The Bird and the Sword (18 page)

T
rue to his word, Tiras and his army left for Kilmorda that very day, and true to mine, I left with them. The lords and their retinues left as well, heading away from Jeru toward their own provinces, to await the news of his failure or success. Lady Ariel of Firi—her father, the Lord of Firi, who was too ill to travel and had sent her in his stead—rode with us for a full day, talking gaily to Kjell as if we were heading to a celebration instead of war. She watched me curiously, and I felt her questions but refused to expose my ability to answer them. Firi was west of Kilmorda, and the region had taken the brunt of the influx of refugees from the besieged province. Lady Firi and her guard would part ways with us at the fork, but she seemed to enjoy the protection of the army and the attention of Kjell and the king while it lasted.

Does she want to be queen?
I asked Tiras, breaking the companionable silence between us.

He grunted in response, though the sound lifted on the end like he didn’t know who I was talking about.

Lady Firi. Does she want to be queen?

“Most likely,” he answered.

I almost laughed at his conceit, though I was certain he was right.

Kjell is in love with her.

“I doubt it is love. But he is taken with her,” he admitted. “So she will never be queen.”

She isn’t of use to you?

“She isn’t of use to me,” he replied simply. “And Kjell is my only friend.”

We traveled for four days, slowed by the carriages filled with supplies that brought up the rear. I grew sore and begged to walk, my tender flesh unused to hours on the back of a horse. Tiras acquiesced, but only because of my very real agony, and I walked each day for a little while, Tiras constantly doubling back to make sure I hadn’t slipped off.

I have nowhere to go
, I would reassure him.

“You have no reason to stay,” he would shoot back.

Boojohni would roll his eyes and whistle pointedly, and Tiras would spur Shindoh back to the front. At night, I slept beneath the stars with the men. We wouldn’t make camp or pitch our tents until we arrived in Kilmorda. It took too much time and effort when the goal was to move as quickly as possible. I had a pallet and Boojohni at my side, and I found I liked the open air.

The first night Tiras slept nearby on a pallet similar to my own. The next two nights he retreated at sundown, and I didn’t see him at all the third day. When someone asked where Tiras was, Kjell would always answer as if Tiras was simply out of sight. “Up front,” he’d say, or “in the rear,” or “just ahead” or “over yonder.” But that day, I rode Shindoh alone, Boojohni trotting alongside us, following the army at a small distance. On the fourth day, Tiras was asleep on his pallet at dawn, and there were shadows beneath his eyes when he woke. When he lifted me on Shindoh and climbed up behind me, the final leg of our journey ahead, I asked after his wellbeing.

Are you able to rest?

He was silent for a heartbeat, then answered, his lips near my ear as if he were afraid others would hear.

“Eagles aren’t nocturnal birds. I am able to sleep if I find a safe spot. But we are nearing Kilmorda, and I flew ahead to see the lay of the land. Forces from the provinces retreated to the ridge above the valley and have kept them from gaining ground, but the Volgar have nested in the valley, in the abandoned village there. Their numbers have grown.”

How many?

“There are thousands of them.”

Thousands?

“They have drained the livestock of blood and cleared the wildlife from the forests. They are hungry, and they are starting to widen their attacks.”

Where are they coming from? There were no such thing as Volgar when I was a child.

“Nobody knows. The first time I saw a Volgar was three years ago. Since then, they have become the biggest threat to Jeru. Some think they originated from an island in the Jyraen Sea. All I know is that their numbers continue to grow, and we’re losing the battle.”

What about the army on the border of the valley?

“They’re being picked off, one at a time.”

W
e arrived at the edge of the valley near noon on the fourth day, but we didn’t pitch our tents. Tiras bade everyone eat and rest, and he and Kjell and the leaders of the existing army stole away to make battle plans. I could feel the Volgar the way I could always feel large numbers, and the awareness made me jittery and obliterated my appetite.

Like most creatures, their words were simple.
Fly, eat, mate
. They didn’t worry or dread. They didn’t seem to fear us, and they certainly weren’t making war plans. They just instinctually existed—
eat, fly, mate. Kill
.

The difference between them and any other large herd was that they enjoyed the kill. They lived for it. Their instincts were basic . . . but they were also base. They were simple, but they weren’t good. They were predators at the top of the food chain, and their numbers had become problematic.

They normally slept during the day and had much better night vision than a mere human, but Tiras thought if we could lure them in at dusk, when there was still some light and they were just waking, it might improve our odds at taking larger numbers of them down.

We rested a full day, giving the horses a chance to recuperate from the journey, but the collective unease of the camp made the day feel wasted. Shrieks and shouts filled the night as the Volgar picked off men in the dark, the way they’d been picking off soldiers on the border, and when the day dawned tepid and grey, it reflected the mood of every warrior. No one wanted to wait any longer.

The weather was advantageous. The dark skies and the wan light made it much more likely that the Volgar could be lured into a daytime hunt. Tiras said we needed them to come to us, and that was where I came in. By late afternoon, the entire army—save Boojohni, the wounded, and the cooks—were gathered in the trees at the edge of the valley just to the west of Kilmorda. “A mile as the eagle flies,” Tiras said, and Kjell shot him a look.

Black clouds curled and tumbled in their haste to flee the lightning that sheared off sections of the sky and touched down on the cliffs and crags that shot up from the ground like Tiras’s castle in Jeru city. He held me in front of him, his armored arm tight around my waist, and we galloped through the warrior throng, Tiras throwing out instructions and encouragement even as the horse beneath us trembled with fright. I tried to speak peace to Shindoh’s mind and felt the red emotion of his fear begin to weaken my own control.

“Save your energy,” Tiras commanded, his mouth close to my ear. “I need you whole. Shindoh is accustomed to battle. He won’t fail me.”

I obeyed, but my hand sneaked out to curl in the cropped mane of the black horse, and Tiras said no more. He’d slung a shirt of mail over the green tunic and breeches he’d demanded I wear, but I refused the helmet and the clanking armor he’d urged upon me. It was so heavy I wouldn’t have been able to move, and Shindoh wouldn’t have been able to run as swiftly beneath our combined weight.

Tiras wore a helmet, but he told me it was to hide his identity more than anything else. Killing the white-haired king would be the ultimate prize. My own hair hung in a long rope past my waist, and I feared my presence would only draw attention to him, a woman in the midst of battle.

“Call them, Lark. Urge them to come closer.”

I reached out, feeling the sigh in the clouds, the threat of rain, the hum of life that rose up from the ground, and I sifted through tepid light.

There they were.

I could hear them and the simple bloodlust that pulsed from them. They lived to kill. Not for hate or power. But still, they killed. They killed because death meant food. Death meant life. Death meant that their blood pounded hotter in their veins, and their flesh grew thicker on their bones. They were simple monsters, but monsters all the same.

And they were hungry.

Their pangs were sharp, as if their diet had been limited or reduced. I spoke to that hunger, telling them to come, to eat.

Lift your heads into the wind,

Food aplenty ‘round the bend.

I felt them stir and shudder, wanting to obey, but beneath the collective heartbeat of innocent instinct, however bloodthirsty, there was an undercurrent of intent that was more man than beast, and it was separate from them.

Someone or something was controlling them, and the intelligence that led them was not like they were. His voice was moist and guttural, clinging to the mind of each beast, manipulating and instructing.

And he was aware.

I drew back with a gasp, and my head thunked against Tiras’s plated chest.

“Lark?”

The leader of the Volgar, Liege, is he man or Volgar?

Shindoh whinnied like he understood, though I knew better. He felt my fear.

“He is both.”

Is he Gifted?

“Some say he is a Changer . . . like me. Man and bird.”

What if Lord Bin Dar was right? What if the Gifted are behind the Volgar attacks?

“What difference does it make? I would rather destroy an evil man than an innocent beast. The Volgar destroy, so they must be destroyed, but Liege wants to conquer, he wants to take. If he is Gifted, it means little to me. He wants Jeru. He can’t have her.”

“Tiras! The men are anxious. If we don’t move now we won’t reach the Volgar until dark,” Kjell interrupted, trotting up alongside us with barely suppressed frustration. His countenance reflected the sky, dark and heavy and ready to burst.

“Wait, Kjell. Hold. Let them come to us, just as I said.”

Kjell nodded, but his blue gaze settled on my face briefly, and I knew he wanted to argue. He lowered the grill of his helmet and moved away once more, but he didn’t go far. His horse paced like a panther, and Tiras lowered his lips to my ear.

“Make them come, Lark,” Tiras repeated, his voice a rumbling murmur that lifted the tendrils on my cheeks. “It’s time.”

I released my words into the breeze like a siren’s call, urging the Volgar to do the very thing they desired.
Fly, kill, eat
. I pulled at them with temptation-infused words, terrified that they would actually come, more afraid that they wouldn’t. They wanted Jeru. They wanted Tiras. And I discovered I wasn’t willing to part with either.

There was a thunderous cawing in my skull, a beast denied, and I winced in pain as the undercurrent of control I’d felt in the Volgar was suddenly weakened. I heard the sound of thousands of wings beating the air, beating back the words that urged restraint. His words.

They’re coming,
I warned.

Tiras roared, an echo of the beast in my head, and Shindoh shot forward as Tiras prepared the eager line of Jeruvian archers who hovered in the trees, arrows drawn, waiting to unleash hell on the winged enemy. The sky above us began to wriggle and shift and the light of day was completely obscured by a blanket of black.

“Make them land, Lark,” Tiras ordered. I barely hesitated, flinging my gift with all the urgency of the damned and desperate.

You cannot fly,

So you will fall.

Leave the sky

One and all.

I saw the simple spell pierce the air above us, the words like fireballs in a pit of writhing snakes, and the Volgar began to drop, screaming toward the earth. Some hit the ground with such velocity that they died instantly, but others seemed more resistant to my suggestion and landed with a tumble, still flapping, stunned but unharmed.

“Attack!” Kjell cried, and the soldiers crouched in the long grass to the right of the archers left the cover of the trees and charged across the clearing, swords swinging, spears flying, falling on the dazed birdmen before they had a chance to bare their talons and wield their razor-sharp beaks.

Tiras spurred Shindoh forward, running a birdman through with his lance, even as he warned a soldier of an attack overhead.

“Keep them down, Lark!” Tiras shouted, “We cannot fight them in the air.”

You cannot fly,

Your wings are bent.

You will never

Fly again.

Another layer of birdmen dropped from the sky even as the Volgar in the clearing shrieked and fought back. Very few took flight. They believed their wings were bent.

There were so many. Ten to one—twenty to one—and they just kept coming and coming as Tiras rounded the raging hoard, barking commands and using every weapon at his disposal. Again and again Tiras called on me, directing me, wielding me like a sword, and I clung to Shindoh, doing my king’s bidding, watching as death multiplied around me—men of Jeru with gaping wounds and sightless eyes lay among the birdmen. I could not save them all, though I tried. I spun words and spells until my eyes felt raw and my mind began to fail.

There was gore in my hair and grit in my teeth, and Tiras was tireless at my back, shouting and pivoting and moving his men. I could feel my pulse in my temples, and it reverberated like a gong. I wretched and quaked, too weak to keep myself upright. I careened forward against Shindoh’s neck, not caring that his mane was slick with sweat and blood. I felt myself slipping, unable to hold on any longer.