His content lasted about five minutes.
Then they came down upon the brightly tiled landing-roof of what was probably the townhall, and Kern, already fluttering his wings for a landing, saw something that made him instinctively tighten the chest-muscles that controlled his wings so that they stiffened into broad pinions again. He soared and made a second circle about the rooftop.
The girl had reversed herself and was reaching with one foot for a landing when she saw what had startled him. She laughed and looked up, beckoning through the cloud of her settling hair.
Kern made a third circle, fighting the updraft among the houses while he looked down dubiously at the two dead men sprawled upon the roof. Both were young and both were winged. The girl walked delicately by them as if they were not there, settling her wings precisely. She stepped over the pool of blood, still liquid, that ran from a wound in the nearer man’s neck, streaked across the width of his quiet pinion, and that puddled the brilliant tiles with a color of even brighter hue.
There was a measured beating of the air above Kern, and he looked up to see the hunchback hovering on silky red wings above him. Sunlight flashed on a bared knife-blade. Gerd gestured down. And there was something about his poise in the air, the way he handled his muscular, twisted body, that warned Kern not to precipitate a struggle. It occurred to him for the first time that fighting in midair must be an art requiring skills he had never learned—yet.
Gingerly he circled again and came down very lightly at the edge of the roof, holding his wings half-open until he was sure of his footing. The girl was waiting for him. She smiled, her blue glance flicking the dead men. Then she slapped her own dagger significantly, glanced at the bodies and back at Kern, and with a careless beckoning motion turned to enter the roof door.
A little dazed, Kern followed. Did she mean she herself had killed them? What extraordinary sort of culture had he found ready-made for him here? The first doubts stirring in his mind, he stooped his wings under the doorframe and groped down a narrow, curving stairway behind the floating hair of his guide. Behind him he heard Gerd’s feet thump uncompromisingly from step to step.
Voices came up the stairwell as they descended. At the bottom of the flight Kern followed the girl into a big stone-paved room, low-ceilinged, smoky from the fire that blazed in a huge cavern of whitewashed brick at one end of the roof.
The room was full of the living and the dead. Bewildered. Kern glanced about at the winged bodies which had obviously been dragged carelessly out of the center of the room and heaped against the walls. Blood lay in coagulating pools here and there on the flags. The men about the fireplace seemed to be debating something in loud voices. They looked up sharply as the girl entered. Then there was a clattering rush and a clamor of guttural voices as they hurried to greet her.
Kern made out one word among their sentences that seemed to be her name.
“Elje—Elje!”
Their voices echoed under the low ceiling, their wings made a rustle and soft clatter as they shouldered together around her. If it had not been for the unconsidered dead at their feet, Kern would have been happy without reservation, knowing at last beyond any doubt that this was a world of the winged.
They were talking about him, obviously. Elje, braiding her disordered hair, spoke rapidly and glanced from Kern to her companions and back again. Kern did not wholly like the looks of the men. Without wings, they would have seemed an undisciplined, violent group. Their faces were scarred and weather-beaten. All of them wore knives, and they had clearly been in a hard fight within the last few hours.
Among the dead on the floor there were men without wings. There were also, he saw now, a few women, some winged, some not. Two races? Somehow he surmised that was not true; there was a subtle likeness among them all, the wingless and the winged, that marked them of the same racial stock.
Presently he began to notice that the unwinged were all either elderly or adolescent. He remembered that his own wings had not begun to grow until he was past eighteen. Was it only in their prime that this race could fly? And would he, with advancing years, lose again this glorious attribute he had only now begun to enjoy?
The thought damped that surge of exultation which still flooded his mind beneath the surface bewilderment. And then he grinned wryly to himself, thinking:
“Maybe it won’t happen. Maybe I won’t live that long!”
For the looks of the grim men around him were not encouraging. If he had guessed right about a universal language in this world, it was not strange that his ignorance of it gave them room for suspicion. And in a village where life was held as cheaply as it was held here, he could probably expect direct and violent reactions to suspicion.
He was not far wrong. The men spoke among themselves in brawling voices a moment or two longer, the girl Elje braiding her hair carelessly and putting in a word now and then. While Kern stood there, debating with himself what was best to do, the argument came to a swift climax. Elje called something in a clear voice and, directly behind him, Kern heard a guttural monosyllable in answer, and the rustle of wings, and felt something cold and edged laid against the side of his neck.
He stood quite still. Then the hunchback, Gerd, sidled around into his view, holding the sharp knife with a steady hand against Kern’s jugular. The pale eyes in the dark young face were steady and full of cold threat.
Someone moved across the
