“Something from the Maw, I expect,” Lyvia said. She eyed the skull with a dark wariness and, unlike Shamil, showed no inclination to touch it.
“It’s a flenser.”
They both turned to find Tihla standing in the tunnel, surveying the results of their work with a critical eye.
“Body like a monkey with wings like a bat. The teeth, though.” She shook her head with a humourless laugh, eyes still roving the newly scraped tunnel. “One bite is usually enough to kill, and if it doesn’t, their drool is so loaded with foulness the wound will fester so fast you’ll be dead in a day. One of the Maw’s less dangerous children.”
She sniffed, head tilting in faint satisfaction. “Stink’s not so bad now. Should hold us for another few weeks. Stow your shovels by the gate, and fetch your weapons. Time to find out if you two were bragging.”
Shamil’s feet skidded a few inches along the pillar’s summit as he landed, arms windmilling briefly to regain his balance. Once steadied, he unslung his bow and nocked an arrow, raising the weapon to loose at the target suspended from a rope a dozen feet above his head. He watched the shaft slam into the centre of the wooden circle, then turned, smoothly nocking another arrow to the string, then loosing at the target to his right, scoring another perfect hit. Crouching, he fixed his gaze on the neighbouring pillar, forcing himself not to dwell on the thicket of thorn bushes below. It was a ten-foot drop, but Shamil feared the thorns more.
He leapt, this time achieving a less solid landing. One foot slipped as it connected with the pillar’s marble top, flailing in the air for the brief second or two it took Shamil to find his balance once more. Fortunately his next pair of arrows were just as well aimed as the first, the wooden targets swaying as the shafts found their centres. His accuracy, however, failed to stir any appreciation from Tihla when he hopped from the sixth and final pillar to land at her side.
“Too slow,” she said. “Next time don’t stop to admire your handiwork.” She jerked her head at Lyvia. “Get to it, fledgling.”
After they had retrieved their weapons from their shared chamber, the second wing led them to the northern flank of the Eyrie where a semicircle of marble pillars rose from a thick mass of thorn bushes surrounding the base of a tall mound of tiered rock. Above the pillars wooden targets dangled from a web of ropes.
“Every battle fought by a sentinel takes place in the air,” Tihla told them. “The fear of falling is ingrained in every one of us, as well it should be, but to fight from a great wing’s back requires that you master that fear. Your path lies before you.” She gestured to the pillars. “Built here and abandoned centuries ago by hands unknown. The thorn bushes we planted ourselves, a reminder to fledglings that falling has consequences.” As evidence she raised her forearm to display a pale, jagged scar tracing from her wrist to her elbow. “My first and last fall. The thorn cut so deep Shelka had to use her crystals to seal it else I’d’ve bled to death.” She fixed them with a smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “Is your mage friend so skilled at healing, I wonder?”
When Lyvia’s turn came, she proved to be swifter than Shamil, leaping on nimble feet to linger on the first pillar just long enough to whirl her sling and cast a stone at the nearest target. Her aim wasn’t as true as his, however, the stone smacking into the target’s edge and sending it spinning. Unlike Shamil, Lyvia took Tihla’s words to heart and didn’t linger to watch. Slipping another stone into her sling, she whirled it and leapt again, unleashing the projectile in midair before twisting to land on the next pillar.
Shamil’s admiration turned to alarm when he saw her lead foot connect with the edge of the pillar’s crown rather than the flat surface. Lyvia twisted again as her foot skidded along the edge, trying to latch a hand onto the pillar before gravity did its work. She was only partially successful, managing to clamp one hand to the marble with enough of a grip to arrest her fall. Seeing the way her straining fingers inched closer to the edge as she dangled, feet kicking in an ineffectual attempt to gain leverage on the pillar’s upper stones, Shamil knew she had only seconds before plummeting into the possibly lethal embrace of the thorns.
He acted without thinking, casting his bow aside and leaping onto the first pillar, snatching the raptorile-tail whip from his belt. As he flicked his arm, it made a familiar, ear-straining crack, louder, it was said, than any other whip in all the Treaty Realms. The whip uncoiled like a deceptively lazy snake to wrap itself around Lyvia’s waist just as her fingers lost their grip.
Although she wasn’t a person of any particular bulk, the suddenness of her fall made it impossible for him to haul her back up. Instead he swung her, grunting with the effort of heaving the whip and its burden, Lyvia missing the thorns by bare inches. He let go at the midpoint of the swing, Lyvia landing hard on the bare stone a few yards from the thicket. She tumbled a short distance before coming to a halt, winded and groaning. As she looked up at Shamil, he was surprised to find a face that was pale with the shock of recent danger but also drawn in gratitude rather than injured pride.
Tihla’s reaction was similarly unexpected, pursing her lips in approval rather than anger as she watched Lyvia untangle herself from Shamil’s whip. Instead of voicing an acerbic injunction against saving fledglings from their deserved injuries, she nodded to Lyvia untangling herself from the whip. “An impressive instrument,” the second wing observed. “I assume it can kill as well as save?”
“I have a steel barb for the tip,” Shamil confirmed. “If need arises.”
“Need will surely arise, so be sure to keep it sharp.” She cupped her hands around her mouth to call down to Lyvia. “Stop lazing about and get back up here, fledgling! Try again, and ponder the folly of overconfidence whilst you’re at it.”
The next two weeks followed a daily routine of enlivening training and soul-taxing drudgery. Mornings were spent at the pillars, Tihla hectoring them to ever increasing speed. Shamil came close to falling only once more whilst Lyvia’s initial mishap seemed to have birthed a near manic concentration that ensured an uncanny sure-footedness. Within a few days she could hop from one pillar to another without the slightest pause, sling whirling all the while as stones thunked against the targets in a rapid drumbeat. Shamil quickly resigned himself to an inability to match her speed, although Tihla seemed satisfied with his progress and reserved the bulk of her criticism for the less dangerous but more arduous aspects of their training.
“Duck, you cack-brain!” she snarled, swinging the spear again, this time at his chest instead of his head. The weapon was called a claw spear and was at least twice the length of any pole-arm Shamil had encountered before. The haft was fashioned from ash, which allowed it to flex as Tihla wielded it, aiming the curved point at the upper parts of his body. The spearhead consisted of a black claw fixed to the haft by an iron bracket. This particular claw had a leather sheath to prevent its serrated edge from tearing his flesh, but the sting of its impact was a thing to be feared, and he bore several long, crescent-shaped bruises on his back from his first abortive practice.