The Children of the Sky

There was a lazy smile in Raggedy Ears’ aspect. He flipped a battle axe adroitly. “You’re wrong. I don’t need the Ravna two-legs alive. I have a good use for her now. More use than I have for most two-legs.”

Gannon gave a nervous laugh and said to Jefri. “Just go along with it, Jef.”

Jefri glared at him and then around at the packs. The air was still for a moment, and Ravna saw that Amdi had been absolutely right. With Remasritlfeer gone, Chitiratifor was free to complete his mission. Please don’t try to fight them, Jefri. Amdi seemed to feel the same. He uttered a loud screech and tried to hold Jefri back by grabbing at the cuffs of his pants.

“Fine,” said Jefri—and reached toward the nearest of Chitiratifor. “Then give me an axe, too.”

“You craphead!” said Gannon.

For an instant, Ravna thought Raggedy Ears might slash at Jefri’s hand. Then the pack gave a rattling laugh and flipped one of the axes out of its mouth.

Jefri snatched the axe from the air. He kicked loose of Amdi’s grasp and stomped across the path to stand by Ravna. Amdiranifani followed all around.

Chitiratifor’s laughter swelled into full honking, and he said something to Screwfloss and the wagoneers. They were all having a good time. Their leader was going to show them just what all the killer tree fuss was about—without putting anyone worthwhile at risk. He gobbled something imperative at Amdi.

Amdi replied in human talk. “No, I won’t leave Jefri.” The words were brave, but there was white around his eyes.

Chitiratifor boomed angrily. Then he said in Samnorsk, “You are of interest, but you can still be punished. Would you like to be seven? or six?”

Screwfloss put in: “Oh, let him stay, my lord. He can stand over by the tree with the root bush. That should be relatively safe.”

Amdi cowered back, shuffling toward the tree that Screwfloss was pointing to. Ravna noticed that the campsite had been very carefully chosen. No tree near hers had a root bush.

Chitiratifor watched Amdi move; a smile spread across his aspect. “You are a coward clown.” His attention returned to Ravna and Jefri, but he had good humor for them too. “Now you, the female. Pick up the axe. Cut the tree behind you. Is that the one, Screwfloss?”

“Quite so, my lord. That’s almost certainly a true killer, and the lowest arrows look well-tensioned.”

“Are the kherhogs safely away?”

Screwfloss glanced at the carts and animals. “Oh yes.” The kherhogs were milling around as if they realized that something extreme was in the offing. “You’ve positioned them perfectly.”

Chitiratifor gobbled to the others. He sounded like he was putting on a show. Ravna recognized the word for “wager” in his chords. “And you, the male, stand by the second tree on the left.”

“But don’t chop anything yet,” said Screwfloss. “We want to see if one attack can provoke the other trees.”

Raggedy Ears elaborated for his Tinish audience.

“I said, pick up the axe!” Chitiratifor boomed at her. “You have a good chance at living if you do.” He said something to his audience. They gobbled back at him, and he added. “Four to one odds in your favor. But you’re sure dead if you don’t move.” His wagoneers had both cranked back their bows.

Ravna grabbed the axe’s jaw handle and pulled it free of the sod. Flecks of needles fell from it and the edge glittered in the late afternoon light. It might be a utility blade, but it looked freshly sharpened.

On the other side of the trail, the wagoneers and Chitiratifor were watching her in the intense, still way that always bothered her about Tines. This wasn’t all a matter of entertainment. Except for the bow-holding members, they had wiggled most of themselves into the protective cover of the root bushes. Only Chitiratifor, Screwfloss, and Gannon were still standing in the open. Gannon looked around, seemed to realize his exposure. He turned and headed for the nearest unoccupied bush.

And now the wagoneers were making noise again. They were chanting, a blend of harmonics that made Ravna’s ears hurt. She knew the meaning: Do it, do it, do it. There were packs who chanted just that at the kids’ ballgames.

Ravna turned to the tree behind her. On her right, Amdi danced around in frightened excitement, edging nearer to the root bush that could protect him. He had no secret messages, at least nothing he would chance on human hearing. On her left, Jefri was looking at Amdi and then at her … and suddenly she realized that he and Amdi were playing a game, just as when they were very little, but now as a matter of life and death.

Do it, do it, do it.

“All right!” She walked toward the tree, gave the axe a little swing. An ancient human might have described the thing as double axe head fixed on a bale hook handle. There was no way she could get the full leverage a human would have with a real, made-for-human axe.

But the blade was sharp.

This particular tree was about eighty centimeters across, the bark almost as smooth as a baby’s skin, but a pale buff color such as you rarely saw on modern Homo Sapiens. The tree seemed no different from the thousands of bannerwoods she’d seen the last few days. Its straight trunk extended some forty meters up, a beautiful slim tower. The lowest branches grew straight out. The nearest were some thirty centimeters above her head, their needles growing in great sheaves from the lumps that Screwfloss called “tensioning knots.”

Do it, do it, do it.

She raised the axe and gave the smooth pillar a blow that was more a tentative tap. The blade sank a centimeter into the wood. When she eased the blade out, there was a film of clear sap on the steel and a little more oozing down the side of the tree. The smell of the sap was a dry, complex thing, somehow familiar. Oh. It was simply a sharp version of this forest’s pervasive smell.

Most important, the scent seemed to have no effect on the peaceful drowse of this late afternoon. Above and around her, the needle leaves hung in greenish silence, unmoving.

On the other side of trail, the audience was not happy. The chant had stilled, but the wagoneers gobbled irritably to each other. Screwfloss had nothing to say, but there was an ironic smile in his aspect, as if he were waiting for someone to say the obvious.

Chitiratifor’s voice boomed out, in Tinish and Samnorsk all at once: “Cut the tree, human! Chop up and down. We will see its insides, or we will see yours.”

The wagoneers laughed and swung their bows back toward her.

She turned back to the tree and began whacking. Her blows were still weak, but she did as she was told, hitting upwards and then down, at something like the same target line. At this pace, it might take her an hour to cut the tree down, but she was gouging a deep notch in the wood, revealing the growth ring pattern that was near-ubiquitous in the trees of Tines World.

She paused, partly because she was out of breath, partly because she heard Amdi make an anxious wheep sound. She noticed that Chitiratifor had edged closer to the safety of a large bush.

The forest was no longer silent. She heard a clattering sound in the branches above her. The nearest branches trembled, clusters of needles shivering faintly, jerked about by the tensioning knots that anchored them in place. The knots themselves, were … smoking? No, not smoke. It was a heavy haze of pollen, drifting slowly on the faint currents of the cooling afternoon. Where it floated through the brightest light, the reflection of the sun from the peaks above, it shone golden green.

On the other side of the path, some of the sporting humor had evaporated. The packs watched the drifting haze with wide eyes. As it floated outwards from Ravna’s tree, the rattling of branches spread to the trees around her and then across the wagon trail, creating a growing, golden green alarm. The wagoneers squeezed back beneath their root bushes; not even their bow carriers stood in the open now.

When the rattling reached the trees around Chitiratifor, he finally gave up his brave stance and wiggled himself deep into his own bush. Only screwloose Screwfloss was left unprepared. He hadn’t picked a big enough bush and now he was mostly unable to get adequate cover.

For the rest: the kherhogs were staring at them in uneasy wonder. Depending on how far the alarm spread, the wagons might not provide sufficient cover.