“I’m sorry you didn’t get your salvage,” she said. Or maybe not. What if she ripped the balloon again? Sure, there were no rockets to hide her sabotage, but with the trees blocking the view, who would know what had happened?
She closed her eyes, envisioning that balloon, and tried to cut a hole as she had before. This time, it didn’t work. She sensed the why right away. There was a protective film about it, not unlike the barrier she had just thrown up. The sorcerer. He knew she was out there and wasn’t going to be caught unaware again.
A screech came out of the depths of the canyon, eerie and hair-raising. Sardelle gulped. “Was that a cat?”
There had been mountain lions and wolves in the Ice Blades in her day, and she had heard both, but this sounded like something different. Something less… mortal.
“Almost sounds like a hawk,” Zirkander said. “A really loud, creepier-than-a-haunted-battlefield hawk. Let’s find the other men and get back to the fort. There’s nothing left for us here.”
The screech sounded again, closer this time. It reverberated from the canyon walls and seemed to hang on the breeze for an eternity. Something about it made Sardelle want to spring in the opposite direction and let those soldiers find their own way home. Zirkander didn’t shy away though, and she strode after him.
She searched the valley with her senses, hoping to find the creature and identify it. Or maybe just find it so they could better avoid it. She sensed the men. They had been spread out, trying to sneak up on the ship as its crew finished repairs. They were angling back toward each other now, though two seemed to have lost their way in the snow and trees—or maybe they were intentionally looking for the source of those cries. Sardelle shuddered. She wouldn’t.
Oddly, she couldn’t find it even with her mage senses. The screech sounded one more time, so she knew the cat or hawk or whatever it was hadn’t left the canyon, but she couldn’t feel anything in the direction the noise had come from. Or where it had seemed to come from. The way it reverberated from the rocky walls made it hard to tell.
Two shots fired.
“They’re not shooting at some animal, are they?” Zirkander didn’t sound out of breath from their charge into the canyon.
Sardelle was too busy gulping air to respond.
“Unless the airship left some men behind,” Zirkander added.
“I don’t think so.” Sardelle didn’t sense any people in the canyon, other than those on the colonel’s team. “It seemed pretty full,” she added, when he glanced back at her. Minus the two men he had shot. They wouldn’t be happy about that. She hoped the craft wasn’t heading back to attack the fort. It had flown off in the opposite direction, but that might not mean anything.
“Colonel Zirkander?” came a call from their left. Boulders and the cliffs of the canyon wall were visible beyond the snowy trees, but Sardelle didn’t see the speaker.
“Coming,” Zirkander called. He veered off the trail. “They must think we’re alone if they’re shouting,” he added more quietly. “But what are they shooting at then?”
The screech sounded again, as if to answer his question. It sounded like it was coming from the sky rather than the canyon floor, or maybe some precipice up the cliffs. Once again, Sardelle tried to find it, but the only life she sensed was that of the soldiers and of a few rodents and chipmunks, most burrowed beneath the snow. She counted four soldiers. Hadn’t there been five before? Maybe she had been mistaken.
“How many men are out here with you?” Sardelle asked.
“Five.”
Uh oh. Either someone had gotten separated from the group, or…
The parkas of two of the men came into view through the trees. If not for the contrast of the white ground, Sardelle might have missed them. It was growing dark, with the snow picking up again.
One of the soldiers lifted a solemn hand at their approach. “It’s Nakkithor, sir.”
“What happened, Sergeant?” Zirkander asked.
“We’re not sure.”
“We didn’t see it,” the second soldier said. “Nak was behind us, maybe ten meters back, at least that’s what I thought. Then we heard his screams. We ran back and… ”
Sardelle tried to see past Zirkander without leaving the trail he was breaking. The drifts hugging the trees to either side were above her waist. It took a moment before she located the man they were talking about. The soldier lay unmoving on the ground in a tiny clearing, his body half hidden by a tangle of thorny brambles on one edge. Dark crimson stains spattered the snow. She didn’t have to take a closer look to know he was dead.
“I swear I saw something, some shadow running or flying away,” the sergeant said. Sardelle squinted through the gloom to pick out the names on their parkas. Makt. “It was big and moving fast, whatever it was. I shot twice, then realized it might be you.”
“I haven’t managed to move that fast out here,” Zirkander said, stopping beside the body. “It wasn’t me.”
“I thought I hit whatever it was, but it didn’t cry out. It just disappeared behind the trees.”
“Rav and Oster went to look,” the second man, Eringroad, said. “See if they could find tracks or a sign that we’d hit it. As you can see, there’s nothing around here except our snowshoe marks.”
“Are you sure they’re all our prints?” Zirkander asked. “The Cofah could have had snowshoes too.”
“Fairly certain, sir. We saw the ship take off and searched around it. No one seemed to have been left behind.”
“No one.”
While the men debated, Sardelle mentally braced herself and walked up to the side of the body. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t sensed something that was big enough to kill a man, and to kill him swiftly it sounded like. His face had been ravaged by claws or—she thought of Zirkander’s hawk guess—talons. The eyes were missing, gouged out, the holes so deep they revealed brain matter beneath them. The front of his parka was shredded, his flesh cut open, entrails torn free and slumped into the snow.
Sardelle took a long breath, glad the air was so fresh and cold. As a healer, she had seen death before, and all manner of wounds, but this was a particularly grisly display. Had she arrived earlier, maybe she could have saved him, but maybe not. He must have died quickly from those extensive wounds.
“Looks like the attack came from the air,” Zirkander said. He wasn’t unmoved by the death, she sensed, but his words came out calm and detached. This would be an analytical discussion, not an emotional one.
Makt glanced at him. “That’s what I thought, sir. But I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to sound stupid. I reckon there’s eagles and other big raptors up here, but an eagle couldn’t do this, could it? And even if it could, why would it?”
“Why, indeed?” Zirkander looked to Sardelle. Did he think she would have the answer? He couldn’t possibly think she was somehow responsible, could he? Maybe he had figured out that her powers were more than academic. Or maybe he thought it suspicious that she had run after the group. “Are you all right?” he asked, flexing his mittened fingers toward the body.
Oh. Concern. Not suspicion. Not yet.
She looked at his hand but not at the body. She had seen enough. “I’m… ” Fine? That seemed a ludicrous thing to proclaim with a mauled soldier at her feet. She simply nodded to finish her answer.
Snow crunched, heralding the return of the other two men, their rifles in their hands. They were shaking their heads before they reached the colonel.
“We didn’t see anything.”
“Not so much as a tuft of fur.” Oster glanced at Makt. “Or a feather.”
“It’s getting dark though.” The first man eyed the metal gray sky above the pines and firs. Thick flakes wafted down peacefully, unperturbed by the death below. “If there had been drops of blood out there, they would have been hard to pick out.”
“Should we head back, sir?” Oster asked. “Even darker clouds are heading this way, and there’s a lot of wind coming across the canyon
up above. The airship had to fight to head off to the north.”
Zirkander was staring down at the body, a fist pressed to his mouth. “Yes, there’s nothing for us out here now.”
Except a mystery. Sardelle couldn’t believe something had slipped past her awareness. Something deadly. Was it possible the airship sorcerer had masked it somehow?
“Let’s make a travois so we can haul him back,” Zirkander said. “I’m not leaving his body out here to the animals.”
“Yes, sir,” Oster said. “Rav, you got an axe? Use those saplings to—”
A screech ripped through the forest.
It wasn’t in the distance this time, but nearby, overhead. Sardelle searched the clouds, her hand balled into a fist, ready to unleash an attack. Even in the small clearing, the trees fenced them in, and little of the dark sky was visible.
“Cover,” Zirkander barked.
The soldiers split into twos and lunged behind trees, then knelt, their rifles pointing to the sky. Zirkander started for a tree of his own, but saw Sardelle wasn’t moving and grabbed her. Just as he was pulling her away, she glimpsed massive outstretched wings high overhead, the dark shape seeming more shadow than substance against the snow and clouds.
“There,” she cried at the same time as two rifles fired.
Zirkander pushed her toward a pair of trees. “Stay between them,” he ordered, even as he took two steps in the other direction and raised his own firearm to the sky.
The bird—no, it was far too large to call it a bird—had swooped out of sight almost as soon as they had spotted it, but it came back around, higher. Even with the poor visibility, Sardelle would have expected the men’s bullets to hit it, but the creature never flinched, never altered its flight path. It was climbing higher and higher. Readying for a dive.
She still couldn’t sense it, and that perplexed her but didn’t keep her from preparing an attack of her own. Shots rang out from all of the rifles. The massive bird pulled in its wings to dive, like an osprey arrowing into a lake for a fish, except its target was Zirkander. Sardelle pulled wind from the coming storm, channeled it, and slammed it into the plummeting creature. It was flung to the side, hurled into a stout pine.
Sardelle blew out a quick relieved breath. She had feared that since she couldn’t sense it, she wouldn’t be able to strike it, as if it were some kind of illusion. The great bird—it had the markings of a barred owl, not a hawk, but it was nearly as tall as a man—recovered before it hit the ground, thrusting its wings out to beat at the air, to pull itself back into the night sky.
All through this, the soldiers were firing, their spent casings leaping from their rifles and burning holes into the snow all around them. The creature climbed back into the sky, not fleeing from the barrage but preparing to dive again.
“Who hit it?” one soldier shouted. “Where did you aim to make it fly sideways?”
“We’ve all hit it,” another responded. “The bullets are bouncing off—I saw mine strike and veer off as if that thing were solid metal.”
“Someone hurt it though—it crashed for a moment. If we could all target that spot.”
“That wasn’t a bullet, you idiot. That was the wind.”
Technically true.
Jaxi! What is this thing? Someone’s familiar? Someone’s extremely enhanced familiar?
I believe you’re looking at a Dakrovian shaman’s animal companion.
Dakrovian! From the jungles in the southern hemisphere? That’s thousands of miles from Cofah.
Jaxi offered a mental shrug. Perhaps they went recruiting.
“Sir! Look out. It’s dropping again.”
“I see it.” Zirkander jumped to his feet and ran toward Sardelle’s trees.
He ducked around the biggest one and fished into his ammo pouch to reload his rifle.
Nobody except the dead soldier remained in the tiny clearing, but that didn’t keep the giant owl from diving down again. Though Sardelle knew she risked what little of her confusing cover story remained by using magic, she hurled another funnel of wind at it. The bullets weren’t doing anything. Someone had to drive it away.
But the bird somehow sensed her attack and dodged. The blast of wind barely ruffled its feathers. It dropped to within two feet of the ground, then impossibly turned the dive into an upward swoop, pulling out at the last moment. No, not pulling out, and not turning upward. It streaked horizontally, paralleling the ground, its dive taking it toward the trees two of the soldiers hid behind.
“Look out!” someone yelled.
More shots rang out, though the soldiers must have realized by then that they couldn’t hurt it. Zirkander yanked out a foot-long dagger and charged toward the creature. The soldiers leaped to the side, avoiding the owl’s attack in time, but only because the stout firs slowed their avian attacker. One ran around a tree and clubbed the owl in the wing as it shifted from flying to standing, its spread talons enough to keep it from sinking into the snow. The soldier’s attack did nothing to hurt it. It flung its wing out, the tip catching him and hurling him ten feet.
Zirkander ran at it from behind, fast enough, even with the snowshoes, to surprise it. He leaped onto its back and tried to sink his long dagger into its neck. As with the bullets, the blade bounced off. Its head spun around a hundred and eighty degrees. That must have been alarming—it was suddenly staring right at Zirkander—but he attacked it without hesitation, this time aiming for one of its great yellow eyes.
Sardelle had her own hand raised, trying to think of some attack she dared make while Zirkander was right on top of it, but she paused, hoping he had guessed right and that the eye represented some vulnerability.
The blade started to sink in. At least she thought it did—it was hard to tell. At the first touch, the owl shook its head vigorously. Zirkander didn’t let go of the weapon. He tried to push it in deeper, but was thrown free. He landed hard on his back. The creature jumped after him, seeming to rear up to an impossible height as it spread its wings.
Sardelle tried to find its heart, to wrap the fingers of her mind around it to stop it from beating, but again her senses told her nothing was there. A soldier ran out, an axe in his hand, as if that would do what the bullets hadn’t. The bird ignored the man and attacked Zirkander, plunging downward with its beak.
Sardelle cursed, knowing she would be too late as she tore a heavy branch from the tree above the owl, hoping to bring it down onto the creature’s head. Zirkander had already rolled to the side and leaped up, not as helpless as he had appeared.
The branch landed, flinging snow everywhere, and surprised him as much as the creature. He recovered first and hurled his dagger. The weapon struck the owl’s eye, but in throwing the attack, he exposed himself an instant too long. A talon flashed up, striking like lightning as it ripped into his parka. Zirkander leaped back, but blood sprayed the snow around him.
Sardelle growled, prepared to drop an entire tree on the bird’s head, and to the hells with what anyone saw, but it was flinging its head about and screeching now. The dagger was stuck in its eye. For a moment, she thought it might be a killing blow, or at least a seriously wounding one, but the creature used a talon to bat it away. The weapon landed point first in the snow. The owl leaped into the air, raking the axe-wielding soldier with its talons, too, before it flapped its wings and climbed out of reach again.
“Sir, Rav, are you all right?” Makt ran out from behind the trees on the other side of the clearing.
“Just a scratch,” Zirkander said.
Sure, a scratch that had left blood all over the snow. Sardelle started toward him, but the owl screeched again. It wasn’t done with them. It was circling and rising again, preparing for another dive.
“Let’s get out of here.” Zirkander pointed to the rocky canyon wall. “Are there any caves or fissures in that cliff?”
“Don’t know, sir.”
“Go, look. There’s nothing for us to gain by fighting this thing.”
And eve
rything to lose.
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s starting another dive,” one of the men said.
“Go, go.” Zirkander waved the men forward and reached back toward Sardelle.
She had thought to linger, to try dropping a tree on it when the men were out of sight, but Zirkander was like a sheep dog, gathering his flock. Nothing in his expression said he would let her loiter.
She hustled after him. A tree probably wouldn’t kill that creature anyway. Not unless she could ram the trunk through its eye.
The owl swooped again when it reached the ground, trying to dart through the forest after them. Zirkander and the soldiers weaved into the thickest areas. Even the powerful creature couldn’t rip trees aside with its talons. It returned to the sky, tracking them from above. There was a bare stretch near the cliff wall. They would have to be careful crossing it.
“There’s a big crack.” Someone pointed.
“Might be a cave.”
“Another hole over there. Impossible to tell without looking.”
“It’s too dark to tell either way. That’s just a big shadow, I think.”
Zirkander looked up. Yes, the creature was up there, banking and turning, flying back and forth. Waiting.
Sardelle skimmed the craggy rocks with her mind. That spot was too shallow, that one too narrow to get into, that one large enough that the owl could follow. A dozen meters to the left, there were two little caves that should work, each with just enough space for two or three men to squeeze into.
“Down there.” Sardelle pointed. “I’ve studied geology. Those are Brackenforth Fissures. They’ll be narrow but deep.”
One of the soldiers snorted. “Is she joking?”
“It’s going to dive again.” Oster stabbed his rifle toward the black sky.
Sardelle ran toward the caves she knew were deep enough. Zirkander cursed and ran after her, yelling, “Find hiding,” to the soldiers.
“I ought to tackle you,” he growled, his voice right behind her. He could have. She definitely wasn’t fast on the snowshoes.
“Not a good time.” Sardelle waved to the sky without pausing, then climbed up the cliff face. She tried to anyway. She couldn’t manage with the big, clumsy shoes on. She bent, unbuckling them as fast as she could, and hurled another buffet of wind at the owl as she did so. It was already diving, choosing her as a target since she had been foolish enough to run out first.