'Healing more quickly than Tumna's wing.'
'What's new since this morning, then?'
'I am at the end of my wits,' said Askar. 'So many unjessed eagles descending all at once, looking for new reeves. Who must all spend months being trained. We can't do it all in this one place.'
'It's true,' said Verena. 'It's never happened before. Some of those eagles must have spent years in the mountains waiting to return.' She turned to the other two fawkners. 'Did you see Sweet? That sly old bird! I thought sure she was dead. I last saw her eight years ago, if a day.'
'Marshal Joss,' said Arda, the trainer sent from Clan Hall. She'd lived in the hall all her life and knew nothing but eagles and reeves. 'We must set up a camp elsewhere to keep the raptors out of each other's way until they're settled in and their new reeves have finished training. Until we get the rest of the eagles jessed.'
'We don't have the resources,' said Joss. 'And what about the safety of the new reeves and their eagles? How can we protect them until they're trained?'
'Three or four months for basic training,' said Arda. 'At last count we've got twenty-two new reeves-'
'-and at least forty more unjessed eagles passing by every day,' added Verena.
Askar said, 'Some of the eagles will simply not come in with so many other unjessed raptors, and with such a mob of folk churning about. We need that temporary camp, Marshal.'
Arda had known Joss a long time, and had besides never shown the slightest sexual interest in him, so it was easy for her to slip into the hectoring ways she had felt free to use when they'd both been at Clan Hall. 'It's not as if we haven't been telling you for the last
many days. I admit, I hoped the eagles would choose faster, but there's no reason to think they haven't looked over this crop and taken what suits them. Can't you get rid of these useless hangers-on?'
Govard, the steward, broke in, rubbing the short hair atop his head with a hand. 'And if I may speak to that, Marshal. I don't have room for all these cursed lads, the wrack and leftovers that have washed up in the hall. The young ones are the worst. Two fights today! Perhaps if you'd encourage them to give up and go back to their homes.'
'And leave us in peace with the overwhelming task we already have!' added Arda, in case Joss hadn't gotten the message.
Joss raised both hands. 'Calm down. Don't think I haven't been considering this.'
'Heya! Heya!' Running footsteps crackled on gravel. 'Marshal! Come quickly!'
Volias was already on his feet. The rest of the group crowded onto the porch as Siras sprinted up. Overhead, a thick spiral of eagles had massed.
Three Qin strode out of the alley that led between storehouses and lofts from the marshal's garden to the parade ground. Joss pushed past the others, slipped on sandals, and jumped down the stairs to the path, then hurried over to greet the visitors beside the fountain.
'Captain Anji. Greetings of the afternoon.'
'Greetings of the afternoon, Marshal. If you will come with me, I need to show you something.'
As Joss walked beside the captain, the others maintained a gap between themselves and the pair of dour guards who attended the captain everywhere he went. They passed into the shadowed alley.
'You came sooner than I expected,' said Joss.
'I have my own difficulties.' Anji scanned the storehouse doors, all tightly shut against the rains, and the freshly painted braceworks. 'The Olossi council is reluctant to grant me the resources I need to build an effective fighting force. Will you come to the council meeting on-' Joss could almost track the captain's thoughts as he picked through unfamiliar words to pluck the right one. 'Wakened Rat, the last day of the month. Ten days from today.'
'How can I help you?'
'I've scouted out lands in the Barrens, on the western shore of the Olo'o Sea. Good pastureland, sufficient water, and mostly uninhabited. Familiar territory for Qin seeking to make new homes for themselves.'
'Unaccountably close to sinks of oil of naya.'
Anji smiled. 'So it is. We will put forward our claim to the land at the next council. Meanwhile, I tell them they must expand the militia to an army on a permanent footing, but they don't want to hear. I refuse to waste my efforts on this-this-' He struggled for words. 'Rags and scraps hastily tied together do not make a fine gown any more than rags and scraps hastily placed in marching order make an army. Here we are. Now you'll see.'
They strode into the parade ground, where five horses were being held by two grooms in the shade. The perches were empty; all the eagles had flown, as they were likely to do when things got too exciting. Every person there meanwhile was crowding the landward ramparts and staring toward the fields. Without pushing or saying, indeed, a single word aloud, the two Qin soldiers opened a path for the captain and the marshal to a steep stair that led up to the rampart walk. Joss clambered with the ease of long practice, fawkners crowding up behind him. Everyone was talking, exclaiming, and a few of the newcomers, young men who'd come with the hope of jessing an eagle and gotten no satisfaction, were mumbling complaints.
'There,' said the captain, shouldering aside an onlooker — a hireling by the cut of his threadbare tunic — to give Joss room.
Joss did not have a great deal of experience of horses, but he had ridden them for about a year during his apprenticeship as a messenger to Ilu, the Herald. He had an idea that the stout Qin horses were the most phlegmatic, and toughest, equines known to humankind. But they were definitely scared of the big eagles.
The company of thirty men Anji had ridden in with had scattered to a safer distance, although all had bows at the ready, waiting for the command to shoot. One poor fellow had been thrown from his panicked horse and left on the road facing down a handsome female eagle. Joss had to admire the way the lad stood his ground, not sure whether to bolt or brazen it out, but sticking with the latter course of action in the face of the imposing head and wicked talons.
'What do you make of that?' Anji asked with the same admirable calm.
'Does anything shock you?' Joss asked him.
'It might, if I had noticed you were worried, but since you are not, then I assume you know what is going on. That's one of my tailmen, Pil. What do you make of it?'
'The western shore of the Olo'o Sea is not all that far as the eagle flies, if she flies, as she can, from Olossi across the sea rather than being forced to walk roads and tracks the long way around the shore and through the wild lands. There are boats that usually ply the eastern shore, that could haul supplies to the west. I'll argue before the council in favor of your claim, if you'll help me build a temporary reeve hall in the Barrens for my flight of new reeves. Like that lad, there. What did you say his name was?'
Ha! Now he had surprised Anji.
'Pil? What are you saying, Marshal?'
'You live in the Hundred now. If you mean to make this your home, then you have to abide by our laws. That eagle has made her choice. She's chosen one of your soldiers.'
29
The envoy of Ilu did his best to track the girl on her journeys around the Barrens without hounding her. Sometimes she hunted, or practiced her archery at a target she set up at the base of the hill, where the winds weren't so strong. Sometimes she returned to the hidden valley, with its unseasonable harvest of fruits and nuts and the strange, glittering threads drifting in the air. Sometimes she scouted the outlanders' building activity, and the nearby hills. He kept his eye on her from a distance, because he knew absolutely that to try to force her to accept what she had become would be the ruin of his hopes.
One day she returned in the late afternoon in the teeth of an unexpected cloudburst. This time of year, an unusual pressure of storms boomed out of the Spires, strong weather pushed over the mountains from foreign climes. Under the overhang, he coaxed the
coals into a brisk fire, and after she had cared for the horses she sat down on a rock opposite him.
'The fire will dry out your clothes,' he said. 'Not that you can precisely catch your death and die of a fever,' he added as she turned her mirror to catch the flames in its reflection.
