months ago, at the advent of the Whisper Rains. At first we received regular messages from him regarding his concerns about the health of Marshal Alyon and the difficulties besetting Argent Hall and the southern roads, but we've heard nothing in six months. The one reeve I sent south to the Olo'o Sea did not return. I've not had the luxury to send another, under similar risk.'
She raised her head and studied the faces of her reeves, one by one. Joss nodded, to acknowledge her, but she merely touched on him and moved on along the row of legates, the experienced reeves, the cripples and retirees and fledglings. Clan Hall had a higher percentage than other halls of reeves who could no longer fly, men and women who transferred in to help with the recordkeeping, mapmaking, and other administrative chores with which Clan Hall was burdened. Gods! And there sat that rancid spot of pus, the Snake, whispering in Sadit's shapely ear. Sadit caught Joss looking, and flushed, and grimaced with anger, and looked away, which movement caused the Snake to note her action and glance Joss's way. With a smirk, the Snake rudely flicked a finger.
Joss's whole body went rigid, ready to smash that slithering sack of shit's nose down into his ass… and then he thought of the reeve-Veda-who had lashed out at Peddo only because she had no one else to be angry with. Volias was a snake, all right, and Joss had seen him at his poisonous worst, but this situation was not Volias's fault. He rubbed his head, but the pain did not go away. It was always worst in the season of Furnace Sky, in the last month before the rains brought relief.
The commander smacked her staff on stone. The crack resonated in his skull, making him wince. Her voice was sharp, cold, and flat. 'They're tightening the net, and drawing it closed around us. And we don't even know who they are, or what they want.'
She stared for a long time at the map of the Hundred. It was a crude thing, really, once you had flown over the land with all its glorious variation, viewed it aloft from the vantage of the eagle: a prize beyond any other. Once chosen as a reeve, you were, in a way, a slave to the halls. No reeve could turn away from the eagles. The eagles did not allow it.
Yet for all that, he craved no other life. Not even the quiet routine of the Haya fish ponds.
'So,' the commander finished. 'What do we do now?'
Joss stood immediately. A man snickered; certainly that was Volias, but he refused to notice him. 'I have said for months that we need to investigate the situation at Argent Hall.'
'So you have,' said the commander in her kindest and thus most dangerous voice. 'That's why I sent Evo south. Evo never returned, and is presumed lost, and dead.'
Joss sat heavily. The Snake coughed like a man trying not to vomit. Others whispered, scratched their heads, shuffled their feet on stone; someone was crying softly. The river rushed on. The late-afternoon sun dragged shadows across them, a mercy in this heat.
'But.' The commander's voice cut through their restlessness, their uncertainty. 'The siege of High Haldia has changed all this. All my accounting must alter. If High Haldia falls, and in the face of such numbers I cannot imagine it will survive for long, then everything changes. The nature of what we are up against changes. The power that works against us has chosen to move out into the open. We are helpless to act as we have done. We reeves must find another way, or we will be destroyed, for that is surely their plan. The Guardians are dead. And the reeve halls, indeed the very sanctity of the laws and the Hundred, are under attack.'
Such a beautiful, hot, clear day, to hear such bitter words.
'I've selected three reeves to fly south, to investigate the situation at Horn Hall and at Argent Hall. Joss.'
'Of course,' muttered some wit in the audience. 'They always choose him.'
'Peddo. And Volias.'
'The hells!' cried the Snake.
Peddo scratched his chin thoughtfully, then patted Joss's knee in a brotherly fashion. 'This doesn't sound good,' he said in a low voice.
But Joss smiled. His headache had vanished, and for the first time in years, he felt an upsurge of recklessness overwhelm the long slide of despair. Exhilaration tugged at his heart as it had not done since the old days.
'I'm ready to go,' he said.
The commander nodded. She'd known that was what he would say.
20
They took flight at dawn from the prow of Toskala. Folk were already at work along the outer wall and earthworks, strengthening the defenses. There were reeves on patrol out in the countryside where villages and estates lay vulnerable to attack. For a person with keen eyesight, they appeared as specks circling in the sky.
People were moving on the roads and paths, headed out to their fields or pulling out carts laden with night soil. The road commonly called the Flats, which struck south into the lush farmlands of the Istrian Plain, was crowded. But traffic thinned out where the wide road known as the ridgeward Istri Walk pushed into the north alongside the great river. When the three reeves banked to head downstream along the great river for the first part of the journey, Joss noted how quickly traffic turned sparse on the seaward Istri Walk as well.
No one wanted to be far from the safety of the walls.
At length they gained enough height that they were ready to turn more or less due south onto the plain, the eagles gliding and losing altitude until they found another thermal radiating up from the ground as the earth warmed under the morning sun. Fields, hamlets, and villages dotted the plain. This time of year, stubble dried to yellow on harvested fields, in places already mulched and turned into the earth. Here and there dense white smoke rose up from fields being burned clean in preparation for the coming new year's rains. Farmers repaired irrigation ditches, mended fences, and restored the embankments that protected against flooding. Artisans gathered around smoking kilns or arranged bricks in ranks to dry in the sun. Everywhere folk worked on fortifications, digging out and raising earthworks or fragile brick walls around the ten and thousand villages of Istria that had for as long as anyone remembered lived in relative peace.
Now and again a person looked upward and lifted a hand in greeting. No red eagle banners were raised on signal poles. All across the plain it seemed that today might be a calm day, and yet perhaps their good fortune came at the expense of the folk living in High Haldia.
Wind rushed past Joss's face. Scar's wings flapped as the big eagle caught the hint of a shift in the airflow and cut left to find a better current. Strapped in the harness, Joss felt the breathing of the raptor as his own. After twenty-two years together, they communicated in ways that at some times seemed like mystery to Joss and at others no different from the simple understanding granted to two creatures who knew each other very very well and trusted each other absolutely.
He scanned the landscape as the regular pattern of village and fields shifted, and the ground itself changed character. This is what had altered the current: They had reached the Ascent, the slow uplift that marked the end of the Istrian Plain. Hills like bubbles broke the surface; streams cut gullies like lacework through the soil; stands of uncut trees gave way to woodland and then forest. By noon they met up with the main road, still known as the Flats although here it pushed steadily upward through pine, beech, and sour-sap trees. This was also good farming country. Here in clearings bloomed a thousand tiny reservoirs, although the water levels had sunk low. The berms surrounding the reservoirs were planted with mulberry trees. Cows rested in the shade. Terraces stair-stepped down steeper slopes into broad cotton fields or into tea plantations and fenced vegetable gardens. There was no traffic on the road except, once, a caravan of ten wagons with an escort of about thirty men armed with what looked like staves and spears and wearing round leather caps.
To the southwest, the rocky peak of Mount Aua thrust up through the heat haze. The western spur of the Ossu Hills painted a yellow-brown line to the east of the mountain. Between these highland escarpments lay the high, wide saddle of the Aua Gap, entry to the high plains grassland of the south.
It was really getting hot as the afternoon dragged on. Joss was itching with sweat under his leathers. He was sorry he'd worn his short cloak. Usually it was much cooler up high, with the winds tearing at you. Overland, of course, it normally took anywhere from six to ten days to travel from Toskala to Horn, but the eagles, pushed hard, could make it in one day. Joss was just mulling over whether it would be best to set down for the day before the eagles got too hot when a flash caught his peripheral vision. He looked west to see Peddo, who was flying on the
