Wings Over Talera - Charles Allen Gramlich [88]
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
WINGS OVER THE JUNGLE
Outward I leaped, from the pyramid into the sky, with Bryce held like a child in my arms. Downward we hurtled—five feet, ten feet—with the wind shrilling cold around us. But I had timed my jump, had tried to time it, to the movement of the saddle birds racing by in formations.
Beneath us swept a troop of hesperns, those massive birds which are primarily used as transports and which compare in size to a vullwing or a sabrun like a Clydesdale compares to a Shetland pony. From inside the pyramid I’d seen them coming, a dozen of them. We struck one.
The hespern’s rider had not heard or seen us, did not know what was about to happen as I drew my legs up and hit him in the shoulders with my knees. He was snapped forward brutally over the neck of the bird. Bryce smashed down across the man’s back as I grabbed desperately for a hold on something.
The impact of our falling bodies seemed to collapse the hespern for a moment. It dropped sickeningly beneath us. Bryce slid down the rider’s back, slammed into my chest and knocked me further along the bird’s broad, piebald flanks. My right foot slid out over the void; my hands scrabbled, clawed, caught one of the tough leather straps of the saddle. That strap stretched. But held.
Bryce’s unconscious body slipped past me, nearly jolting my hands loose from the saddle strap as he tumbled off the side of the bird and was jerked up hard by the scabbard-hooks linking our belts. The bird had nearly recovered itself, but now its right side took a sudden dip. It gave a terrified squawk as its left wing beat wildly at the air to balance the weight differential. I was jerked further out to the right side of the bird’s body, the tendons straining like living wires in my arms. Bryce hung from my waist, dangling over emptiness.
The hespern’s rider groaned. I’d thought the impact of Bryce and I crashing down upon him must have snapped his spine, but it seemed we’d only stunned him. If he saw us now.... One quick slice of his knife through the strap that I held and all would be over but our fall.
I lurched forward, on my belly along the back of the bird. Other saddle birds swept past us, their riders gawking at what had appeared suddenly in their midst. I ignored them, got both my hands over the saddle’s extended rear cantle, pulled myself up to my knees by main strength. With quivering arms, I dragged Bryce up beside me.
The hespern had lost some altitude but had fought its way back to level flight and was starting to circle, venting a plaintive call as it sought to locate its formation. So far, everyone was leaving us alone, too startled to know how to react. That couldn’t last. In moments we’d be recognized for enemies and crossbows would be turned loose to raven us.
Then the hespern’s rider sat up, coming suddenly back to full awareness. As he started to turn, still not realizing exactly what had happened, I snapped one arm around his neck from behind. He jerked in shock and grabbed with both hands at my elbow. That left my other hand free to snake down and whip his belt dagger from its sheath.
The rider had his head half turned toward me within the lock of my choke hold. The whites of his eyes glistened. He saw me lift the dagger and flailed for my wrist with one hand to keep the blade from his throat. But it wasn’t his throat I wanted.
I slashed down with the blade alongside his hips, slicing through the ties that all bird riders use to keep them in their seats. The man gasped, realizing too late what I planned as I twisted hard with my other arm and threw him off the side of his own mount. The sky took him. I didn’t hear him scream.
I thrust myself down into the bird’s saddle, dragged Bryce up and unhooked his belt from mine to loop it tight over the pommel horn. I reached for the cut ties to knot them around me, but the shadows of two vullwings raced past and when I glanced up I saw they were circling, coming back toward me with emerald sunlight lancing from their javelins and bows.
Forgetting about tying myself