The Fate of the Fallen (The Song of the Tears Book 1) (10 page)

The body of the amulet was metal, perhaps brass, with
intricate patterns which she couldn’t make out in this light. It had four pairs
of hinged metal legs folded beneath it. The horned head, and the tail, were
also tucked under. As she cleaned it the glow from its jade eyes faded, though
it did not entirely go out.

She touched the underside of the amulet with a fingertip.
Her head spun and the skin over her entire body burned, as if little flames had
sprung up there. White streaks flashed in her inner eye then her head steadied
and the burning sensation faded to a hot tingle that fluttered back and forth
before slowly disappearing.

The flappeter sucked in a gurgling breath, its legs twitched
and flexed, and she felt a dull pain in her right elbow. Now she sensed a
simmering alien rage – surely the creature’s rage at the loss of its
rider. The amulet must have made a mental link between her and it, and she had
an insane idea. Could she take command of it, even escape on it?

Maelys shied away from the idea. She’d never been brave or
daring. As a kid, while the other children had been off on rambles, diving from
rocks into hidden pools or walking across ravines on tree trunks, she’d
preferred to sit under a tree, reading or daydreaming. But this time she was
going to take command of her situation. She had to.

She touched the amulet again. Once more the flappeter gave a
small cry, though this time Maelys didn’t feel anything unusual. She went to
the fallen beast, gingerly. Its legs were still tangled and jerking
spasmodically, as if the disruption had also affected its coordination and it
couldn’t work out how to untangle them. She studied the pairs of legs, biting
her lip, afraid to touch the beast since it had regained consciousness. And the
soldiers’ lights were much closer now.

Hauling Nish onto the rear saddle of the flappeter between
the saddle horn and a pair of saddlebags, she tied him on with a coil of thin
rope looped there. Her broken finger was swelling but there wasn’t time to
attend to it. She jammed Nish’s feet into the rider’s fur-lined boots and tied
them above the ankles so they wouldn’t come off. Taking hold of one of the
flappeter’s legs, she tried to ease it out of the way. It resisted, then
suddenly gave. As she fell forwards, it snapped back from the knee joint,
thumping her in the midriff.

Maelys landed hard, hurting all over. Had it attacked
because she’d touched it, or because she wasn’t its rider? Its legs were
clacking against each other as they thrashed, its long body heaving sinuously
and the scales making a dry rustle.

Rolling onto its side, it forced itself to five or six of
its feet and gave a little stagger like a newborn calf. Its long neck curved
around and it stared at Maelys for a moment, then bent its legs, snapped them
straight and shot into the air. The lower feather-rotor spun, the creature
hovered, then the top rotor turned as well and it began to climb.

Maelys cried out in dismay. It was going to fly away with
Nish, back to its master. She ran a couple of steps and shouted, stupidly,
‘Come back!’ It lifted out of reach but suddenly the upper feather-rotor jammed
and, emitting a shrill wail, it crashed back to ground. Again she felt that
twinge in her elbow, though sharper this time –
its pain
.

She approached it, careful of teeth, tail and legs. One of
the feathered blades of the top rotor was sticking up. It had landed on it
earlier and must have damaged the blade in the fall. If it couldn’t fly, all
was lost.

Maelys had never been closer to giving up than at that
moment. She’d been thrown headfirst into a violent world she knew nothing
about, where none of her skills were much use, and nothing she did made a difference
in the end, so what was the point? Why not leave Nish and run for her life;
there was a tiny chance she’d get away.

Why not? Because she’d given her word and that was sacred to
her. Her father lay dying in Mazurhize because he’d refused to break his
promise and betray a friend, so how could she do otherwise? The thought of
being taken, though, of Seneschal Vomix’s all-seeing eyes roving across her
body, his slimy fingers all over her, was almost enough to make her change her
mind. No! She would keep trying, to the very end.

Could she do anything for the beast? Maelys had been looking
after animals all her life, because the care and health of an estate’s stock,
birds, fish and bees was vital to its survival and prosperity. Though she’d
never seen a flap-peter before, there might be a way to gain its confidence.

Moving slowly towards it, keeping in clear sight of the
compound eyes, she began to hum, just three notes, the deepest she could
manage, shifting smoothly from one to the next. It watched her with that
unblinking insect-like stare, but when she was only a few paces away the
elongated tail whipped around and would have broken her legs had she not sprung
out of the way.

Any injured creature might have done the same but at least
she understood farm animals. The flappeter, however, was Jal-Nish’s creature,
perhaps made in his image, and she couldn’t hope to gain its trust so quickly.
Even horses had to be broken to the saddle and that took ages. But time was
short, and if she was going to be caught she’d sooner be killed by this alien
monstrosity than by Jal-Nish’s torturers.

Flappeters were rare and valuable. There were only a few of
them and if one’s rider were sick or injured, surely another rider must be able
to use it. The amulet might be the key. Taking it from her pocket, she squeezed
it in her hand as the rider had. Its folded metal legs gave a twitch, the glow
of the jade eyes brightened fractionally and she sensed the flappeter’s rage
and pain once more. It drew breath hard, then raised its long neck to study
her, and Maelys sensed that something had changed between them.

Clutching the amulet tightly, she approached the tail. The
neck bent, the eyes following her all the way, but this time it allowed her
near. Good so far. She rifled through the saddlebags, looking for anything she
could use to tend its injuries. She found food, spare clothing, a tent, bedroll
and camping gear. Could the tent pegs be used to splint the rotor blade? She
didn’t think she could tie them on tightly enough.

At the top of the food bag lay three forearm-length sections
of bamboo or cane, full of a sweet, sticky juice whose smell made her salivate.
She poked the knife through one and licked her fingers. It was sweeter than
honey, but fermented and strongly spirituous.

Slipping the sections under her arm, she tore one of the
rider’s shirts into rags, cut more strips from the surplus leather, peed into
his mug and soaked the strips in it. Holding the amulet again, she climbed onto
the front saddle and caught hold of the sheathed stalk. The lower feather-rotor
was at her shoulder height while standing up, the upper one above her head. The
moon was bright now and she could see that the damaged rotor blade had a
distinct bend; either a break in the bone (assuming this creature had bones), a
greenstick fracture or at best a bad sprain.

The flappeter’s body was covered in thick scales but each
rotor blade had a thin, leathery skin out of which the feathers were extruded
from horny collars. As she felt the hot swelling of the injury the flappeter
let out a ringing cry and tried to heave her off.

She hooked her arm around the stalk and hung on until the
beast went still, trying to work out how to fix the injury so it could fly. Had
it been any normal farm animal she would have known, but the flappeter had been
created by the abominable evil of flesh-forming, from the bones, tissues and
organs of any number of creatures, fashioned to suit the God-Emperor’s
perverted whim.

A cry echoed up the slope. Could the troops have seen her?
The lanterns were surrounded by mist haloes now, so probably not, but there
wasn’t time to think things through. All she could do was let her fingers work
instinctively. If she could get the creature into the air and away, even for
half a league, it would give her a faint chance.

Maelys hung the thong around her neck and thrust the amulet
deep into her cleavage, hoping that skin contact would suffice. As she felt
along the injury the flappeter writhed and its tail arched up towards her. She
hastily pulled her shoulders forward, compressing her breasts until she felt
the warmth of the amulet between them. The metal legs unfolded against her left
breast and she nearly screamed. It felt like a huge, hard spider there. Maelys
drew a deep breath, clenched her fists and restrained the urge to claw it out
and bat it away into the darkness. After a long, shuddering moment the
flappeter relaxed and the metal legs slowly folded again.

She wiped her brow, then, trying to maintain pressure on the
amulet, began to manipulate the feathered blade. She was used to working by
feel; it was ages since her family had been able to afford candles.

The blade wasn’t broken, for it didn’t have bones at all.
Beneath the skin and feathers was a flattened, horny shell like the leg of a
crab, though it was as flexible as a thumb-nail. An oddly hinged joint in the
middle was dislocated and felt badly sprained. She eased it back, ignoring the
creature’s flinch, allowing the internal tendons to pull the joint together
then rotating the two sections this way and that until she could feel them
slipping into place.

That was the easy part. Now she had to immobilise the joint
so it would not dislocate under the strain of flying, yet allow the blade to
rotate as it should, with as little pain as possible. No simple splint could do
that, for even if she bound it on so tightly that it cut off the circulation it
would eventually fail, and if that happened in the air they would die. But
perhaps a two-part splint might serve.

She split one piece of bamboo in two and rubbed its
spirituous contents over the lacerated area around the dislocation; it would
help to stop it becoming infected. After carving out the ends to fit perfectly
over the blade she padded the insides with cloth. The flappeter was stirring
and the metal legs of the amulet twitching again, so she swiftly bound the
bamboo on with the strips of pee-soaked leather, stretching them as tightly as
she could. As the wet leather dried it would shrink, binding the bamboo on more
tightly.

Maelys felt the repair; it was as good as she could manage.
She slid back to Nish, who was still comatose, though warmer than he had been
before, and breathing steadily. Time to go, assuming she could make the
flappeter move.

She slid forwards into the rider’s saddle, drew the amulet
out, squeezed it in her fist and said, ‘Go, flappeter.’

It didn’t move. ‘Fly!’ It did not react at all. ‘Get going,
beast!’ Then, ‘Please.’ It just stood there on its many legs, its neck turned,
staring at her with those paired eyes.

Was she supposed to call it by name? Hinneltyne had used its
name when speaking to Vomix but Maelys couldn’t remember it.
Rurr
-something. Or was she supposed to
say a prayer to the God-Emperor first, or give a special order or signal? It
could be anything. How was she supposed to prevail over its alien
consciousness?

There didn’t seem any way to find out. Maelys slumped in the
saddle, feeling her suppressed panic rising again, and watching the soldiers’
lanterns creep ever nearer, when she noticed a brain-like protuberance at the
back of the creature’s elongated skull.

It looked rather like a second brain grafted onto the first,
and arising from it was, unmistakeably, a little loop-listener, its faintly
luminous bile-green noose no bigger than a rat’s neck. The dark specks within
the loop were still now. The rider had leaned forwards and spoken to Vomix
through it. Could Vomix have ordered the flappeter to keep her here until the
troops arrived?

Behind the loop-listener was a small, fleshy bowl, from the
centre of which rose, on a stub of stalk, a round disc filled with shimmering
threads. At first she thought it was a kind of wisp-watcher, though it didn’t
have an iris. The threads appeared to be in random motion, and neither was it
making that characteristic buzz.

Suddenly the specks inside the dangling loop began to
sparkle. ‘Hinneltyne, where are you? Report immediately.’ It was Seneschal
Vomix.

So the front organ wasn’t a loop-listener at all, but
something greater and more dangerous. Maelys had no name for it but would call
it a speck-speaker. Hinneltyne had used it to talk to Vomix. And when
Hinneltyne didn’t answer, what would Vomix do? Try to take direct command of
the flap-peter?

The flappeter’s head reared around at her and the serrated jaws
opened, though then it seemed to hesitate as if waiting for an order which
hadn’t come. ‘Don’t!’ she whispered, foolishly. The speck-speaker shimmered,
sending her words to Vomix and, thoughtlessly, sure he’d ordered the beast to
attack, Maelys whipped her knife out and severed the loop from its stalk.

Something that wasn’t blood spurted out, yellow-grey in the
bright moonlight. The flappeter screeched and lurched sideways, its hooked feet
scrabbling on the stony ground. The metal legs of the amulet snapped out and it
scuttled across her left breast, over the nipple then down towards her armpit
before it was brought up by the thong. This time Maelys did shriek; she
couldn’t stop herself.

The flow ebbed, the wound skinned over and the pressure in
her mind diminished so suddenly that she almost fell out of the saddle. The
flappeter’s rage eased as well, although now she felt its overwhelming grief at
the death of the rider it had been bonded with. No, not so much grief as loss.
The bond with its rider had made it complete, and if it didn’t soon replace
that bond it would go mad. Had she freed it from Vomix’s shackles only to
torment it unbearably?

The amulet bent its legs, clinging by their points to the
outside of her breast. She plucked it out and was reaching towards the
wisp-device with the knife, wondering if she should cut it away as well, when
an intimation made her draw back. What if that were the way the beast was
controlled by the rider? She recalled Hinneltyne thrusting his fist forwards a
couple of times, and once it had seemed to disappear. She clenched the amulet
in her fist and thrust it through the wisp-filled circle.