“Only if they have mages to keep the storm churning,” Shamil said. “We need to kill them.”
“Mind your place.” Tihla’s voice was curt, though less so than he might have expected. “What you did today was impressive, and we’re all rightly grateful for it, but the first wing decides our battle plans, not you. Today we lost half our number and barely got within sight of those mages. And even if we did get close enough for an arrow, I doubt they’ll just stand there and obligingly await death.” She took a breath heavy with reluctance. “It might be wiser to conserve our strength, wait for them to cross before launching successive attacks, buy time for the Treaty Realms to gather their forces.”
She fell silent, eyes lingering expectantly on Morgath’s slumped head, her features bunching in suppressed consternation when no response was immediately forthcoming.
“Shamil is right.”
Shamil and Tihla turned to regard Rignar as he hefted his satchel onto his bench. “It will take weeks for Mira-Vielle and the Crucible Kingdom to muster an army,” he went on. “Months for the Treaty Realms entire to gather a force capable of defeating the malign horde, if such a force can even be gathered. We have to stop this before it begins.”
“You want me to watch the rest of them die?”
Morgath’s voice was a raw scraping echo of its previous vitality. Looking into his partly ruined face with its gleaming blue eye, Shamil knew his wounds went deeper than mere skin and muscle. The first wing of the Sentinel Eyrie might not yet be broken, but he was at least buckled.
“This family we’ve built?” Morgath continued, his gaze shifting from Rignar to Tihla. “I did that once before. All my fine lads and lasses, thieves and cutthroats they may have been, but they were family to me. I knew more loyalty and kindness living amongst pirates than I ever knew throughout the long, wretched years beneath my father’s roof. And I watched him hang them all, one by one. He had me chained in such a way that I couldn’t turn my head from the sight, and I was flogged if I dared to close my eyes. When I was dragged to these mountains and dumped at the base of the Eyrie, the last words I ever heard from my father were, ‘Die quickly.’ But I wouldn’t, my last act of defiance. In surviving here, I won the trust of my brothers and sisters, once again becoming a captain of sorts. In the years since, the love I have for this place and these people has washed away all the anger and hatred that once claimed my soul. Don’t ask me to destroy what’s left, Tihla.” His head slumped once more, ragged voice descending into a groan. “I can’t.”
“You won’t have to,” Rignar said. He paused to undo the satchel’s buckles, revealing the glassy orb of the black onyx. “If I might be so bold as to propose a stratagem.”
“It doesn’t seem like nearly enough.”
Morgath’s one good eye tracked over the three birds perched on the east-facing rise. Kritzlasch and Vintress exchanged a few beak snaps and hisses as they waited, both resting on a branch lower than Stielbek and conscientious in avoiding his eye. For his part, the black wing seemed content to ignore them both, his gaze still entirely locked on the Maw and its vomitous smoke. The rising sun painted the occluded horizon a faint shade of pink. Deep shadows still concealed much of the army waiting on the far bank of the lava flow, but the ice storm was visible now, a blaze of white that seemed to be growing by the second.
“Speed is more important than numbers,” Rignar replied, glancing up from the black onyx. He had kept hold of the crystal since Morgath’s eventual and grudging agreement to this plan, constantly playing his fingers over the surface. The stone’s response to his touch had grown ever brighter in the intervening hours, producing a sustained shimmer in its core. Judging by Rignar’s increasingly grey and hollow-cheeked countenance, Shamil concluded that whatever sorcery he had crafted within its facets had cost him dear.
“Besides”—Rignar forced a smile before favouring Lyvia and Shamil with a fond glance—“I’d rather fly with my young friends at my side than any other.”
Morgath gave a sombre nod before settling his gaze first on Shamil then Lyvia. “I won’t command you to this,” he told them, the diminished rasp of his voice battling with the stiff morning wind. “No disgrace will result if you choose not to . . .”
“We’re wasting time,” Lyvia cut in, before adding with a tight smile, “But your consideration is appreciated, First Wing.”
Morgath’s livid scars twisted as a very faint grin ghosted across his face, but only briefly before he turned and strode away. He climbed the perch of the tallest rise where Kaitlahr waited. The youthful fire wing had taken up station at the beam before sunrise, crouching low to allow the first wing to climb onto his back with no need to leap. Other great wings had issued forth from the nest to accept sentinels whose birds had succumbed to their wounds. Even so, the host mustered that morning was a much denuded and less impressive gathering than had flown to confront the resurgent Voice the day before.
Before the sentinels buckled on their helms, Shamil saw a mostly uniform expression of fatalistic determination with no sign of the usual grim humour. He watched Morgath share a long look with Tihla before they both donned their helms, a look that surely spoke of many things left unsaid throughout the years of their service.
They took off in one great flock, the well-ordered grouping of yesterday replaced by a dense arrowhead formation aimed directly at the Maw. The air thrummed as the birds beat their wings with furious energy, closing the distance to their foes with a speed that commanded notice.
Rignar waited until the sentinels closed to within a few hundred yards of the Maw before donning his helm. “It’s time,” he said, raising his gaze to Kritzlasch, who immediately hopped down from the perch, crouching low so the mage could climb onto his back.
“Before we set off,” he said, settling himself into place, one hand clutching the owl’s harness and the other pressing the onyx hard against his chest. “It would be remiss of me not to offer my regrets to Lady Lyvia.”
“Regrets?” she asked, voice given a metallic tinge by her own helm as she climbed onto Vintress’s back.
“For the desecration we are about to inflict upon your ancestor.” Rignar nodded to Sharrow-Met’s statue, still contriving to shrug off the concealing cloak of the Maw’s discharge.
Lyvia replied with a short, tinny laugh. “Desecrate away, good sir. It’ll be a relief not to have to look at that thing every day.”
Stielbek shuddered with anticipation when Shamil mounted him, spreading his wings and launching them into the air without pause. He climbed into the air to catch an updraft and began to circle higher, letting out an impatient caw that had Vintress and Kritzlasch quickly following suit.
The three birds levelled out at least two hundred feet higher than the sentinel host before striking for the Maw. Shamil could see the close-packed formation of great wings closing on the smokestack now and the flecks of black within the haze that told of a great many Maw beasts rising to meet their onslaught. Flares of light erupted at the edge of the smoke as the leading sentinels let loose with their first volley of crystal-head arrows before they disappeared into the grey-black fog.
For a few seconds, unleashed energy roiled like a compressed lightning storm, a testament to the ferocity of the hidden struggle, flashing so bright Shamil was forced to switch to his darkened lenses. He fought down a panicked suspicion that the sentinels had met with disaster, and a relieved sigh hissed through his teeth when he saw the leading birds sweep clear of the smoke, followed by what appeared to be most of the host. The sentinels banked upon reaching clear sky, turning in a wide arc to attack once again, loosing a flurry of arrows as they did so. The host became a great wheeling circle at the edge of the towering pall, which darkened in its upper reaches as ever more Maw beasts were drawn towards the fray.