“Likari is part of my goal. But I have a larger ambition.”
“And what is that?” she asked, her voice cooling. I could almost read her thoughts. That the first time, he and his raid on Gettys had done nothing toward getting her son back. She did not want him to have any greater plan now, only to focus solely on getting Likari back.
He took a breath but before he could reply, he was distracted by the sounds of heavy wings beating overhead. A croaker bird’s descending flight is nothing like an owl’s. The creature did not alight in the branches overhead so much as use one to break his fall as he came down. The branch bobbed under his weight, and for a time, he kept his wide wings out, balancing himself until he had dug his claws firmly into his perch. When he was settled, he folded his wings in and spent a few moments fussily settling his pinions. Only when he was finished did he stretch his long ugly neck out and turn his head sideways so that one eye pointed straight down at me. He opened his beak, and to me it appeared that he silently laughed.
“Has something died nearby?” Olikea wondered aloud. “What brings a carrion bird here?”
Orandula laughed aloud then, raucous caws in succession that split through the endless drumbeat of Kinrove’s dance. Soldier’s Boy refused to look at him any longer, but transferred his gaze to the guards staring at his treasure.
“Who chooses first?” one of the guards demanded of him.
“Don’t ask him! He cannot choose at all!” the croaker bird called down. The words were perfectly clear to me and Soldier’s Boy scowled at them, but Olikea didn’t appear to notice that the bird had spoken.
“Who chooses first?” the guard asked again. I think that his question annoyed Soldier’s Boy, for he abruptly replied, “He does!” and pointed to the other fellow.
The first guard was unperturbed. “Well, let me know what you choose, so I can decide which I want,” he told his partner.
“I’m thinking!” the other man replied testily.
“Let me know what you choose, so I can decide which I want!” the bird echoed him overhead. He followed his words with his sinister cawing laughter. I heard Soldier’s Boy grind his teeth.
Then the runner appeared around the bend in the trail. He ran fleetly and was grinning as if he bore rare good news. He came to a halt and said to the guards, “You may admit them. Kinrove is ready to receive them. He will open the barrier, but only to those two!” He raised his voice to convey those final tidings. The other supplicants had drawn near to hear the runner’s words. They muttered and milled, but did not look likely to make any attempts to breach the defenses.
“How will we know when we may pass?” Olikea wondered aloud, but before her words were finished, she knew. From repelling us, the force suddenly pressed us forward. Soldier’s Boy stopped to gather his swag, then caught Olikea by the hand and led her through with him. Above our heads, the carrion bird suddenly cackled loudly and, with noisily flapping wings, followed us.
“You said I could choose first!” the one guard reminded Soldier’s Boy.
“So I did,” he replied, and once more lowered the blanket. The two guards were not slow to claim their prizes. The runner, who had had less time to gawk at the riches, took longer, but eventually settled on a heavy silver medallion of a running deer on a silver chain. He looped it around his neck immediately and seemed very pleased with it.
“Follow me,” he invited us, and added, “Kinrove will quick-walk us now.”
The promised quick-walk began with a sickening lurch, and proceeded at a speed I’d never known before. In three steps, we stood in Kinrove’s summer encampment. The noise of the endless drumming and the seemingly random blatting of the horns were well-nigh unbearable here. The circle of dancers was smaller than it had been the first time we saw it. It still wove through a village of tents established around a larger pavilion. That surprised me; I had seen few tents at our kin-clan’s summer settlement. But there were many ways in which his village seemed more permanent: the dancers had trodden a trail of bare packed earth through the tents; neatly stacked firewood in a rick waited next to a stone oven near a well-tended cook fire on a stone-based hearth; fish was smoking nearby over another fire, and a platform of poles held ready caches of smoked meats and fish.
Kinrove’s tent was on a raised dais; it was the same pavilion I had seen before, simply moved to this location. Four men stood watch outside it and they were armed with bows, not spears or swords. They had watched our quick-walk approach, and I perceived what an advantage this had given them over us. Kinrove had learned. I did not think that anyone would ever again be able to surprise him in his stronghold.