He broke off, and went back into the cote without explaining who "she" was, who the one who escaped her was, and why she would be angry or her anger matter to anyone.
"Three flights," said Toban. "You'll lead them, Horas. Time you had a command."
He looked at them, who had cosseted and praised him. They were all rotten. They hated him, just as he hated them and everyone.
"Three flights," he said. Why not? A man with the knack for command could win the loyalty of reeves who might then join him when, as in the Tale of Change, it was time for new leadership.
THREE FLIGHTS TOOK time to launch, and they struggled once in the air to find a formation. The eagles did not like to fly so close together, nor had Master Yordenas flown them in drills as often as he ought, given so many were eagles who had migrated into new territory. He had preferred to send constant small patrols into the Barrens.
Looking for what? For the nest of my missing eagle, he'd said, but also, for signs of habitation in high isolated reaches. Any place, it seemed, a person might hide where only eagles could reach. Maybe what she was looking for, the person who had escaped her, whoever she was. For some reason, he thought of that mild clerk who had interviewed him at the army camp, of the way her gaze had burned right down to his cringing heart, curse her.
Enough! Circling above Argent Hall, he fixed his attention on the landscape below. He didn't love the sight of the land unrolling beneath, not as many reeves claimed to. The people were too small, reminding him of bugs, and perhaps it was best most folk be squashed for they would be gnawing and biting at him, ill-tempered as they all seemed to be. Paths and roads threaded through dry fields. The irrigation canals were emptied, nothing more than scars scratched into the dirt. Yet there was a smell in the air, a taste like a kiss of spice on a Devouring girl's tongue: the rains were coming soon. The new year would green out of the withered stalks of the one passing away. The Year of the Red Goat was waiting to germinate, bloody and stubborn. Jealous, passionate, fickle, like that damned Devouring girl. If he ever got his hands on her again, she'd not be laughing at him afterward.
At length, his flights were assembled in the air. Flanks stretched far out to either side. With the first flight, he took the lead, striking out for Olossi and West Track. Fields poured away below them. Soon enough he saw people on paths hauling carts and wagons piled high with possessions. From out of the walls rose the clangor of a bell. They had been warned. They were running for the safety of the walls, curse them.
The wind was hot, and the afternoon sun hotter yet. They circled Olossi a pair of times just for the pleasure of seeing so many faces upturned, so many pointing, shouting, weeping. It was good that the crawlers were frightened of reeves. They ought to be.
A flag flashed off to the left south flank, forward of his position. He banked, and the lead flight followed, with the other two keeping a prudent distance. Villagers hurried down the road, all in a jumble, some clots passing others, some resting, some splitting into two while others joined up. These were no threat. The flag whipped its signal again. His gaze caught on a distant group that, like ants, crept along the road in something resembling order. An eagle circled high aloft, watching over that company.
He slipped loose a flag and signaled to the rest to "stay back." He beat higher. The company on the road sparkled in their ranks. They were armed with swords and spears, although their dress was dark. What seemed at a height to be creeping was in truth a brisk march, eating up the mey.
As he banked, he got a good look at the reeve who was guarding the troop, and damned if it wasn't the very reeve who should have been dead. Joss, his name was. The other reeve's eagle was a big, old, experienced bird, and Tumna clamped down her feathers, not wanting to approach.
The other raptor pulled in close enough that that damned smug reeve could shout across the distance. "What do you intend?"
"Go back! Go back! This is our place!" Then he saw what waited to the south.
Two flights of reeves, in tight formation, seen as specks over the escarpment where the thermals were strongest.
"Reeves do not war on other reeves!" called Legate Joss. "Let us make an alliance."
Three flights, to the enemy's two.
His bow was strung, clipped to his chest harness. He got it into his hands, pressed to the end of its tether, and nocked an arrow. Swinging wide, he released the arrow, but what would have been a fair shot on the land went astray in the currents and missed wide. The other eagle beat its wings, calling a challenge, and swung talons up as though to close and grapple in midair.
Horas tugged on the upper jesses, and Tumna dove out of the way. They twisted back and returned, flying hard, to their flight.
Reeves had no signal for attack. They were not soldiers. Using two flags, he gave two signals.
Crime in progress.
No quarter.
Perhaps the reeves of Argent Hall had simply been waiting for action. Still, it surprised him how they bent with a will, eagles ready to defend their territory and reeves eager to take out their frustration on Clan Hall's enforcers. Many of the Argent Hall reeves had, like him, been driven from their original places by the spite and envy of others. Now they could get their revenge.
They flew over West Track and, continuing south, grabbed height as they could, but Clan Hall had already taken advantage of the good updrafts along the high ground. As Horas and his flights moved in, Clan Hall's eagles shifted, in disciplined ranks, toward the west. He turned his group to follow, but at once the glare of the westering sun got in their eyes and made it difficult to aim.
Again, he signaled. No quarter.
Numbers would tell. Seeing what they were up against, Clan Hall would break and flee.
That's what he would do, in their situation. He wasn't a fool.
The lead flights closed. Some were too high and some too low; all the lines were staggered at irregular intervals. They almost seemed to be flying through each other, as the chanters in talking lines may shift places by weaving in between their comrades. A few arrows flew harmlessly. Some reeves grabbed an updraft, while others stooped to get out of the way.
The escarpment was a jumbled blanket of gray stone outcrops and grass dried almost white by the heat of Furnace Sky. Far to the south, a trickle of dust rose, marking movement, but the high plains were otherwise empty except for the eagles circling here along the spot where the earth thrust up from the river plain.
Horas found himself beyond the fray. He cursed at Tumna and turned her, although she protested. They banked steeply, losing altitude but getting back around where he could see the wheel of raptors in the sky above him in a silent gyre so beautiful that you might believe, for the space of a breath, that the gods had intended it exactly that way.
Then it happened.
An eagle faltered. Bated. Plunged.
It was difficult to imagine that the arrow in the eagle's eye was a carefully aimed shot, but it proved lethal. Everyone watched as the reeve struggled, trying to get his eagle to respond to his frantic pulls on the jesses, but they tumbled regardless. There was no sound when they hit. They merely became a motionless discoloration on the earth.
He wasn't even sure who had fallen, only that the man wore Argent Hall colors. The flanking flights turned wide. The Clan Hall flights split with a remarkable display of coordination, some stooping while others climbed. It was impossible to surround them.
Arrows sped through the air. Reeves shouted curses. A javelin whistled past below Horas's feet, and he twisted in the harness, trying to see who had come so close, but his view was blocked. Someone had gotten behind him, out of his range.
Down. Down. Above, two eagles passed close enough for reeves to jab with their staffs. Tumna labored, found a thermal, and caught it. Rising, Horas tried to grasp the sprawl of the skirmish. As more arrows and javelins were expended, the fight came to the raptors themselves. Their natural instinct to drive any other out of the territory they claimed for their own goaded them. Two eagles would close, and strike with their talons. Another would calculate its distance and dive, but because all possessed an uncanny ability to judge distance and velocity, only once did eagles collide in midair, and that to disaster, for both raptors tore each at the other, one reeve was sliced loose from his harness, and all plunged to earth.