Owlsight

us out before dawn and tell us to eat in the saddle.”

“Which is why you’re roasting a stick to calm down so you can get to sleep quickly,” Darian finished for him, and yawned. “Believe me, I don’t need that to get me to sleep.” Then he snickered. “Poor Snowfire - he and Nightwind won’t get much chance to cuddle tonight!”

Wintersky snorted and elbowed him; Darian elbowed right back, and both made moon-calf faces at each other so that they both broke into peals of laughter.

As the two youngest members of the team, they spent a great deal of time together, got into a certain amount of mischief together, and despite coming from such different cultures, had far more in common than Darian had found with the boys his age in Errold’s Grove. Darian really felt by now that he was part of a family, with Wintersky the brother he had always wanted.

They chortled themselves breathless, paying no attention to the quizzical looks of some of the other Hawkbrothers; Wintersky tossed his stick into the fire, Darian followed it with the remains of his, and they both went straight to bed. Wintersky’s bird was already asleep on his perch inside the tent, Kuari dozed in the branches of the tree above them. Although most owls were nocturnal, the eagle-owls were comfortable in darkness or daylight; their size gave them a hunting advantage in the daytime, and their night-sight and silent flight the advantage after dark. Kuari could adapt his sleep schedule to suit his bondmate.

As Wintersky had predicted, hertasi rousted them out while it was still as dark as the inside of a cold-drake’s belly in an ice cave. They weren’t given a lot of time to ready themselves, either. Hertasi were efficient under any conditions, but Darian had never seen them work quite so quickly before. The camp was down and packed up by the time he had Tyrsell saddled, and Ayshen must have known last night that this was going to happen, because one of his helpers came by with pastry-wrapped venison that Ayshen must have put to baking in the embers of the cook fire the night before. Darian actually got to eat his without being in the saddle; no one had told him he had a new assignment, so he, was tail-guard again this morning. Tail-guard’s morning duty was to make sure the camp was clear, that all the fires were out, that nothing had been left behind. So he ate his meat-roll and drank his bittersweet, hot kava while everyone else bustled about, getting their riding order straight, then started the day’s trek - still in the dark. Darian was entirely unsurprised to see that Snowfire had lead-duty; with not one, but two owls as bondbirds, he was the only logical choice for a ride in total darkness.

As soon as the last dyheli cleared the camp, Darian summoned up a mage-light and made a thorough inspection of the site. This time he uncovered evidence of the hasty departure in the form of a couple of misplaced small articles of clothing and adornment, a bit of trash that needed burial, and one fire that had not been thoroughly extinguished and still smoked. These small tasks attended to, he mounted Tyrsell, and with Kuari following in the trees, he caught up with the rest.

He banished the light as soon as he drew up with the rearmost rider - Sunleaf, whose forestgyre dozed on a perch incorporated into the saddle-bow in front of him. Riding in the darkness like this, the team now depended on the eyes and ears of only three birds and Kelvren to protect them. Even Daystorm’s flock of crows rode - two on the saddle-bow perch, two on the horns of her dyheli Pyreen, and the rest on the horns of any other dyheli that would let them.

With nothing to look at but the vaguest of shadows, Darian was acutely aware of every calling insect, every time a bird chirped or squawked its sleepy protest at being disturbed, every crackle of dead leaf or rustle of undergrowth. None of this made him at all wary or nervous; he’d grown up in forest like this, and these were all normal night sounds. He’d be alerted only if they stopped, or if a sudden burst of noise betrayed that something had disturbed the sylvan sleepers.

Kuari was perfectly composed - and perfectly full; he’d eaten well last night, and would not need to eat again until tonight. He wasn’t tempted to hunt, not even by the flocks of drowsy birds he passed beneath. What Kuari saw danced like a ghost-image in front of Darian’s eyes, a double-vision that did not disconcert him in the least now, though it had taken him months to get used to it.

The air was very still, not a breath of breeze; it was cold, and smelled of damp, old leaves, and fog. It felt heavy, somehow; morning before dawn almost always felt like that, as if it was just possible that the sun might not rise, after all.

It was difficult to judge the passing of time; Kuari would rise above the treetops once in a while, to take the measure of the dawn, and for what seemed to be the longest time he saw nothing but darkness and stars.

Finally, though, the strange sense of heaviness lifted, ever so slightly. Kuari lofted through the leaves to catch the first brightening in the east, and the first tentative notes of the birds’ dawn chorus drifted down to the travelers below.

Sunleaf’s forestgyre roused all his feathers with a quick shake - still more heard than seen - as those first notes brought him out of his doze. Gradually, faint light filtered down through the trees; at first the light was so very faint that everything seemed painted in shades of black and gray, but as the sun rose, the light brightened to a thin, dusty rose, and color came back into the world.

Up and down the line of riders, birds were shaking out their feathers, stretching their wings, preening and yawning. Then, one by one, they hopped onto their bondmates’ gauntleted arms to be tossed into the air.

The crows were the first, and taunted the others as lazy loafers with their derisive claws as they rowed up into the canopy. Stung by the good-natured insult, the younger birds followed immediately. The older birds were too seasoned to be tempted into flight by a pack of delinquents before they’d warmed up their muscles; there was plenty of stretching and flapping before the rest took to the air.

Two enormous shapes lofted silently toward the line beneath the lowest branches, one from ahead and to the right, one from the left. These were Hweel and Huur, Snowfire’s bondbirds; that meant that Snowfire had