The woman hesitated, took a step forward. The eagle hissed. She stopped. 'I can't.'
'Certainly you can!' Fost twisted in the uncomfortably small saddle, keeping a sharp watch for interlopers. It was unlikely that soldiers of either side would be friendly to armed strangers in the streets. Anyone in the street would be fair game. 'Get aboard.'
Her approach was again met by shrill whistling from the eagle. It batted at her with its wings as it stepped backward, clumsy under the courier's weight. 'It fears her smell,' said Erimenes. 'I don't think it likes bears.' 'It accepted me. Jennas, for Ust's sake, hurry!'
'With all due respect to the lovely and capable Jennas, you're hardly as steeped in ursine essences as she.'
At the mention of the Bear God, Jennas's face had gone thoughtful. She stepped back and let her greatsword slump until its tip rested on the granite cobblestones. She had reached a decision of her own, no less painful than the one Fost made.
'I am not meant to go,' she said. 'This journey is yours alone, Fost.'
Wings thundered overhead and the voices of men floated down through the fog. Fost's bird screamed. It twisted about under him, its wings beginning to flutter nervously. The bird longed for the air. Fost cursed and jabbed its neck, expecting the Sky Guards to start dropping through the misty ceiling. None came. 'That's ridiculous. Get aboard.'
'I couldn't,' she said, her brown eyes gleaming wetly, 'even were it intended that I do so. Yon beast can't bear both our weights.'
'She's right, Fost. That dead girl's a foot shorter than you, and no doubt weighs half what you do.'
'Shut up, Erimenes.' A catch in his voice almost choked him. He tried to lie to himself that it was due to eagerness to see Moriana again. He knew better.
'Nor can I abandon our faithful bears in the streets of this strange city,' she went on remorselessly. 'You can manage on your own. Nor are you truly on your own, O Chosen of Ust.' 'Jennas…'
She turned and mounted Chubchuk, her soft, 'Goodbye,' coming back to haunt Fost. 'My sainted self, Fost, quit dithering!' Erimenes shouted.
Face a mask of anguish, Fost nudged the eagle's flanks with both knees hoping this was the proper signal. The bird understood. It stretched its wings, hopped, thumped the air vigorously in an effort to raise the unaccustomed weight. The courier's heart almost stopped as the bird dropped from beneath him, but the next instant the wings caught air and smoothly bore him upward into the mist. 'Good luck, Jennas I… I hope we'll meet again!'
'We shall,' she called after him. 'But not in happy reunion. Fare thee well, Longstrider. I…'The words became garbled by distance. Fost thought she added 'I love you' but couldn't be sure.
A moment of flight both timeless and weightless through the veiling clouds and then Fost was blinking in hot sunlight. The roofs of the buildings were completely covered by the fog. Off to his right the salamander still died in agony within a thrashing spiral of steam. Hoping the bird had sense enough not to veer in that direction, he pressed himself against its neck and clung.
Off to his left where the blunt cliffs of the hills shouldered out of the cloud, he saw the distinctive shapes of the Sky City cargo balloons dropping down with bird riders circling protectively above. Just ahead, a great number of the sausage balloons dropped toward the Central Plaza. The gondolas beneath bulged with armed men in the livery of Bilsinx. Though he didn't know what was happening, he knew enough of both tactics and of Rann to make a fair guess. With the fog to cover the maneuver, the prince had launched a feint attack on the Ducal Palace; when the Estil commanders sent troops to relieve the Palace, the main attack fell against the reduced forces in the Hall of Deputies, the nerve center of the defense.
The sky was nearly clear of eagles, though more balloons hung near the City bearing loads of arrows and javelins for the riders to replenish their ammunition. Most of the birds Fost saw were spiralling down among the assault balloons. That confirmed his guess that he was witnessing the killing stroke.
But what of the score of balloons rising upward toward the City in the Sky?
'Easy, easy,' he told the eagle, mainly to quiet his own nerves. To his surprise, he was not reduced to jelly by the knowledge he was alone on the back of a potentially hostile bird half a thousand feet in the air. Since first encountering Erimenes and Moriana, he had been through any number of appalling adventures, including several of the aerial variety to rival this hellride to the City through the combat all around him. That and the emotional numbness remaining after his escape from the wrath of a captive elemental a hundred stories tall accounted for his seeming calm.
He couldn't bring himself to even think of Jennas left behind in the now defeated city so far under his feet.
'Erimenes,' he whispered, knowing it was lunatic since none could hear him. 'Erimenes, why are so many Sky City balloons climbing back to the City? The battle's at its climax.' 'Guardian was right. Your eyesight is weak, indeed.'
'What?' Why was that confounded genie prattling about the sentient glacier guarding Athalau?
'Don't you see those "balloons" are orange and round? They aren't balloons, they're ludintip.' 'Oh,' said Fost, 'and we're flying right up into the midst of them.'
'There's always the opposite direction.' Fost swallowed hard.
Single-mindedly, the bird beat its way upward. None of the ludintip's passengers seemed to be looking their way, Fost noted with relief. Their attention was fixed upward. A few eagles flying combat patrol around the City's perimeter swooped down, only to be clawed from the air by whirring flights of arrows. Then the living gasbags were above the rimwail, pouring lethal arrows on the startled faces of the attackers turned defenders.
Fost's eagle climbed up into the midst of the beings in time to see a flight of small black birds billow upward like smoke.
The five hundred men and women riding beneath the ludintip had not the slightest expectation of living to feel solid earth beneath their bootsoles again. Their only aim was to sow as much death and devastation as possible in the City itself before they fell. Synalon and Rann might triumph, but nevermore could it be said that the City in the Sky was immune to reprisal from the ground.
Dropping with her squadron of bird riders and Sky Guards, Colonel Dashta Enn was astonished to see the ludintip sprouting from the mist like red-crowned mushrooms and go rushing upward so fast that she and her flyers only had time to loose a futile scattering of arrows. The audacity of the attack took away her breath.
Trained by Rann, she did not hesitate. The colonel was committed to the attack on the Hall of Deputies. The assault might succeed. Then all that remained would be the mopping-up of scattered, disorganized and leaderless forces, if it failed, all Rann's genius and the sorceries of Synalon could not alter the fact that the Estil armies still outnumbered their foes hugely and would crush them like a giant swatting a fly if they regrouped.
The City had to fend for itself. She swooped down to battle. Her eagle's talons raked cotton, then fell on unsuspecting prey.
Synalon sat on the stone pier, head hanging listlessly with her chin on her breastbone. It took all her powers of concentration to keep the sylph and the dying, screeching fire sprite under control. She didn't know if they were still needed. She dominated them now simply to prove her power.
Something brushed her cheek. It whined like an insect. She slapped at her face when she felt the sting.
'Your Majesty, beware!' screamed one of her bodyguards from the skydock behind her. Additional words were lost in a bubbling, gurgling moan.