David Farland - Sons of the Oak

They had no riders upon their backs, no saddles even, and when they saw the riders, they let out frightful cries and climbed like hawks.

With rising horror, Waggit watched the cloud of winged beasts, and realization came to him.

There were stories, ancient stories, of such graaks-trained not as mounts, but as winged assassins.

None had been used in nearly two hundred years.

The lords of the Earth had a tacit agreement: children, even messengers, were never to be targeted in war, and since assassin graaks would of necessity kill children, their use among civilized folk had long since been abandoned.

Apparently, Asgaroth was not civilized folk.

“Farion!” Waggit shouted in warning. “Come back!” But she was too far away to hear.

Amid cries of dismay, the young riders hugged the necks of their mounts as the killer graaks swept toward them. Some children turned their mounts, tried to veer away from the killers, but such a race was bound to end badly, for there were two or three killer graaks to each mount, and they would not be hindered by riders.

Waggit winded his own horn, calling retreat, and watched in terror to see if the children would give heed.

Six of the children heard.

Two others, two that had been heading toward Heredon, seemed to freeze with fear. Waggit watched in dismay as killer graaks swept up and deftly plucked the children from their mounts, then dove and brought the children to earth kicking and screaming, to make of them a meal.

Not my Farion, Waggit told himself. Not my daughter.

He had lost track of where Farion might be. He knew that she was upon a graak, and he also knew that she was the least adept of the riders. Had she been able to turn in time?

The others raced back toward the castle, their mounts veering and swerving as killer graaks gave chase. As the graaks neared the castle walls, archers let fly a hail of arrows, trying to deter the attackers, but it was little use. The assassin graaks kept coming.

One child took an arrow in the shoulder. He cried out and fell from his graak, hundreds of feet, to land with a crunch just outside the castle wall.

Another dove toward the graakerie and hit the landing pad, and as he tried to leap to safety, a killer graak dove like a giant gull and took him in its teeth.

The rest of the children veered between towers, screaming for help as enemy fliers gave chase. Waggit watched them fly by, the wingtips of their graaks nearly clipping the towers, the stark fear showing in every line of their faces.

Two passed him, a third.

Then the last of the children came, racing toward his tower, and Waggit heard Farion’s voice, so full of terror that it broke his heart, crying, “Daddy!”

A killer graak was racing up behind her.

Arrows whipped up toward the killer, and Waggit wondered if he could leap onto its back, use his own weight to bear it to earth.

But it stooped above him, screaming down in a dive, and the worst that he could do was to throw his warhorn.

The warhorn bounced off its chest. The graak didn’t even seem to notice.

Farion dove straight toward the gate, hugging the leathery neck of her graak, screaming in terror.

Arrows blurred up, hitting the killer graak as it raced down to snatch her. Waggit heard the snick of arrows, saw them bounce off its breast, and then one struck home, blurring into the monster’s breast, and the killer graak made a croaking sound, veered left, and began to fall rapidly.

Waggit saw Farion’s own graak hit the ground fast, and Farion was thrown onto the cobblestone streets on impact.

She rolled down near the wall of an inn, and a force soldier hastened to her side, grabbed her.

For a brief moment, the girl was silent, and Waggit held his breath, afraid that she’d taken injury in the fall. But within moments she began to scream in terror and fight the guard, breaking free, and then she scrambled into the door of the inn.

In the end, only five children made it back safely.

When it was done, the assassin graaks flapped heavily out toward the woods, and Chancellor Waggit gazed down into the fields to the north.

Asgaroth sat straight in his saddle, gave a nod of satisfaction.

Now the siege begins in earnest, Waggit thought. For certainly Asgaroth believed that if any of the princes were alive, they had just been driven to ground at the castle.

But Asgaroth waved his men forward. Dozens of them swept over the fields, into the woods east of the castle, and Waggit was left to marvel.

Asgaroth had suspected that it was a ruse. Perhaps he had even known that it was a ruse.

Yet he had let his graaks murder innocent children anyway.

What kind of man would do that? Waggit wondered.

Waggit had studied much in the House of Understanding. He had read histories of ancient lords, befouled and evil, and in time had begun to understand a little of how they thought, how they gained power.

But no one could ever really understand them. No sane man would want to.

Now that he had finished terrorizing the castle, Asgaroth left a contingent of warriors to beat back any attempt that Waggit’s troops might make to sally forth while he went to search for the princes in earnest.

At the snarl of the strengi-saat, Rhianna rose up on her elbow, edged to the open flap, and peered out over Hadissa’s shoulder: the stars shone down through a thin haze that clung to the river. Starlight gleamed on the water, upon the slick round stones along the bank, and upon the glossy leaves of grass and vines along the shore.

Rhianna wished fiercely that there was more of a fog. Myrrima had promised them one, but Rhianna could see plainly through the thin haze.

Enormous pine trees crowded the banks along the steep sides of a hill; beneath them, all was shadows.

The strengi-saats will be on us before we ever see them, Rhianna thought.

And then there was a hiss in the trees, pine boughs brushing against one another, as something huge leapt from a large branch, and Rhianna clearly saw a shadow glide across the water ahead, only twenty feet in the air, and land among the rounded boulders at the edge of the river.

Rhianna dared not cry out, for fear that she would attract the monster’s attention. Besides, she was sure that Borenson and the others could see it.

The strengi-saat dropped silently to the ground and merely crouched in the shadows on the riverbank. It sniffed the air and peered about, searching for prey, and then cocked its head to the side, listening.

It can’t hear us, Rhianna thought, even though her heart beat so loudly that it thundered in her ears. It can’t see us, either.

But she knew from her time among the strengi-saats that they had powerful eyes, and seemed to travel well even in total darkness.

So why doesn’t it see us now?

The fog, Rhianna realized.

Myrrima had anointed Rhianna’s eyes, promising that she would be able to see through the mist. Could it be that the strengi-saat really was blinded by the haze that crept along the river?

If that was true, then Myrrima was a wizardess, and suddenly Rhianna knew that it was true and some white-hot part of her soul burned with a desire to be like the stately woman.

Rhianna glistened with sweat. It was as if her body was trying to reject the opium that the healer had given her, so that it purged the drug from every pore. She licked her upper lip and found that it tasted bitter from opium and from the acids in her body.

She felt that surely the strengi-saat would hear them or smell them. But the beast just held still as the boat glided swiftly downriver toward it, and for their part, as the boat drifted slowly and began to spin, the adults on the boat remained still, like frightened rabbits that hold and hold right until the time when you reach down into the tall grass and snatch them up.