The Road to Death

23

“This is madness,” Sallah said as Kandler reached down to help her up the last rungs of the ladder and onto the wooden platform that swayed high above the Wandering Inn. Looking down at the whole of the nomadic village splayed out below them in the soft light of the breaking dawn, he had to agree.

Few of the halflings had roused yet, but those who had rushed about the place as if Halpum had set fire to their loincloths. To the east, a massive threehorn lizard, already yoked to an even larger wagon, lowed soft and mournful, as if it yearned to charge free through the grassy, open plains. A pack of bridled clawfoots scratched at the hard-packed earth just beyond it, eager to be off. The Wandering Inn never stayed in one place for long, and already these beasts could sense it was time to go.

“How does this work again?” Xalt asked.

Kandler thought he detected a hint of fear in the warforged’s voice as he peered over the unrailed edge of the platform to where the ground spun fifty feet below. Even to the justicar, the set of long, thin poles that held them in the air seemed like they might snap like lengths of straw at any moment and send them tumbling to the unforgiving earth.

A westerly wind carrying the faint scent of the Mournland on it—the stale smell of a fresh-dug grave—swept through them, and the platform wavered again.

Brendis fell to his knees and clutched the wood beneath them, finding purchase on a leather strap nailed there for that purpose. “Humans aren’t meant to fly,” he said. “The airship was bad enough, but at least it was a ship. This,” he stared at the winged lizards waddling about at the platform’s northern edge, their leather collars lashed to it by short lengths of a rope so thin it only suggested that the creatures stay in place. “This is insane.”

“Fastest way to go,” Burch said. “Clawfoots might take three days to make Fort Bones. Glidewings can do it in one.” The shifter smiled at the discomfort of the others. “Just like riding a horse. Hold on tight. Don’t fall off.”

“It’s a bit more of a drop,” said Sallah.

“Hold on tighter.”

Burch busied himself helping Monja check the riggings on the massive creatures: long leather straps that ran over their shoulders and met other straps coming around their middles, holding in place a thin, molded saddle that rode just above where the wings met the body. One of the lizards stretched out its leathery wings, displaying a stunning wing-span that could have hidden a family of halflings beneath. It opened its long beaklike mouth, exposing rows of tiny, sharp teeth, and squawked at Monja as she tightened its harness.

“It’s all right, Swoop,” she said. “They’re not that big.” She turned to the others to explain. “They sense your fear. It makes them nervous.”

Brendis gulped but did not let go of his strap yet. Sallah steeled herself, resting her hand on the pommel of her new sword. It wasn’t one of the sacred, blazing blades of the Knights of the Silver Flame, but it beat out that black dagger of Te’oma’s, which rode on the lady knight’s other hip.

Halpum had outfitted Burch and his friends with all the food, drink, and weapons they could need. Despite his protests, Sallah had insisted on paying him with Thranite gold.

“Consider it my contribution to your cause,” he had said to her.

“This money comes not from your friends but from the coffers of the Silver Flame,” she said, pressing it into his hand.

“Well,” the lathon said with a smile as he accepted the gold, “why didn’t you say so?”

Kandler’s stomach warmed at the thought of not having to subsist on smoked horsemeat for the rest of the journey. He and the others had eaten well that morning, joining the lathon once more. Now it was time to go.

The justicar strode across the platform, feeling it sway under his feet, something like the way a ship moved in the ocean, or so he tried to tell himself. He stood next to Monja and waited for her to finish.

“You are ready?” she asked when she was finished checking over the last of the riggings.

“More than.”

The halfling shaman smiled and gestured for Kandler to climb onto the glidewing she had called Swoop. “Riding a glidewing is not quite like riding a horse,” she said, showing him the stirrups for his feet and the straps for his hands. “If you rode it sitting up, the winds might lift you right off its back. Instead, you must lean forward, lying on your face in the saddle.”

Kandler followed Monja’s instructions and ended up hugging Swoop from behind. His feet trailed behind him in the stirrups, and his hands wound into the straps atop the massive creature’s shoulders.

Even perched on the edge of the platform, Swoop stood taller than Kandler. As the justicar wrapped himself around the glidewing’s back, he realized that any creature he could ride would be able to snatch him right out of the plains if it wanted and carry him away to feast on his heart. He held the beast tighter. It had none of the warmth of a horse. In fact, its scales felt cool to his touch yet strong, like the grip of a good blade. He almost wondered if the thing was alive or perhaps some kind of magical construct like Xalt. Then he felt it breathe—like a cold bellows gobbling air and then blasting it back out. The sensation startled him but comforted him at the same time. If he had to risk his life in the air, he wanted to be on the back of a living thing.

“Why do we need to take off from here?” Kandler asked as Monja helped the others into their riggings one by one. “With wings like these, can’t the glidewings just flap into the air?”

“If they had to,” Monja said as she returned to tighten a safety strap around Kandler’s middle, lashing him to Swoop’s back. “Glidewings aren’t meant to carry people, especially ones as big as you. They normally take off by waddling down a hill until they get enough air under them to catch some sky. From there, they’re the most graceful things you’ve ever seen. On the ground, though, they’re worse than hobbled ducks.”

The shaman patted the back of Kandler’s hand. “Once you’re in the air, you use these to steer. Pull left to go left, and right to go right. Pull back to go up, and push forward to go down. If the glidewing starts fighting you, trust it. It knows how to fly much better than you.”

“Once we’re in the air?” Xalt asked from atop his own glidewing. The thing squawked as he squeezed it a bit too hard. “How do we get ‘in the air’?”

Monja smiled. “With luck, you’ll find out in a moment.”

The others secured to her satisfaction, the young shaman climbed atop the last of the glidewings. This one seemed to know her, reaching back to nuzzle her cheek with the top of its long, pointed head as she mounted it. As she rubbed its beak, Kandler noticed that she hadn’t bothered to strap herself to the creature. She perched in her saddle light and easy, looking as if she’d been born to ride such a beast. Perhaps she had.

“Just hold on and follow me,” she called to the others as her mount waddled up to the edge of the platform, its long talons scratching deep scars into the wood.

“Do we have a choice?” Kandler asked.

“Not unless you want to die,” Monja said.

Her glidewing leaped about a foot into the air and a couple of feet forward, not quite enough to clear the platform. It smacked its tail on the edge, slapping the platform back a couple of feet, and then it disappeared as it plummeted toward the earth far below. For a half-second, Kandler thought the platform would tip over and dump all of them onto the ground with it, but it righted itself soon after.

As the justicar clutched Swoop’s scaly, muscled neck, the breath rushing in and out of it like air through a blowgun, Monja’s winged reptile flung itself high into the air. Its long-stretched wings caught the air and sunlight in them and rode them both higher and higher into the sky.

Kandler watched for a moment, his own breath stopped cold in his chest. Then he gasped as the flying lizard rolled all the way around to the right until Monja—who’d been dangling free and unstrapped from its back, high over the Wandering Inn and the open plains beyond—sat upright in its saddle again, the western winds whipping through her long, sun-bleached hair.

Kandler started to wonder why she could ignore the advice she’d given the others to lean low on their mounts, but when she wheeled about in the sky and skated back through the air toward them, the sheer joy in her face told him why. Before he could marvel at it any more, though, she wound her fist in the air over her head and jabbed it forward.

As one, the remaining glidewings waddle-rushed for the edge of the platform, the entire thing shaking like a leaf in the wind as they went, then leaped off into the open air.

As Kandler stifled the urge to scream, a war whoop rang in his ears, a howl of triumph and delight that he later recognized as Burch’s voice. At that instant, though, he could think of nothing else but the bright-colored tops of the tents of the Wandering Inn rushing up at him at lethal speed.

Swoop stretched its wings wide, and the rushing wind caught in them and pushed them back from the ground, away from the tents and from certain death. For a frozen moment, Swoop and Kandler seemed to hang there in the air, caught like an insect in amber between two worlds. Then the wind grabbed Swoop’s wings and shoved them flying into the sky.

Kandler had flown before on the airship, but the two experiences didn’t compare. The airship handled like a boat in the water. It felt like one when you walked over it. If you stood in the center of it, you could imagine that you sailed along through the ocean rather than the sky. He understood that sensation. It made sense.

The glidewing pitched and bucked through the air enough to make Kandler glad he was strapped to it. Racing along on a horse galloping at top speed over rough land, hoping the thing wouldn’t find a hole, break a leg, and spill over on top of you as it fell—he would have preferred that.

As the momentum from the dive off the platform played out, Swoop settled into the winds and began a slow, steady climb to the north. Kandler’s internal organs all fell back into their places, and he felt like he could breathe again. He looked around to see all of his companions—friends, even, they’d been through so much already—stable atop their own flying beasts.

Burch and Xalt rode the winds to Kandler’s left while Sallah and Brendis sailed along at his right. He craned his neck around looking for Monja, who came zooming in from behind on her own glidewing to take the point and lead them all into the great unknown that spread out before them.

“Next stop,” the tiny shaman shouted, “Fort Bones!”