David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

Zeus hesitated, eased his stance. He’d decided to wait.

So we wait , Gallen thought. Yet he wondered at the reason behind Zeus’s show of aggression . He doesn’t trust me to bring in the Qualeewoohs , Gallen knew. But something more seemed to be going on.

Gallen took the helm, brought the ship down, keeping the Qualeewoohs in sight. The ship bounced as it pounded through air currents, shaking the cameras.

In moments the Seeker screamed up behind the prey.

When the Qualeewoohs sensed the pill-shaped Seeker on their tails, the birds split-one right, one left-and hurtled to a small hillock crested by standing stones.

“Quarry identification is positive,” the ship’s AI whispered, its deep voice filling the helm.

The Seeker followed the Qualeewooh that had split right. Winging toward a cleft in the rocks, the Qualeewooh spun in the air, folding its wings to make the narrow escape.

The Seeker, traveling at just under ninety kilometers an hour, could not match the bird’s deft maneuver. It slammed into a stone abutment and exploded into a fireball.

In seconds Gallen’s ship reached the site. The Qualeewoohs dived into the rocks, seeking shelter in a crevice. On the barren plain beyond this rock pile, Gallen didn’t see so much as a bush or gully for a kilometer. He’d cornered the Qualeewoohs.

Gallen reached into his pack, pulled out the Qualeewooh translator Felph had given him, and hooked it to the voice mike he’d been carrying ever since he’d confronted the Lords of the Sixth Swarm on dronon.

That done, Gallen opened the ship’s hatch and called, “You two in the rocks, come out.” His voice rang as if with a shout, echoing back from the stone walls below.

Gallen waited, but the Qualeewoohs didn’t emerge from hiding. He repeated the order.

After a full minute, he looked over at Orick and. Maggie. “I guess I’ll have to go get them. Anyone want to follow?”

He didn’t want Maggie to come, felt relieved when she declined. Orick said, “They won’t be so afraid if you meet them alone. Maybe it should just be you who is talking to them.”

“Good point,” Gallen said.

Zeus immediately grumbled, “I’m coming, too.”

Maggie lowered the ship a meter from the ground, and Gallen climbed down, followed by Zeus. The hillock stood no more than sixty meters high, yet Gallen found it a rough climb up the huge stone slabs, leaping from foothold to foothold. He stretched his senses, let his mantle magnify incoming sounds. Everything was still. He ordered the mantle’s motion detectors to kick in.

He wasn’t afraid. Instead he felt coiled, ready. He’d hunted more dangerous prey. Yet the Qualeewoohs couldn’t be ignored as a threat. One had mastered the art of aerial decapitation.

Together, Zeus and Gallen reached the top of the hillock, stood on a huge flat rock. Gallen looked down on all sides. To the east, he heard a scratching sound, something scraping rock as it tried to dig deeper for cover.

“Come out,” Gallen said. “We must talk.”

Almost instantly he was aware of a form to his right, swerving up to meet him. It came so fast, only his mantle let him react. He drew an incendiary rifle, leveled it at the bird.

A Qualeewooh whipped up the ravine toward them, batted the air with its wings so it hovered nearby, staring at. them. Gallen hadn’t been prepared for the awesome sight.

The bird was huge, at least thirteen feet at the wingspan. Forever after, he’d hold the image of that encounter, the Qualeewooh beating its wings, the wind coming off them like a storm, the dark purple brooding of its feathers, the strange black mask over its long face, filigreed with swirls of silver, the dark eyes, like black quartz with a tinge of violet, staring at him.

Gallen wasn’t prepared for the intelligence in those eyes, the intensity, the crazed gleam. The Qualeewooh opened its mouth and whistled, a strange sound that somehow reminded Gallen of ropes twisting in the air. Gallen saw rows of teeth in that deep, beaklike face.

“Even if you take my mask, you will have no soul,” the Qualeewooh whistled.

Gallen pointed his rifle at the Qualeewooh’s breastbone. “If I wanted to wear your mask, you’d be dead. I came to talk.”

“Speak,” the Qualeewooh whistled. Only then did Gallen notice that the creature bore a thin blade, a scimitar, in its left hand. The small hand protruded from the apex of the wings, and the Qualeewooh had expertly concealed the blade in its pinion feathers.

“You killed our friend,” Gallen said. “Yesterday. You ate him.”

The Qualeewooh swooped forward, landed on the rock beside Gallen. Standing up, it was nearly as tall as a man. It held its head back on a snakelike neck and stood for a moment gazing at Gallen, just blinking.

“We killed an animal,” the Qualeewooh said. “Not human. It had wings.”

“It was a human with wings,” Gallen said. “He was my brother!” Zeus shouted.

The Qualeewooh made a high, keening whistle, and bobbed its head up and down rapidly while blinking. The translator on Gallen’s lapel interpreted the keening wail. “Noooooo!”

The Qualeewooh waddled forward, extending its neck, and laid its head on the ground, twisted up slightly to the side. “Blood debt we owe. Blood debt. Two lives for one.”

With the sound of that wail a second Quaieewooh, a small and beautiful female, scrabbled from the rocks, winged its way up the slope, and lit nearby, bobbing its head, calling, “Two lives! Two lives!”

The Qualeewoohs looked at one another, a mournful glance, and the female waddled forward. “An egg is in my pouch. We are two. Slay us. Cooharah shall live.”

“No, I plead to the fourth degree,” the male said. “Aaw shall live. Slay me and her chick.”

Gallen studied the Qualeewoohs. Both birds appeared to be hot. The blue gathers of skin at their throats jiggled, cooling them. With them sitting on the rock, wings folded, they did not look so noble or marvelous. He could see spots on the male where feathers were missing or broken, could see the wear on their lone blade, the thin nap on the bag the female wore. The bag Aaw wore strapped across her chest was decorated with feathers and beads, held closed by a circular pin. It looked to be made of some thin strands of woven reed.

Gallen noticed blood at the edge of Cooharah’s mask. These Qualeewoohs were poor, tired. They had nothing to offer but their useless lives, and they begged to throw them away, pleading loudly, squawking. Honorable and pathetic.

Gallen decided to put Zeus to the test. “Here are your murderers. They don’t want a trial. You want to kill them?”

Zeus stared at the Qualeewoohs in disgust, his hands bunched into fists, his face pale. He seemed to struggle, to seek control. Back in the ship’s cabin, fifteen minutes earlier, Orick had been preaching about understanding and forgiveness.

“No.” Zeus looked away, shook his head. “Let the damned things go.”

Gallen said softly, so the translator would not pick up his words. “Felph will be angry.”

Zeus shook his head. “I don’t care.”

Gallen stared into Zeus’s dark eyes. “Maggie believes you want to leave Lord Felph, leave this world. Is that true?”

Zeus took a deep breath, nostrils flaring, looked up at the clear sky, the distant sun beating mercilessly. “Leave this happy place? The family fortune? I don’t know.” Gallen understood. It’s hard to leave comfort for the unknown.

Gallen remembered when he’d left his home. He’d not had it so soft as Zeus. A life of poverty and work, but with the comfort of good friends and family as recompense.

“Where were you going?” Gallen asked the Qualeewoohs.

Cooharah, answered. “We look for an oasis, a place to nest.”