Taking Flight

“Because,” Kelder told her, “you promised Asha.”

Irith looked unconvinced.

“Because I asked you to,” Kelder suggested.

Irith sighed again, nodded, and spread wings that had not been there an instant before. She flapped them once.

Kelder started to shush her, then caught himself.

“Just testing,” she said. “They’re a little stiff; I haven’t flown much these last few days.”

He nodded. “Look,” he said, “we’ll meet you at the city gate, all right?”

“Fine.” Her wings stretched gracefully upward, flapped, and she rose toward the night sky.

Below her, the youth and the child watched for a moment. Then Kelder shook himself out of his momentary daze and said, “Come on.” Asha followed obediently as he crept toward the caravan, moving as silently as he could and trying to keep to the shadows as much as possible.

The wagons were in a line along one side of an arcade that was significantly higher and wider than most, and open on both sides. Torches were mounted on each vehicle, but most had burned out, and those that remained were little more than stubs. What little light they cast mingled with the orange glow of the greater moon, and with light spilling over from the central square, but even so, the arcade was shadowy and dim, the caravan’s bright colors reduced to scarcely more than flame-yellow and shadow-gray.

Most of the wagons were closed, their shutters latched and doors barred, awnings and banners furled and stowed. Steps and benches were folded away, brakes set, wheels blocked. The draft animals and outriders’ mounts had all been unhitched and taken elsewhere for stabling, the yokes and traces and other gear all neatly tucked out of sight. Each one had a pike held to one corner by iron loops, and atop each pike was a bandit’s head.

At first glance, Kelder saw nothing moving but the flickering shadows. Then something yawned loudly.

Kelder felt Asha tugging at the back of his tunic, but he ignored it as he looked for the source of the sound.

He found it; a big, burly man in a dark tunic and kilt was leaning against a pillar, whittling. A sword hung from his belt, and a long spear stood within easy reach, propped against a stone upright. There could be no doubt whatsoever that he was standing guard.

The knife he was carving with glinted in the torchlight for a moment, and a curl of wood-shaving spiraled to the pavement. He was awake, but not exactly intent on his job.

The mere fact of his presence, and wakefulness, was enough to make the whole job more worrisome, though. “Damn,” Kelder muttered to himself.

“Kelder!” Asha whispered urgently.

He turned, finger to lips, and hissed, “What is it?”

“Where’s Abden?”

Kelder looked at her blankly for a moment.

“I mean, where’s Abden’s head?”

Annoyed, Kelder turned to point. “The head’s right...”

He stopped.

Slowly, he turned back to Asha.

“I don’t know,” he said. “What does... what did your brother look like?”

“I don’t know,” Asha said.

“That one,” Kelder said, pointing to the nearest pike, “is that him?”

“No,” Asha said, “that’s Kelder — I mean, the other Kelder, Kelder the Lesser, they called him.”

“Well, I knew it wasn’t me,” Kelder snarled sarcastically. “What about the others? Which one is he?”

Asha took a minute to peer up at those heads that were visible from where they stood. “I don’t see Abden,” she said at last.

The head was not right there, Kelder realized.

“Damn!” he said again.

Chapter Sixteen

“Now, how many heads are there?” Kelder asked himself, as he scanned the skies for Irith. “Nobody’s about to take a severed head inside his wagon at night, not if he’s sleeping there — that would be too creepy, just asking to be haunted.” He glanced down at Asha, hoping for some useful suggestion, but all he saw was that she was on the verge of tears. He quickly turned his gaze upward again.

“No one would take one inside,” he said, still addressing himself, “so they’re all out here on the wagons, and it’s just a matter of finding the right one, right?”

Asha made a muffled noise of agreement.

Kelder frowned. It was just a matter of finding the right one, but Asha was the only one who could do that, since she was the only one who knew her brother’s face.

Irith must have realized this by now — so where was she? Why hadn’t she come back for further instructions? All he could see was a small bird, silhouetted against the lesser moon as it climbed the eastern sky.

He shrugged, and looked down at Asha. “We’ll have to sneak up as close as we can, and see if we can find the right... uh... the right pike. Then we’ll tell Irith which one it is...”

There was a sudden flapping of wings, and Irith was descending, a few feet away.

“Kelder,” she said angrily, “I don’t know which head!”

“We just thought of that,” Kelder agreed.

“So what do we do?”

“Can you carry Asha when you fly? Then she could point it out.”

Irith looked the girl over, considering, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not a chance.”

Kelder had expected that. “All right, then,” he said. “We sneak Asha up as close as we can on foot, and let her look until she finds the right one.”

“Maybe Irith could get all of them?” Asha suggested. “Then we could go back and burn all the bodies...”

She realized that both Kelder and Irith were glaring at her, and her voice faded away.

“No,” Irith said. “Just one.”

“All right,” Asha said. “I’ll go look. But I can’t go alone.”

“Of course not,” Kelder agreed.

Irith glanced over at the wagons, the patchwork of light and shadow, the big man scraping away bits of wood with his knife.

“You two go ahead,” she said. “I’ll wait here.”

Kelder started to agree, then paused. Irith was the one who had to know just where the head was, after all. But it wasn’t worth the argument. “All right,” he said. “Come on, Asha.”

Together, the two crept closer.

There were a dozen wagons; the guard stood beside the seventh in line, by Kelder’s quick count, and they had approached near the ninth. “This way,” he hissed, beckoning Asha toward the front of the column.

After all, there were more wagons in that direction, even if it was farther to go.

The head on the eighth wagon was facing the opposite direction, but Asha shook her own head no; the hair was wrong.

The next faced them, but again, Asha indicated that it was not the one they wanted. They were both tiptoeing now; if the guard happened to look up from his whittling, and if he weren’t blinded by the tangle of shadows and torchlight, he would be looking right at them.

The head on the sixth wagon was facing away, and Asha was not completely sure, but didn’t think it looked like Abden.

Kelder was beginning to think they should have turned the other way and checked the tail end first when