We huddled close together warmly wrapped in flying silks and leathers, with immense furs wrapped about us.
The airboat was a mere shell of wood upon metal formers, shaped into the likeness of a petal and streamlined well enough with a windshield and leather thongs and wooden guard-rails. If it failed, as airboats notoriously failed, we were doomed. Below us lay certain death. That death might come from cold and exposure. It might come from starvation or madness. It might come in the ravening jaws of some semimystical monster of the higher slopes where the tree line thinned and the screes stretched for miles before the snow line was reached in ice and penetrating cold. Or — that death might come to us from the fangs and talons of any one of the many species of giant birds and animals who flew voraciously among the passes and valleys seeking what prey they might snatch. From their high aeries they could plummet down, their eyes sighted on a target so small at that distance only eyes superlatively endowed by nature could ever make out what manner of animal or beast it might be below them. We saw the ominous dots flying far off. I grasped my long sword hilt and determined that should anything or any monster attack us only my death would prevent me from protecting my Delia until none remained.
Coal-black impiters, corths, xi — the iridescent-scaled winged lizards of the humid jungle-valleys sunk in broad tracts within The Stratemsk — bisbis, zizils, the yellow eagles of Wyndhai, and many other monstrous flying beasts are to be found within the massive confines of The Stratemsk — or, to be practical about this matter, better not found.
For the first upward trending slopes before we rose high to seek the easiest of the passes opening out before us we flew over many crude encampments of the man-beasts who occupy the outer portions of The Stratemsk. There are many tribes, but they are referred to in general as crofermen, savage, untamed, cruel and suspicious, who delight in nothing so much as raiding down the outer slopes of The Stratemsk. It was their ponshos that the great winged beasts of the air would seize if given the chance. Life, indeed, was a hard and demanding existence within The Stratemsk.
So that with the sheer size and immensity of the mountains and the crofermen incessantly raiding and the monstrous winged beasts, The Stratemsk had provided a barrier between the Eye of the World and eastern Turismond that had endured for century after century.
And my Delia of the Blue Mountains had braved these terrors and these dangers in order once more to clasp me in her arms!
No wonder the sailors of the outer oceans would sail all the weary way around by the Cyphren Sea past Donengil and up the skeleton coasts to enter the inner sea via the Dam of Days. For besides the dangers of The Stratemsk there lay ahead of us the unknown perils of the Hostile Territories. We had safely negotiated the first passes and left the peaks on either hand and Delia had the control levers thrust full to maximum when she touched my arm and pointed.
“Look, Dray-”
The gorgeous scarlet and golden accipiter with those deadly talons extended flew above our heads, turning in lazy hunting circles. I knew it. Messenger or observer of the Star Lords, the Gdoinye croaked a harsh challenging call — either that, a challenge, or a farewell — and swung away. I did not think that any corth or zizil or other flying monster would seek to attack that blazing raptor of the Star Lords. We waited out the flying time, eating and drinking sparingly as the dwaburs unreeled below us. The air remained thin and cold, for Delia would not dip down into the shrouded valleys for warmth for the iridescent shapes of the xi circled there, seeking their prey in the humid jungles beneath. Gradually the high peaks passed away over our shoulders. Slowly the whole convulsed mass of The Stratemsk with its shining silver spears thrusting into dazzlement above dropped away behind us, but it would be days before those high peaks fell below the horizon. And slowly and gradually I came to thinking that we had successfully surmounted — or threaded our way through — the first great obstacle. And then the impiters struck.
They swooped in a wide-winged onslaught from a distant ledge, swirling about us in a monstrous beating of wings. They tried to pluck us from the sky. Massive talons extended like the claws of some Earthly power excavator. Raucous croakings of their fanged mouths from which the forked tongues emerged in a constant licking were designed to frighten us into frozen immobility. The airboat rocked. The impiters were wild and savage, but I protected Delia of Delphond and my wildness and savagery met and mastered theirs.
My long sword whirled, thick with blood. And Seg’s arrows flew as fast as he could draw back the string and loose. In truth, he dispatched far more than did I, although I was forced to tackle those posing the greater threat as they sought to impale us with their whip-barbed tails or rend us with their claws or snatch us up in their gape-jaws.
Massive they were, the impiters, giants of the air, and yet they cavorted in the empty levels with the speed and agility of an Earthly falcon. My sword arm bunched with muscle and I struck and struck and still they came. Now the airboat faltered, it dipped, dropped, fell away.
“She won’t respond!” shouted Delia.
Thelda was screaming away and impeding me in my work as she sought to throw herself into my arms. I knocked her back into the bottom of the airboat and yelled at Delia.
“Grab her, Delia! She’ll have her head taken off if she sticks it out here!”
Arrows spurted from Seg’s bow. My sword lopped and slashed. The impiters continued to attack as the airboat sank lower. There was no chance of my seeing where we were falling; every straining effort had to be bent on to picking the next flying beast, sensing his line of attack, guessing whether he would strike with his jaws or flick himself over to lash with that deadly barbed tail. I saw a tail strike into the wood of the rail, splintering it. The barbs did not hold; some muscular mechanism seemed to fold them in the instant the impiter knew it had missed its stroke. I hacked the tail off. How long that insane aerial battle went on I do not know. Now my chest was crisscrossed by red welts where the barbed tails had struck, and blood — my blood — slicked down my belly and thighs. But I battled on. I could stand up and brace myself against the movement of the airboat. My long sea training gave me at least that advantage. But Seg, too, stuck to his task, loosing arrows as though from some fabled machine-crossbow of the ancient men of the sunrise.
Trees abruptly swooshed past and a branch almost accomplished what the impiters had failed to do. I ducked and just managed to get the long sword’s swing to intersect neatly with an impiter’s jaw. He screeched and spun away and then — suddenly, miraculously, enormously — we were surrounded by a vindictively smothering swarm of tiny pink and yellow bodies. Tiny birds! Thousands of them. Tiny pink and yellow birds with shrill cheeping cries were hurling themselves at the massive impiters, were darting in to sink their long sharp beaks into tender spots, where wings met body, at the juncture of tail, into the glaring, bloodshot eyes. The impiters went mad. I threw the long sword down — it had served me well but all my arms-training could not prevent me from doing what I had to do the quickest way I knew. I seized Delia and thrust her hard under a heaping pile of silks and leathers. I shouted.