"Come to fight, I suppose," said Joss, looking around for the woman.
"Then they got what they come for. Unlike us."
"Where'd she go?"
"Where'd who go?"
"I was talking to that woman, the one we saw."
"You're always talking to women."
"Didn't you see her?"
"I did, but it seems she took fright of your ugly face and crept off while I was coming up from behind those rocks. I lost sight of you for a bit. Serves you right! You're not used to them rejecting you, are you?"
For once, the Snake's taunting did not disturb him. Wind skirled through the rocks and spit dust at them. They tramped through the maze of outcrops and boulders, stuck their heads into shadowed overhangs, and poked their batons into deep crevices. Birds flitted around them, anxious at their presence, and various animals-rats, mice, rabbits, coneys, a veritable feast-scurried in the undergrowth or down into slits and cracks where they could not reach. Once, Joss saw a fox's clever face peering at him out of a thicket, but when he blinked, it was gone. There were bones aplenty; Joss estimated that hundreds of people had died here, but the remains really were stripped out and there was nothing except skeletal remains and bits and pieces of useless scrap.
They found no sign of the woman.
At length, Joss scrambled to the top of the highest boulder, where he stood at a sheer edge about three body's lengths off the ground. Searching the sky, he saw Peddo and Jabi approaching from the south. That was strange, too. Hadn't Peddo been out of sight, too far away to mark as anything except an unidentified bird? How had the woman known he was there?
He set his whistle to his lips and called Scar, and signaled with the flag for Peddo to come down, but instead Peddo flew low overhead and, banking tight, blew the three short blasts on his whistle that made Joss's whole body jolt just as a fire bell would, heard clanging within the city's vulnerable streets.
Emergency.
He and Scar leaped aloft, Volias and Trouble not far behind. There was a slight updraft over the rocks, but the raptors strained, pushing hard, for they recognized the whistle call as well as their reeves did. Jabi flapped past, pushing hard back the way he had come, and Peddo whipped his flag in the up-and-down motion for crime in progress .
By the hells, it would be good to be able to act for a change.
He looked back over the outcrop as they lifted, but he still saw no sign of that woman. She could not have walked away so fast. She must have heard them, and hidden in the rock in some hidey-hole they had not noticed. How had the people of this region come to fear and hate reeves?
He did see the four children walking across abandoned fields in the direction of Horn. They hadn't gotten far. They even looked up and one pointed their way while the others paused to stare.
Peddo glided alongside as close as any of them dared get to the other, and shouted across the gap. "Osprey attack! Merchant banners. On West Track. Looks bad!"
They found thermals and rose, and from the height the eagles immediately spotted movement a mey or more ahead of them on the road.
Scar and Jabi and Trouble put out a burst of speed. Only as they got closer could Joss make sense of the scene: a pair of wagons flying household banners marking them as respectable merchants, a dozen plunging horses, and men on the road striving mightily against a larger attacking group mostly on foot and directed by a pair of riders hanging back at the rear out of danger. One of those captains was carrying so much gear on his horse that the baggage distorted the animal's frame, making it seem bulkier about the body than a normal horse. The other captain wore lime-whitened horsetail shoulder crests, and carried a banner strung with four narrow yellow and red flags.
For those on the road, who couldn't have counted more than fifteen or so, it was clearly a losing battle against attackers who boasted over twice that number. Already about half of the merchants and their armed escort had fallen, while the others gave way until they were backed against one of the wagons.
This time he wasn't going to walk away.
The eagles glided in silence and, when the angle was right, they stooped.
You never got jaded to this. The air screamed past; the ground leaped up at you, ready to punch you in the face and then flatten you. And yet your eagle would put on the brakes at just the right instant. Scar came down with wings wide and talons extended. The laden horse was already bolting with its rider clinging to its back, but the other man and horse did not react as quickly. Scar knocked him right off the saddle, and the horse reared back in a panic, shied, backed up, and broke for safety, following the other horse, which was already racing north along the road.
Joss unhooked his harness and jumped free, hitting the ground with legs bent to absorb the impact. He had his short sword drawn. Peddo punched back a pair of men with his spear's stout haft while Jabi went at a clot of bandits who had pushed the beleaguered merchants up against their wagons. The raucous kek-kek of the huge eagle was a terrifying thing, wings beating and talons ripping. The bandits shrieked and cried out and scattered.
Where was Volias?
Scar yelped. Joss shied sideways, an instant before the blow hit him. His shoulder took most of it, but the tip caught him just behind his right ear. Then the man coming at him fell forward onto his own face, and Volias yanked his short sword out of the man's back and shoved the body aside.
"Thanks," grunted Joss, stung and shocked as he struggled to his feet.
"Doesn't mean I like you any better," said the Snake.
The fallen man was writhing spastically, blood spitting from his mouth. Joss's head throbbed as a swell of nausea clogged his throat, but he gulped down the bile and tried not to blink, which made the pain worse. Volias yelled, but Joss's ears were ringing and he couldn't sort out the words. Then Scar was there, tearing into a man who had somehow gotten right in front of him. The eagle's talons punctured the flesh, and the man screamed and screamed. Volias, glancing past them, got an awful look on his face and ran as if demon-ridden toward the mess by the wagon.
A pair of men leaped past Joss, having crept up from the left, and swung with halberds at Scar, but Joss spun up and met them blade-to-blade, holding them off until Scar pounced. Their fear killed them, because they hesitated. Scar tore the head off one while Joss stabbed another. The hot scent of death and blood flooded him, and the ache in his head, in that instant, cleared.
He swept the scene with a quick look to identify the danger spots. The last eddy of fighting had caught around the wagon. Peddo was on the ground curled up as into a ball with eyes forced wide by pain. Volias battered back the last two men standing, the ones who wouldn't give up and run. A furious Jabi struck and struck and struck into the torso of one of the men, whose hideous shrieks hurt the ears. The other bolted, but Volias grabbed him from behind, jerked him back, and stabbed him, then shoved him away.
Joss ran, and dropped down beside Peddo. "Heya! Heya! Peddo! Let's see it. Come on, now. It can't be that bad."
Volias appeared, his shadow giving them a brief respite from the sudden impossible weight of the heat. The sun was dizzying.
"Ah, the hells." Volias stalked away to see if anyone was left alive.
"Eh! Eh! Eh!" gasped Peddo, trying to speak, trying not to cry out.
"The hells," said Joss. "Just scream, damn you. Let me see it." Jabi was circling; he hackled, and opened his wings impatiently. He was so damned big, a hundred times more intimidating than any twenty men and their weapons because of his ferocity and high courage. "He's going to bate, Peddo. He's scared for you. Don't let me face that alone. He'll rip my head clean off."