Stielbek streaked between the two remaining man-bats, killing one with his beak and the other, his claws. Spreading his wings wide and rearing back, the black wing extended his talons to enfold the tumbling form of Morgath Durnholm. They were barely fifty feet from the ground now, the air a maelstrom of fire arrows that would surely see them ablaze within seconds.
A chorus of bird cries drew Shamil’s gaze upwards in time to see what appeared to be the entire Sentinel host streaking out of the sky. Tihla flew at their head with Lyvia close behind, sling whirling. Crystal-headed arrows fell in a thick hail, the neat ranks of the vehlgard column below blasted apart by a welter of explosions.
Stielbek was forced to swoop low before soaring high, and Shamil found himself staring down into the face of a vehlgard barely a spear’s length beneath. Having expected to be confronted with some form of bestial, snarling mask, he was surprised to see a face that was recognisably human in both expression and form. The features were certainly broader than could be called natural, with a blocklike jaw and wide lips, the pale, hairless skin scarred in many places and rich in tattoos of garish design. But still he saw humanity in the way he glared at Shamil, lips drawn back from wedge-like teeth in a snarl of anger. This was not the unreasoning, animalistic hunger of the Maw beasts. These were the eyes of a thinking being like the raptorile he had murdered. But unlike the raptorile, the soul behind these eyes badly wanted him dead.
The vehlgard lunged at him just as Stielbek beat his wings to begin his ascent, and Shamil heard a shout of frustrated rage as the long spear flailed at the black wing’s tail feathers. A deep, growling voice chased them with curses in a grating language alien to Shamil’s ear, fading quickly.
The sentinels closed in around Stielbek as he climbed into the upper reaches of the still roiling smokestack, climbing out of arrow range but soon finding themselves attacked by a fresh swarm of flensers. Tihla was quick to hurl her fire wing into the heart of the swarm, the crystals set into her claw spear shining bright as she whirled it. Sparks erupted whenever it met the flesh of a Maw beast, sending a dozen blackened corpses towards the ground. Shamil lashed his whip constantly as Stielbek took them through the fray, the swarm soon blasted apart as the sentinels exhausted their remaining crystals, and they finally flew clear of the smoke.
Tihla’s bird laboured to the front of the formation, the second wing waving her spear in a slow circle before pointing it at the Eyrie. They were being ordered home. Looking around the surviving host, Shamil saw the reason in stark clarity. Less than half were left, and many of those were either injured or close to exhaustion. Riders sagged on the backs of their birds, several clutching wounds. Many of the great wings were also in poor shape, leaving a trail of black specks in their wake as they shed feathers, some bearing blackened patches on their plumage, others leaking crimson droplets as they struggled towards the Eyrie on tired wings. The Sentinels had suffered a defeat this day, and the unmoving form of the man lying limp in Stielbek’s claws made it clear they might be about to suffer their most grievous loss yet.
10. The Mage’s Gambit
Rignar laboured through the night, with Tihla lingering outside his chamber as the glimmer of powerful sorcery flickered in the edges of the closed door. An occasional shout would accompany the shifting lights, weak at first but growing in volume as the hours wore on. Shamil wasn’t sure whether this was a good sign or not.
By unanimous agreement, the other sentinels had all refused to accept crystal healing to allow Rignar to concentrate his entire energies on the first wing. Consequently, Shamil had spent much of the night employing the medical skills he had learned in the Doctrinate. It amounted mostly to setting broken bones and stitching cuts, some small, others deep. However, much of the burden of caring for the wounded fell on Ehlias. The smith possessed many years of hard-won experience in tending injury, although his remedies ranged from the basic to the gruesome, the latter involving some judicious use of red-hot irons or the sharper knives from his workshop. Liberal quantities of pain-muting herbs were also doled out, resulting in a curiously lighthearted atmosphere amongst the wounded. Songs and jokes filled the air, although Shamil noted that the laughter had a near hysterical quality, often subsiding to tears in quieter moments as confusion was replaced by the hard realisation of grief.
The great wings settled on their perches or returned to the nest, some keening laments for lost riders, others nuzzling beaks at wounded comrades. Shamil noted that Stielbek kept apart from them, perching on a rise close to the eastern cliff from where he maintained an unwavering vigil of the Maw. Its roar was louder now, hunger and rage more discernible than ever, leaving Shamil in no doubt that he was hearing the Voice itself. The legends had always depicted this eternal adversary as more a malign seducer than a monster, whispering temptation into the ears of weak or greedy souls. The sound that now emerged from the Maw spoke of something different, a being perhaps transformed by its centuries of confinement. This altered Voice, Shamil knew, had no interest in the subtleties of seduction or carefully woven schemes; it hungered only for the destruction of those that had chained it.
After he had stitched his last cut and wiped his last fevered brow, Shamil climbed the rise to stand at Stielbek’s side. Even without the insight offered by their bond, he could sense the black wing’s roiling fury, the deep desire for a return to battle in the eyes he focused on the shifting glow of the Maw.
“The mage with the tattoos,” Shamil said. “An old friend, perhaps?”
Stielbek cocked his head slightly, beak snapping once in confirmation. “Who is he, I wonder?” Shamil peered at the ugly spectacle of the Maw at night. Sharrow-Met’s statue stood silhouetted against the constant smoke lit in various hues by the glow of lava and the mage’s magics, which had continued unabated since the sentinels’ retreat.
The ice storm they crafted was invisible in the dark, but its effects were now increasingly evident. A black line had appeared in the slow current of the molten river, a line pointing west that hadn’t been there the night before. It seemed barely more than a hair’s width at this distance, but Shamil calculated it must be at least fifty feet across.
“So,” he murmured. “That’s what they’re about.”
Stielbek’s beak snapped again, louder this time. His desire for resumed battle was clear, but the bond enabled Shamil to sense something beneath it, a raw impatience to finish this task so that they might begin another.
“Soon.” Shamil ran a hand through the feathers on Stielbek’s neck before turning to descend the rise, making quickly for Rignar’s chamber.
“They’re crafting a bridge.”
Morgath spared Shamil a brief glance, grunting as he swung his leg off Rignar’s bed. The mage had sealed the first wing’s every wound, but his broad back was now an epic of overlapping scars, and crystalmancy could do nothing to restore the eye he had lost. In its place he wore a smooth blue stone, veined in gold, a strangely beautiful island of colour in a sea of scarred flesh. More concerning than the disfigurement was the absence of any vestige of a smile on his lips. Shamil had thought this man capable of finding humour in any circumstance, and discovering his error made for a harsh realisation: he thinks we’ve already lost.
“He’s right,” Tihla put in. “Took a look for myself. That ice storm they’ve conjured can turn twenty yards of lava to rock in the space of an hour. By noon tomorrow they’ll have a causeway for that army to cross.”