bright sunlight permeated between the trees and threw moving highlights on the ground. Bracken and angelica sprouted among piles of bleached-white timber. In the tussocky clearings luscious purple foxgloves stood like racks of lingerie. I saw the road clearly from the air-two tracks from the wagon wheels with a grassy strip between them.
The air above the road shimmered; it looked wet and glassy. In every hollow of the dry track there was a mirage of a silver puddle that peeled away as we got nearer, and repeated farther up the road in the hot air rising from it.
We passed a cleared area beside the road intended for a fyrd division muster point. About every forty kilometers we passed a coach inn. These pubs and stables were semifortified with high walls. Travelers, hunters and workers of the surrounding farms could seek refuge there if Insects set upon them. Luckily, there had been no attacks this far south for twelve months. I considered the forest to be free from Insects; we had spent the last five years hunting them down.
Wrenn dozed on the back of his palfrey. The Swordsman had no horsemanship whatsoever and sat like a sack of spuds, his chin on his chest, nodding forward and jerking awake so I thought he was going to fall under the hooves of Ata’s mare. Ata reclined in thought, under a denim cap. Her legs braced in the stirrups pulled her leather trousers tight over well-defined muscles. She stared at the backside of Lightning’s stallion.
Lightning knew the forest well, and he loved it. He rested his bow horizontally on his knee and an arrow across it, nocked to the string. Holding a weapon changes your perception of the surrounding world. The very act of carrying a bow tunes your awareness to find the quarry. Lightning listened to every rustle in the undergrowth, or breaking twigs in the canopy. He noticed the “coc-coc” of pheasants, the sound of grasshoppers switched on by the heat. He noticed the subtle odor of deer and differentiated it from the stink of the horses, wild garlic and ditch water. His senses were heightened-in the country, after an hour smell and hearing became as important as sight. A less experienced hunter would jump at any play of shadows and snatch up his arrows, but Lightning was confident. He knew that you always have more time to draw and loose a bow than you think.
I noticed a commotion farther along the road. The highway ascended a slight hill; near the top it was blocked completely with people. At this distance I could only see splodges of color, brown or black clothing, some pikes or flagpoles moving about, and an occasional bright flash in the center of the milling crowd that was either a mirror or polished steel. I narrowed my eyes. This could be Gio’s work.
I wheeled over my colleagues and called, “Lightning?”
“Yes?”
“There’s something strange ahead. I want to find out what it is.”
“A den for you to sleep in, perhaps.”
I clacked my wings together impatiently. “It looks unusual…Just because I’m hooked doesn’t mean I can’t function,” I added, muttering. I pulled on the air and surged up. I was only between one and two on the room- spinning scale. I should be treated the same as when I’m clean, especially if I have a good supply; it takes very careful examination to tell the difference.
A company of about one hundred men was walking slowly up the hill behind a double ox team that pulled…At first it looked like a massive farm dray, but with an enormous wooden beam across it. At the front the square- sectioned beam was attached to a horizontal capstan whose great spiked handles projected like an unfinished cart wheel. A hawser made of twisted sinew joined a leather sling half a meter wide. It was a trebuchet, a thing of horrible potential.
The tops of heads, like dots, became pink as men turned their faces up to see me. The drover slapped the oxen’s snouts, and when the trebuchet team ground to a halt he slipped wooden wedges under its solid wheels.
On the hilltop was another circular, grassed-over clearing maintained for a fyrd camp. Tents packed the earth, some small triangular shelters around a spacious cream canvas pavilion. Most were thread-bare, stained with dirt, grease and wine, but some were from brand-new supplies. There were awnings and lean-tos, but I had no time to take it in because people on the ground spotted me and started shouting. Men dashed from all over the encampment to the center where a huge bonfire smoldered. They stoked it, poked it, and threw on new logs and green boughs.
A thick column of dark gray smoke rose up. I saw it coming and a second later I was completely enveloped. Smoke burned my eyes and nose. I breathed in a lungful and started coughing violently. Acrid smoke seared my throat. My sinuses were full of it; my inflamed eyes ran with tears.
Black flecks and sparks swirled past me. Leaves and lichen burning around the edges stuck to my shirt. I beat my palms on my stomach. I tumbled out of the billowing smoke, blinded and disoriented. I started to fall. Air whipped past me. Treetops hurtled up from where the sky was supposed to be. The sky was underneath me. I rubbed my face vigorously, tore out of my spin. I found myself above the road again, very low.
The hard-faced men by the ox team drew their longbows with disorganized timing and loosed. A hundred arrows flew straight up; I banked away hard. Long shafts passed in the air on my right. Flights whistled as they reached their zenith, turned around and plunged back. A breeze brushed my face from the nearest one. Spent arrows thumped on the upper surface of my wings. Shafts slipped between my fingered feathers. I straightened my flight path and beat madly away over the forest.
This could not be a case of mistaken identity.
Hot with panic I yelped, “In San’s name, stop!” Arrows poured around me like solid raindrops. “In the name of…San Emperor, for the will of god…” But I was coughing too much.
I flew out of range but they kept shooting for five seconds to make their point. The arrows’ broad heads crackled down behind me onto the topmost branches.
I winged back to the coach, furious. What’s it like to be hit? To have a solid wooden rod impaled through my whole body-would I be able to feel it with my insides?
I landed next to Lightning and Mist. “Did you see that?”
“Yes,” said Lightning.
“They aimed straight at me. Me! The Emperor’s Messenger!” My clothes stank of smoke. I blew my nose and flicked mucus off my fingers. “Bastards! Bastards! It’s a wonder they didn’t hit. If it wasn’t for my agility…They wouldn’t even stop for ‘the will of god and the protection of the Circle’!”
“Aye,” said Mist. “You shouldn’t have gone ahead. Now they know we’re here, and soon they’ll tell Gio.”
“Me! An Eszai!” I was smart enough to know I am not universally loved, but I never thought I was hated.
Mist said, “There must be something in that camp they don’t want us to see.”
“Probably another bloody big trebuchet like the one they’re dragging up the hill! I didn’t see its serial number.”
I described the ox team and Mist listened with a faint smile, either admiring Gio’s ingenuity or passionate for a good chase. She said, “Why’s the trebuchet this side of Eske, if he’s taking it to the Castle? Has Swallow given it to him? Or has he stolen it? There, Lightning; you see that Awndyn’s as treacherous as the other Plainslands manors.”
Wrenn’s eyes were wide in disbelief. He ventured, “Stop here and see if they come down to us.”
“In range of the trebuchet? Why not carry a target and make it their sport? We could offer foreign gold as prizes!” Lightning had a clearer idea of Gio’s character.
“They must be very confident,” said Mist.
“They shot at me!” I said.
“Jant, quit wringing your hands and tell us-you know these roads-how can we reach the Castle without pushing past them?”
I said, “We’re about halfway to Eske. This is the only coach route, unless we go back into Awndyn and join Shivel Road. It’ll take a couple more days because it’d put us two hundred kilometers out of our way. And it’s probably packed with mangonels.”
Mist took off her cap and ruffled her hair, which was damp with sweat. Her face betrayed the stress she was under, some puffiness around her disturbing indigo eyes. “Into the woods and outflank them, then. I’m carrying important information that I don’t want them to capture.”
Wrenn found this ignominious. “We can fight if necessary!”
“Unfortunately, Serein, I think they’d shoot you, too.”
I ordered my driver to take the carriage back to the last coach inn, the Culver Inn, and wait there for
