The Children of the Sky

The shrieking continued, the noise coming together on the far side of the wagon.

Ravna kept one of the lamps with her at night. Now she shook it into surveillance mode. The light flickered in pseudo-random hops, scanning into the underbrush in a pattern that should confuse anyone trying to spot the source.

The sounds of the monster cat fight continued, but she saw no sign of attacking packs. If Ritl had betrayed them, it wasn’t to a simple ambush.

“Let me point light.” That was Screwfloss from atop the wagon, where the second lamp was stored. He swept the illumination onto something beyond the wagon. Looking beneath the wagon, Ravna saw Tinish legs scrambling around.

“That’s part of Amdi!” Jefri started around the wagon. He had his crossbow up and cocked.

Two packs of four came racing round the wagon, one on each side. They ran towards each other, jaws snapping. All were dressed in plain workcloaks just like Amdi wore when they were on the road.

“Huh!” Jefri said. “Amdi?”

All eight collapsed in a heap. The lamplight swung in to spotlight the crowd. Indeed, this was exactly Amdi.

“Are you okay, Amdi?” Ravna knelt beside the pack, looking at each of him. There were cuts and scrapes. One of his ears was torn. “Who did this?” And is it still out there? But she could see that up on the wagon, all of Screwfloss was watching Amdi; he wasn’t worried about an attack.

Amdi was hissing and sputtering, but she heard a high, keening whistle behind all his sounds. The pack was in terrible pain. Finally, he slipped into Samnorsk: “No attack. There was no attack. No one’s sneaking up on us, though Screwfloss should take sentry duty.” He emitted two or three chords. Screwfloss sang something back. The remnant dropped off the far side of the wagon and walked into the bushes.

Amdi wriggled miserably in the bright lamp light, exchanging looks with himself, darting glances at Jefri and Ravna. “Turn off the light, okay?”

Ravna did, and Amdi’s voice continued in the darkness. “It was Ritl.”

“I don’t understand,” said Ravna. “If there’s no one else out there, how could she do so much harm?”

Ravna heard a muffled click, Jefri safing his crossbow. “I think it’s more complicated than that,” Jef said, and she heard him go to his knees beside the pack.

Amdi was making a strange medley of sounds. There was the whimpering, almost the sound of a human child. There were chords that she didn’t understand, and there was the pack’s little boy voice speaking in tones that were full of self-loathing: “The Ritl animal has been a troublemaker from the beginning. She is not smart, but she is always saying the wrong thing when I try to perform. You saw that too, right? She almost got us killed at Winch Top. At the same time, she is in my personal space every chance she gets.”

Jefri’s voice was soft: “She’s a singleton, Amdi. She can’t live apart.”

The whimpering got a little louder. Ravna had a sense of quick motion within the pack, heard a pair of jaws snapping on air. Jefri made soothing sounds. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Amdi.”

After a moment, the little boy voice continued, “Sigh. I knew Ritl was an issue the moment she turned up, but I thought—I hoped it would be like in the romances. Ritl would make Screwfloss whole again! It would have solved both their problems. Instead, that stupid remnant has no interest in her. And Ritl doesn’t like Screwfloss either. Then she made, um, advances towards me. But so what, I thought. I am so perfectly matched. There is nothing that having another member could cause me except harm.”

Amdi didn’t say anything for a moment, though the whimpering continued. “… Tonight I was strung out all the way around the campsite. It’s really kind of an interesting way to be. I get very stupid, but I can see so much and the thoughts rattle around one step at a time, each of me adding a little insight.” The whimpering got louder. It wasn’t a group sound; it was coming from the three members hunched down closest to the ground. “Ritl came in among me. She didn’t sneak up exactly; I knew she was there. She started bothering the parts of me…” Amdi’s voice rose into keening: “the parts who like her.” He twisted around, jaws snapping. Jefri reached down, risking some nasty cuts to caress a head here and there. After a moment, coherence returned to the eightsome. “Ritl is tearing me apart!”

Chapter 30

The maps showed a town thirty kilometers up the road. There were nearer ones on other roads, but this was their best bet for a full provisioning. From there, they could sneak forward, scouting Woodcarver’s border forts for the safest one to approach.

This would be their last show, and then the real climax would be ahead. Meanwhile …

Ravna rode atop the wagon. Nominally, she was driving, though she suspected that all by herself, Ravna- from-the-stars could not have managed a team of four kherhogs. Their cooperation was more likely due to Remnant Screwfloss, who was almost always here and there around the animals, bullying them along.

Jefri and Amdi walked together, dropping further back than usual, their forms almost lost in the morning fog. The eightsome was clustered tight, the posture a pack normally used when in a crowd or coping with bad acoustics or needing to do hard thinking. The fog alone couldn’t account for that posture. Since his midnight collapse, the pack had been like this, cheerless and quiet, talking in low tones to his Best Friend.

Ravna gave the reins a tentative slap, just to let the kherhogs know that she wasn’t asleep. She glanced at her companion atop the wagon. “So is that what you are, Ritl? A pack wrecker?”

Ritl cocked her head toward Ravna. It was hard to see any expression in a singleton’s posture, but the animal seemed to have some understanding. Is she laughing at me? This morning, Ritl’s leash was tied short to the cargo railing behind the driver’s bench. Getting her up here had been a struggle. She seemed to think that after last night’s shenanigans she had achieved privileged status. Her hissing complaints had continued some minutes after they got on the road. Then she had settled into near silence, staring back along the road in Amdi’s direction. Every so often Ravna felt a buzzing sensation through the wood of the driver’s bench, probably a side effect of Ritl’s shouting ultrasonic endearments.

Ravna continued her one-sided conversation with the creature: “You know, among humans, it’s considered very bad form to break up another’s relationship, even if you’re needy yourself.”

“Very bad form, very bad form,” Ritl looped on the phrase a few times. Then her gaze returned to the object of her immoral advances.

Calling Ritl a “pack wrecker” was not just a figure of speech. Poor Amdiranifani was simply too big to take on another member. That’s what he claimed, anyway, and Jefri agreed. Amdi probably couldn’t even retain a puppy born of his own pack. Accepting an unrelated adult member would surely split the eightsome. The three male members who were enamored of Ritl would break away. Amdi said that one female was wavering. Either possibility would be the end of Amdi.

Screwfloss shouted something at her, and abruptly Ravna was brought back to the present. The kherhogs were making frightened noises and pulling the wagon to the side, into the undergrowth. Screwfloss had abandoned the animals and circled behind the wagon. Whatever he was saying had brought Jefri and Amdi running forward.

Ravna struggled with the reins. The roadside brush hid a gully and deep mud. She rose from the bench, bracing her legs and pulling as hard as she could at the reins. “Need some help here!” Then she heard the sound. It came out of the fog ahead, the buzz of steam induction engines. Scrupilo’s airship! The aircraft was still hidden in the mists, but it was getting closer.

Amdi and Jefri ran past the wagon. “We should get off the road, Ravna,” Jef called to her, but softly. Ritl piped up with complaints. Amdi hissed a “be quiet!” at the singleton, and for a wonder, it fell silent.

So now it was Ravna on the reins, and Screwfloss and Jefri and Amdi up ahead guiding the kherhogs into the brush. Fortunately, this was the general direction the animals wanted to go. They just needed help negotiating the roadside gully.

Meantime, the sound of Scrupilo’s steam engines had grown louder. Was this salvation, or Nevil’s gang? She put the question on hold as the wagon tilted sideways. She didn’t quite lose the reins, but now she was aware how