Sons of the Oak (36 page)

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Authors: David Farland

BOOK: Sons of the Oak
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“Hurry!” Denorra shouted.
Fallion heard an animal cry, excited grunts and shouts. He glanced back. A golath with tremendous endowments of speed and brawn was rushing toward them, taking fifteen feet to a stride. He made as if to pass a pair of his slower kin, and merely leapt ten feet in the air.
Valya drew a boot dagger, but Fallion knew that it would be useless.
“Cut the ropes!” he shouted to Denorra even as he suddenly hit a span of bridge held only by rope.
He raced for all that he was worth, stretching each stride to its fullest, his lungs pumping. Valya matched him stride for stride. They were in the shadow of the fortress now. He heard the thump of heavy feet rushing behind him, became aware of two large graaks rising up from the tower. A few arrows and stones came flying over his head, thudding onto the deck.
The children were fighting back!
The golath warrior grunted and wheezed, its iron boots pounding the walkway only paces behind.
An arrow whipped over Fallion's head, and
thwacked
its iron tip into golath hide. But a golath with endowments wasn't likely to be stopped by a single arrow.
“Jump!” Fallion shouted to Valya just as Denorra swung the ax down on a rope.
They hit the ground together, and the left half of the bridge dropped from under them. Fallion grabbed on to the rope that held the right half of the bridge up. Valya got only a single hand on it.
The golath cursed, just feet behind, and grasped onto the rope.
Fallion held there for a second, swung up so that his feet hit the landing near Denorra, even as the young boy swung wildly, trying to cut the second rope.
The golath cursed, and a pair of children rushed out of the fortress with long spears. The oldest, a girl of eleven, blurred past Fallion and stabbed at the golath, hindering its progress.
Fallion grabbed Valya and pulled her to safety just as Denorra swung one last time, severing the rope.
The golath cried out in rage as it fell into the sea.
Valya turned and caught her breath, stared in shock for half a second. On the far side of the causeway, golaths growled and cursed. Some threw double-sided blades that spun in the air like whirligigs falling from a maple tree. One blade spun just overhead, then Fallion, Valya, and the rest of the children raced into the fortress.
It wasn't much of a fortress. The stone walls would keep a determined force warrior out for only a few minutes; inside there were only a couple of small rooms to give shelter from the weather.
A dozen young Gwardeen boys and girls cared for the graaks. The oldest of them, besides Fallion, was only twelve. These were children of mixed Inkarran blood, with skin as white as bone and hair of pale silver or cinnabar. Fallion was the closest thing to an adult.
The Gwardeen were hastily throwing bridles onto the graaks. Most of the children were already mounted. Indeed, Draken had saddled a beast, and a young recruit was clinging to it tightly. Her name was Nix, and she was only five years old.
“But how do I steer?” Nix was crying.
“Just lean the direction that you want to go,” Draken said, “and gouge with your heels. The mounts will head that way.”
“But what if I fall?”
“You won't fall if you don't lean too far,” Draken replied.
Fallion wondered why the children hadn't left yet, but then realized that they had been waiting for him.
“Draken,” Fallion shouted. “Go inland. Take a message to Marshal Bel-lantine at Stillwater. Warn him what we're up against. Tell him that we'll await his command at the Toth Queen's Hideout. Afterward … go home.”
Draken peered hard at him. Fallion was sending him to safety, he knew, and Draken resented that. But Fallion was also sending him on a vital mission. He nodded his acceptance.
With that, Draken leapt onto his own reptile and gouged its sides. In a thunder of wings it jumped into the air, and several other riders followed.
Fallion rushed forward to the landing platform as some boys led two more graaks forward, the huge reptiles waddling clumsily, tipping their wings in the air.
Fallion peered about. Eight hundred years ago, Fallion's forefathers had left the Gwardeen on vigil, commanding them to watch for the return of the toth.
Since that time, it seemed to Fallion, the famed Gwardeen had dwindled to little more than a club for youngsters who liked to ride graaks.
Most of the older Gwardeen were out making a living, marrying and having babies, planting gardens, growing old and dying together—the way that people should.
Few of them took their ancestors' promise of eternal vigilance seriously.
The Ends of the Earth are not far enough, Fallion thought.
A young man of eleven brought a bridled graak forward, a large male, a powerful thing that smelled as strong as he looked. It glared down at Fallion, as if daring him to ride. His name was Banther.
Valya stood at the edge of the platform. She looked at Fallion, as if begging him to ride this monster, leave her to a tamer beast.
“You'll need a large one,” Fallion told her, “and Banther is not as dangerous as he looks.”
The large sea graaks could carry an adult, and a small woman like Valya would not be hard in most cases, but they would be flying high into the mountains where the air was thin and the flight steep. She needed a sturdy mount.
“He's yours,” the boy told her, “if you dare.”
Valya raced forward, as she'd seen other skyriders do, and planted her foot in a crook at the back of the graak's knee, then leapt and pushed off.
Her second step took her to the graak's thigh, and she leapt from there onto its long neck.
Valya settled onto the beast's neck and grabbed the reins.
“Go inland,” Fallion said, “to the Toth Queen's Hideout. Know where that is?” Valya shook her head no. “Just follow Carralee and the others through the flyway.”
Valya nodded, gouged her mount lightly in the pectoral muscles at the joint of its wing. With an angry grunt, the graak lunged forward, took a pair of clumsy steps, leapt, and flapped its wings.
They say that if you're going to die, it will most likely be on the landing, Valya assured herself.
The beast's wings caught air, and it was suddenly flapping over the water and into the woods.
Fallion helped the last of the children onto their mounts, assigning some to fly to various forts and warn the Gwardeen, sending others into hiding, and then got upon his own huge graak.
Its name was Windkris, and he was the one of the largest and strongest graaks within a thousand miles.
It was only upon such a mount that a boy Fallion's size could fly. Fallion ate little and kept his body fat down to nothing so that he could remain a Gwardeen. Even so, he was growing, putting on muscle, and by the year's end he would be too heavy for a graak to carry far.
Fallion spurred the beast into the sky. Ahead he could see other graaks flitting through the trees, and his mount gave chase.
He looked back over his shoulder, hoping to see if the fight for Garion's Port went well. Distantly, he heard the sounds of crashing blades, cries of pain. The battle was raging down there, but he could see little through the trees, only the smoke of raging fires.
Dozens of Shadoath's warriors raced along the burning gangplank, helpless to catch him.
He peered back one last time, and then looked ahead as his graak soared into the trees.
That's when he entered the flyway.
From the ground it was invisible, hidden by the limbs and leaves of ancient stonewood trees, concealed behind curtains of lichens and flowering vines.
But the Gwardeen children had cleared a path. It had been done over generations, at great cost and effort. The children had cut away limbs high up in the trees, a path sixty feet wide and forty feet high.
It led through the deep forest, inland.
Now that he was airborne, Fallion's heart raced. He was in a precarious position, perched aback the enormous beast. He had no saddle, nothing holding him to safety.
Beneath him, he could feel the enormous lungs of the graak working for every breath, feel its iron muscles ripple and surge as it sought purchase in the air.
For long minutes the creature flew, and only once did Fallion hear any sound of pursuit. He was winging through the flyway, with the day-bats ahead flitting among shafts of sunlight, the air mellow crimson and sweetly scented by pollens, when he heard a whoop below, the gruff voice of a golath.
They're trying to follow us, Fallion realized.
THE HUNT
The flight of a graak oft heralds the coming of gore.
 
—a saying of Inkarra
 
 
 
Borenson trudged along a muddy track beside Jackal Creek, a name that was something of a misnomer. There were no jackals in Landesfallen. The early inhabitants had probably named it after something else—the bushtiger. And there was no creek for most of the year. It was early afternoon, and he had been out hunting for wild burrow-bears for dinner. The creatures were gentle and easy enough to take, if you found one in the open. No luck there.
He had just vowed to himself to climb up into the far hills, where there was better hunting, when he saw a fish: a muddy brown fish eeling along the road, half submerged in a rut from wagons that had traveled this way during the winter.
It was a walking catfish, about four feet in length, as muddy brown as the water, and had four tiny vestigial feet. Its broad mouth was full of teeth, and beneath its mouth were whiskers.
He circled the thing, and it peered at him with dull brown eyes, hissing and baring its teeth.
He didn't like the taste of walking catfish. It was about like eating mud, and he was wondering if he should kill it and take it home for dinner when a shadow fell over him.
He looked up to see a huge white graak winging just overhead.
“Father,” Draken shouted, leaning precariously to his right. The graak grunted angrily, but finally veered right. In moments, the graak landed gracelessly not a dozen yards away, smack in the middle of the road.
The walking catfish hissed and scurried off into some thick ferns.
“Father,” Draken shouted. “Shadoath has found us!”
Quickly he described the attack on Garion's Port.
It took several moments for Borenson to gauge the situation. Shadoath had brought reinforcements—a worldship full of them. How many men that might be, Borenson couldn't guess. It was said that Fallion the Bold had built strange rafts large enough to hold five thousand men each.
For now, the children seemed to have headed to safety at some place called the Toth Queen's Hideout. But how long would they remain safe?
Borenson swallowed hard. It was a long way to Garion's Port—eighty miles by air. But he was getting to be an old fat man, and he would have to travel a lot farther than eighty miles. There were no passes through the mountains for a hundred miles to the north.
And he couldn't just charge toward the city blindly. There were ten thousand Gwardeen in Landesfallen, but they were spread all across the wastes. It would take weeks to warn them of the danger, form an army, and march on Garion's Port.
“I'll head to the fort at Stillwater. If I'm lucky, I'll reach it in a couple of days. But first I have to go home and tell your mother where I'm going.
“As for you, I want you to fly to Beastmaster Thorin's ranch and warn Jaz that Fallion is in trouble. He'll be needing your graak. Give it to him. He'll need it to fly back to the hideout. Understand?”
Draken nodded, then leapt onto the back of the graak. With a cry it rose into the air.
 
 
 
Shadoath followed a pair of golaths along a wooden bridge, until they reached a point near the fortress where it just fell away.
“This is where you lost them?” Shadoath asked.
“Yes,” a golath answered, its voice emotionless. “Fast they were, and cunning fighters. They shot arrows, and pricked at us with spears. Gone they are, I think.”
Shadoath peered over the bridge. One of her most valuable warriors lay broken below, on rocks stained black from blood.
Ahead of her, Shadoath could see the little island fortress. There were still a dozen graaks nesting among the white trees. In the full sunlight, it was a dazzling sight.
“So you saw children flying away from here, heading inland?”
“Yes, yes,” the golath answered. “All of us spotted them, we did.”
“Which way?”
The golath pointed almost due east, into the trees.
It had to be Fallion. She and her men had searched the city, and come up empty.
“Search the forest,” Shadoath said. “Look for any trace of them—footprints, smoke from a fire.”
The golath lowered its eyes in acknowledgment.
Shadoath backed up, then raced along the bridge toward the fortress. Ahead, a portion of it had been cut away. Sixty feet of rope bridge now dangled uselessly to the stones below. But with her endowments of speed and brawn, Shadoath sprinted up to a speed of ninety miles per hour, then leapt high in the air, seeming almost to glide across the span as she hit the bridge on the far side.
Ahead, a wooden door was locked, a bar wedged across the inside.
Shadoath slammed a mailed fist into it, shattering the bar. The door fell open, and Shadoath entered the fortress.
She found harnesses and bridles inside a crude tack room, then came out.
The graaks were nesting, each of them sitting in a bowl formed from sticks and soft seaweed. They rested atop leathery sand-colored eggs with flecks of brown and white.
The mother graaks could not be coaxed from their nests, Shadoath knew. They were good mothers. But the males could be tempted. They were used to hunting for food for their mates at this time of the year, and quickly grew restless.
She found a nest that still had a pair of graaks, and then bridled the male.
She peeled off her mail, left it lying in the nest.
Shadoath was a petite woman, not much heavier than a child. She'd be able to ride a graak for a few miles at a hop.
She leapt upon its back, and urged it into the sky. It leapt forward clumsily, the branches in its nest crunching and snapping under their combined weight. At last it launched forward over the edge of the nest.
It seemed to fall a dozen feet before its wings caught the air and it lumbered upward.
The graak was small for a male, and Shadoath could feel it strain as its leather wings flapped heavily, gaining purchase in the sky.
Then it was airborne.
She aimed it to the east, let it fly above the ocean for a moment, and above the trees, giving it its head.
My mount may have seen which way the children went, Shadoath thought. It knows the paths in the sky. Let's see if he will lead me to their hideout.
To her delight, the graak thundered toward the trees for a few minutes, then dove toward a broad expanse, a place where limbs and branches had been cleared, creating a hidden flyway.
She was hot on Fallion's trail.

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