Rick Cook - The Wizardry Cursed

"You built them, didn’t you? You can fly them."

"I built a cradle once," another dwarf said. "That doesn’t mean I know how to have a baby."

"All right then," said Glandurg in disgust. "We’ll practice until you do know how to fly them."

All the dwarves looked expectantly at their leader and Glandurg realized he had just backed himself into a corner.

"Here we are," he said with more confidence than he felt. "You pick it up like this, grab the holding bar like this and you maneuver by shifting your weight or twisting the bar. Now what could be simpler?"

"Telling isn’t showing," Thorfin said dubiously.

"Well, keep watching," Glandurg snapped. He hoisted the wing, ran forward and leapt into the air.

The result was a sort of grotesque hop that carried him perhaps two feet up and six feet forward. He barely got his feet down in time and half-stumbled on landing.

"Not much flying there," said Snorri.

"Well, I didn’t get going fast enough. Here, let me show you again."

This time Glandurg went to the far end of the clearing and came pounding across the open space at a dead run. He reached the top of a small hillock and again jumped into the air. The result was a flight of perhaps a dozen feet.

"There, you see," he puffed triumphantly as he came back to join his followers.

"Not very well," Snorri said. "Can you do it again?"

Glandurg glared at him. "I will not. You do it."

"Don’t know how," Snorri replied.

Glandurg glared at him. "Not enough, is it? Very well. I’ll show you some flying." He turned and made for the largest tree at the edge of the clearing. "Come along," he flung over his shoulder. "You’ll see right enough."

When he reached the base of the tree he started to climb. With a lot of grunting and heaving he managed to reach the branches about thirty feet up. From there he swarmed upward until he was nearly a hundred feet above his fellows.

"Pass the wing up," he shouted down.

"How?" Thorfin shouted back.

Glandurg bridled. "Don’t be insubordinate."

Finally, with the aid of a line thrown to Glandurg, they were able to get the wing up to him. The others watched as Glandurg wormed his way into the contraption while balancing precariously on a branch.

"Watch," he commanded, and launched himself out into empty air.

Considering he had never flown in his life, it wasn’t too bad. He dived too steeply and had to pull back sharply to keep from ploughing into the ground. He overcorrected and soared up again, slipping off to the right as he lost longitudinal control. He managed to bank sharply left, thereby avoiding the trees at the edge of the clearing and he was still turning when the ground came up to meet him. He moved further back to bleed off more airspeed, brought the nose up too far and came down in something that was more a poorly controlled stall than a landing.

The shock rattled Glandurg’s teeth and drove him to his knees. It also snapped the left wing spar just outboard of his left shoulder.

"You see?" Glandurg said as he staggered to meet the pack of dwarves running toward him. "You see how easy it is.

"Here now," he said to Thorfin. "You try it."

"Will not."

"What?"

"I ain’t going," Thorfin said stubbornly.

Glandurg marched over and stuck his face in Thorfin’s. "I’m the leader here and I say you bloody are going!" he roared.

"You can be the leader all you want and I’m bloody not going," Thorfin said in the same unyielding tone. "No way I could handle one of them things. I’m scared of heights."

" ’S truth," Gimli said. "I watched him on the flight here. Fair like to mess his pants, he was."

Thorfin glared at the purveyor of this unsought bit of support, but he stood firm. "I ain’t going up in one of them things. Not even for practice."

"You would betray your oath?" Glandurg heaped scorn into his words.

"I ain’t going back on my oath, but the oath didn’t say anything about playing at being a bird."

Glandurg sensed that he was facing his first command crisis. He decided to resort to his ultimate threat.

"You will or you’ll be sorry."

"You can’t make me sorrier than I would be if I took one of those things. What could you do to me that’s worse?" The other dwarves shifted uneasily and one or two murmured support for Thorfin.

Glandurg considered the question. It dawned on him there really wasn’t anything he could do. The members of his band were sworn to kill the wizard, but Glandurg had not sworn them to obey him-in part because he doubted they would take such an oath.

However a successful commander remains flexible in the face of unexpected opposition.

"All right then, you won’t have to fly. You and anyone else who feels the way you do can create a diversion by attacking the castle from below. There won’t be as much glory in it, of course." He let the scorn drip from his voice. "But when the attack starts you can swim the river and climb the castle walls."

Thorfin nodded. "That suits," he said stolidly.

In the event two other dwarves decided they’d rather swim and climb than fly. That left Glandurg and eight others to practice gliding out of trees.

By the end of the day each dwarf had made five flights. It was a most successful training session, Glandurg decided. They were all alive and they still had half the wings undamaged. They could even land in the general direction of their target most of the time.

They needed more training. But meanwhile they could continue to practice with the remaining gliders and work on repairing the damaged wings.

It wasn’t the woods, or even the streets of the Capital outside the castle, but there was solitude in this place, and a lovely view.

Well, Wiz thought to himself, at least I’m safe up here.

Glandurg shifted uneasily and grasped his holding bar even tighter. This had seemed like a brilliant inspiration when he had both feet on the ground. Now, dangling hundreds of feet above the river he was less certain.

The wind whipped loose a strand of hair from under his hood and slapped it across his eyes. Instinctively he reached to push it away and for a heart-stopping instant he nearly lost his grip. He clutched the holding bar and squeezed his eyes tightly shut to blot out the scenery passing below him. Above him the griffin flew on, oblivious to his cargo’s antics.

I am the leader, Glandurg reminded himself. I must see where I am going. He forced his eyes open. The castle was coming up fast. Carefully he reached into his shirt and removed the indicator. The glowing arrow inside the crystal sphere pointed straight at the battlements. Glandurg squinted through the wind. Yes, there was a lone figure high on the castle walls.

For an instant the dwarf was so exhilarated he forgot to be afraid. The Sparrow himself and out in the open! Truly this was his lucky day.

"Release the wings," the dwarf commanded.

Off to the west Wiz saw a flock of pigeons or turkeys or some other kind of heavy-bodied birds. As they came closer to the castle he could see they were too large to be pigeons. Turkeys then.

Hey, wait a minute! There aren’t any turkeys in this World! Not only that, but each one seemed to have two sets of wings. Biplane birds?

Then each of the birds seemed to split in two and half of each bird dove toward Wiz.

The dwarves had taken good care to build their wings strong and light. They had taken less care to learn how they reacted in flight and no care at all to understand the mass of thermals, updrafts and cross currents that swirled around the castle on a warm autumn afternoon.