I look at the mess on my fine razor-sharp talons and my nicely decorated nest and then look at him again.
Oh f-f-fuck, he whimpers. Sorry about that. His voice is quivering. I will tell you anything you want to know; just don't do those things to me.
Hmm, I says, lifting him up a bit to look pointedly at the shit on my nest. We'll see.
What you want to know? he shrieks. Just tell me! What you looking for?
I jab my head towards him. An ant, I tell him.
A what?
You heard. But let's start with the lammergeiers.
The lammergeiers? They're gone.
Gone?
From the crypt. Gone.
Gone where?
Nobody knows! They been weird and distant for a while and now they just ain't around no more. It's the truth; check it out for yourself.
I will, and before I let you go, so you better be telling the truth. Now what about this bleeding red-face thing goes gidibibidibigibi etc. etc. you get the idea, eh? What's it when it's at home then?
The old crow freezes for a second, then he starts to shake and then he — I can hardly believe it — he laughs!
What? he shrieks, all hysterical. You mean that thing behind you, is that what you mean?
I shake my head. What sort of bird you take me before? I ask it, shaking it up and down so it rattles like a dice in a cup. Eh? Eh? Just how stupid you think I am? Do I look like a bleeding pigeon?
Gidibidibigidigibigi! screams a voice behind me.
(I feel my eyes go very wide.)
I stare at the bedraggled black crow trapped in the talons of my right foot.
Another time, I says, and crush the crow to the size of a thrush.
I whirl round and throw the dead crow at where I hope the horrible red head thing is, pushing myself off the nest at the same time.
Gidibidibigidigibigi! the skinned head shrieks, and the old dead crow explodes into flame and disappears as it hits the jagged red hole of the thing's flayed nose. The head's bigger than it was before and it's got wings of its own now; wings like the wings of a skinned bat, all wet and bloody and glistening. Fucker's bigger than I am and its teeth look sharp as hell. I beat my wings, not turning and flying away but hovering there, staring at it like it's staring at me.
Gidibidibigidigibigi! it screams again and then it's expanding, rushing towards me like it's a planet bloating, a sun exploding. I'm not fooled; I know it's still the size it was really and this is just a feint. I glimpse the real thing coming straight at me like a punch thrown through the exploding image.
This is my nest. The head's over the edge of it right now.
I take one quick flap closer and reach out with a foot and slap down on a huge white-bleached hunk of timber; the timber is most of a tree-trunk and it levers up in a explosion of smaller branches and smacks straight into the face of the thing going Gidibidi-urp!
Its wings close involuntarily around the tent of branches sticking up in front of it and it falls flapping to the nest, all tangled and shrieking and bouncing and flapping and tearing its wings and I just know I should get the hell out while the going's good but call it instinct, call it madness, I just have to attack.
I give one more flap to get a bit of height — noticing that the sky seems to be getting brighter — then spread my talons and start to drop towards the horrible head thing.
The sky's gone very white and bright.
I cancel the stoop and flap once more, hovering over the flapping screaming entangled head and looking up at the sky; it's gone dark again, but it's starting to bulge somewhat.
Oh-oh, I think, and say my wake-up word to myself.
There are certain things which will impose themselves on you even when you are in the depths of the crypt, and an explosion is one of them; either a very bright flash of light or a shock wave and certainly both, which is what I was getting here. You don't have to wake up and if you're in deep enough you won't, you'll just explain it away to yourself even if it's blowing you apart as you think, but I'm not so daft.
The blast rolls me over in my room, bouncing me off a taut-strung wall and flinging me back into the centre of the room again.
I look out the door through smoke and flames and see men coming down ropes from above the big window in the tower; a handful of guys in wing-chutes are flying in through the window, heading for the scaffolding, shooting with guns that send bolts of light through the smoke. A sloth falls flaming past the doorway of my room, making a tearing, roaring noise as it falls and leaving a trail of thick black smoke. Another explosion rocks the scaffolding around me and the walls bulge. I see the light of big flames shining through the fabric wall to my right. Outside, the guys in the wing-chutes swing their guns to one side and reach out to grab the scaffolding as they thump into it; their chutes fall away as soon as they touch.
I roll away to the back of my room and bite at the fabric just above the floor; it holes and I haul and pull at it till it tears some more then squirm out through and into relative darkness.
I'm behind the walls of the sloths' scaffold structure, swinging from pole to pole like a monkey, heading downwards. A huge explosion of flame bursts out overhead, showering me with flaming debris; I have to hang by one hand from a pole and pat out flames on my shirt. The debris falls on down, lighting the way. There are quite a lot of flames now, and gunfire.
Part of my mind is thinking, Blimey, can all this really be for me? and another part is thinking, No, Bascule, don't be silly! But the first bit is going, Then how come there's all this violence and stuff happening around yours truly? This ain't a violent society; bags is pretty peaceful as a rule. How come all this is happening all of a sudden? Oh fuck; those poor sloths was just trying to be friendly and how do I repay them? I wonder how things have shaken out for Gaston and old Hombetante. Then I figure maybe it's best if I try not to think about that sort of thing; it's done now.
Amazing the survival mechanisms you build up in times like this.
Ahead of me I can see the curved inner surface of the wall of the tower, it's undressed stone and all black and glistening with moisture in the light of flames. A few last poles to go, regularly spaced.
Right hand left hand right hand left hand; I'm in a fever or something because I think; just the time to crypt for a second, and as I reach for the next pole I think, right, crypt until you touch this pole, and I'm there, deliberately not thinking about where I am at the moment but swinging out into the immediate locality
/only to find it isn't there any more.
It's like there's just a grey fog all around me; a metallic, growling, hissing, static-ish sort of fog. I can roughly remember where things were from earlier but I don't want to have to trust to memory that much. Then the fog seems to collect around me and it's like it's not fog at all it's made up not of water but of metal filings, metal dust, sleeting into my skin like acid, burrowing into my pores and it hurts and my eyes go wide and the metal dust is sandpapering my eyes and making me scream and as I open my mouth it's filling it and nose with metal grit and I'm breathing it in and it's fire, like breathing flame, filling me, roasting me from inside.
I flail out at it, trying to push it away and my hand touches something solid and I remember that means something and with a struggle I wake up.
My hand clutches the cold bar of the scaffold pole and I feel the breath whistle out of me and I sneeze and my eyes water and my skin itches everywhere and I just manage to grab the last pole and then thump into the black stone wall and stop there, still shaking and not feeling too good.