One of the eunuchs emerged from behind the screens and set up a padded stool fringed with gold tassels. The old woman sat down with her back to the cloth as a slave fetched Chief Deze.
'The Qin are cursed odd,' muttered Eliar as he and Kesh watched the man approach. 'Look how he comes like a dog to her call.'
'He's not being servile, just respectful. No dog would be given such a consideration.' Kesh smirked at Eliar as a folding stool was brought so the chief could sit. The old woman proceeded to ask him questions, or so it appeared, because he did most of the talking and she did most of the listening.
The caravan waited until she dismissed the chief. Then the veiled women climbed back into the wagons; servants took down the screens; the wagons were rolled into line.
'Did you see the reeve go?' said Eliar as they took their usual places at the front.
'What reeve?'
'You didn't notice, did you?' Eliar's self-satisfied smile at having noticed what Kesh had overlooked was, like a point scored in hooks-and-ropes, an unspoken boast. 'A reeve flew, with a passenger in harness. The chief has wasted no time in sending word forward. A lot of trouble for one old woman, don't you think? The sooner the old bitch gets back inside the women's quarters, the better.'
'Aui! You Silvers! Captain Anji's got no "women's quarters."' The train started moving, local guardsman falling in as guides. 'It's not "a lot of trouble." It's just the respect you would show any eminent elder.'
Yet Kesh wondered.
'Clan Hall doesn't have the means to house and train you,' Joss said to Badinen as they stood on an eyrie at the southeastern tail of the Liya Hills. 'I'm taking you to Copper Hall. That's where I trained as a young reeve.'
Whether Masar would curse him or thank him for bringing in a novice whose speech was difficult to understand and whose eagle was also young and untrained he did not know. But he'd not yet made contact with Gold Hall in Teriayne where they likely housed other reeves with a northern way of talking. Masar he could impose on. The old marshal owed him that much.
The lad was staring at the astonishing vista: not, mind you, at
the cultivated plain, but at the vast forest spreading southward. He asked a question which Joss puzzled out as 'What is that?'
'That's the Wild.'
'The Wild? As in the wildings?'
'Indeed, wildings live there. It is forbidden for any human to enter its boundaries. Have you wildings up in the north?'
Yes, he did. He told an incomprehensible story about a tribe of wildings and a cliff and a valley and someone's child falling into a fell stream — or maybe a fallow field strewn with seed, hard to say — but his nonchalance in recounting the tale made Joss wonder what in the hells it was like growing up in the uttermost north where you might see a trading ship twice a year and now and again an outlander's fishing boat blown to shore in the storm season. He could barely imagine a place where all you knew of the Hundred were the tales handed down by your grandmother and the same everyday local faces. Which evidently included wildings.
'We won't fly over it today,' Joss added, 'but in your training you'll get a taste of how big it is. Come on.'
They hooked in. Scar launched, and Sisit beat after, keeping her distance. She was very young, unsure of how to respond to another eagle except that she always kept her feathers up. Of course all eagles were hatched and raised in their early months in the distant mountainous wilderness of Heaven's Reach, but usually the fledglings returned to the halls with a parent in tow and learned to recognize their family group within the eagles. Within these groups the eagles could be remarkably cooperative. Outside them, training taught most to subdue their territoriality when in company with their reeves.
They sailed over the wide coastal plain. Farmers turned no earth; dug no ditches; trimmed no mulberries. No one was hauling water. No young shepherds guarded grazing flocks. When the first burned villages came into view, Joss knew he should have expected it, yet even so the sight shocked him. Lord Radas's army was spreading its blight.
Lord Radas, whom he might kill if Marit had told him the truth.
Yet thinking of Marit caused him to recall the way she had responded to his kiss.
The hells! He had to focus. With Nessumara under siege, the old Silver had ceased providing bags of nai and rice, and it had therefore become urgent to clear Law Rock of anyone not contributing
to the defense. But because the town of Horn had refused to take in a single refugee, they had to haul the hapless refugees all the way to Candra Crossing from which staging area the refugees could slog the rest of the way to Olossi on roads made safe by Captain Anji's militia. It took a cursed long time to transport hundreds of people hundreds of mey, one at a time, but just seven days ago Nallo and Pil had lifted off with the last two. Now, at last, he might send messengers to the other halls to get their news and call for a council to coordinate plans. Meanwhile, Clan Hall's stores were running low, and it took too gods-rotted long to haul sacks from Candra Crossing. You couldn't feed a reeve hall, even a small one, one sack at a time.
Smoke billowed skyward in the distance. He tugged on the jesses to shift Scar's trajectory, and Badinen and Sisit followed. The lad handled the eagle cursed well for someone without a single day's training.
Seen from the sky, events unfold like tales: burning cottages and shouting farmers, bawling sheep and barking dogs heard intermittently as the wind changes. Folk fled a village; soldiers set torches to thatched roofs while others heaped wagons with sacks of rice and nai, cages of chickens, baskets of radish and rope. The villagers saw him; he knew by the way tiny figures hesitated, waved arms, then stumbled onward.
With the lad in tow, and him alone, he could not stop. What could he do for them beyond telling them to run and hide? He had the luxury to rage, on high, yet as always it seemed he could do nothing to stop injustice. For that was not the only village under attack along the coastal plain near his own birthplace. Smoke rose in bloated, expanding pools, dissipating as plumes reached the upper air. The watch beacons along the shore were on fire up and down the coast.
Had the army reached the town of Haya? Beyond it, to his childhood village?
The hells! Copper Hall's high bluff was surrounded by a full cohort. Incredibly, the army had brought up a fleet of fishing boats and coast-hugging trading ships that were roping in the skiffs and shore-boats used by Copper Hall's population to fish and collect kelp. The cohort had massed on the landward side to cut off retreat by foot, forcing thereby every eagle remaining in Copper Hall to take off from the training ground — no difficult feat, naturally, but those fawkners and assistants and slaves who
had not already gotten out were trapped, so every eagle leaving was weighed down by a passenger.
An intelligent mind commanded the enemy. Archers launched volleys as each eagle banked up, vulnerable before it caught an updraft. Two eagles were already down. One lay lifeless, both reeve and passenger sprawled dead in the harness. The other was wounded, a wing trailing uselessly as it struggled to right itself on an injured leg. In its fury it dragged the harness, its reeve limp and unresponsive but the passenger fighting to get out of the tangle. Joss winced as arrows punctured the helpless eagle's flesh; blades flashed in sunlight as armed men closed in for the kill.
Another raptor was hit, but it kept climbing. Struggling. Listing. Tumbling into the sea as its reeve and passenger unhooked just in time to fall free into the rolling waters.
Blessed Ilu! How could this be happening?
He had taught Badinen four flag commands, the least you needed to know. Now he flagged: Stay aloft.
He sent Scat'down the well-remembered landing path to the training ground just as a huge yammering shout rose from the gatehouse where soldiers had broken through. The raptor thumped down hard. Two eagles launched from the adjoining parade ground as Joss unhooked and dropped out of his harness.