Astride The Wind
Philip Athans
7Alturiak, the Year of Wild Magic
Astride the Wind tucked his wings close to his body and felt his dive accelerate. Below him, the strange boat grew rapidly as he fell toward it. He could feel Atop the Sky next to him and could feel the cool rush of air from his own wake buffet the other kenku. To his credit, Atop the Sky rode the winds well. His dive was tight and fast- almost as tight and fast as Astride the Wind's.
He focused on the men in the flying boat, and his vision narrowed. The first barrage of arrows from Astride the Wind's brother kenku flashed among the soldiers. The arrow shafts ricocheted off the soldiers' gleaming gold armor, snapping and bouncing uselessly away without harming a single one of the startled humans.
Astride the Wind tightened his grip on his scimitar and continued his fast dive. The arrows shot by the three kenku archers were meant as a diversion anyway, but Astride the Wind was disappointed and concerned that of the three none had found a mark.
Two of the soldiers looked off the starboard side of the flying boat and pointed in unison in the direction of the kenku archers. Astride the Wind risked a glance in that direction and saw the archers-Embracing the Clouds, Whirling on High, and Above it All-fluff their wings to slow and pull to their right and down.
As he watched this, Astride the Wind muttered the ancient words passed from chief to chief for all the history of the Soaring Heights Clan. From the corner of his eye he saw Atop the Sky pull farther away from him, knowing well enough to give him a bit of room. In the air around Astride the Wind appeared first one, then a second, then a third and a fourth identical kenku to himself. The images mimicked his every move, sliding through the air around him in a swirling dance guaranteed to confuse any opponent.
It might have been the sudden appearance of the images or maybe he was just well trained, but one of the soldiers finally looked up. Astride the Wind had always had some difficulty telling one human from any other, but these six men were nearly as identical to each other as the magically conjured images were to Astride the Wind. The soldier who looked up had the same close-cropped black hair as the other five. His eyes, though, were bright green.
Astride the Wind expected the man's eyes to bulge in surprise or even fear. He expected the man to have some reaction to the sight of six kenku is a sharp dive in the direction of the top of his head, but there was nothing. The man with the green eyes took note of them and drew his black sword. He opened his mouth to say something and pulled his sword back to strike, but Astride the Wind was there. The kenku felt his blade take the man's head off, and there was a spray of red as Astride the Wind swished past and down.
The magic images followed Astride the Wind down along the side of the flying boat. An image came within reach of one of the gold-armored soldiers, who slashed back and around without even looking and took the image under its right wing. If that had really been Astride the Wind, the slash would have gutted him. Instead, the image burst painlessly in a flash of green and disappeared.
At the same time, Atop the Sky spun his carved wooden staff in a circular blur at his side, away from his wing and smashed the wood into the side of a soldier with crooked teeth-or he tried to, at least. The soldier with crooked teeth took one quick step back and placed the wide, heavy blade of his black sword into the blur of the spinning staff. The staff was cut cleanly in two. Atop the Sky followed Astride the Wind down and under the boat with a squawk of frustration.
The kenku-Astride the Wind, his three remaining images, and Atop the Sky-pulled their wings out to their sides and twisted them to slip under the boat and begin a gentle arc back up the other side. They were as tall and nearly as heavy as the humans they fought, but they were birds. Astride the Wind opened his beak to taste the dry air over the burning wastelands of Anauroch and sensed a storm brewing in the distance. The clouds were over the mountains and would stay there.
They'll need to be drawn there, Astride the Wind thought to his companion.
To the mountains, Atop the Sky responded directly into Astride the Wind's mind. To the storm, yes?
Draw them there, Astride the Wind told him.
The soldier with the crooked teeth looked over the edge of the boat just in time to meet the last two of the party of seven kenku. Borne on the Drafts and Suspended in Air were coming up from below almost as fast as Astride the Wind and Atop the Sky came down from on high. Suspended in Air's scimitar was out in front of him, and though Astride the Wind was sure his friend was going for the soldier's face, the tip of the scimitar drove hard into the man's chest. The human with the crooked teeth fell back hard into the boat.
As Astride the Wind came up along the opposite side of the flying boat, he saw the man with the crooked teeth sprawled on his back in the bottom of the strange vessel. He was breathing hard but was already starting to stand. Suspended in Air's blade had failed to penetrate the ornate gold armor.
Astride the Wind turned his attention to the human who had eliminated one of his images. Again, this human looked like a copy of the others, but he held his black sword in grotesquely hairy hands, hands like the hands of an ape-which is what these creatures were, after all.
Astride the Wind, his three magical images dancing around and through him, swooped in at the boat. The man with the hairy hands tried to follow them all. His jaw was set, and his eyes were narrow. He was obviously trying to figure out which was the real Astride the Wind but was having no luck. He'd seen one of the images disappear into thin air and didn't seem to want to be fooled again.
Astride the Wind's scimitar rang against the human's black sword, and the blow sent a vibration up the kenku's powerful arm, rattling the humanoid bird's skull and momentarily blurring his sharp vision. The human's grunt made Astride the Wind think he'd felt the same thing.
One of the images passed in front of Astride the Wind, and another passed through him. Astride the Wind turned one wing down to move out of the range of the hairy-handed human's blade. The kenku made the motions of a duel to keep the images active. The human stepped back, still trying to figure out which kenku was real and which illusion.
Astride the Wind took a second to scan the other soldiers and saw one of them, a man wearing a shiny copper ring, pull something small from a belt pouch. Atop the Sky and Suspended in Air were swooping in to engage the other soldiers and were coming in for another pass. For some reason Astride the Wind realized just then that none of the humans were speaking. Astride the Wind's experience with humans was limited, but he remembered them doing a lot of shouting and talking. Atop the Sky, his staff in both hands, shrieked a war cry and pulled around to face the boat. The man with the copper ring threw whatever it was he'd taken out of his belt pouch at Atop the Sky and Suspended in Air. Astride the Wind cracked a peel of kenku laughter realizing it was a small stone. The human was throwing rocks at them.
Atop the Sky ducked the thrown rock easily and Astride the Wind thought to him, Careful, Atop the Sky, they're throwing rocks at The flash was white at first, followed quickly by a roiling mass of orange brilliance. The light burned Astride the Wind's vision and made him close his eyes. He heard Atop the Sky and Suspended in Air scream in unison and felt a wave of thought from them that was the beginning of their dying wishes. It was their good-byes to the Soaring Heights Clan.
The orange fire broke apart in the air to reveal the blackened forms of Atop the Sky and Suspended in Air, feathers gone from their wings. They fell impotently, dead. Atop the Sky's steel scimitar whirled, spinning down next to the bodies. Astride the Wind had come with six seasoned warriors of the Soaring Heights Clan, the clan that called him chief, to confront six of the humans. One of the humans was dead, but now Astride the Wind had lost two of his own.
The man with the hairy hands growled something in his indecipherable human tongue and Astride the Wind saw that another of his conjured images was gone.
Some seventeen hundred years before, the kenku who would one day form the Soaring Heights Clan were an undisciplined, barbaric race who lived high in the Columns of the Sky and hunted in the Myconid Forest north of Shade Enclave. The kenku sometimes harassed the citizens of the town of Conch, which sat on the eastern slopes of the Columns of the Sky.
They could not speak. They had no written language, and their manners were more like the birds they resembled than the humans they stole from. They had mastered fire and were carving crude tools from shale and wood. Strangely, they were devoid of religion and superstition. They had no mythology or philosophy. They had no fear of gods or mortals.
