David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

"I'm not sure this will hold me, Mistress Evne," Cashel said. He didn't take another step for now, just made sure that he had his balance as the grasses continued to move.

"Oh, it would hold you, master," the toad said. "But unless you turn back now, there's a creature who'll dine on your flesh for anything I can do to stop her."

"I didn't come this far to turn back," said Cashel, hearing his voice turn huskier with each syllable. "And I don't guess I ever asked you or any soul else to do my fighting for me."

He stepped back into the scrub of turkey oaks, spaced well apart and none of them much taller than he was. He didn't doubt Evne when she said the meadow'd support him, but that didn't mean it was good footing in a fight.

The bird screamed again. Itwas a bird; he could see it now, fluttering toward him on wings that should've been too small to keep it in the air. It got bigger with every jerk of its wings. It wasn'tin the air; it wasn't even in the same world as Cashel yet, but it was coming toward him quickly.

Very quickly.

He braced himself to strike, but he wasn't sure of the timing because he didn't know where the bird It stood before him and kicked a three-clawed foot. The bird was half again Cashel's height and probably outweighed him, though he knew how deceptively light birds were with their feathers and hollow bones. Maybe not this bird, though.

Cashel shifted left and brought his staff around sunwise, leading with his left hand. The kick slashed past him, snatching away a length of the whorled border Ilna had woven into the hem of his outer tunic.

The bird-leaped/flew/shrankupward; Cashel wasn't sure of the movement, only that his quarterstaff sliced the air and the bird was now dropping on him claws first. He jumped to his right, using the staff as a brace and a pivot to bring him back around.

The bird kicked a scrub oak to splinters and strings of bark. It turned its head and long beak over its stubby wing as Cashel drove the butt of his staff like a spear toward its midsection. The bird hopped/flew/shrank away, but not quite quickly enough. The ferrule touched solid flesh in a flash and sizzle of blue wizardlight.

The bird jumped clear, leaving a stench of burned feathers in the air. It watched Cashel, turning its narrow head slightly so that first one eye, then the other, was on him. Cashel, gasping through his open mouth, stared back.

He'd thought the bird was golden as it came toward him, but now that it stood at rest its feathers seemed bronze or even black. Over them lay a rainbow sheen like that of oil on a sunlit pond. Its beak was long and hooked, but its nostrils were the simple ovals of a buzzard instead of complex shapes like eagles and falcons.

The bird's wings were shorter than Cashel's own arms. It couldn't have flown through the air with them.

"You've met your match, bird!" called Evne from a tuffet of grass some distance out in the open meadow. Cashel guessed he must've thrown her off as he swung and dodged, because she was farther away than he thought a little toad could jump. "Let us pass or it'll be the worse for you!"

The bird cocked its head toward Cashel. It raised a crest of feathers so nearly colorless that they shimmered like a fish's fins, then lowered them again.

"Does the toad let or hinder the phoenix?" the bird said. "Creep through the muck and eat bugs, slimy one!"

Cashel stepped forward. The bird drew its head back and leaped, striking with both splayed feet. Cashel stabbed, holding one end of his staff with both hands. The bird flew/jumped/shrank over him. For an instant it seemed no more than sparrow sized, a spot in the heavens; then it was on the ground behind him and he recovered his staff, thrusting backward instead of trying to turn.

The buttcap slammed into the bird's keeled breastbone with a crash and azure flare that numbed Cashel's arms to the elbows. The bird screamed wordlessly and staggered back. The feathers of its breast were blackened like a chicken singed for plucking.

"Have you learned manners, bird?" Evne crowed. She clung awkwardly to the grass stems, her legs stretched in four separate directions. "Does the phoenix now know who is master in this-"

The bird spun and struck at the toad, its wings lifting. Cashel's staff caught it in the upper ribs; he felt bones crack under his iron.

The bird's feet left the ground, lifted by the impact rather than conscious evasion. It gave a strangled squawk as it tumbled sideways over the crouching toad. She'd tricked the bird, drawn its attention to her so that Cashel could strike…

He staggered forward, wheezing and only half aware of his surroundings. The bird was at the far end of a tunnel, and even that view was through a red haze of fatigue. Cashel moved with the punctuated violence of a jagged rock rolling downhill, lurching from one side to the other but never changing its ultimate direction.

The bird eyed him. Its tongue quivered as gave another shrill scream. Its legs bunched, then straightened. Cashel thrust with his staff.

The bird shrank away into the heavens. For a moment it was a glitter in the mist; then it was gone, vanished like a rainbow when the air clears. Cashel sprawled forward as the meadow sloshed and rolled beneath him.

He didn't know how long he lay there. His first conscious thought was that breathing no longer felt like he was jabbing knives down into his lungs. He opened his eyes very carefully. Evne squatted within hand's breadth of his nose, rubbing her pale belly with a webbed forefoot.

"You've decided to rejoin me, I see," the toad said.

"The bird's gone?" said Cashel. He didn't try to move. He wasn't sure he could move just now, and he sure didn't see a good reason to.

"I'll say she's gone!" Evne said complacently. "Gone and wishing she'd never come, if I'm any judge."

"What do I do next?" Cashel said. It seemed a little funny to be carrying on a conversation with his cheek pressed down into boggy soil, but he'd been laughed at before.

"Next?" said the toad. "Next you try your luck against the Visitor himself, master. Unless you decide to turn and run instead."

She laughed. "Which you won't do," she added, "because you're very stupid, and very determined. Though it's just possible that you're even stronger than you're stupid!"

TheBird of the Tide was anchored near the harbor mouth, as far from the docks as was possible in the enclosed waters. The vessel undulated slowly as the current out of Terness Harbor tugged at the anchor line.

Commander Lusius, dressed in fur-trimmed velvet, stood in the shadows of the quay. With him hunched three men; their clothing would've been nondescript were it not for the swords they wore.

TheBird was as silent as death; there was no sound from aboard her save the creak of the line working against the scuttle as she moved. A lantern hung from the mast, arm's length below the furled sail. It guttured on the last of its oil, but the faint glow showed what the men on the dock wanted to see.

One of the vessel's crewmen sprawled in the bow with an arm over the railing. Three more lay amidships; two on their backs, the other face down. The man who'd begun the night on watch leaned against the sternpost, utterly motionless. The woman's legs stuck out of the small deckhouse; she hadn't moved either.

"There's two I don't see," muttered one of the nondescript men. "And the fellow from the merchantman, he must be aboard too."

"They're in the hold, Rincip," Lusius growled. "The supercargo is, at any rate. And they're just as dead as the others. The poison doesn't care whether you can see the bodies or not."

"Let's get it over with," muttered another of the men as he climbed into the skiff tied to the stern of the nearest fishing vessel. "The moon'll be up in an hour. I don't want an audience of rube fishermen while I send corpses to the bottom of the harbor with their bellies filled with ballast."