smoke was getting thicker. Others would climb, or were climbing. He had to act. He put the bone whistle to his lips, and blew the command meant to rouse any eagle to return to its reeve.

Scar lifted his head and opened his wings. Joss fastened into the harness.
Up!
Arrows rose, like rain falling upward, sheets of them, but Scar had grabbed an updraft with the first beat of his wings and kept rising, out of range. Far above, Jabi circled. Below, men scattered into hiding places, making it impossible to get an estimate of their numbers. Scar spiraled up on a thermal. Below, the fire began to spread. Joss and Peddo, keeping their distance, traded flag signals, then flew north in parallel tracks, within human visual range of each other. Gliding and spiraling, gliding and spiraling, the effortless flight of the healthy eagle. For a long time they could see black smoke from the fire, spreading as the blaze got out of control. No doubt, thought Joss sourly, the men who had started it would flee with no concern for what damage the fire would cause. But then, the Year of the Silver Fox had lived up to its worst characteristics: a contentious, difficult, dangerous year colored by ashes and gloom and death, one setback after the next.

As the day rose, they passed over empty tracks and roadways, flew above villages and hamlets where folk turned their fields or trimmed their trees and field shrubs
to ready them for the rains due to arrive next month, after the turn of the year. What folk they saw who were out or abroad stuck close by the often pathetic palisades thrown up around every habitation; in many cases, people were raising or repairing walls.

They’d been aloft most of the morning when Jabi screamed an alert. Scar answered him. Both sets of raptor eyes fixed on a sight beyond human range. Soon enough Joss—and Peddo—saw it, too: another eagle and its reeve, circling high, riding a thermal but not really going anywhere. Plumes of smoke cut up from the land. Had they somehow swung around and were returning to the outcropping they’d started from? Or, the hells, was this a new conflagration?

They had flown well north into the uplands of Haldia. The River Istri, no larger than a stand of blue-green ribbon, snaked along the ground off to the west. The foothills of Heaven’s Ridge swept the north and northwest; the upland plains to the east were lost in heat haze, although at this height the high plateau could be guessed, even at a distance of tens of mey, by the yellow shimmer smearing the eastern horizon. Just a few mey ahead lay the city of High Haldia, one of the Thirteen Bannered Cities in the Hundred. And it was the city, surely, that the smoke surrounded. As they flew closer, he caught sight of a second eagle, then counted four. Ten! More like vultures than eagles, circling as if waiting for the death throes to cease.

Whenever Scar shifted his wings, the movement of the raptor’s breast muscles bunched and eased against Joss’s back. After so many years, Joss could anticipate the changes. The muscles tensed, Scar dipped, then pulled up; Joss scanned the ground to see what Scar had seen and brought to his notice.

Files of men, everywhere.

Sometimes, when you were on patrol, the sights you observed hanging in harness at the breast of your eagle seemed absurd, unreal, a tale unfolding in the movements of tiny carved toys on a rumpled blanket. A mob was converging on High Haldia, whose attendant villages and fields were abandoned and whose gates were shut. Ants might swarm toward a nest of sweets in this same manner. Men were coming from all directions, grouped in companies and ranked by banners to mark their leaders and cadres. Every village claimed a rough and ready militia of thirty-six able adults; every town boasted a militia and guard of one hundred and eight who would run to serve if needs must. Every Bannered City paid a permanent guard to patrol its walls and streets and in addition organized a militia of folk able to stand up with weapons if they were called for, a full six companies if they could manage it or more in the largest population centers like Nessumara and Toskala. But such massed armed forces had become rare in recent times, in the days of Joss’s mother and grandmothers. Even in the north, in Herelia, Iliyat, and Vess, where the ancient custom of lordship still held sway, a lord ruler could rarely afford to house and feed more than a single company of one hundred and eight.

There was a name, rarely used, for the creature pulling its net tight around the fields and walled precincts of High Haldia:
an army.

An eagle dropped down to their elevation and sheared off toward the southwest. Joss flagged Peddo, and they both banked, and followed the Iron Hall reeve ten mey at least, an unexpected distance. The reeve brought the eagle down on a narrow
ridge, the last outthrust of a bank of hills. The River Istri churned below, forced to bend sharply here on its seaward course. A ferry banner marked a crossing point below the stretch of Whitewater, but no one was out on the river or waiting at the shelter. The Istri Walk, that wide road that ran the length of the River Istri from Nessumara to Seven, was entirely deserted; at this time of day it ought to be alive with the flow of traffic. As Joss and Peddo circled in, testing the air currents, the Iron Hall reeve hooded the eagle and trudged to the far end of the ridge to wait.

“The hells!” cried Peddo when he’d landed a safe distance from the other two eagles, and unhitched. Joss beckoned, and together they walked over to the Iron Hall reeve.

“The hells!” said Peddo again, as they came up to a tall, rangy woman with shadowed eyes, a chin scarred and twisted as though it had been broken but healed crooked, and silver streaking her black hair. “What’s going on? How can it be Clan Hall has heard nothing of this?”

The reeve’s expression tightened. A muffled chirp came from the other end of the ridge, her eagle sensing trouble. It was a big, big female, the kind who could cause a lot of damage.

Peddo barreled on. “Why aren’t you reeves doing anything but riding the winds and just cursed watching it all happen?”

She raised a fist. Joss stepped forward before she could slug Peddo.

“I’m Joss, out of Clan Hall. This is Peddo. Mine’s Scar, and his is Jabi. Greetings of the day to you. I don’t mind saying this looks like a rough one.”

She lowered her hand.

“Sorry,” muttered Peddo.

She relaxed infinitesimally. Not that she looked like she remembered how to relax. “I’m Veda, out of Iron Hall. Mine’s Hunter, there. Give her a wide berth. They gave me the duty of calling you Clan Hall reeves off, when you came. So now I’ve done. Best you go back to Toskala and tell the Commander—” Her voice, on that word, came edged with scorn, but Joss wasn’t sure who or what she was aiming at. “—that the council at High Haldia has sworn to hold out against the attack for as long as they can. How long that will be, I couldn’t say. But they’ve dug in. They’re expecting to be besieged. They’re as scared as any folk might be. They’ve heard the stories of villages burned and folk murdered or disappeared. High Haldia is a fine prize for a ruthless thief to grab.”

Peddo opened his mouth, but Joss pressed a hand to Peddo’s elbow to shut him down.

“This is all a shock to me, I’ll tell you,” Joss said, careful to mix geniality and genuine outrage. “Where did all those armed men come from?”