The Unfinished Song (Book 5): Wing (38 page)

Essi blocked his way when Umbral tried to follow
Dindi down into the pit beneath the stage.

“I see you.” Essi jabbed a bony finger at his chest.
“I see the shadow in you.”

“This is not the day to stand between me and my
prey, Essi,” he warned in a low growl.

“You are woven with all the wrong colors,” she said,
indifferent to his threat. “All wrong. And so many of the threads
are broken or missing. But the pattern is there in the weave. I see
you, shadow man. I see your true colors. And so does she.”

“Where is she? Tell me!”

“Gone by now, shadow. Long gone.” Essi cackled.

Furious, Umbral turned and ran from the lodge. He
would have shoved aside anyone in his way, but he didn’t need to.
The crowd parted from him as sheep darting away from a dog.

Outside, he stood in the center of the clanhold,
eyes shut. He tasted the threads of magic around him, until he
found the strand of sweetness. She could run, but she could never
escape him.

Hate was as strong a bond as love. They were tied
together now and would be ever more.

He followed her thread.

When Hadi heard Tamio had challenged Zavaedi Vumo to
a duel, he couldn’t believe it. Sure, the geezer was a blowhard and
a lush, but he was still a ZAVAEDI, for mercy’s sake. No sane
person challenged Zavaedies to duels. Tamio was crazy but even he
wasn’t that crazy.

Except when he was.

“Can’t you stop this fight?” Hadi begged Kemla when
the crowd gathered to watch the fight.

“It’s something he has to do,” she said.

She looked unusually grim, even given the
circumstances. As if she knew more than she wanted to say.

Hadi wondered wildly what could have compelled Tamio
to fight.

Not a single possibility flew into his mind. Empty
sky.

While he was blanking out, the fight began. He
snapped back to attention.

All he could do was watch anxiously, hands clutching
his own spear tightly, as if he could jump into the fight and help.
He couldn’t and maybe there was a cowardly part of him that was
glad of that, but still. He held on tight. His lips moved with
silent words of encouragement. All around him, the crowd shouted
and cheered and jeered, but Hadi didn’t want to distract Tamio. Not
for one blink of the eye. The least mistake…

And there it was.

Tamio crumpled to the dirt beneath Vumo’s spear.
Blood soaked the earth.

“No!” cried Hadi. He broke free of the circle of
onlookers and heedless of taboos or consequences, ran to his
friend.

Tamio had a slightly bewildered expression on his
face, which under any other circumstances, would have been rather
funny to Hadi. Now it only broke his heart.

Hadi shouted some curse at Vumo, but the older man
had an almost identical expression of bewilderment. He knelt beside
Tamio.

“Get your hands off him!” shouted Hadi.

Vumo ignored him. He took Hadi’s hands and
positioned them over the hole in Tamio’s chest.

“Press here,” ordered Vumo. “My spear did not touch
his heart. If it also missed his lung, he may survive.”

Vumo pulled something from Tamio’s vest. “This is
what saved him.”

It was a conch shell. Hadi could not think of any
reason Tamio would have brought a shell with him into a duel. Right
now, the shell was shiny red with blood. Tamio’s blood.

Oh muck, oh muck, oh muck
, Hadi thought. He
held the hole closed, but blood seeped between his fingers. “I’ve
already lost too many friends, Tamio. You better not leave me
too.”

Kemla was there. Hadi hadn’t seen her approach, but
she bent over Tamio long enough to say, “I will find you a healer,
Tamio. I won’t let you die.”

She kissed his forehead. Then she stood up, to go
look for a healer, presumably, but she had no chance.

A shadow passed over the ground. Hadi knew that
shadow. The shape of spread wings, the sheer size.

“Raptors!” shouted other men, echoing his fear.

This has got to be a joke. Nothing could be so
unfair. He’d survived, and even redeemed one of his deathdebts.
Just fourteen more to go. Tamio had been injured, but Vumo said he
might survive too. For now, they could withdraw, honor served, and
go home, assuming nothing insane happened first, like, oh, say, an
attack by a bunch of giant eagles.

So, of course, since this is my life, thought Hadi,
A bunch of giant eagles attack.

Kemla cried, “We are betrayed!”

That’s what Hadi thought at first too, that the
Orange Canyon clans of the sheepmeet had betrayed their enemy
guests to the Raptor Riders, breaking the truce that was supposed
to hold during the duals.

It wasn’t that simple. The Raptors were snatching up
the sheep keepers too. Chaos erupted everywhere as the giant birds
swooped up screaming men and women with their talons.

One good thing. There was no suggestion he stand and
fight. Everyone ran. Even Vumo gathered Tamio into his arms and
ran.

Hadi ran too. He ran like bloody muck-all. That was
one thing he could do.

A Raptor chased him. It was so close behind him, he
swore he could feel its beak shove against his back. The feathers
smelled powerfully of bird, and the wind from the rush under its
wings sounded like howling in his ears. He jumped the sheepmeet
wall and ran across the open ground, no plan, no place to go.

Too late, he realized the Raptor Rider was herding
him toward the edge of the cliff. The giant talons hit him, not to
grab him but to knock him off the cliff.

He fell through empty air. A memory flashed: the
journey omen. The eagle had knocked the lamb off the cliff, so it
could dine off the corpse after the lamb smashed to the rocky floor
a mile below.

Ropes burned his arms and legs. Hadi had landed in a
net. Other bodies were already there in a bruising pile, and more
falling people banged on top of him. Raptors held the edges of the
nets and carried the captives away.

The Raptors deposited the wildlings in the forested
slopes below the Orange Canyon tribehold, where Amdra said the
Deathsworn had been seen by the Vyfae. At her request, however,
Finnadro stayed seated behind her on Hawk, in his raptor form, as
they circled the area overhead. Finnadro had the Singing Bow drawn
and loaded with his finest arrow.

“There.” He pointed with the notched arrow to two
figures below. A small one in white fled a larger one in black.

“We’ve found them!” he exalted. “And we can save the
girl.”

Her boots slid on the ice. She fell hard, bruising
her arm. Scraped skin, blood. Pain would have to wait, she wasn’t
even aware of it.

Only the cold penetrated. Jaws of cold gnawed her.
It was worse than when the Green Woods tribesfolk had ordered her
hung by her arms outside.

This was madness. She was not dressed for the snow,
she still wore the thin Aelfae gown, with only Farla’s short cape
to keep her from freezing. It wouldn’t be enough.

The Ice Snake slithered and coiled through sheer
walls of stone. There were no banks, but in some places the ice had
thinned in the center of the river so much that Dindi had to hug
the canyon wall, where the ice was thickest.

Ugly snow trolls watched her from the overhang,
which was coated with icicles as sharp and long as spears. At first
she mistook them for tiny, twisted conifers. Their skin was pine
green, but their beards were so thick with snow they looked white.
For fun, they dropped the ice blades at her. She dodged them as
adroitly as she could, but one shattered so close to her that she
almost lost her grip and fell into the melted slush. The trolls
laughed cruelly.

She made it past the patch of thin ice and the gang
of trolls, but the Ice Snake folded into another curve, and then
another. How long was the river?

She arched her head up, up, up to stare at
Orangehorn mountain. It looked impossibly far to the summit.

Farla said the caves were warm, but Dindi knew she
had slim chance to reach the entrance before Umbral or ice fae or
mere cold murdered her.

Still, she ran. Any chance was better than no
chance.

Then she heard a shrill shriek from the sky.

Above, she saw the raptors.

Dindi’s thread led Umbral to the frozen river.

She can’t be serious
.

She was following the river uphill, higher into the
mountains, which was madness. Spring was perilously close. This was
the most dangerous time of year for travel over thin ice. The Ice
Snake was a deep, fast river, which never froze at the core. It was
never safe even at winter’s heart, never mind now.

She knows you’re going to kill her
, Kavio
whispered.
What risk won’t she take? Even if you don’t cut her
throat, you will be to blame if the Ice Snake kills her
.

Umbral swore.
Shut up, Kavio. Shut up, shut up,
shut up
.

The sky shrieked. Shadows crossed the ice before
him. Umbral squinted up at the raptors. His heart squeezed.

Then the wolves howled.

Wolves
and
raptors?

He didn’t care about how dangerous it was. He
pounded up the ice as fast as his stride would take him. He had to
reach her before
either
enemy.

A torpedo of fur knocked him off his feet.

A wolf.

Then another.

Muck and mercy, it was a pack of them. Other beasts
too.

And from overhead, arrows rained down from the
Riders on the Raptors.

You need me
, said Kavio.

There’s too many of them!
Beasts. Humans.
Fae.
I can’t match their power!

They’re giving you everything you need. You don’t
need to match it, you just need to twist it back on them. The more
they throw at you, the stronger you will become.

I don’t know how!

But
I
do
.
Feed me, Umbral. Let me
save you so you can save her
.

Umbral didn’t hesitate any longer.

He lifted his fists to the air and sucked in every
strand of surrounding power he could grasp, and fed it all into
Kavio.

Done!

Two wolves still bore him down, pinning his arms,
when a green arrow, a weapon nearly as long as a spear with ten
times the velocity, came straight at his heart. But as he merged
his power with Kavio’s memories, raw power and instinct united into
one explosion of muscle and action. Umbral smashed both wolves
together and caught the arrow with the bodies. The arrow was so
strong it penetrated both beasts through fur, spine and skull.

Umbral tossed aside the dead wolves.

He danced as he fought. Wolves and wolverines and
even badgers (muck it all,
badgers
?) crazed like rabid dogs,
leaped at him one after another, but he ripped a leafless sapling
out of the ground and battered them out of his way as fast as they
could attack. One damn little fox just would not give up, it leap
on him and bit him again and again no matter how many times he
tossed it away, until it finally landed right on his face and sank
teeth into his nose. Umbral howled and ripped it off and threw it
so hard the fox hit the canyon wall, leaving a bloody streak when
it slid down the rock to a muddle on the ice.

He turned every move in the fight into a puzzle
piece in his war dance. He knew exactly what to do, how to do it,
how to balance it, how to control it. It all flowed. Thanks to
Kavio, it was as if he had fought fae and beast and man like this a
thousand times before.

When he’d woven the hex he wanted he kicked the
magic into the air at his foes, smashing their own wind back on
them. The blizzard blew the birds out of the sky.

He shook his club at the abandoned sky. “Is that all
you’ve got, you mucking bastards?”

The Singing Bow sang with glee when Finnadro
released the arrow. The arrow flew strong and true. It should have
killed Umbral. But he used Finnadro’s own wolf allies as shields.
Finnadro cursed, but the wind whipped away the foul words.

The Deathsworn’s menace tainted the whole
mountainside. Finnadro could see the light being drain away as if
cascading into a pitch-black canyon with no bottom.

More wildlings flung themselves at the
Deathsworn.

Including Fox.

“No!” shouted Finnadro. He wished he had never
agreed to stay on the Raptor. He needed to be down
there
,
with her.

He watched helpless as the Deathsworn bloodied her
against the canyon wall. She fell in a puddle of expanding scarlet
and did not rise. A silent scream tore through him, but he clamped
his jaws so tight he bit through his lip and tasted blood.

Her death is one more debt I will make you pay,
Deathsworn
, Finnadro promised silently.
Pay in full. Pay in
blood.

“This isn’t working,” said Amdra. “We have to take
out the whole river. Do you have fire arrows?”

“Yes.”

“Light one now.”

That was harder done than said, but Finnadro took
out an arrow with a bulb of tar-soaked wool and invoked Red to
light it.

“Aim it at the trolls,” Amdra said.

Raptors swept by overhead. One of the Riders
released a flaming arrow.

That won’t last long in the snow, Dindi thought.

The arrow didn’t hit the snow. It hit a gnarled
troll. Beneath his snowy beard, he had woody flesh, which caught
the flame like a torch.

The raptors weren’t alone in the sky. Winged High
Fae, the Orange Vyfae, flew alongside the giant eagles and hawks.
Their wings raised fierce winds that swept down the canyon like a
giant broom. Flames leapt from one troll to another. They screeched
and ran in circles, setting fires to the trees all around them. One
huge burning conifer collapsed onto the Ice Snake.