The Bird and the Sword (19 page)

I watched Shindoh’s hooves dancing around the wounded and dead when suddenly Tiras caught my braid, wrapping it around his hand as he pulled me upright. I slumped against him, and his mouth brushed my ear, gentle even as he demanded more.

“Make them fly, Lark. End it.”

The sharp tug of his hand in my hair, and the quick burn of my scalp cleared my head enough to wield a final plea.

Go now, birdmen.

Fly away,

Live to see another day.

“Mightier than the sword,” Tiras mused, and I wrapped myself in the relief that echoed in his voice. Tattered wings lifted from the ground, and I watched with the warriors of Jeru, my lids heavy and my breaths shallow, as the remaining Volgar retreated to the sky. I fought the pull of unconsciousness, my arms leaden and my thoughts thick. Then I was sliding again, slipping free from Shindoh and sound and the weight of my gift.

I thought I heard Kjell crow in victory, and all around there was grateful triumph, like feathers against my cheeks.

“Is she wounded?” someone asked, and I felt the tightening of steel bands around my body. I was moving through soldiers, floating.

“We did it, Majesty!” Someone pounded the king on his back and my face bobbed against his breast plate. Tiras was carrying me, and the bands were his arms.

I will walk.

“You will rest.”

I will walk.

“Stubborn woman,” he murmured. “Sleep.”

And I slept.

I
awoke in a bed of grass to moaning and cursing and the raw stench of blood and flesh. Shindoh whinnied next to me, and I reached a hand to comfort him and soothe myself. A bladder of water sat near my head, and I drank gratefully and doused my hands and face. I could see men moving in the darkness, tending to the wounded and piling the dead.

The men took shifts, some sleeping among the trees, others watching the skies and tending to the wounded. I picked my way among them, needing privacy to relieve myself and maybe a place where I could wash. My hair stuck to my face, and the shirt of mail, though it had kept me warm, was rubbing me raw beneath my arms.

Clearly, the battle wasn’t over, but paused, and I trembled at what the morrow would bring. No words hung in the wind. The forest creatures had gone deep or fled. Night sounds were muted, the trees silent. Even the leaves spoke in whispers or not at all. Death made the living things hide. I crept into the brush and took care of my most urgent need, praying no one was near. I thought I smelled water and sniffed the air the way Boojohni did, pausing to listen, even as I caught a hint of damp earth and peat moss. It was the creek that ran deeper and wider upstream near the camp.

I moved toward the scent and the quiet tumble of water over rocks. Water drew the living, just as it drew me, so I approached carefully, peering through the rushes that lined the banks. The creek gleamed in the darkness, the stars reflected in water that pooled at the shallow edges, and all was still. I knelt on the bank, stones digging into my knees, water seeping through my breeches, and as I leaned close to the surface to wash my face, a shadow slipped over the moon.

I jerked upright and lifted my eyes to the sky, watching as one birdman after another flew silently overhead, as low as the trees. I dropped to my belly in the rushes, not daring to move or even breathe. I had not lured them in. They’d been sent, and we weren’t ready.

Tiras! Tiras! The Volgar are here. The Volgar are here!
I sent the message out in a wave of terror, not caring who might have the ability to hear.

As if the birdmen had heard my warning, the silence shattered in shrieks and screams, and I burst from the rushes and began to run, fearing I would be cut off from the warriors of Jeru with the Volgar between us.

I raced blindly, unable to conjure spells and weave words,
Volgar
the only thought in my head.

Birdmen descended around me, filling the air with the heavy flapping of powerful wings. I tripped and fell, narrowly missing the sharp talons of a diving beast. Thwarted, he screeched and ascended, even as a new attacker dipped low to make another attempt. I scrambled, half-crawling, half-running, and talons glanced off my shirt of mail only to tangle in my hair.

I pulled at my braid, trying to free myself, my mind blank in the horror of the moment. The birdman beat his powerful wings and rose back into the air, taking me with him, dangling by my hair. I slapped and grasped at the Volgar’s clawed feet, more terrified of being taken away than falling. The birdman screeched once more, and his ascension sputtered, stalled by the Jeruvian lance buried in his chest.

Suddenly freed and temporarily weightless, the ground rose up and snatched my breath. I lay stunned, the wind forced from my lungs.

“Lark!” Tiras roared, his voice breaking through my stupor. “Run for the trees!”

The clash of swords, the shouts of men, and the pounding of hooves bore down upon me, and I covered my head and rolled to avoid being trampled. I had no sense of the forest or the stream, of left or right, of friend or foe. Everywhere I looked the battle raged, and I pulled my legs to my chest and closed my eyes, searching for my words.

Volgar wings, both big and small,

The higher you fly, the faster you fall.

Every beak that seeks to kill,

It’s Volgar blood you want to spill.

I hurled the words into the air, catapulting them above the trees, making them swoop and tumble and dive into the Volgar overhead.

For a moment the battle continued, and I pushed harder, wrapping the Volgar in my web.

Then the sky began to whistle as bodies fell like cannon balls, colliding with the earth. Blood sprayed across my cheeks, and I was swept to the ground, pinned beneath a birdman’s wing.

I pushed and heaved, freeing myself, only to scramble back for cover as another birdman fell.

“Lark!” Tiras shouted, “Where are you?”

I started to climb over bodies toward his voice.

Here. I am here.

I felt Shindoh’s red fear streaking toward me, even as I found my feet and instinctively stretched out my arm. Then the king was there, swinging me up behind him, no armor, no helmet, no mail or gloves. Only a sword, which he brandished in his left hand, and a spiked flail which he swung with his right. We had been caught completely unaware. I wrapped my arms around his waist and gripped Shindoh’s flanks between my knees, and the battle waged on.

Among the Volgar birdmen were those who seemed unaffected by my spells, those who dove and flew and carried men away, impervious to the susceptibility of their brothers. But the greater number tumbled from the sky when I wielded my words. Those who survived the fall turned on each other as I’d instructed them to do. Our vulnerability became superiority, even as Jeru’s warriors fought off the surprise attack.

When a fresh wave of birdmen descended, I sent up spells to bring them down, and as dawn’s timid light crept over the shivering trees, the Volgar who remained were dead or dying.

I laid my weary head on Tiras’s back, welcoming the end of the second conflict, refusing to entertain the thought of more. His back bowed as if he too had reached his limit, and a tremor shook him, making me tighten my grip around his waist. His breath hissed, and his hand clamped down on my arm, repositioning it.

You’re wounded.

“Not seriously. I need to change.”

I pulled at his tunic and he hissed again, the wool tugging at his wound. His flesh was warm and sticky beneath my hands, and he shivered again.

“Leave it, woman. You’re spent,” Tiras commanded, but I pressed my palms to the long gash across his left side. Blood spilled over my hands and he cursed.

All the ills, the dirt and grime

Flee this wound and quicken time.

Gaping flesh and broken skin

Mend together, whole again.

Tiras sighed and relaxed, lifting his hand to cover mine, thanking me without speaking. I pictured his flesh repairing itself, the torn skin uncurling and binding together again.

Heal the wound beneath my hand, ease the pain inside this man.

It wasn’t a well-crafted spell, but it was all I could conjure, and I pressed the words into his abdomen through the tips of my fingers, giving him the last of my strength.

My eyes were heavy, and my awareness hung on by the thinnest of threads, but I thought I heard him mutter.

“I think I will keep you.”

W
hen I awoke again, darkness had fallen, or maybe it had simply come and gone and come again. The sounds of revelry and laughter trickled into my tent, accompanied by the smell of meat and men, and all of it made my stomach turn. When I’d lost consciousness, I’d been surrounded by broken bodies and torn flesh, and the scent was still clinging to me.

I was warm, comfortable even, though I still wore the tunic and breeches the king had insisted I wear into battle. The shirt of mail was gone, along with the ill-fitting boots, and my hair was loose around my head. Tiras was gone too, though there were signs of him everywhere. The bed of piled furs covered in silk and the size of the tent, along with the richly appointed simplicity of my surroundings left little doubt that he had done as he vowed he would. He’d kept me near. I sat up slowly and stretched my body experimentally. I was among the living, but my heart ached, and I wanted to weep.

The smell of boar on a spit and something earthy, like yeasty bread, tickled my nose once more, and my stomach growled even as it revolted. I was filthy and thirsty and in desperate need of a chamber pot. I crawled from the corner pallet where I’d been laid, a simple coverlet spread over me, and flinched when the flap of the tent rustled and someone entered.

I would have felt Boojohni before I saw him had I not been so discombobulated. He was singing a little tune beneath his breath, and his beard was braided neatly with a little bow at the tip, as if he’d spent time being cared for and primped by nimble fingers. There was celebration in his step, and he smiled widely when he saw that I was awake.

“Ye slept so long! King Tiras told me ye saved everyone.” He whispered the last part, and his eyes darted right and left as if he worried someone might hear. He should. No one but Tiras and Kjell and maybe, to some extent, Boojohni knew what part I had played. I was the king’s pet. I’d heard the men refer to me that way.

I need to wash.
I pulled on the boots near my pallet, ignoring Boojohni’s congratulations.

Boojohni tilted his head and looked at me with pursed lips.

“Aren’t ye glad, Bird?

I can’t be glad when there is so much death. I don’t want to hurt people. I don’t want to hurt animals, or beasts, or even birdmen.

“But sometimes we must,” he said softly.

I nodded, but I had a hard time looking him in the eye. I fumbled in my satchel and pulled out a gown, silky and smooth, and shook it out. It was too fine for the circumstances in which I found myself, but it would feel good against my skin once I was clean. Boojohni followed my lead, grabbing up a wedge of soap, a blanket, and a cloth for drying, and folding it all into a pouch that he balanced on his head. He led me from the king’s tent and past the smaller shelters and groups of men toward the stream on the edge of camp.

Revelry abounded. There was nothing more raucous than men who’d faced death and lived to see another day. Men who’d killed to keep slaughter from their lands, men who still had gore on their weapons and blood on their clothes. They drank and laughed, and some crept off to be with the small band of women who followed the king’s army whenever they traveled. It was understandable. But I wondered how those women felt embracing men with death on their skin. Maybe they were grateful.

I didn’t know. But I couldn’t celebrate. I couldn’t laugh, or smile, or drink from the community flask and kick up my feet, though many smiled at me and even bowed when I passed, as if I’d gained a certain measure of celebrity. I kept my head high and my hands to my sides, and Boojohni hurried behind me, his eyes darting left and right at the celebration, and I saw him accept a cup brimming with something red. I pushed back my nausea and started down the little valley to the rushing water. I had to wash. If I didn’t wash I would be sick, and if I was sick then I would cry. If I started crying I wouldn’t stop.