“Rocky?”
The horse tapped a forehoof gently on the ground as if it approved.
“Rocky it is then,” said the woman. “Bareback’s possible, but it’d be tiring any distance. Suppose…it can’t do any harm…”
She moved forward and laid her spread hands on Rocky’s back. With apparent confidence—but diffidence seemed to be not in her nature—she spoke the single word, “Harness.”
Again that shock-wave. This time Maja stayed conscious, though if she’d been standing she’d have staggered and fallen. Then the tremor and glitter of the landscape and a series of piercing thrills, as one by one a double saddle appeared, stirrups, saddlebags and scallop-fringed reins and bridle, the leather all glossy scarlet, the buckles and studs gold, and the plume on the bridle a fountain of golden feathers. The woman looked up, frowning. The movement broke the spell of the wonderful and beautiful event, and Maja looked up too, and gasped. Something almost as astonishing, but this time terrible and strange, was happening in the sky.
Hidden till now by the treetops of the forest edge beyond the farm, an immense, dark bag-thing had appeared, floating toward it, shaped like a fat sausage pointed at both ends, held up by nothing, but carrying below it a sort of long, thin basket, as big as the largest boat on the river. Even more dangerous and terrifying because they were so much nearer, five enormous birds were flying steadily ahead of it. Each of them towed a bag like the first one, nothing like as huge but still as big as a haystack, below which dangled a harness carrying a man in a bulging dark helmet and jet-black uniform. They seemed to Maja to be flying directly toward her. This had happened to her before, many, many times in dreams—the monsters who knew where she was hiding, and were coming for her now. Always in dreams, she had woken before she saw them. This time she was awake, and they were real. Her limbs locked rigid with terror.
The two humans had their backs toward them and hadn’t seen them. But now the horse had. He didn’t like it at all. He started to fidget, to stretch his great wings for flight, to try to rear. The woman shouted to the man to load the kit into the saddlebags and come and hold the bridle. And as soon as she could she darted round to the mounting block and slid into the front saddle. The man hurried to follow. The horse was almost on his hind legs. Maja broke out of the terror-trance. She scrambled from her den and up the block.
“Take me too!” she shouted. “Don’t leave me behind! Please! Please!”
The horse was rearing, his hind legs tensed to spring, his wings spread for the first mighty buffet that would carry them into the air. Maja felt herself caught by the collar and flung forward and upward. She grasped desperately for something to hold on to. Another hand caught her out of the air and sent her crashing against the horse’s neck. Rocky squealed and bolted north. Maja clutched, found a handful of mane, and then another, and then just clung there, while the great wings smote the air in panic.
She felt some sort of a struggle going on behind her and managed to crane round. By now they were well clear of the ground. Ribek’s legs and waist were dangling down by the horse’s flank, with him grasping the after saddle and wrestling to hoist himself further, while the woman, with one hand twisted into Rocky’s mane, was reaching round with the other to help him. At last he made it and settled down, gasping, into the saddle.
“Sheep-faces, and an airboat,” shouted the woman, as soon as she’d got her breath back.
“More magic?” asked Ribek, like her, shouting to be heard above the wing-thunder. “People like you and me? Or something else?”
“Oh, they’re people all right. Only where I’ve been we call them Sheep-faces. They just don’t think the way we do. And they don’t do magic. We’ll be all right. A horse at a canter is faster than bird-kites, and the birds get tired. The airboat is even slower but it’s driven by engines and can go on for ever.”
“Any idea where we’re going after that?”
“Just getting clear of the Sheep-faces, for the moment. After that…Maybe Rocky knows. He isn’t just bolting. He’s bolting somewhere. I’ve got to get him slowed down. He’ll kill himself, this speed.”
Maja crouched out of the way to let her lean past her and over Rocky’s neck, murmuring in his ear, nudging gently on his bit, letting him feel her legs against his flanks. Ribek watched their rear, calling the news. The bird-kites, far outpaced, turned back to the airboat almost at once, but it continued to follow doggedly until it was a dwindling dot, almost out of sight.
Sometimes in her dreams Maja could fly, and when the monsters came she could soar away from them. Then, at this exact moment, when the danger seemed gone, the gift deserted her, and she was plodding through heavy plowland with the pursuers only a field or two behind. Rocky gave a long shuddering sigh. Now. She tensed herself for the onslaught of terror as the frantic wingbeats slowed.
It didn’t happen. Instead, she felt the tension of the great body ease as he started to glide. They came lower and lower. Looking down, Maja saw fields and a farm beneath them. A boy was driving cows in to be milked. He gazed up, and his mouth fell open. She heard his faint shout, saw him point, and Rocky shuddered again, deliberately this time, shaking away the final shreds of both nightmares, his and hers, and flew purposefully on. Somewhere.
“If the story’s any guide—” Ribek said.
“Don’t tell me!” snapped the woman. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to know. That stupid story’s ruined my life. I’ve never believed it. I never wanted to believe it. I don’t now. If you’re trying to tell me that Rocky’s taking us to look for the stupid Ropemaker, I’m getting off right away, soon as we’re clear. You can keep Rocky, and welcome.”
“I don’t know how to ride a horse,” said Ribek, obviously teasing. He seemed to be like that.
“Then Rocky can tell you that too,” snarled the woman.
“Maybe our new friend knows how to ride a horse,” said Ribek, still teasing. “Who are you anyway? We can’t go on calling you uh.”
“Me?” said Maja, astonished to be asked, to be even noticed. “I’m…I’m Maja Urlasdaughter.”
“Maja!” said the woman in a totally different voice. “You’re still alive! Oh, thank the stars! I’ve thought of you so often. It was the worst thing of all, leaving you behind there in that hell. I was sure she’d have…”
She didn’t finish the sentence. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t important, swept away like a leaf in a stream on the flood of hope that welled up in Maja, unstoppable. Normally she would have pushed it away, having decided long ago that hope was only the insubstantial shadow that solid, real disappointment cast in front of it wherever it came. Not now.
“You’re…you’re Saranja?” she whispered, and then had to say it aloud because her whisper was drowned by the wing-thunder.
“Oh, Maja!” said Saranja, laying the reins down on Rocky’s neck and hugging Maja to her like a doll. “That’s wonderful! That’s absolutely wonderful! Ribek, this is my cousin Maja, who I never thought I would see again. I think this is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“Hello, Maja,” said Ribek. “Glad to have you with us. Perhaps you can persuade your big cousin to stop talking nonsense about not coming to help look for the Ropemaker.”
Saranja snorted, let go of Maja and picked up the reins.
“What happened to them?” she said after a while. “My parents, your mother, the boys?”
Maja told her about finding the bodies, and the bonfire she’d made on them. She didn’t say anything about the screams.
“Your father and the boys went off to fight the horsemen,” she said. “I don’t know anything about them.”
“If they were in the same fight I was,” said Ribek, “it wasn’t good. We held the horsemen for a while and it looked like we were winning, but then some of them came round and caught us from the side, and after that it was a massacre. I got out by the skin of my teeth, but a lot of people didn’t.”