with this year’s offspring, lines of pheasants and quail poked around the tough bushes clinging to the highlands, and in the lower, damper parts ducks abounded.
Had Wistala been traveling for pleasure, rather than with dispatch, she would have gone south along the coastline of the Inland Ocean. She had friends in the Hypatian north, and it would be nice to see how the descendants of Yari-tab were getting along at the Green Dragon Inn in the old village where she’d grown up under the protection of Rainfall, the old elf gentleman who kept the great bridge and highway in repair. Perhaps she would find time to visit one of the Hypatian Libraries and meet students seeking to become sages and experts—she still held the title of “Librarian” for collecting some of the works of NooMoahk the Black in her hunt for AuRon.
But Yefkoa was on a mission and could not afford to lose days in that manner.
The plains held their own interest for her. She’d never traveled this route south before, though she had taken shorter flights out of the Sadda-Vale to keep herself in training, hunt, and take a break from Scabia’s conversation.
Wistala had explored the lands of the nomadic Ironriders decades ago in her hunt for AuRon and she wondered if the changes she marked now were some seasonal variation or a sign of plague or catastrophe. Before, she’d observed masses of the Ironriders in movement, flowing on their horses like a brown stain across the landscape, with shaggy and woolly herds surrounding the mass of riding and trudging mankind.
This time, the herds were reduced to a few poor animals closely watched by children just outside tents and huts set up out of the wind in some hard-to-find notch in the earth.
The shining armor, the bright, proud pennants, the songs from the tall riders in their woolly, tower-shaped hats—all gone, apparently. Once these warriors had grown such long and cultivated mustaches coated in shining, perfumed fats that they could be seen from the air; now the men were shaggy and unkempt.
Wistala tipped her wings and banked, closing up on Yefkoa, who fell in behind the vastly larger Wistala, riding the air off her wing.
“Aren’t these the lands of the Ironriders?” Wistala asked.
“You would know better than I,” Yefkoa said. “I believe so.”
“Are they off fighting somewhere?”
“The Ironriders? No. The Hypatians took—oh, you don’t know about the great raids.”
“No.”
“It was mostly the Aerial Host with Hypatian troops. They hunted down the Ironrider bands, fought the warriors and made thralls of the rest. They’re mostly gone, but some dwarfish slavers still hunt the area. They bring the thralls to Wallander and sell them to us.”
That struck Wistala as nasty work. She could understand making slaves of a vanquished army—part of the chance one took in setting out on war—but to hunt hominids like wild animals solely to enslave them . . . that led to what? An empty land reverting to wildness. No trade, no camps full of song and the shrieks of children at play.
“How far until Wallander, Yefkoa? These steppes are depressing me.”
“We should reach it tomorrow, I think. The ground is more broken now as we approach the river. I understand your dislike for this country. It makes me feel like the only presence in the world, too. Or that someone is watching me.”
Wistala had no love for the Ironriders—she’d won some distinction among the Firemaids and the Tyr’s dragons fighting them, as a matter of fact. But she couldn’t help feeling that some continent-spanning wrong had been committed and that sooner or later the crime would demand atonement.
The crickets in Wallander were happy in the balmy spring evening. Yefkoa and Wistala had their wings partly spread out, carefully massaging hot muscles, cleaning wing skin, and flexing and contracting tender tendons to distinguish injury from exhaustion.
It felt good to be with a female close to her own mind.
Had Wistala been traveling for pleasure, rather than with dispatch, she would have gone south along the coastline of the Inland Ocean. She had friends in the Hypatian north, and it would be nice to see how the descendants of Yari-tab were getting along at the Green Dragon Inn in the old village where she’d grown up under the protection of Rainfall, the old elf gentleman who kept the great bridge and highway in repair. Perhaps she would find time to visit one of the Hypatian Libraries and meet students seeking to become sages and experts—she still held the title of “Librarian” for collecting some of the works of NooMoahk the Black in her hunt for AuRon.
But Yefkoa was on a mission and could not afford to lose days in that manner.
The plains held their own interest for her. She’d never traveled this route south before, though she had taken shorter flights out of the Sadda-Vale to keep herself in training, hunt, and take a break from Scabia’s conversation.
Wistala had explored the lands of the nomadic Ironriders decades ago in her hunt for AuRon and she wondered if the changes she marked now were some seasonal variation or a sign of plague or catastrophe. Before, she’d observed masses of the Ironriders in movement, flowing on their horses like a brown stain across the landscape, with shaggy and woolly herds surrounding the mass of riding and trudging mankind.
This time, the herds were reduced to a few poor animals closely watched by children just outside tents and huts set up out of the wind in some hard-to-find notch in the earth.
The shining armor, the bright, proud pennants, the songs from the tall riders in their woolly, tower-shaped hats—all gone, apparently. Once these warriors had grown such long and cultivated mustaches coated in shining, perfumed fats that they could be seen from the air; now the men were shaggy and unkempt.
Wistala tipped her wings and banked, closing up on Yefkoa, who fell in behind the vastly larger Wistala, riding the air off her wing.
“Aren’t these the lands of the Ironriders?” Wistala asked.
“You would know better than I,” Yefkoa said. “I believe so.”
“Are they off fighting somewhere?”
“The Ironriders? No. The Hypatians took—oh, you don’t know about the great raids.”
“No.”
“It was mostly the Aerial Host with Hypatian troops. They hunted down the Ironrider bands, fought the warriors and made thralls of the rest. They’re mostly gone, but some dwarfish slavers still hunt the area. They bring the thralls to Wallander and sell them to us.”
That struck Wistala as nasty work. She could understand making slaves of a vanquished army—part of the chance one took in setting out on war—but to hunt hominids like wild animals solely to enslave them . . . that led to what? An empty land reverting to wildness. No trade, no camps full of song and the shrieks of children at play.
“How far until Wallander, Yefkoa? These steppes are depressing me.”
“We should reach it tomorrow, I think. The ground is more broken now as we approach the river. I understand your dislike for this country. It makes me feel like the only presence in the world, too. Or that someone is watching me.”
Wistala had no love for the Ironriders—she’d won some distinction among the Firemaids and the Tyr’s dragons fighting them, as a matter of fact. But she couldn’t help feeling that some continent-spanning wrong had been committed and that sooner or later the crime would demand atonement.
The crickets in Wallander were happy in the balmy spring evening. Yefkoa and Wistala had their wings partly spread out, carefully massaging hot muscles, cleaning wing skin, and flexing and contracting tender tendons to distinguish injury from exhaustion.
It felt good to be with a female close to her own mind.
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