“Speak,” the Qualeewooh whistled. Only then did Gallen notice that the creature bore a thin blade, a scimitar, in its left hand. The small hand protruded from the apex of the wings, and the Qualeewooh had expertly concealed the blade in its pinion feathers.
“You killed our friend,” Gallen said. “Yesterday. You ate him.”
The Qualeewooh swooped forward, landed on the rock beside Gallen. Standing up, it was nearly as tall as a man. It held its head back on a snakelike neck and stood for a moment gazing at Gallen, just blinking.
“We killed an animal,” the Qualeewooh said. “Not human. It had wings.”
“It was a human with wings,” Gallen said. “He was my brother!” Zeus shouted.
The Qualeewooh made a high, keening whistle, and bobbed its head up and down rapidly while blinking. The translator on Gallen’s lapel interpreted the keening wail. “Noooooo!”
The Qualeewooh waddled forward, extending its neck, and laid its head on the ground, twisted up slightly to the side. “Blood debt we owe. Blood debt. Two lives for one.”
With the sound of that wail a second Quaieewooh, a small and beautiful female, scrabbled from the rocks, winged its way up the slope, and lit nearby, bobbing its head, calling, “Two lives! Two lives!”
The Qualeewoohs looked at one another, a mournful glance, and the female waddled forward. “An egg is in my pouch. We are two. Slay us. Cooharah shall live.”
“No, I plead to the fourth degree,” the male said. “Aaw shall live. Slay me and her chick.”
Gallen studied the Qualeewoohs. Both birds appeared to be hot. The blue gathers of skin at their throats jiggled, cooling them. With them sitting on the rock, wings folded, they did not look so noble or marvelous. He could see spots on the male where feathers were missing or broken, could see the wear on their lone blade, the thin nap on the bag the female wore. The bag Aaw wore strapped across her chest was decorated with feathers and beads, held closed by a circular pin. It looked to be made of some thin strands of woven reed.
Gallen noticed blood at the edge of Cooharah’s mask. These Qualeewoohs were poor, tired. They had nothing to offer but their useless lives, and they begged to throw them away, pleading loudly, squawking. Honorable and pathetic.
Gallen decided to put Zeus to the test. “Here are your murderers. They don’t want a trial. You want to kill them?”
Zeus stared at the Qualeewoohs in disgust, his hands bunched into fists, his face pale. He seemed to struggle, to seek control. Back in the ship’s cabin, fifteen minutes earlier, Orick had been preaching about understanding and forgiveness.
“No.” Zeus looked away, shook his head. “Let the damned things go.”
Gallen said softly, so the translator would not pick up his words. “Felph will be angry.”
Zeus shook his head. “I don’t care.”
Gallen stared into Zeus’s dark eyes. “Maggie believes you want to leave Lord Felph, leave this world. Is that true?”
Zeus took a deep breath, nostrils flaring, looked up at the clear sky, the distant sun beating mercilessly. “Leave this happy place? The family fortune? I don’t know.” Gallen understood. It’s hard to leave comfort for the unknown.
Gallen remembered when he’d left his home. He’d not had it so soft as Zeus. A life of poverty and work, but with the comfort of good friends and family as recompense.
“Where were you going?” Gallen asked the Qualeewoohs.
Cooharah, answered. “We look for an oasis, a place to nest.”
Gallen debated in his mind whether to warn the Qualeewoohs that Felph wanted them dead. Judging from how they acted, the fool birds would probably demand to return to the palace for execution. So Gallen said, “You’ll find an oasis two hundred kilometers to the northeast, but you won’t be safe there. Men may hunt you. Continue on till you get to the great tangle.”
“Negative to the fourth degree,” Aaw said. “We owe blood debt. We must pay. The ancestors tell us so.”
“We can’t take your lives,” Gallen said. “Human law won’t allow it. You are forgiven the blood debt.” Gallen unsnapped the canteen from his belt and poured water into an indentation in the rock so the birds could drink. “Go in peace.”
Gallen turned and climbed down from the rock, heading for the ship, acutely aware that behind him, Zeus had not yet moved.
Zeus eyed Gallen’s back, tense, as if considering Gallen’s rationale. If Zeus did not attack now, if he did not slay the Qualeewoohs here, he’d lose the opportunity. Gallen used the sensors in his mantle to study the big man.
At last, Zeus followed, leaping down from rock to rock. “Stinking, ignorant savages,” he murmured.
The Qualeewoohs flapped their wings, glided downhill, then circled the ship, gawking, and flew off to the north.
Gallen stood watching them leave, when his mantle sent a warning that rang in his head. “Warning-imminent attack!
Gallen ducked and spun to block, imagining Zeus was attacking, but Zeus only startled backward in surprise. Gallen’s mantle continued. “Fifteen heavy battle cruisers have exited hyperspace at one hundred kilometers. Neutron mines have fired into orbit.”
From the Nightswift, Maggie shouted through the hatch.
“Gallen, get in here!” Apparently she was getting the same news.
“Neutron mines?” Gallen asked his mantle as he ran for the ship. The heavy mass of densely packed neutrons made it almost impossible to navigate a jump into hyperspace, the gravitational distortions caused by the mines could send a ship slamming into a star or crashing into a planet. If Gallen left Ruin now and hit a mine, his ship might even tear apart in the upper atmosphere. Yet there was a secondary danger: if the mines were set too close to Ruin’s gravity well, they’d get pulled in like meteors-meteors heavy enough to shoot through the planet’s crust like bullets, creating a global catastrophe. Enough neutron mines placed in low orbit could decimate a world.
Gallen reached the ship, jumped into the hold, ran to the bridge. Their little cruiser was fast, very fast for a civilian vessel, but it lacked weaponry and didn’t have enough armor for combat. Maggie stood at the console, looking about, obviously upset.
“Identify those ships!” Gallen ordered the ship’s AI, hoping against all odds that for some reason he couldn’t fathom, human boats would be in the sky.
The ship’s AI answered in its damned neutral voice, “Six dronon Golden-Class vessels, and nine dronon War Hives. Sensor jammers have just been initiated. All radio contact is now impossible. I cannot confirm new arrivals of ships, nor can I verify the locations of mines.”
Gallen looked at Maggie. “Six Golden-Class vessels!” she breathed.
“What does that mean?” Zeus asked.
“The dronon Lords of the Swarms are here-all of them,” Gallen said.
Maggie asked, “Ship, with the jammers on, can the dronon read our position?”
“So it’s true, what Arachne said?” Zeus asked Gallen. “You and Maggie really are the Lords of the Sixth Swarm?”
“Negative,” the ship answered Maggie. “The dronon cannot read our position unless they make visual contact.”
Maggie glanced back to Gallen. “We need to get under cover. The palace?”
Gallen shook his head, thinking furiously. “No, your scent is everywhere there.” The dronon would obviously send Seekers. And in his mind, he saw a vision of clouds, of the towering storms above Teeawah. Felph said they raged there almost constantly.
“Ship,” Gallen nearly shouted, “take us to Teeawah. Get us under the clouds, top speed.”
With a lurch, the ship hurtled forward. Gallen feared the moving ship would show easily on dronon scanners, but he only hoped that now, having just reached Ruin, the dronon wouldn’t have had time to begin extensive planetary surveillance. Besides, even if they had, he imagined, the tangle was huge. He could hide in that mess for weeks.
For twelve long minutes his ship hurtled through the sky at mach fifteen, fast enough so the heat shielding on the ship’s hull began to flame. Gallen’s heart raced; his breathing came uneasy.