A group of captives cowered on the road, roped together, unable to move. The soldiers bolted back the way they had come, heading for the safety of a copse several hundred paces away. Nallo released her basket, but she had cursed totally misjudged their speed and her angle and distance and the entire gods-rotted pummel of stones rained uselessly on dirt.
They tucked their heads and kept sprinting. None saw Pil and Sweet stooping from above, or Peddonon and Kanness coming in at an angle.
Sweet struck with such breathtaking precision that Nallo shouted. The talons gripped, plunging right into a man's torso as he screamed. Then the raptor, beating its wings, rose; none of the soldiers even attempted an attack. They were too stunned. Pil, turning in his harness, released first one arrow, then another, and a third and fourth in quick succession as Sweet rose. Two arrows hit their mark. Sweet released her prey.
Kanness's Lovely struck, talons raised and wings battering, as if she was taking a deer. The men scattered, one uselessly flinging a spear in the direction of the eagle's tail feathers. Peddonon slammed a javelin into the back of the bold spearman as Jabi grazed another man, missing the strike and pulling up hard as Peddonon released his grip on his javelin. One soldier had the presence of mind to nock an arrow to his bow.
Nallo had overshot again. She passed over the ford. The captives struggled at their bonds, and the dray master out in the current had grabbed a dead man's sword and cut free one beast. He was now diving in and out of the tangle to try to save the
other while the prisoners shouted at him to come cut them loose instead while they still had a chance to run.
Warri and Orya remained aloft, and that cursed idiot Warri hadn't even released his stones, which when you thought about it described him very well.
The hells!
Two soldiers ran up a path on the far side of the ford. Seeing her, they scrambled for the nearest bushes, any scant cover that might protect them.
She felt Tumna's attention like a burst of fire in her own body, a powerful spear of hunting hunger. Eihi! She hadn't cut the basket free; the cursed thing was in her way, but Tumna was already diving. She grabbed one of the four thin javelins stowed in a quiver to her right; no time to fumble for a knife and cut the basket loose.
How did she ever get to be such a gods-rotted slack-minded lackwit?
One man dove sideways into a crackling mass of thornberry.
Tumna struck the other.
Her wings flared; she thumped down so hard that Nallo pitched sideways and slammed into the raptor's body, then stubbed her foot on the hard dirt, but Tumna's powerful talons pinned them — and the soldier — to the earth. He twitched. He didn't yet know he was dead. He croaked, struggling to get free, and Nallo plunged her javelin into his back, right where she thought the heart must be. He sagged and went slack.
A howl. A roar. Behind her, the other soldier attacked.
In the instant, she thought: He'll kill me from behind. How do / fight?
All her lessons and training scattered like dross.
Tumna was faster than either of them.
She struck in one movement, piercing the man through the chest as Nallo drew up her legs and dangled in the harness watching a man die an arm's length from her face. He looked like a rabbit caught out in the field, too stunned to understand what was happening. His mouth opened and shut as if he had forgotten what he meant to say. Bubbles of blood beaded at his nostrils, sucked in and out. She grabbed her knife, unhooked the harness, and dropped into a crouch beside him. His gaze did not follow her movement, but Tumna squawked irritably.
'Hush!' Nallo snapped. 'Do what you want with him.'
She ducked out from under the raptor's wings and circled around to the other man, who amazingly was not yet dead. Somehow, he was trying to pull himself up the path. She got a foot under his body and shoved him over. She bent, grasped his chin, and held it back to get a full curve. Then she cut deep to sever the windpipe, the foodpipe, and the blood vessels in one strong stroke, as she'd learned to do growing up among goat herders in the Soha Hills.
Battle wasn't much different from slaughtering goats, when you thought of it that way. You killed when you had to, not for any joy you took in it.
Tumna shook the other man loose. She bent her head and nudged him.
'Heya!' shouted Nallo.
By now the cursed basket was half crushed. She cut the gods-rotted thing free, wiped her knife's blade such as she could in two swipes on the weaving, then shoved the blade back in its sheath. Pulling her reeve's baton, she approached Tumna brandishing it as the training regimen had taught her, as if anyone believed eagles actually feared the little stick of a baton that the reeves used to 'train' and 'control' the huge raptors. Tumna, anyway, was perfectly able and willing to rip off the head of her reeve, if her reeve annoyed her. But Nallo had been told time and again that it were better for a reeve to sacrifice herself than to allow her eagle to feast on human flesh.
Yet Tumna was only playing; she wasn't hungry, or inclined to eat; she rolled the body around and gave up, impatient with the corpse's lack of activity. It was only fun when they tried to escape.
'Aui!' muttered Nallo, hot and cold at once.
She heard folk calling, 'Cut us loose, you gods-rotted-'
A dray beast bellowed. A man cursed.
She would have run down to slap some order into them, but Peddonnon had been clear in his instructions: Do not stay on the ground.
Flight gave the reeves their advantage; on the ground, they were easy to kill.
She whistled, and Tumna stretched her wings, looking around as if hoping for more entertaining hunting. Nallo ducked under the shadow of her wingspan and hooked in.
'Up!'
Up.
The eagle's majestic strength carried her. The unbelievable sight of the skirmish unfolded beneath her: the dray master had finally gotten both animals out of the water and was helping the captives free themselves. Some had plunged into the water to recover weapons or gear; trails of red spun out in the water, marking dead soldiers in the current. Three women were coming up the path in Nallo's direction, and Nallo gestured to them, waving an arm to indicate where they should look for the fallen.
Shouts and cheers and the stamping of |eet on earth sent her on her way, just as an audience showed its approval at the Festival contests. She was grinning as Tumna slipped into a weak thermal and got some lift. She couldn't really shout across the gap between eagles, but she found her place in the formation easily enough.
Peddonon flagged a 'follow me,' and they continued south toward the delta, an intense green shivering mass of vegetation ahead. Kanness was laughing as he banked into place; not that she could quite make out the lineaments of his face, but he was a hearty laugher; she knew him well enough by now to recognize how his torso and head looked when he was full-on guffawing.
She didn't feel like laughing, precisely, but it was so cursed good to know they'd finally inflicted some damage. After all the months of feeling like useless observers.
Why in the hells hadn't the reeves done this earlier?
We're not helpless any longer.
That cursed Commander Joss and his gods-rotted outlander ally had been right. Imagine that.
A month ago, the enemy had been dispersed across the plain of Istria and the lower reaches of Haldia, stretching to the Haya Gap, pillaging, burning, and generally causing havoc. Now it seemed everyone was marching toward Nessumara. Barges moved downriver, laden with slaves or building materials. Gangs worked in the western forests, felling logs, which were lashed into huge rafts and floated toward Skerru.
As they flew downriver after the skirmish, she observed with new eyes. That gang of men being marched under guard down-road was not vulnerable because they were guarded by too many soldiers for one wing to attack. Yet there, several mey from the river in heavily wooded hills, a half cadre of men hauling wagons was too far away from foot-based relief to call for help; a single wing could scatter them, and two wings working in concert — if