here.'
'I think getting the Hell out of this scene is quite beyond your powers, friend Fost.' The spirit chortled eerily as the two bears broke into a soggy, squishy run.
The waterspout had cut through the anchored naval vessels like a scythe. Then it began to rampage at random across the harbor, picking up ships and flinging them to the points of the compass. Even the slovenly Miscreate did not escape its attention.
Fost saw Ortil Onsulomulo. The golden Dwarf had climbed up the Miscreate's rigging and clung with one hand while he shook his chubby fist at the elemental. Then the wind funnel caught the vessel. Fost had a final glimpse of Onsulomulo hurling defiant curses at his enemy before man and ship vanished.
Fost turned away. He was all too aware of moisture on his cheeks that had a taste different from the rank water of the harbor.
Leading the way, Fost rode for the southern fringes of the seaport. He had no particular reason for heading that way. All he knew was that the center of town wasn't going to be a healthy place. Battle raged furiously in the thickness of the fog.
They rounded a corner and steel hissed reflexiveiy into his hand before his brain had time to evaluate the situation. A brown eagle, its chest a blaze of white, swooped straight at them. Grutz snarled a challenge, and jennas unslung her greatsword.
The bird paid them no heed. It set down lightly in the middle of the block and stood gazing over its shoulder at the rider clinging to its back. The dark-haired woman rider slumped over the bird wore the armlet of the Guard.
As he and Jennas watched, the woman swayed and toppled to the ground. Fost dismounted and approached, sword in hand. The bird beat its wings and screamed at him. He jumped back, then looked closer at the prostrate form of the Sky Guardswoman and sheathed his sword.
The bird let him near the rider. The osprey-feathered shaft of an Estil arrow jutted out just below her collarbone. A trail of blood ran from a corner of the full-lipped mouth.
'I tried,' she told Fost, gazing up at him from beneath sagging eyelids. 'I… tried.' 'You did well.' There seemed little else he could say.
She coughed pink foam, sighed raggedly, seemed to shrink. Fost thumbed her eyelids closed. The eagle raised its head and uttered a single, lonely cry.
Fost straightened, casting his eyes warily up and down the street. He heard the clamor of voices and arms off to his right, toward the center of town. But under the fog which formed a few feet above his head the streets of Kara-Est were deserted. He drew a deep breath, a decision made. 'Jennas. We've found our way into the City.'
The hetwoman looked from him to the eagle, standing with its fierce head wreathed in mist. Tost took a step toward the bird. It opened its beak in challenge. Jennas brandished her sword.
'Ho, bird, here!' she shouted. Grutz and Chubchuk growled and lumbered about menacingly. The bird turned its head to glower at them, allowing Fost to vault into the saddle. The bird cried in fury.
'Settle down, bird, there's nothing to fear. I mean you no harm. Damn!' The last word popped out as the feathered head swiveled to slash at his leg with a black beak. Fost drew his sword and pressed the tip to the side of the bird's neck.
'I mean you no harm,' he said, enunciating each word carefully. The eagles were intelligent and understood manspeech even though they couldn't speak it. 'I must travel to the Sky City. If you try to hurt me, I'll defend myself.' The head bobbed. Fost hoped that meant assent. 'Come on aboard,' he called out to Jennas.
The woman hesitated, took a step forward. The eagle hissed. She stopped. 'I can't.'
'Certainly you can!' Fost twisted in the uncomfortably small saddle, keeping a sharp watch for interlopers. It was unlikely that soldiers of either side would be friendly to armed strangers in the streets. Anyone in the street would be fair game. 'Get aboard.'
Her approach was again met by shrill whistling from the eagle. It batted at her with its wings as it stepped backward, clumsy under the courier's weight. 'It fears her smell,' said Erimenes. 'I don't think it likes bears.' 'It accepted me. Jennas, for Ust's sake, hurry!'
'With all due respect to the lovely and capable Jennas, you're hardly as steeped in ursine essences as she.'
At the mention of the Bear God, Jennas's face had gone thoughtful. She stepped back and let her greatsword slump until its tip rested on the granite cobblestones. She had reached a decision of her own, no less painful than the one Fost made.
'I am not meant to go,' she said. 'This journey is yours alone, Fost.'
Wings thundered overhead and the voices of men floated down through the fog. Fost's bird screamed. It twisted about under him, its wings beginning to flutter nervously. The bird longed for the air. Fost cursed and jabbed its neck, expecting the Sky Guards to start dropping through the misty ceiling. None came. 'That's ridiculous. Get aboard.'
'I couldn't,' she said, her brown eyes gleaming wetly, 'even were it intended that I do so. Yon beast can't bear both our weights.'
'She's right, Fost. That dead girl's a foot shorter than you, and no doubt weighs half what you do.'
'Shut up, Erimenes.' A catch in his voice almost choked him. He tried to lie to himself that it was due to eagerness to see Moriana again. He knew better.
'Nor can I abandon our faithful bears in the streets of this strange city,' she went on remorselessly. 'You can manage on your own. Nor are you truly on your own, O Chosen of Ust.' 'Jennas…'
She turned and mounted Chubchuk, her soft, 'Goodbye,' coming back to haunt Fost. 'My sainted self, Fost, quit dithering!' Erimenes shouted.
Face a mask of anguish, Fost nudged the eagle's flanks with both knees hoping this was the proper signal. The bird understood. It stretched its wings, hopped, thumped the air vigorously in an effort to raise the unaccustomed weight. The courier's heart almost stopped as the bird dropped from beneath him, but the next instant the wings caught air and smoothly bore him upward into the mist. 'Good luck, Jennas I… I hope we'll meet again!'
'We shall,' she called after him. 'But not in happy reunion. Fare thee well, Longstrider. I…'The words became garbled by distance. Fost thought she added 'I love you' but couldn't be sure.
A moment of flight both timeless and weightless through the veiling clouds and then Fost was blinking in hot sunlight. The roofs of the buildings were completely covered by the fog. Off to his right the salamander still died in agony within a thrashing spiral of steam. Hoping the bird had sense enough not to veer in that direction, he pressed himself against its neck and clung.
Off to his left where the blunt cliffs of the hills shouldered out of the cloud, he saw the distinctive shapes of the Sky City cargo balloons dropping down with bird riders circling protectively above. Just ahead, a great number of the sausage balloons dropped toward the Central Plaza. The gondolas beneath bulged with armed men in the livery of Bilsinx. Though he didn't know what was happening, he knew enough of both tactics and of Rann to make a fair guess. With the fog to cover the maneuver, the prince had launched a feint attack on the Ducal Palace; when the Estil commanders sent troops to relieve the Palace, the main attack fell against the reduced forces in the Hall of Deputies, the nerve center of the defense.
The sky was nearly clear of eagles, though more balloons hung near the City bearing loads of arrows and javelins for the riders to replenish their ammunition. Most of the birds Fost saw were spiralling down among the assault balloons. That confirmed his guess that he was witnessing the killing stroke.
But what of the score of balloons rising upward toward the City in the Sky?
'Easy, easy,' he told the eagle, mainly to quiet his own nerves. To his surprise, he was not reduced to jelly by the knowledge he was alone on the back of a potentially hostile bird half a thousand feet in the air. Since first encountering Erimenes and Moriana, he had been through any number of appalling adventures, including several of the aerial variety to rival this hellride to the City through the combat all around him. That and the emotional numbness remaining after his escape from the wrath of a captive elemental a hundred stories tall accounted for his seeming calm.
He couldn't bring himself to even think of Jennas left behind in the now defeated city so far under his feet.
'Erimenes,' he whispered, knowing it was lunatic since none could hear him. 'Erimenes, why are so many Sky
