Sons of the Oak

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.

Shadoath backed up, then raced along the bridge toward the fortress. Ahead, a portion of it had been cut away. Sixty feet of rope bridge now dangled uselessly to the stones below. But with her endowments of speed and brawn, Shadoath sprinted up to a speed of ninety miles per hour, then leapt high in the air, seeming almost to glide across the span as she hit the bridge on the far side.

Ahead, a wooden door was locked, a bar wedged across the inside.

Shadoath slammed a mailed fist into it, shattering the bar. The door fell open, and Shadoath entered the fortress.

She found harnesses and bridles inside a crude tack room, then came out.

The graaks were nesting, each of them sitting in a bowl formed from sticks and soft seaweed. They rested atop leathery sand-colored eggs with flecks of brown and white.

The mother graaks could not be coaxed from their nests, Shadoath knew. They were good mothers. But the males could be tempted. They were used to hunting for food for their mates at this time of the year, and quickly grew restless.

She found a nest that still had a pair of graaks, and then bridled the male.

She peeled off her mail, left it lying in the nest.

Shadoath was a petite woman, not much heavier than a child. She’d be able to ride a graak for a few miles at a hop.

She leapt upon its back, and urged it into the sky. It leapt forward clumsily, the branches in its nest crunching and snapping under their combined weight. At last it launched forward over the edge of the nest.

It seemed to fall a dozen feet before its wings caught the air and it lumbered upward.

The graak was small for a male, and Shadoath could feel it strain as its leather wings flapped heavily, gaining purchase in the sky.

Then it was airborne.

She aimed it to the east, let it fly above the ocean for a moment, and above the trees, giving it its head.

My mount may have seen which way the children went, Shadoath thought. It knows the paths in the sky. Let’s see if he will lead me to their hideout.

To her delight, the graak thundered toward the trees for a few minutes, then dove toward a broad expanse, a place where limbs and branches had been cleared, creating a hidden flyway.

She was hot on Fallion’s trail.