Valya settled onto the beast’s neck and grabbed the reins.
“Go inland,” Fallion said, “to the Toth Queen’s Hideout. Know where that is?” Valya shook her head no. “Just follow Carralee and the others through the flyway.”
Valya nodded, gouged her mount lightly in the pectoral muscles at the joint of its wing. With an angry grunt, the graak lunged forward, took a pair of clumsy steps, leapt, and flapped its wings.
They say that if you’re going to die, it will most likely be on the landing, Valya assured herself.
The beast’s wings caught air, and it was suddenly flapping over the water and into the woods.
Fallion helped the last of the children onto their mounts, assigning some to fly to various forts and warn the Gwardeen, sending others into hiding, and then got upon his own huge graak.
Its name was Windkris, and he was the one of the largest and strongest graaks within a thousand miles.
It was only upon such a mount that a boy Fallion’s size could fly. Fallion ate little and kept his body fat down to nothing so that he could remain a Gwardeen. Even so, he was growing, putting on muscle, and by the year’s end he would be too heavy for a graak to carry far.
Fallion spurred the beast into the sky. Ahead he could see other graaks flitting through the trees, and his mount gave chase.
He looked back over his shoulder, hoping to see if the fight for Garion’s Port went well. Distantly, he heard the sounds of crashing blades, cries of pain. The battle was raging down there, but he could see little through the trees, only the smoke of raging fires.
Dozens of Shadoath’s warriors raced along the burning gangplank, helpless to catch him.
He peered back one last time, and then looked ahead as his graak soared into the trees.
That’s when he entered the flyway.
From the ground it was invisible, hidden by the limbs and leaves of ancient stonewood trees, concealed behind curtains of lichens and flowering vines.
But the Gwardeen children had cleared a path. It had been done over generations, at great cost and effort. The children had cut away limbs high up in the trees, a path sixty feet wide and forty feet high.
It led through the deep forest, inland.
Now that he was airborne, Fallion’s heart raced. He was in a precarious position, perched aback the enormous beast. He had no saddle, nothing holding him to safety.
Beneath him, he could feel the enormous lungs of the graak working for every breath, feel its iron muscles ripple and surge as it sought purchase in the air.
For long minutes the creature flew, and only once did Fallion hear any sound of pursuit. He was winging through the flyway, with the day-bats ahead flitting among shafts of sunlight, the air mellow crimson and sweetly scented by pollens, when he heard a whoop below, the gruff voice of a golath.
They’re trying to follow us, Fallion realized.
45
The flight of a graak oft heralds the coming of gore.
Borenson trudged along a muddy track beside Jackal Creek, a name that was something of a misnomer. There were no jackals in Landesfallen. The early inhabitants had probably named it after something else-the bushtiger. And there was no creek for most of the year. It was early afternoon, and he had been out hunting for wild burrow-bears for dinner. The creatures were gentle and easy enough to take, if you found one in the open. No luck there.
He had just vowed to himself to climb up into the far hills, where there was better hunting, when he saw a fish: a muddy brown fish eeling along the road, half submerged in a rut from wagons that had traveled this way during the winter.
It was a walking catfish, about four feet in length, as muddy brown as the water, and had four tiny vestigial feet. Its broad mouth was full of teeth, and beneath its mouth were whiskers.
He circled the thing, and it peered at him with dull brown eyes, hissing and baring its teeth.
He didn’t like the taste of walking catfish. It was about like eating mud, and he was wondering if he should kill it and take it home for dinner when a shadow fell over him.
He looked up to see a huge white graak winging just overhead.
“Father,” Draken shouted, leaning precariously to his right. The graak grunted angrily, but finally veered right. In moments, the graak landed gracelessly not a dozen yards away, smack in the middle of the road.
The walking catfish hissed and scurried off into some thick ferns.
“Father,” Draken shouted. “Shadoath has found us!”
Quickly he described the attack on Garion’s Port.
It took several moments for Borenson to gauge the situation. Shadoath had brought reinforcements-a worldship full of them. How many men that might be, Borenson couldn’t guess. It was said that Fallion the Bold had built strange rafts large enough to hold five thousand men each.
For now, the children seemed to have headed to safety at some place called the Toth Queen’s Hideout. But how long would they remain safe?
Borenson swallowed hard. It was a long way to Garion’s Port-eighty miles by air. But he was getting to be an old fat man, and he would have to travel a lot farther than eighty miles. There were no passes through the mountains for a hundred miles to the north.
And he couldn’t just charge toward the city blindly. There were ten thousand Gwardeen in Landesfallen, but they were spread all across the wastes. It would take weeks to warn them of the danger, form an army, and march on Garion’s Port.
“I’ll head to the fort at Stillwater. If I’m lucky, I’ll reach it in a couple of days. But first I have to go home and tell your mother where I’m going.
“As for you, I want you to fly to Beastmaster Thorin’s ranch and warn Jaz that Fallion is in trouble. He’ll be needing your graak. Give it to him. He’ll need it to fly back to the hideout. Understand?”
Draken nodded, then leapt onto the back of the graak. With a cry it rose into the air.
Shadoath followed a pair of golaths along a wooden bridge, until they reached a point near the fortress where it just fell away.
“This is where you lost them?” Shadoath asked.
“Yes,” a golath answered, its voice emotionless. “Fast they were, and cunning fighters. They shot arrows, and pricked at us with spears. Gone they are, I think.”
Shadoath peered over the bridge. One of her most valuable warriors lay broken below, on rocks stained black from blood.
Ahead of her, Shadoath could see the little island fortress. There were still a dozen graaks nesting among the white trees. In the full sunlight, it was a dazzling sight.
“So you saw children flying away from here, heading inland?”
“Yes, yes,” the golath answered. “All of us spotted them, we did.”
“Which way?”
The golath pointed almost due east, into the trees.
It had to be Fallion. She and her men had searched the city, and come up empty.
“Search the forest,” Shadoath said. “Look for any trace of them- footprints, smoke from a fire.”
The golath lowered its eyes in acknowledgment.
