He had spent his whole life here for one purpose: to give Noreela warning should the Mages return this way.
He was halfway up the cliff when he first heard the screams. Perhaps they came from the hawks, he thought. Or maybe the Krotes sitting astride their necks were calling out in glee at the prospect of spilling blood. Either way, Jayke ignored the noise. To turn around now he would have to stop, and that would admit defeat.
If only I’d stayed at the house, not gone for breakfast.
But he had to eat.
If only I could have enjoyed sitting and watching as much as I enjoyed walking!
But he had been here for forty years. He could not punish himself with thoughts of disgrace. Whatever happened now, he had already fulfilled his charge.
Jayke kept climbing, wishing himself higher and closer to the house. There were weapons in there, but first he had to free the doves. There were a hundred birds in all, fit and healthy, trained from birth to fly east and south until their message was delivered into human hands. And that message, tied ready in leather pouches on their legs, was stark and simple: The Mages are coming.
That scream again, assaulting his ears and echoing from the cliff face. He could not help glancing back, and he saw that the hawks had spread out just above the water. There were dozens of them-maybe a hundred in all-and Jayke could not help comparing that number with those messenger doves he was desperate to release.
The Krotes started shouting as the hawks approached the beach. There was no meaning to their words, no language other than bloodlust.
Jayke was almost at the top of the cliff. He was exhausted, but fear kept him moving. Thirty paces, that was all, thirty paces to the house, and then he could do his best to give warning to the land. He looked back again in time to see the hawks sweep up from the beach and rise above the cliff, a living wave breaking violently against Noreela’s shore.
The flying things were even larger than Jayke had believed. Their hides were speckled black, partly transparent, hideous organs pulsing vaguely inside. They were fat and bloated with gases that aided buoyancy, and their beaks were as big as a man, serrated, yellowed and streaked with the remains of old victims. The downdraft from their movement sent Jayke sprawling to the ground, kicked up dust, blew grit in a whisper against the windows and walls of his house. They rose along the whole length of the cliff, rising on thermals as if blasted straight up from the beach, and most of them immediately headed south, across the island of Land’s End and toward Noreela.
Between here and Noreela lay the Bay of Cantrassa, four hundred miles of open ocean. Jayke wondered how fast those things could fly. And whether the doves would fly faster.
A dozen hawks dipped down and came at him, their riders screeching, raising bows and letting fly arrows. One struck Jayke in the shoulder and he spun and fell, cursing, Not yet not yet not yet. He found his feet and staggered to the door, pressing through as more arrows struck the walls around him, the door, his leg. He stumbled inside and kicked the door shut with his good leg, unable to turn in the narrow corridor because of the long shafts protruding from his shoulder and knee.
He was dizzied already by blood loss… and something else. His throat was swelling, his airway blocking, and he knew that the arrows were tipped with poison.
There was more screeching from outside. The sound of the hawks’ venting was like thunder against the house, and one of them landed on the roof, smashing broken tiles down onto Jayke’s head. The monstrous creature pecked at his home, and its disregard for his history made him mad.
A hole appeared in his roof, a ragged rent battered and enlarged again and again by the creature’s vicious beak. As Jayke leaned against a wall and slid himself along, vision blurring, a Krote peered through the hole.
“I haven’t killed for too many moons,” the Krote said, her voice surprisingly gentle and calm.
“Fuck you,” Jayke muttered, and the Mage warrior laughed as Jayke fell into the back room. His leg was a block of wood, his shoulder stiff and burning with shed blood, and as the poison coursed through his veins it was only rage keeping him moving. Rage, and duty. He had to release the doves, to warn the neighboring islands along The Spine if nothing else. He snatched a primed and loaded crossbow from the wall, glancing at the shelves of books he would never read again, and staggered to another door, this one leading into the aviary where the doves were waiting.
They were in tumult. A hawk had landed in the vegetable garden behind the house and it sat there snorting, blood and mucus dripping from its beak. The doves fluttered and fought to back away from the monstrous vision, pecking, crying, and when Jayke appeared in their midst they turned on him.
“No!” he shouted. He hissed to the birds, sounds and words that could communicate concepts and direction, and as the Krote sitting on the hawk started to laugh, the doves immediately settled.
Jayke fell on the handle that flipped open the enclosure. The screens fell away, the Krote raised his bow in a lazy, dismissive gesture and Jayke brought up his crossbow and let fly. The bolt struck home in the Krote’s left eye. Mortally wounded, poisoned, half-blinded though he may be, Jayke had lived alone for forty years, hunting rabbit and pheasant with his crossbow. Target practice was something he’d had a lot of time for.
The warrior let out a surprised gasp and tipped sideways in his saddle. The hawk seemed not to notice its rider’s sudden death, and it pecked listlessly at the ground as the Krote tumbled from its left flank and hit the dirt.
“First blood,” Jayke whispered. He hoped that it was a good omen for Noreela.
He hissed and whistled once again to the birds. They turned to look at him and it was almost as if they knew of his wounds, knew that this time they would not fly home. They cooed, their throats swelled and vibrated, their small leather message pouches so full of hope and desperation. And then, as one mass, they took flight.
Jayke slid down the stone wall, crying out as the arrow in his shoulder was snapped off. It had been morning when he found the turtle’s eggs, he was sure, and yet dusk now seemed to be closing in. The sky was growing dark. His vision was fading. And with a hundred doves in the air, it looked as if it were snowing.
The birds parted immediately, some darting south toward the Bay of Cantrassa, others heading east to the neighboring island of Bethwitch, thirty miles distant. The theory had always been that if the doves never made it directly to Noreela, the message would be carried back along The Spine by the communities living there. Now, close to death and near to warriors of the dreaded and despised Mages, Jayke wondered at his people’s naivete. So much more could have been done, surely. So many more precautions.
Hawks swooped down, plunging through the clouds of small white birds and spilling them to the ground. Dozens fluttered and fell, twitching as they hit earth and rock, feathers exploding from smashed wings and burst bodies.
“All of them!” one of the Krotes commanded. It sounded like the gentle-voiced warrior from the roof. “Every single one!” The hawks swooped down and another dozen doves were shattered in mid-air. Some of the Krote riders took pleasure in the target practice, skewering birds with well-placed arrows. One of the hawks seemed to be in a feeding frenzy, following a small flock of doves, snapping at them, showering bloodied white remnants to the ground.
A Krote appeared before the open screens, short, thick sword drawn. The metal caught sunlight, and Jayke was glad for the brief spear of pain the reflection drove into his eye.