The lammergeier flew away to his lair among the high crags and the eagles descended to their roosting trees an hour before the sun set. The kites scattered, having to satisfy their appetites with insects, and even the buzzards disappeared at last, perhaps wondering what had prompted all of them to waste time waiting in the futile hope of sharing the great newcomer’s prey. He alone still circled aloof in the high air, completely disdainful of the vanished thermals.
And Amerie watched him, lying under the tree, watched that distant speck endlessly wheeling that had drawn all the others and then disappointed them. That bird with motionless wings.
Heart pounding, she scrambled to her feet and ran back up the canyon to rout everybody out.
“Stand back! Don’t touch it until the field’s off, for God’s sake!” someone shouted.
The huge thing, still glowing faintly purple, seemed to fill the whole lower end of the canyon. It had descended just as soon as the sky was fully dark, subsonic by a whisker but still shoving a hurricane blast ahead of it that tore bundles of thatch from the roofs and sent poor old Peppino’s geese tumbling like leaves in a gale. It had come to a dead halt no more than two meters above the highest trees, its drooping nose, gull wings, and fan-shaped tail bathed in a crawling network of nearly ultravisible fire. Old Man Kawai, composed now and curtly efficient, had sent several youngsters for wet sacks and ordered the rest of the villagers to stand by the rolls of camouflage netting.
They all watched, awe-struck, as the hovering thing folded its great wings back against its thirty-meter fuselage and delicately felt its way down. It nosed obliquely between a pair of tall firs where there was a minimum of undergrowth, hesitated just barely off the ground, and then let its long legs settle. There was a loud hiss; a few bushes began to smolder and wisps of smoke curled up around the footpads. The skin of the bird went dead black.
Then the people, who had stood as though paralyzed, broke into wild cheers. A number sobbed aloud as they rushed to follow Kawai’s orders, beating out the little fires that had been set by the rho-field and hustling to set up poles and guy-ropes for the nets.
The belly hatch opened and the ladder extruded. Slowly, Madame Guderian came down.
Amerie said, “Welcome home.”
“We have brought it,” said Madame.
“Everything is ready. Exactly as your plan specified.”
Lame Miz Cheryl-Ann, who was two hundred and three and nearly blind, seized one of Madame’s hands and kissed it; but the Frenchwoman hardly seemed to notice. Up above, a word of warning came from within the flyer. A litter was lowered from the hatch by Felice and Richard.
Madame said only, “You are needed, ma Soeur.” And then she turned and walked as in a daze toward her cottage. Amerie knelt down and took one of Martha’s bony wrists. Richard stood there in his ruffled pirate shirt and battered buckskins with fists clenched and tears running down his dirty sun-scorched cheeks.
“She wouldn’t let us come back until the Spear was working right. And now she’s damn near bled to death. Help her, Amerie.”
“Follow me,” said the nun, and they rushed off after Madame, carrying the litter with them, leaving Claude to see that the big black bird of prey was safely bedded down for the night.
CHAPTER TEN
Before dawn there was the Battle Mass, and then Madame exerted her farspeech power to transmit an enigmatic “we come” to Pallol, insuring that the invasion fleet would be poised to exploit the bombardment of Finiah’s wall. Sunrise was less than an hour away and if past performance was any criterion, Lord Velteyn and the members of his Flying Hunt would be back at their stronghold after the night’s foray.
Claude strode along nearly at the end of the procession heading for the flyer and wished Felice would shut up. She was once again attired in her black leather ring-hockey armor, which had been beautifully refurbished by Old Man Kawai’s artisans, and she was wild with anxiety lest she should miss the war.
“I wouldn’t take up any room. And I swear I won’t say a word during the flight! Claude, you’ve got to let me come with you. I can’t wait for you to come back after the strike. What if you don’t make it?”
“If Velteyn nails the flyer, you’d go down with us.”
“But if you get away, you could put me down right outside Finiah! Say, at the breach in the wall on the land side of the peninsula. I could go in with the Firvulag on the second wave! Please Claude!”
“The Hunt could have spotted us by then. Landing could be suicide, and that’s not what this fight is all about. Not for me and Madame Guderian, at any rate. Finiah is just the beginning of our war. And Richard’s got Martha to live for now.”
Up ahead, villagers were pulling the nets from the black bird. A few candles gleamed in the mist where Amerie was blessing the aircraft.
Felice said, “I could help you with the Spear, Claude. You know what an awkward big bastard it is. I could be useful.” She clutched at the old man’s bush shirt and he stopped abruptly and took her by, the shoulders.
“Listen to me, girl! Richard is all strung up. He hasn’t slept for more than twenty-four hours and he’s half-crazy with worry because of Martha, Even with the transfusions, Amerie gives her less than a fifty-fifty chance. And now Richard has to fly a combat mission in an exotic aircraft with a couple of old crocks and the future of Pliocene humanity riding on his tail! You know how he feels about you. Having you in the flyer during the mission could be the last straw. You say that you’d keep out of the way. But I know you couldn’t help asserting yourself once the heat was on. So you’re staying here, and that’s that. We’ll do our job and then run for home, and with luck we’ll leave Velteyn completely mystified about where we’ve gone. We’ll come back and pick you up. I promise you that if we make it, we’ll get you to the battle not more than an hour or so after the main assault begins.”
“Claude… Claude…” Her face peered through the T-shaped opening in the black hoplite helmet, panic and fury and some other more alien emotion at war with reason. Claude waited, praying that she wouldn’t jump him. But he was so steeped in fatigue that he almost didn’t give a damn whether or not she knocked him cold and forced the others to let her take his place. It was in her mind, all right; but she also knew that he was by far the better shot.
“Oh, Claude.” The blazing brown eyes closed. Tears poured behind the cheekpieces of her helmet and the green plumes flattened as she wrenched away from him and fled back toward Madame’s cottage.
He let out a long breath. “Be ready when we get back!” he called, and then hurried to where the others were waiting.
The great bird crept furtively from its hiding place. When it was in the clear, it mounted the predawn sky like a violet spark going up an invisible chimney, attaining an altitude of 5000 meters in a thunderclap inertialess surge. Angélique Guderian stood beside Richard, clutching the back of his seat with one hand and her golden torc with the other. Richard had changed into his old spacer’s coverall.