Page 11 of Of Blood and Fire
What worship?came Kaia’s thought.
I hesitated.It has many different meanings, but in this case, it means treating them as gods—a god being a divine being of great power but not of this world.
They not gods.
No, they are not.But perhaps before they’d tamed them, the riders had believed them to be. Was that why the rider Kele and I had questioned had been so damn confident of victory? They had the numbers, sure, but was it more the fact that they had their gods with them and had never lost a battle?
Was that why the Mareritt were working alongside them? The riders were not from our region, but the Mareritt hadobviously been trading with them for a very long time and would have gained some sense of their beliefs and priorities. Did they, too, believe the gilded birds were gods and were fearful of retaliation? Or was it more the fact that the Mareritt were a very practical race and, after centuries of trying to conquer Arleeon alone, they’d decided sharing the spoils with a trading partner was better than no spoils at all?
What we do?Kaia asked.Follow tracks?
We have no other choice. We need to know what they’re carrying.
We need to kill.
I snorted.Is that your answer to all problems?
No problems exist if killed.
Therewasthat. I waited until she’d landed, then scrambled under her wings and up her leg. Once I was clipped on and settled, she hunkered down, then launched into the air. The tracks continued on, cutting a straight line toward the mountains, though with all the rain, those tracks were now little more than a muddy streak through the sparse grasses and rocks that covered the area for miles. As the craggy shadow that was the Blue Steel Mountains grew larger on the horizon, I asked Kaia to rise. While any birds that accompanied the carts were likely to be grounded, given the riders didn’t seem to fly them in daylight hours unless they were the control birds—birds who had a device attached to one of their legs that allowed them to both communicate with their ridersandsee through the eyes of said riders—we knew from past experience they could still sense our presence from a good distance away. Besides, these bastards obviously had at least one mage with them. Caution had to prevail until we got a better idea of exactly what we were facing.
Kaia rose, and I once again deepened our connection. Even if our speed hadn’t made using the long viewer practically useless, the sheeting rain would have. Moisture seeped throughmy coat now, and I could feel the wetness across vast stretches of my shirt. Thankfully it was woolen, so I remained warm, even if more than a little uncomfortable. We really needed to find something better than oilskins to protect us on long, wet flights—and while we were at it, maybe we needed to add a fire resistance, too. Flame backwash hadn’t been much of a problem to date, but itwaspossible for these coats, soaked in oil and wax as they were, to catch and burn. What we desperately needed was gear suitable for all weather conditions. The layers I was currently wearing might be perfectly fine for the chillier seasons, but I’d basically boil in the long, warm months of summer... presuming, of course, we were all still around to enjoy that season.
As the craggy line of mountains became ever more dominant on the horizon, I spotted something glimmering in the distance. Fire. Or to be more precise, fire gleaming off gold.
We’d found their encampment.
We burn?
I rolled my eyes.Let’s see what they’re hauling first.
She made a soft grumbly sound that I both heard and felt and came in at the encampment from its western side—a side they perhaps might not expect, given we were from Esan, not Zephrine. They’d set up within a half-moon shaped cave—a leftover from Mareritten’s volcanic past, though time and weather had eroded many of them—with the wagons and the three birds providing a barrier at its entrance. The fire we’d glimpsed from afar had been set up near the entrance of the cave’s deep overhang and burned with an unnatural greenish glow—they might have been using wood collected from the nearby trees, but it’d been enhanced with magic.
Kaia, can you hover high above those carts?
She did so, each wing sweep causing brief swirls of rain that raced away from our position before disintegrating into the continuing downpour.
There were six carts in all, but even with the benefit of her sharper eyesight, it was hard to figure out what the large square shape tied onto each one was. I asked her to drop a little lower, then got out the long viewer, twisted the eye piece until the carts were in focus, then shaded the front of viewer with a hand to protect it from the rain.
The square shapes were baskets—large six-foot-square baskets with thick wooden frames and sides woven out of wide strips of leather. There was a brace in the middle of each anchoring a metal pole that appeared to be at least eight foot tall with a top ending in a T—one that was long enough for a couple of birds to roost on.... Realization dawned.
Oh, fuck.
These baskets had been designed to carry menoverthe mountains. Or rather, for the gilded birds to flytheirfoot soldiers over the mountains. That’s why they hadn’t yet attacked Esan—they were waiting to build their force up here in the Mareritten wastelands before they made the final push over the Blue Steel Mountains into Arleeon.
So why not carry them directly from K’Anor? That’s where they were obviously coming from. Surely it would have been easier than hauling the wagons through Mareritten... easier, but probably not safer. They’d know we were patrolling the eastern side of the Igna River on drakkon back now, so maybe it was simply a case of ensuring they were not seen in great numbers in the air until they were ready.
I shifted position on Kaia’s back and leaned to the left to get a better view of the birds. They were hunkered down and fluffed out—as much as metal feathers could fluff—against the rain, so I couldn’t see if they were wearing control bands.
But the three damn riders standing beside the flames were.
I swore softly but moved the viewer beyond them. There were at least two dozen other people down there, but the shadows were too deep to see if they were riders, Mareritt, or serfs. There were no coursers and no indication ofhowthey were moving the carts—unless of course, they were simply using manpower. I couldn’t see anyone resembling a mage but he—or perhaps even she—was obviously down there somewhere, given the color of the flames.
We attack?Kaia asked.
We attack. I tucked the long viewer away.But we’ll need to be fast.
Happiness rolled through our connection, then she dove so hard and fast that I was briefly thrown back. As the rope holding me on snapped taut, I hunkered down behind her spine to cut the wind and peered over the edge of her closely tucked wings. Watching the riders. Looking for their mage. His magic might not be able to harm us, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t create a physical barrier or cage of some kind, in much the same way as our earth and air mages could.
