bounded down stone steps to the
cottage with the grace of a careless mountain goat. The eagle launched, found an updraft, and rose fast into the sky, ignoring Marit and Warning.
She backtracked to the ruins of the outpost and landed. A byre had been repaired with freshly cut wood, one post listing. Wind whined through the gaping doors of the rock longhouse, the kind of hall northern barbarians lived in, without proper doors and windows or even a porch. She left Warning with reins to the ground and approached the door, slowing as the musty scent of its interior assailed her.
A human leg bone gleamed in the entrance.
The wind's chill cut her as she retreated to quarter the area, seeing with new eyes the odd white growth strewn through the brush.
Human bones aplenty, arms, legs, ribs, skulls, the fluttering remains of sashes and the ribbons of belts, if not much in the way of scraps of actual clothing. But other bones, too: tumbled columns of vertebrae, huge sternums big enough to shelter under, and talons whose strength was bleached by sun and scoured clean by rain and wind. Tangles of old harness, its leather more resilient than flesh.
Hundreds of humans and eagles had been slaughtered here.
If the earth had dropped out from under her feet, she might have better known how to react: by flailing and shrieking. She stumbled back to the training ground and halted there, rocking with eyes shut until a keening wail burst from her throat.
A scuff of foot alerted her to a figure leaping behind the corner of the stone longhouse. She bolted after him, and although he was young and lean and knew the ground, she caught him, grabbed the back of his jacket, and yanked him to a halt so hard his feet went forward while his body slammed back. He rolled, kicking and grunting, and she flipped him and sat atop his chest. He'd braided his long hair neatly, and his face was scrubbed clean and his chin shaven, cuts healing in two places where he'd scraped too hard. His eyes were wide with fright as he gaped up at her.
She took in the weight of his memories like a hammer to the head: a poor fishing clan's superfluous son, restless enough to range into dangerous waters and plucked from the stormy wreck of his sinking boat by reeves. The reeves were in exile, they'd told him, fled to the uttermost north and gone into hiding from implacable enemies whose name they did not share. He'd been too
awed by the huge eagles and their fearless handlers to ask questions. What right did he have to do so, anyway? They'd taken him in and treated him well, that was enough, wasn't it? His fishing helped feed the hall, and he'd worked around the place in exchange for his keep. Once a month a ship came, its hold filled with sheep or cattle, because the Eagle's Claws did not nourish enough big prey to feed so many eagles. And one month he'd been out fishing beyond the point a day after the ship's arrival, when he heard shouting, screaming, the sharp calls of frantic eagles.
'I didn't know what to do,' he stuttered, choking on sobs. 'I was afraid to come in. After it got quiet, the ship sailed. I came back to find them dead.'
He'd seen the corpses of clansmen washed ashore after losing their boats; he'd seen elders pass over to the other side, hands limp atop frail chests; he'd seen infants washed gray by death. But he'd never seen anything like this butchery, a brutal attack by people who had lured the eagles to their death by feeding them poisoned meat and killing any who did not succumb.
'Even after they were dead they hacked them up, like they hated them. How can you hate something so beautiful?'
He flung a hand over his eyes.
She felt the wings of an eagle swell in the air and heard a raptor thump down behind her. Its shadow fell over her. She moved very deliberately, remembering the time an eagle's talons had ripped into her, and shifted to sit off to one side. No threat. The hem of her cloak flickered on the ground as the wind picked up.
'Do you know who it was who killed them?' she asked in the voice she'd used as a reeve to question people who had just faced a violent death or sudden fatal accident in their clan.
'I don't know.' He was telling the truth. He was just a village kid, way out of his depth.
'Where did these reeves come from?'
'They called themselves Horn Hall. They made a couple other outposts, in other ruins. But those others got killed, too. I went to every place. They're all dead!'
His voice raised to an edge of hysteria. He'd been living on the brink for a long time.
'They can't have all been killed. How could anyone manage it?'
'They killed the eagles first!' he cried with the frustrated disgust of youth, unable to penetrate the obliteratingly stubborn blindness of elders. 'They brought good meat for all that time and got
them into the habit of feeding it out in a certain way. And then they just did it.'
Who had the means and the motive? Who might think that, by killing the eagles first, they would not only kill reeves but ruin the eagles' ability to reproduce, thereby destroying the reeve halls forever. 'Did you ever see another person wearing a cloak like mine? A cloak like the sun, or night?'
The lad's sobs washed over her like a wild wind, but she could not succumb to panic, to rage, to despair.
'Listen! How long ago did this happen?'
He sucked down a few gulps and steadied himself. He'd grown up with women scolding him with sharp words; he knew how to listen and answer when listening and answering was preferable to a smack. 'M-Maybe a year ago. It was the dry season. Just like now.'
The eagle's shadow slid off her, as though it had decided she was no threat, and the raptor bent over its reeve, head twisting first to this side and then the other as it examined the young man. It was a young bird, still changing color, as inexperienced and naive as he was. Satisfied he was not injured, it moved off to the center of the parade ground, tail feathers swiping the ground.
'I'm called Marit. What's your name?'
The manners taught him by his aunts and grandmothers ruled him. 'I'm Badinen, honored aunt.'
An old-fashioned name, in keeping with this gods-forsaken isolated wilderness. 'Where did this eagle come from?'
T don't know.'
'How does it happen that she jessed you?'
T couldn't bear to leave even after they were dead. She just flew out of the sky one day. She'd been left behind, like me, I guess. We've been together ever since. I fish. There's plenty of game for one eagle.'
She asked more questions, but he knew nothing of the world beyond his humble fishing village south of here. In truth, he was hard to understand, even after the assizes had accustomed her to the northern way of talking.
'Clan Hall must be told that an entire reeve hall fled here and was betrayed and massacred.'
'What is Clan Hall?' He sat up cautiously, glancing toward his eagle, who had opened her wings to sun. T know the tales. Clan Hall isn't one of the six reeve halls.'
'They are the seventh hall. They supervise the other six halls.'
'That's not in the tales. Maybe they're the ones who did the murder. If my reeves trusted them, they'd have gone there, wouldn't they?'
It was a good question. Why hadn't Horn Hall gone for help to Clan Hall? Why flee here?
'Anyhow,' he added, 'if we leave here, them ones who killed the rest might see us and kill us, too.'
'You've already been seen. They're already coming for you. I came to warn you.'
He frowned, a simple lad forced to comprehend twisted minds. 'You might be luring me away to kill me. Best I stay where I know the land. I have hiding spots. No one will find me.'
'I found you.'
'I swore I'd watch over this place, for it's their Sorrowing Tower, isn't it? The gods have scoured them clean. Their spirits have passed the gate. I'm the watchman. It's a holy obligation. I have to stay, and you can't make me go. Why should I trust you, anyhow?'
She rose. Why should he trust anyone? Yet the folk at that assizes had trusted her, because they still trusted the old ways. As he might.
'Badinen, have you not yet recognized what I am? I am a Guardian. I've come to take you where you need to
