grinning a taut grin devoid of all humor. This would decide so very much. Him against her, arrow against arrow, teacher against prize pupil.
'Goodbye, Moriana,' he said softly. 'If only I could consummate my love for you at greater length.' He drew.
Darl's raft bucked upward. Before either cousin could loose an arrow, his craft had swung protectively over the princess's. Rann shrieked a curse and shot at Darl. He'd at least take care of Moriana's damned lover. He didn't.
Darl watched the arrow, calmly awaiting death. With contemptuous ease, the Zr'gsz at the Count-Duke's side thrust up his shield. The arrow Chunked into it. Darl stared at the malformed head gleaming an inch from his breastplate. 'My thanks,' he said dryly. The lizard man grinned.
Moriana tracked Rann the instant Terror plummeted past Darl's craft. 'Die, you devil!' she screamed, and shot.
The Destiny Stone went black. The glue binding one of the three feathered vanes to her shaft gave way. The arrow slewed wide. Moriana wept with frustration as Rann and Terror were lost to sight beneath her skystone raft.
More bird riders rocketed in. Archers Zr'gsz and human got the feel of aerial shooting and took a grim toll of the attackers. But the Sky City riders took a toll of their own. Men and lizard men fell writhing on the decks. Red blood mingled with green.
A clump of riders bore down on Khirshagk's raft. He stood as defiant as Darl. The Heart of the People smoked in his right claw. Only one rider reached the raft and that one died as he flew overhead. But he cast down the heavy clay vessel he carried.
It shattered on the prow of the Instrumentality's raft. The Zr'gsz leader turned at the acrid odor of turpentine. Four hundred yards away, three bird riders dropped fire lances, heard the chittering of salamanders, released them.
Moriana gasped as three lines of blinding fire reached for Khirshagk. He revolted her, ally or not, but it was hard to see him die in this diabolical manner.
Khirshagk uttered a laugh that' resounded above the clamor of battle. He held the Heart high. Smoke boiled into the sky. The salamanders streaked straight into the core of the huge black diamond and were absorbed without sound.
Deadly quiet filled the sky. Watching from her throne room in the Palace, Synalon choked out an obscenity and raised her arms in invocation. The sleeves of her robe flapped like wings in the wind streaming through the open windows.
'It's time!' Moriana cried to her steersman. He shook his head in Zr'gsz affirmation and the raft plunged ahead. She heard a wolf cry from the Nevrymin foresters in the skystone rafts behind as they sped up to keep pace. 'Moriana and victory!' she heard Darl cry. She raised her bow in salute. There were no words adequate.
Rann's death plunge had carried him far below Moriana's raft. Levelling out at the bottom of his attack, he found himself in the midst of an angry swarm of two-man rafts. Rann's bowstring snapped in a furious exchange of arrows. Terror finished that duel by clutching the stern of an eight-foot raft with his mighty talons and bodily flipping the craft, sending its occupants tumbling to their deaths.
Angrily Rann flung the useless bow away. Not even he could restring a bird rider's bow in flight. He satisfied himself that the rafts were being dealt with successfully – even at the high cost of half his elite flight – and put Terror into a climb, searching the sky above for Moriana's raft.
He found her. A mile in advance of the others he saw the five wooden-clad skyrafts, almost to the ramparts of the City itself. There was little point in pursuing now. Rann allowed himself a sardonic smile. Synalon would soon be learning the extent of the powers she'd accepted from the Dark Ones.
He drew his sword and led the flight steeply toward the armada floating overhead.
Eyes as wild as an animal's, Fost glared up and down the street. He had hacked down three Monitors in a storm of blood without being aware that he did so. Erimenes still cheered hysterically.
He tested the heft of the round shield he carried. This was his first real, full-dress battle. He wasn't fool enough to go into it with no more protection than his broadsword and chainmail shirt.
'Back!' cried Erimenes. Fost jumped into a doorway. An arrow splintered the doorpost near his head. A girl with close-cropped red hair popped out of the next doorway and let fly her arrow. The sniper did a high dive from a minaret across the cobblestone street. His scream ended in an ugly thump.
'Excellent shot!' applauded Erimenes from his jug. Fost's lips curled back from his teeth in a wordless snarl. The genie's bloodlust sickened him, but Erimenes still seemed inclined to help – and help he had. He'd just saved Fost's life. 'Where's Luranni?' came the inquiry from the street.
Fost cautiously peered from his niche. Two young men trotted toward him surveying the heights all around. He recognized Prudyn and Chasko, two of the ablest of the lower caste recruits. Short and stocky Chasko carried a javelin and bird rider's target shield. Prudyn loomed over him, holding a bow with professional ease, brown eyes keen beneath the rim of a stolen helmet.
'I don't know,' Fost replied as the two ducked into the niche with him.
'We thought she'd be with you,' said Chasko. Fost shrugged and turned away. He'd futilely sought her at her apartment the night before and wound up sleeping with his assault squad in a warehouse. By the time the unit had to move, the High Councillor's daughter hadn't shown up.
A sea-gray eagle flecked with brown swept over the rooftops. Prudyn whipped up his shortbow and shot. The rider tumbled off and disappeared behind the buildings. Prudyn whooped delight. Chasko and Fost pounded him on the back.
They calmed enough to take stock. The tumult of street fighting raged all around. Smoke sprouted from a dozen fires. To his right, the soaring architecture of the Palace lorded it over lesser buildings. Two hundred yards away, Fost judged. He had an appointment on the steps of that edifice. He prayed fervently to gods he still didn't fully believe in that the other party would arrive unharmed.
The door opened behind them.
They jumped into the street snapping weapons around. A pudgy feminine-looking hand reached out holding a green glass bottle. Prudyn hesitated, accepted it and lifted it to his lips and drank.
'Thank you kindly,' he said. The arm withdrew and the door closed once more.
The three passed around the wine bottle until it was drained. Fost called for the rest of his squad and they moved toward the Palace.
A melee raged among the rafts of the People. Sky City men had birds shot from under them and if luck favored, they managed to drop to the decks of the enemy rafts and continued the fight at close quarters. Others, out of arrows or simply eager to come to grips with the ancient enemies of their kind, landed deliberately to fight side by side with their birds. Riderless eagles plucked Zr'gsz and Nevrymin from the skystone slabs and cast them down.
Both sides fought with fanatical intensity. More than a few of the bird riders passed under the rafts after firing their arrows, only to have the hissing Vridzish fling themselves onto them so both fell, struggling viciously until the hard earth mingled their substance and rendered all issues moot.
Darl's great blade reaped lives like grain. A wareagle knocked his shield-bearer to the deck and disembowelled him with his talons. Darl decapitated the bird with a single cut and spun to split the rider's skull to the teeth as the man closed with a spear.
The deck teemed with battling men and near-men. A green-clad giant loomed over a knot of wiry little bird riders, flailing at them with his bow. So great was his strength that he batted three of the black and purple clad troopers over the edge before the others brought him down.
Darl leaped upon the giant's slayers. They turned as quick as serpents, but their speed and skill meant nothing against the Count-Duke. They died.
Behind him Darl heard a boom of wings, a scrape of talon on stone.
'Very well done, my good Sieur r'Harmis,' came a cultured voice. 'We seem to find ourselves alone. Shall we?' Darl turned and slowly smiled at Prince Rann Etuul.
In eerie suspended silence, Moriana's raft soared over the rimwall of the City in the Sky. She fancied she floated on the wings of a dream until a ballista thrummed and a barbed iron head punched through the wooden shielding to kill a Nevrymin. She came out of her reverie and shot an artillerist as he bent to the windlass of his
