“Your bird?” Tihla asked her.
“Few tail feathers lost is all.” Ashinta reached for her helm and hopped down from Rignar’s bench. “We can still fly.”
“Good. Load up on arrows and make ready. You’ll wing with me when we launch.” Tihla’s gaze shifted to Lyvia, as if noting her presence for the first time. “You too. Fill your pouches with crystal and get aloft. Lamira has charge of the falcon wing. Stay close and follow her lead. I’ve no time for any more lessons, and we need every bird in the air.”
Lyvia shared a brief but bright glance with Shamil, lips wavering as she sought words that wouldn’t come until he gave her a tight smile and nodded. Scooping a handful of quartz into a leather pouch, she rushed off into the shouts and squawks outside.
“I’ve a notion we’ll soon have need of more stones,” Tihla said to Rignar, who was already setting out a row of crystals on his bench.
“I’ll see to it,” he said, looking up at Shamil. “I’d work faster knowing there was someone here to watch my back.”
Tihla’s gaze slid to Shamil, evident reluctance in her eyes. “We’ve no true picture of what we face today. The Eyrie may be swarmed by all manner of Maw-born foulness before this is over, and you have no obligation here now . . .”
“Yes,” he cut in. “I do.”
The second wing sighed and inclined her head in acquiescence. “As you wish. Fetch your weapons and guard the mage. If none of us return by sunset, climb down and get as far west as you can, spread the word that the Voice has woken.”
She went to a corner where a claw spear had been propped, augmented by several fragments of topaz set into the sickle-shaped blade. “Thanks for this,” she told Rignar over her shoulder. “Let’s hope it works.”
He watched Vintress carry Lyvia aloft to join the circling flock of falcons. Tihla took off soon after on Rhienvelk, a veteran fire wing with a cracked beak and plumage a dark shade of crimson. The sentinels formed into three spirals in accordance with the first wing’s orders, the fire wings being the largest and spread out over a half mile or more of sky.
Morgath Durnholm was the last to fly off, climbing onto Fleyrak’s back to pause for a momentary survey of the mostly empty Eyrie. His face was hidden by his helm, but Shamil had the sense of a man saying farewell to a much-loved home. The blank glass eyes of Morgath’s visor settled on Shamil, lowered once in a bow of grave respect, then jerked upwards as the first wing gave a voiceless command that had Fleyrak leaping from the perch. The bird’s wings sent twin whirlwinds spinning across the Eyrie as he climbed into the sky, immediately striking out towards the Maw.
As the first wing passed below, the three circles broke apart to follow, the falcons staying high, whilst the fire wings fell in behind Morgath, spreading out into a formation that resembled a broad arrowhead. The owls were the smallest contingent and flew a good distance behind the fire wings, their formation more varied in height so that, as they drew away, they resembled a giant shield.
Shamil paced continuously as he watched the winged host fade towards the ever more mountainous smoke. He had primed his bow with a quartz-head arrow and half drawn the string, mainly to occupy his hands as seething frustration rose to an ever greater pitch.
Besides him and Rignar, the only other occupants of the Eyrie were Kritzlasch, circling above, and Ehlias. The smith sat outside the door to his workshop cradling a windlass crossbow, his song a murmured dirge now, full of dire intonations. The crossbow was loaded with a bolt armed with a chunk of white quartz the size of a fist. Four other identical devices, all drawn and loaded, were propped against the wall within easy reach.
Ehlias let his song fall silent as Shamil paced closer, his restive gaze roaming the arrayed weapons. “Too heavy to aim from a bird’s back,” the smith explained, patting the crossbow’s stock. “Made ’em when I first came here and didn’t know any better. Kept them out of sentiment, I s’pose.” He gave a wry, strained chuckle. “Never thought I’d have occasion to use ’em, to be honest. Still, reckon I’ll get at least a hundred or so beasties before they gobble me up.”
His words were drowned by a loud rumble of thunder from the Maw. Shamil’s head snapped round to see the last dark specks of the sentinel host disappearing into the smoke. The flash and glimmer of exploding crystals began almost immediately, made even more disconcerting because the sounds of battle took several seconds to reach the Eyrie.
“I’d give just about anything to be there out with them,” Ehlias said. “Guess you would too. Not an easy thing to be a sentinel without a bird. I had one, y’know. Rhottblane, means ‘red snow’ in my birth tongue. He was an owl, pure white all over but for his eyes, red like rubies. It was age rather than battle that got him in the end. Couldn’t hunt, couldn’t see much of anything, shedding feathers that wouldn’t grow back. One day, he just flew off, never saw him again. I tried to bond with another, but no bird would do more than snatch meat from me. Even thought about trying my luck with him once.” Ehlias jerked his head at the summit of the nest. “Turned out, I was too much of a coward when the time came.”
Following his gaze, Shamil saw a very large winged shape circling the nest, black but for the speckle of sunlight on its feathers. “Stielbek,” he murmured. He found his gaze captured by the black wing’s slowly turning silhouette, a singular irresistible notion building in his mind that caused him to return the arrow to his quiver and hook his bow over his chest.
“Yes,” Ehlias mused, puzzlement colouring his tone. “Odd he should turn up again now. Usually only appears when there’s a new brace of fledglings . . .”
Ehlias’s voice faltered as Shamil started off at a run, buckling his helm in place, which had the fortuitous effect of muffling the baffled words the smith cast in his wake. “What’re you about, lad?”
Shamil sprinted through the Eyrie, skirting the rises and making for the cliff where the beam pointed towards the smoke now lit by so much unleashed sorcery its upper reaches had taken on a persistent shimmer. Shamil didn’t pause upon reaching the beam, didn’t even look up before he came to the end and leapt. As his feet left the timber, part of him knew this to be madness, that when he fell this time, there would be no one to save him. He was just a lost youth with a broken mind hurtling towards his own death because he feared the guilt and self-detestation that was his due. Still he refused to surrender to despair, letting the hope blossom like a fire as he reached the apex of his leap, allowing only one clear thought to rise to the forefront of his churning mind: He was waiting for me . . . for me to be ready. He was waiting for me . . .
Stielbek caught him before he had even begun to fall.
9. The Maw
Stielbek’s talons clasped him only for a second before tossing him into the air. The momentary terror gave rise to a notion that the bird had allowed him to experience the joy of salvation only to let him fall, a cruel amusement born of his avian mind. However, a gust of wind and a brush of feathers saw him land on the black wing’s back. His legs quickly found purchase on the hard, surging muscle beneath the plumage at the nape of Stielbek’s neck. Shamil secured himself in place by clutching fistfuls of feathers for want of a harness. Stielbek angled his huge head to regard him with a gleaming yellow eye, and it was then that Shamil felt the bond for the first time.
He found the sensation resembled the satisfaction that came from sinking an arrow into the centre of a target, or the turn of a key in a lock, but greatly magnified. It was a feeling of completion, of two matched components fitting together. Suddenly, Shamil understood the nature of the bond between sentinel and bird. It was not a sharing of minds, but a sharing of purpose. Staring into the depths of Stielbek’s eye, Shamil felt himself dwarfed by the intense commitment he saw there, the absolute conviction in the soul behind those eyes. He found himself lost in the utter blackness of the pupil, experiencing a sense of being drawn into depthless shadows where there lurked many ugly things. Bonding with this mighty and ancient soul was like being scraped by a gnarled tree, one that cared little for what such scraping might do to its rider.