Taking Flight loe-5 Read online

  The stranger nodded, and continued, unperturbed. “There are bandits in these hills, and they have been known to use several tricks and ruses. Accordingly, we cannot trust anyone we meet here — and most particularly, not a person like yourself, who clearly has great magic at her command. So while we mean no harm to anyone, if you approach again the guards will do their best to kill you.”

  “Kill me?” Irith squeaked. “But I’m Irith the Flyer! Everyone on the Great Highway knows me! And this is Kelder, and he’s harmless!”

  The horseman shrugged, palm up. “Perhaps you are what you say,” he said, “but we will not risk it. I’m sorry.”

  Before Irith could say anything more, he turned and snapped the reins, sending his horse cantering back toward the departing wagons.

  Irith blinked, then turned to Kelder, furious.

  “They can’t treat us like that!” she said.

  Kelder shrugged. “Why not?” he asked. Almost immediately, however, he regretted the words — a reaction like that was not going to impress anyone. He didn’t want Irith to consider him a coward.

  “They don’t own the highway!” Irith shouted. “We can pass them if we like!”

  Kelder reluctantly shook his head — appearances or no, and even if it meant an accusation of cowardice, common sense was on the side of caution. “It’s not right,” he said, “nor fair, but I wouldn’t try it. There are an awful lot of them.”

  Irith looked at the wagons for a moment, considering, and then stuck out her tongue. “Who needs them, anyway?” she said. “And did you notice that weird smell?”

  “What smell?” Kelder asked, startled. The only odors he had detected were those of dust and horses.

  “That sour smell,” Irith said. “When the horseman rode up just now. The whole caravan smells like that. Didn’t you notice?”

  “I didn’t smell anything,” Kelder said, puzzled. “Except horse,” he added, for the sake of accuracy, “and maybe sweaty leather.”

  “Well, then your nose doesn’t work,” Irith retorted, “because the whole caravan stinks.”

  “I didn’t smell anything,” Kelder repeated.

  Irith considered for a moment, then announced, “They stink, anyway. Who needs them?”

  Relieved, Kelder smiled, and she smiled back, and the two of them walked on, following the caravan at a safe distance of roughly two hundred yards.

  Chapter Five

  “How is it there are so many bandits in Angarossa?” Kelder asked, as they trudged onward. They had been following the caravan for hours; it was still ahead of them, and in fact moving a little more slowly than they ordinarily did, but leaving the highway to pass it did not strike the pair as worth the effort. Instead, they had slowed down, giving Kelder more time to think. “Why here, and not other kingdoms?”

  “Because of King Caren, silly,” Irith replied.

  Kelder blinked. “Who?” he asked.

  “King Caren,” Irith repeated. “The king of Angarossa.”

  “Oh,” Kelder said, trying to see if he was missing some obvious explanation. He didn’t see that he was. “What does he have to do with it?” he asked. “Is he a bad king, or something?”

  “Not as far as the bandits are concerned,” Irith said with a grin.

  “I mean,” Kelder said, slightly annoyed at the girl’s attitude, “is he particularly bad at running the country?”

  “And I mean,” Irith replied, still grinning mockingly, “that it depends on whether you look at it from the point of view of a caravan master or a bandit.”

  “You’re the one being silly, then,” Kelder retorted. “It’s part of a king’s duties to stop banditry.” He might not know as much of the World as Irith did, but he knew that much.

  “Well, in that case,” Irith answered, turning more or less serious, “King Caren’s an absolutely rotten king, because he doesn’t see it that way.”

  “He doesn’t?” Kelder said, startled.

  “No, he doesn’t. As long as the bandits pay their taxes, King Caren doesn’t bother them.”

  “Taxes?” This conversation was, in Kelder’s opinion, becoming very strange indeed. He wondered if Irith were teasing him somehow, but that didn’t seem likely. He didn’t think she could lie that well. “Do bandits pay taxes?” he asked.

  “In Angarossa, they do,” Irith explained, “if they don’t want the king’s men to hunt them down and kill them.”

  “They pay taxes?” The concept still didn’t seem to make sense.

  “One-eighth of everything they steal,” Irith assured him.

  “But...” He groped for an intelligent response, and found none.

  “Pretty rotten, isn’t it?” Irith said, with a grin.

  “It’s... it’s...” It was plain that there were wonders in the World that had nothing to do with mysteries or magic, and were nothing he’d care to brag about seeing when he got home. He struggled for something to say.

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” Irith said, smiling.

  Kelder stopped trying to find words to express his appalled amazement, and Irith explained.

  “King Caren’s greedy,” she said. “I guess most kings are. Anyway, when he came to the throne, the kingdom was broke, so he tried to raise money. Angarossa hasn’t got a lot going for it — it’s not good farmland, the weather’s pretty bad, there’s nothing worth mining, and the army didn’t amount to much. About the only thing in the kingdom that’s worth anything is the Great Highway, so King Caren tried to impose tolls.”

  Kelder needed a moment to remember the word “toll,” but did eventually figure it out. “That makes sense,” he admitted.

  “Yes,” Irith agreed, “but only if people pay the tolls. The merchants wouldn’t pay. They all traveled in big caravans, like the one up ahead, and when two or three guards tried to stop them at the border and collect a toll, the merchants would just laugh and march right on past, and if the soldiers tried to stop them, the caravan’s own guards would beat the toll collectors to pulp. So King Caren threatened to march his entire army out to the highway to collect the tolls.”

  “What happened?”

  “The merchants sent a delegation to Castle Angarossa to negotiate, and told King Caren that they’d never paid any tolls here before and didn’t want to now, and they didn’t pay any tolls in Yondra or Amramion or Sinodita, and why couldn’t he make his money by taxing the innkeepers and farmers, like everybody else? And besides, at the time there was this bandit named Telar the Red who was causing trouble, and the merchants said that if they had to pay to use the highway, at the very least the king ought to make it safer to use, and get rid of Telar.”

  The story was not particularly fascinating, but watching Irith was, and listening to her voice was, as well. Kelder nodded encouragement, and Irith continued.

  “So King Caren got an agreement from the merchants that if he captured or killed Telar the Red, and got rid of his bandits, then the merchants would pay a toll, a small one. And he sent out his army, and they tracked down Telar and caught him — and Telar offered them money to let him go again.”

  “Did they take it?” Kelder asked, since she seemed to expect a reaction.

  “No,” Irith said. “They were too scared of the king, because everybody knew he had a really nasty temper, and if the story got out he would probably have them all disemboweled. Instead they took Telar back to the king, and Telar offered King Caren the money — and the king thought about it, and saw that the money was more than he’d get in a year of collecting tolls from merchants, and that Telar was a lot easier to deal with than the merchants, so he took it. And other bandits heard about this, and it looked like a good deal.” Irith shrugged, fingers spread. “So there still aren’t any tolls in Angarossa, but there are plenty of bandits.”

  Kelder thought this over for a moment, then said, “That’s ridiculous. Why do the merchants put up with it?”

  “Well, some of them don’t want to,” Irith admitted. “They’ve been talking about bu
ilding a new highway, south of Angarossa, through Shimillion and Omanon. It would be a lot longer, though, and so far most people settle for hiring guards, or bringing magicians along.”

  “Couldn’t they offer to pay tolls, if King Caren would get rid of the bandits?”

  Irith shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said.

  They walked on silently as Kelder considered the notion of a king who could be corrupted so easily by mere money. Kings were supposed to protect their people, weren’t they?

  But then, the merchants weren’t really King Caren’s people, were they? They were foreigners passing through, while the bandits lived in the country. Did that mean that other kings were actually betraying their people by stamping out banditry?

  No, that was silly — but why was it silly?

  He struggled with the whole question for some time, mulling it over as the afternoon wore on and the sun descended to the west, and he finally worked it out.

  Banditry helped the bandits, in the short run, but it hurt the innkeepers and the local merchants by stealing money that the caravans might have spent in town. And in the long run, it might mean re-routing the highway, which would hurt everybody, Angarossan or otherwise.

  Besides, how could the king be sure that the bandits would only rob or kill foreigners?

  So King Caren ought to stop the bandits.

  “There’s that smell again,” Irith said, interrupting his thought.

  “What smell?” he asked, startled.

  “That funny sour smell that the caravan has.”

  Kelder sniffed.

  “I still don’t smell anything,” he said.

  “It’s there,” Irith insisted.

  “Maybe the wind shifted,” Kelder suggested.

  Irith abruptly had wings, and flapped them tentatively.

  “No,” she said. “The wind’s still from the northwest.”

  Her wings vanished again.

  “You really don’t smell it?” she asked.

  “No,” Kelder admitted, “I really don’t.”

  “It’s very strong now.”

  “I don’t smell it. Maybe it’s something magical? Something only girls can smell?”

  Irith frowned, an expression that Kelder found comic and endearing; he resisted the temptation to grab her and forget all about mysterious odors, hostile caravans, deranged kings, and so forth.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I never heard of anything like that.”

  Kelder could think of nothing more to say; he could smell nothing but dust and grass and the leavings of the caravan’s draft animals. He looked about, trying to think of another subject to take up and to distract himself from Irith’s charms.

  Something caught his eye, far out on the horizon.

  “What’s that?” he said, pointing.

  Irith’s gaze followed his outstretched finger, but she didn’t need to answer; it was plain now what Kelder had spotted.

  A line of horsemen was charging down over the low ridge to the north of the highway, sweeping down toward the caravan.

  “Bandits!” Irith exclaimed, and her wings were back. Before Kelder could say anything to calm her she was aloft, flying up out of danger.

  Kelder had no such convenient escape, but he saw no need for one. He was no more than a neutral observer, after all — neither the bandits nor the caravan had any reason to harm him. He stood his ground and watched.

  The idea of watching a battle was both alluring and repulsive — it would certainly be something to tell everyone back in Shulara, but at the same time he didn’t want to see anyone hurt or killed. They were going to be hurt or killed whether he watched or not, however, so he stared intently.

  The horsemen had swords drawn, their blades glittering in the sun. They were shouting, though Kelder could make out no words. The caravan could hardly help but see them now, and the guards and merchants were running around madly, the horses whinnying in dismay at the excitement, the oxen plodding stolidly on undisturbed, or stopping if their drivers remembered to rein them in, or if they came too close to the wagon in front.

  It seemed to Kelder, from what he had heard of such affairs, that certain things should be happening. The caravan guards should be forming a defensive line, or a ring, or something, while the merchants and other noncombatants should be taking shelter — but that didn’t seem to be what was happening. Instead, people were rushing back and forth along the line of wagons, while others, including most of the guards, were gathering along the south side of the wagons, away from the approaching riders.

  “Look!” Irith called from above, her word barely discernable above the hubbub of shouting, babbling voices, rattling equipage, and drumming hooves. She pointed.

  Kelder looked.

  A man in a black robe had climbed atop one of the big wagons, and was rising to his feet, standing on the wagon’s roof. He was shouting aloud, and even over the general din his voice seemed to cut like a hard wind.

  The words, though, were like nothing Kelder had ever heard before. They were no language he recognized — and no language he wanted to recognize. They were harsh, alien sounds that had no right to emerge from a human throat.

  The bandits were almost to the row of wagons now; their original neat line had broken as the faster horses pulled ahead and the slower lagged. The foremost attackers were reining in, rather than barreling straight on into the sides of the wagons, or charging past their objective entirely.

  The battle was about to be joined when the first black thing popped out of the ground.

  At first Kelder wasn’t sure what he had seen, but then others appeared, so fast that he couldn’t say where the second or third had emerged; there were none, there was one, and then there were hundreds, faster than he could react, a sea of them springing up from under the caravan. Like water from a fountain, they came from beneath the wagon where the man in black stood, still chanting.

  They were shorter than people, perhaps three or four feet tall, but as broad across the shoulders as most men. Their limbs were crooked, but clearly powerful. Their bare skin and shaggy, unkempt hair were black or dark gray. They wore no armor, and for that matter no clothing, but charged into the fray naked — but not unarmed. Axes, swords, knives, sticks, weapons of every kind were clutched in their misshapen hands, the blades as naked as the creatures that wielded them.

  And the creatures’ faces were truly hideous. Great staring white eyes, noses like blades or blobs or broken rock, mouths that gaped in enormous yawning grins, full of jagged yellow teeth — Kelder was very glad he was no closer, and could not make out all the details. He had never seen anything so ghastly.

  At least, not until the fighting began.

  The creatures made no distinction between man and mount; it seemed they would gleefully hack at anything that moved that came within reach and was not a part of the caravan. Horses screamed in agony as the axes and knives chopped at their legs and flanks; they fell, and their riders screams joined their own.

  “Demons!” Irith called from overhead. “The man in black’s a demonologist!”

  That made sense to Kelder. It also sent a shudder through him, and he began backing away. He wanted to turn and run, but the idea of turning his back on those horrors was at least as bad as being this close to them.

  Wasn’t demonology illegal? Weren’t all demons banished from the physical world hundreds of years ago, when the Great War ended? How could this be happening?

  He watched in horrid fascination.

  One of the demon-things spotted a new target, but this one happened to be one of the merchants who had accompanied the caravan; the creature leapt toward her, then stopped, as if in mid-jump, and turned away, holding its nose.

  Enlightenment burst upon Kelder. The smell Irith had insisted she smelled — it was real, it was magical, and it protected the caravan from the demons!

  But why could Irith smell it, and not himself? Was it because she was a creature of magic, like the demons, while he was a merely o
rdinary human being?

  That had to be it — but this was no time to worry about it, when the hideous spectacle before him yet continued.

  Some of the bandits had tried to turn and flee, but none had gotten more than a few yards before dozens of the creatures were upon them. Then the last of the bandits was down, but the demon-things did not stop; they continued hacking and hacking, knives and axes rising and falling, as blood sprayed and spattered. They gibbered and shrieked in an inhuman chorus as they chopped and stabbed, until the caravan’s own people were cowering in terror, retreating southward away from the highway, as the creatures reveled in the destruction they had wrought.

  The entire battle had lasted only a few seconds. It had happened much too fast for the reality, the horror of it all to sink in.

  “Eeeww,” Irith said loudly, somewhere above Kelder’s head. “Gross!”

  Half a dozen of the demons heard that, turned toward her, and saw her.

  And below her, they saw Kelder.

  Chapter Six

  Kelder began to back away more quickly; above him he heard a strangled squeak, and the beating of wings fading into the distance, and then nothing.

  The demon-things were grinning at him, and making weird whooping noises. Then one began to run toward him, axe raised, and a second followed, waving a short sword. The black-robed man atop the wagon was waving his arms and chanting again, and Kelder took an instant to wonder why before he turned and started running for his life.

  The demons came shrieking after him as he fled, the noise growing closer with every step he took — until it abruptly stopped.

  The total silence was so astonishing that he stumbled and fell. His arms came up instinctively, shielding his face; he curled into a ball and rolled in the dust of the highway, waiting for the first blade to cut him, the first club to batter him.

  Nothing happened.

  Carefully, he opened his eyes, lifted an arm from his face.

  There was the caravan; the man in black was climbing down from his perch, and the merchants and guards were returning to their places, preparing to move on.