“Just hold on and follow me,” she called to the others as her mount waddled up to the edge of the platform, its long talons scratching deep scars into the wood.
“Do we have a choice?” Kandler asked.
“Not unless you want to die,” Monja said.
Her glidewing leaped about a foot into the air and a couple of feet forward, not quite enough to clear the platform. It smacked its tail on the edge, slapping the platform back a couple of feet, and then it disappeared as it plummeted toward the earth far below. For a half-second, Kandler thought the platform would tip over and dump all of them onto the ground with it, but it righted itself soon after.
As the justicar clutched Swoop’s scaly, muscled neck, the breath rushing in and out of it like air through a blowgun, Monja’s winged reptile flung itself high into the air. Its long-stretched wings caught the air and sunlight in them and rode them both higher and higher into the sky.
Kandler watched for a moment, his own breath stopped cold in his chest. Then he gasped as the flying lizard rolled all the way around to the right until Monja—who’d been dangling free and unstrapped from its back, high over the Wandering Inn and the open plains beyond—sat upright in its saddle again, the western winds whipping through her long, sun-bleached hair.
Kandler started to wonder why she could ignore the advice she’d given the others to lean low on their mounts, but when she wheeled about in the sky and skated back through the air toward them, the sheer joy in her face told him why. Before he could marvel at it any more, though, she wound her fist in the air over her head and jabbed it forward.
As one, the remaining glidewings waddle-rushed for the edge of the platform, the entire thing shaking like a leaf in the wind as they went, then leaped off into the open air.
As Kandler stifled the urge to scream, a war whoop rang in his ears, a howl of triumph and delight that he later recognized as Burch’s voice. At that instant, though, he could think of nothing else but the bright-colored tops of the tents of the Wandering Inn rushing up at him at lethal speed.
Swoop stretched its wings wide, and the rushing wind caught in them and pushed them back from the ground, away from the tents and from certain death. For a frozen moment, Swoop and Kandler seemed to hang there in the air, caught like an insect in amber between two worlds. Then the wind grabbed Swoop’s wings and shoved them flying into the sky.
Kandler had flown before on the airship, but the two experiences didn’t compare. The airship handled like a boat in the water. It felt like one when you walked over it. If you stood in the center of it, you could imagine that you sailed along through the ocean rather than the sky. He understood that sensation. It made sense.
The glidewing pitched and bucked through the air enough to make Kandler glad he was strapped to it. Racing along on a horse galloping at top speed over rough land, hoping the thing wouldn’t find a hole, break a leg, and spill over on top of you as it fell—he would have preferred that.
As the momentum from the dive off the platform played out, Swoop settled into the winds and began a slow, steady climb to the north. Kandler’s internal organs all fell back into their places, and he felt like he could breathe again. He looked around to see all of his companions—friends, even, they’d been through so much already—stable atop their own flying beasts.
Burch and Xalt rode the winds to Kandler’s left while Sallah and Brendis sailed along at his right. He craned his neck around looking for Monja, who came zooming in from behind on her own glidewing to take the point and lead them all into the great unknown that spread out before them.
“Next stop,” the tiny shaman shouted, “Fort Bones!”
24
The middle of the next day, Burch shouted for Kandler’s attention. The justicar saw the shifter signaling toward a gray patch on the horizon, and he sighed with relief as he realized that Burch had spotted Fort Bones where the sky met the plains.
It had been a long, hard trip. At first, Kandler never dreamed he’d tire of flying or even become bored with it, but hour after hour of leaning forward atop Swoop had robbed the experience of any sort of excitement.
They’d made only three stops, each about eight hours apart. They couldn’t bring the glidewings in to land on the ground, as they feared they might never get back into the sky on their backs again. Instead, they’d been forced to search out the few small copses that spotted the plains, often near a watering hole or along the edge of a shallow creek or stream.
Perched in the tops of these small trees, they ate and drank what they could fish from their packs. After they finished, they took to the skies again with yet another gut-wrenching takeoff. Kandler swore that his boots had scraped through the tall grasses on the last such embarking, but he preferred not to think about it.
At first, riding Swoop had been exhilarating, but as Kandler’s body grew sore from sitting—or leaning—in the strange saddle, the thrill wore off. Eventually, he braved sleeping atop the glidewing as it soared through the skies, trusting the straps around him to hold him in place. He hadn’t been sure he’d be able to manage it, but the great beast’s rhythmic breathing helped him nod off.
Xalt had tried starting a conversation a few times, but he stopped when Monja pointed out that sound carried far and wide from so high in the air. If they did not want to become a target of some wandering predator, they would do better to keep quiet. The few times Xalt had tossed caution to the winds, Burch had stared him down until he fell silent.
Now, though, their goal called to them from the horizon, growing closer with every passing moment.
From the air, Fort Bones didn’t look like much: a set of low wooden buildings surrounded by a high wall fashioned from baked clay. Even from this distance, Kandler could spy armored guards shambling about the crenellated top of the outer wall, forever gazing outward for threats from without—or above.
A hue and cry went up from the walls as a sentry spotted the glidewings. Flying in formation as they were, there could be little doubt that they were headed for the fort. Even if the soldiers in Fort Bones couldn’t spot the riders atop the lizards, the arrival of six such large creatures would be enough to rouse every soul—or body, at least—in the place.
“We land here!” Monja shouted back from her place in the lead, turning to be sure the others could hear her. “If we get too much closer, we risk being knocked from the sky.”
Kandler pushed down on Swoop’s reins, but as had happened every time in the past, the creature seemed to move more according to its own will than his. It followed Monja’s beast in a curving dive that came to rest a safe double bowshot from the fort’s walls.
Just like before, the landing jarred Kandler to his core, but he was so grateful to find himself on solid ground again that he didn’t give it a thought. Instead, he fumbled with the straps around him until they loosened, and he slid off the massive lizard’s back and into grasses tall enough to reach up to his chest.
“Everyone all right?” he asked, scanning the relieved faces of the others.
Xalt threw himself to the ground, disappearing in the grass. “I’ll never leave you again,” he said to the earth beneath him.
Brendis, who’d looked pale and green since the dawn, staggered three steps, then bent over and vomited loudly. The lizards all skittered away from him on their short, folded legs. When he stood up and wiped his chin, he said, “I’ve been waiting to do that since we left the platform.”
“Good thing,” Burch said, smirking. “Glidewings don’t like the smell. Might have plucked you right off its back.”