Читать книгу Sword Quest - Nancy Fan Yi - Страница 9

No empire since the creation of the sword had spread so quickly or so ruthlessly as that of the archaeopteryxes. They were a shrewd, hardy species. The key to their sudden expansion was that they thrived on everything: fruit, seeds, insects, fish and carrion. Soon most of the other tribes were serving them as slaves or paying them tribute. Even the powerful alliance of the crow, myna and raven clans had fallen.

Some surrendered and, in return for their lives, agreed to serve in the archaeopteryx army. Only the eagles, in their remote mountain stronghold, lived free, but they were too busy guarding their own liberty to come to the aid of others.

The archaeopteryx empire was divided into six regions: Castlewood, or the Emperor’s Wood; the Forests; the Dryland; the Plains; the Isles and the Marshes. Each region was ruled by one of the emperor’s most trusted officers. Sir Kawaka commanded the Marshes Battalion.

Early in the morning on the first day of winter, Kawaka was hosting a dinner for his officers, proudly displaying the treasures he had gathered for the Ancient Wing. A beautiful yellow crystal was his most magnificent tribute. He’d seized it from a tribe of weak little kingfishers only the week before. Wouldn’t the emperor be pleased!

“To Sir Kawaka! To Emperor Hungrias! To the expansion of archaeopteryx territory!” The traditional toast rang from the leafless branches of the tree that Kawaka had made into his headquarters.

Below, in a storeroom hollowed out beneath the roots of the tree, a scrawny bird was scrubbing pots. His white feathers were smeared with grime, his red bill and feet blackened by grease. A dark smudge on his face almost covered the slash of red dye that marked him as a slave.

A bored sentry at the mouth of the cave sighed as he lit his pipe. Dubto could hear the toasts and the shouting from the branches above, but he was stuck here guarding this. What kind of bird was that slave anyway? Dubto thought. He looked like a dove but was bigger than any dove Dubto had ever seen. He supposed that was why they called the bird “013-Unidentified”.

“Who’re your parents?” he barked, blowing smoke rings out of his nostrils.

“My mother’s a dove, but I’ve never seen my father,” the young bird said. His voice was so weak that it was hard to hear above the sloshing of the pans.

So why did a feeble young drudge like this need his own guard? The fledgling barely looked strong enough to attack a greasy pot. Indeed, as the archaeopteryx watched, the white bird slumped over the cauldron he was scrubbing, too exhausted to continue.

“Here, you,” Dubto said gruffly, and tapped his pipe. He didn’t dare risk being seen or heard speaking to a slave with kindness in his voice. “Leave that. I need you to run an errand.”

There was nothing truly urgent that needed to be done. But the slave would surely be the better for some fresh air.

“Yes, sir?” 013-Unidentified said weakly.

Dubto looked around and spotted a small barrel of ale, half hidden under a tree root. “Take that over to the outpost on the edge of camp,” he said. “The sentry needs supplies.”

Take your time, he almost added, but he thought he had been kind enough for one day. After all, the bird was a slave, not an archaeopteryx.

Outside, 013-Unidentified gulped in life-giving air, feeling the tiredness wash out of his sore back. His soul was dazzled by the azure spread that was the sky. He tried to fly, but the heavy cask of ale kept making him tip forward. He was outside! For months now, ever since he’d been captured by an archaeopteryx patrol, he’d been cooped up in the back of that earthen cave, alternately cleaning whatever pots and pans were flung at him and sleeping. He scanned the green-tinted ponds and the cedars looming nearby. Howling winds! he thought. What a murky, frightening land!

“Over here! The sun’s barely up and I’m cold,” a raucous voice rang out.

013-Unidentified handed over the cask of ale to the sentry, who was perched on the bare, grey limb of a dead tree near the entrance to a burrow in the ground. A clattering came from within the dark hollow.

The sentry popped the cork off the cask of ale and took a long drink while 013-Unidentified cocked his head to catch the sound. Then there was a muffled groan. “What is inside, sir?” he asked.

The sentry sighed in disgust. “Tomorrow’s dinner, fool! Go back to your cave immediately, hear?” He jumped from his perch and glided towards 013-Unidentified.

013-Unidentified fluttered back. “But sir, I…”

The archaeopteryx swung his lance at the white bird’s face. 013-Unidentified dodged it, ducking under a branch. The archaeopteryx swooped after him, but his tail, dragging behind him, struck a tree branch. His wings flapped frantically and a strangled croak burst out. He dropped his lance, which barely missed 013-Unidentified.

Alarmed, 013-Unidentified stumbled backwards. What was happening? Then he saw that a metal chain necklace around the archaeopteryx’s neck had got caught. The sentry was choking and twisting. His necklace snapped. With a splash, he crashed into a puddle on the ground below.

013-Unidentified peered at him suspiciously, but the archaeopteryx didn’t stir. A faint moan from inside the burrow made him remember what he had been curious about originally. He wasn’t likely to have such a chance again; the archaeopteryxes usually watched him very closely. Cautiously he pushed aside some ferns at the entrance and ducked inside.

There was a flash of something moving behind some metal crates. 013-Unidentified took a few steps forward.

“Hello,” he whispered into the darkness.

Something squirmed back away from him as far as it could.

“Who are you?” 013-Unidentified said under his breath. His eyes gradually adjusted to the dark and he could see the frail figure cowering inside one of the crates. A tattered vest covered black and white feathers; a red head gleamed in the murky darkness.

“Don’t eat me…” The bird rested his head against the crate.

“Eat you?” 013-Unidentified gasped, horrified. He’d known for seasons now what the archaeopteryxes did with captives they thought too weak or too useless to make good slaves. But he’d never before had a chance to speak to what the sentry had called “tomorrow’s dinner”.

The next thing he knew he had picked up a rock and slammed it with all his might at the lock of the crate. He did not know how many times he repeated the action, but finally the lock gave way and he threw it aside with a sudden rush of fierce satisfaction. He leaned against the side of the burrow, gasping for breath, and said huskily, “Come out! Come out!”

The prisoner raised his tearstained eyes. “Thank you! I’m 216-Woodpecker.” Then he added, “No, I’m Ewingerale…‘Winger.’”

“I am…” It had been so long since anybird had called the white bird by his true name that he found he had to grope in his memory for it. A scene flashed in his mind – his mother stroking his head tenderly, her sweet voice lingering in his ear. “I’m…Wind-voice.”

Wind-voice hadn’t planned to escape when he woke that morning. And when Dubto had ordered him outside, he hadn’t planned to do anything more than stretch his wings. But now, with a broken lock, a freed prisoner and an archaeopteryx lying unconscious in a puddle outside the burrow, what choice did they both have but to fly as fast as they could?

“Now is the time to fly away,” Wind-voice whispered.

“Let’s go,” Winger agreed.

From the corner of his crate Winger snatched up a quill and a piece of wood, which was carved in a peculiar curved shape, and followed Wind-voice outside. They both peered cautiously out of the entrance to the burrow. Nothing was to be seen. The puddle where the sentry had been lying was empty. Holding their breath, they stepped outside.

“Ha! You think you can just walk out?” From above them, the slime-covered sentry, recovered now, leaped down and crushed them with his claws.

Without thinking, Wind-voice twisted around and pecked madly at the face of the archaeopteryx guard. Not expecting such violence from a slave, the bird flinched, and Winger twisted free.

“Fly!” Wind-voice shouted. “Fly!”

“You filthy little slave!” the guard said, panting, and his claws gripped Wind-voice even more tightly as he made a second grab at the woodpecker.

Winger dodged, leaping into the air, but hesitated, hovering. “Fly!” Wind-voice cried. Winger swooped around, but helpless to do more, he took flight.

Wind-voice was no match for the stronger, heavier bird once the archaeopteryx had recovered from his surprise. In a moment he was pinned flat in the mud with the sentry’s claws gripping his throat. The claws squeezed tighter and tighter. Darkness began to close in on Wind-voice’s vision.

“Halt!”

The angry voice was faintly familiar to Wind-voice. The claws around his throat loosened, and he gasped for air. Sir Kawaka, he thought. Why was the commander of the Marshes Battalion intervening to stop the killing of a lowly slave?

“This one is not yours to punish, fool!”

Wind-voice wasn’t sure what Kawaka meant by that, and nobird bothered to explain it to him as he was bound and forced back to his dark den under the roots of the headquarters tree. But even in that darkness, when he closed his eyes, he could almost see the woodpecker, with his bright red head, zipping away to freedom.

“Who let him out of the cave? Who?” Kawaka, garbed in silken tassels and grey-and-khaki uniform, shouted from a branch of his headquarters tree. Usually he only turned his profile to other birds, since his beak was slightly curved to one side in a way that looked half silly, half intimidating. “Crookbeak,” the other knights called him behind his back. Lower-ranked birds didn’t dare to talk about the beak, much less look at it. But now he was facing his soldiers, a bad sign.

The fifty or so officers in the Marshes Battalion stood at attention, eyes either looking off into space or focused strictly on the knight’s forehead. Outside, lesser soldiers bustled about, sensing that something was wrong.

“I did, Kawaka, sir.” The voice came from somewhere behind the barrel-chested local-resistance captains. “I was on maintenance duty.”

“And you are?” Kawaka held his breath, trying not to shout at the fool.

“Dubto, spear-bird, of the sixth elite band of the tracking division of the Marshes Battalion.”

Kawaka strode along the branch, trembling with impatience. “By my teeth! Do you know why I kept this mangy little crossbreed so carefully all these seasons? He could have been a nice dumpling in the supper pot!”

“Yes, sir,” said Dubto mechanically. “You kept him to give to His Majesty the Ancient Wing. It is well known that the emperor likes rare gemstones and rare birds. But the fledgling was weakening, sir,” Dubto said. “So I thought fresh air…”

“Cheek!” Kawaka screeched. He marched about impatiently, the tassels on his chest fluttering with each huff of his breath.

A year before, while on a trip passing over the seaside, four of his soldiers had raided a cliff. After two of them had drawn away the mother and killed her, the remaining birds had seized her scrawny baby. Seeing its strangeness, they had reported it to Kawaka.

“All that work to keep him safe,” Kawaka blustered, “and now this incident has sown seeds of rebellion in his heart. But time is running short! You,” he ordered one of the birds, “put a heavy rope around 013-Unidentified’s foot. We must start the journey.” Kawaka snatched the yellow stone from its display stand and put it in a small wooden box. At least I have this. The emperor will be pleased with me, the knight thought.

Ewingerale bobbed up and down in his undulating flight. Alternating between mad bursts of wing flapping and short glides where he tucked in his wings, he paused only to pull up the hood of his tattered vest. His round red head was dangerously obvious in the woods.

But as the sun brightened, the hope that Wind-voice was still alive dimmed. The woodpecker’s long tongue tensed in his skull and he swallowed hard. How could the white bird not have been sentenced to death already? “Fate holds both grit and gold in store for us,” he whispered to himself. If Wind-voice was fated to die, there was little that Winger could do to save him.

And yet, while languishing in that fetid cage, Winger had thought it must be his fate to perish, and Wind-voice had changed that. Maybe Wind-voice’s fate could be changed as well. Winger knew he could not simply abandon his new friend, not after Wind-voice had saved his life. If there was any chance – the slightest ray of hope – that the strange white bird was still alive, Winger would peck and hammer with all his might, attempting a rescue.

I can’t do it alone, but where in these hills and dales can I find help? he thought. He had been shipped here as a gift to Kawaka by a lesser official. That bird had thought the woodpecker’s musical talents were something to enjoy, but clearly Kawaka had not agreed. The knight had ordered a guard to break all the strings on the woodpecker’s harp and had tossed the prisoner into the back of the burrow.

A few days before, Kawaka had remembered him and decided he’d make a succulent meal. They’d tossed gigantic piles of potato peelings into his cage hoping to fatten him up, but he had eaten none of it.

“Fate is good to me,” he whispered to himself joyously, for suddenly he spied a small wisp of smoke in the cedar groves north of the battalion camp. Perhaps some other birds lived nearby.

But then his head snapped back at the faint croaks of “Hey ho, hey ho!” behind him. Down he dropped, his heart pounding fearfully. From the thorns of a hawthorn tree, he glimpsed Kawaka flying purposefully in the lead of twenty or so birds, all laden down with odd packages. They were heading northwest.

His fears eased as he saw the archaeopteryxes streak past, not veering a feather from their straight path. The sight of white wings straggling behind an archaeopteryx made his neck prickle again. “Wind-voice is alive! Where are they going?”

Winger leaped out of hiding and bolted towards the line of smoke. An egret armed with darts splashed out from a pond and ordered him to stop. Winger obeyed, pouring out a jumble of words so quickly that the sentry could hardly understand.

“I’ll take you to Fisher,” the egret declared. “You can tell your tale to him.”

Winger heard the camp before he saw it. The whetting of dozens of spearheads upon rock sounded like a brisk, deadly rain. Kingfishers, egrets, herons and mynas bowed before their work. They seemed to be preparing for battle. Some practised moves, jabbing with their spears, leaping back, and jabbing again in time with the grinding. Winger saw a great blue heron erect on a rock, and a stout myna leaning on his staff.

The heron had the air of a leader, so Winger darted to the bird, gasping out his story. “My friend, he saved me. He released me from the lair of the archaeopteryxes. But they caught him, they kept him, he couldn’t – did you just see that train of birds? They were leading him away on a rope—”

The heron held up a wing and interrupted him. “A train of birds, you say? Were they carrying boxes and bundles?”

“Yes, yes!” Winger nodded eagerly. “And they are holding my friend captive. Please, can you—”

The heron looked down his long beak at the excited woodpecker. “My son, our goals are linked,” he said. “Kawaka has stolen the amber stone of the kingfisher tribe. If what you say is true, he is bringing our stone as tribute to the Ancient Wing, the emperor of the archaeopteryxes. We have prepared for weeks, and we plan to attack them today. You must show us where they were flying. Perhaps we can rescue your friend as well as our gemstone.”

Meanwhile, Kawaka winged on to meet his emperor. Hungrias had just arrived at his winter palace in the Marshes territory, where he went to escape the cold in the northern region of his empire, Castlewood.

“Hurry, hurry!” Kawaka called to his soldiers. He, as the regional knight, had to report to the emperor yearly with gifts and tributes. This year, twenty pack-soldiers accompanied him, some hanging on to barrels with hooked talons or clamped bills, others swinging silk stretchers, heavy with bales and boxes, between them.

013-Unidentified seized a moment when his guard’s head was turned to try to untie his leash, but the burly soldier who was holding the other end noticed and gave a terrible flick of the rope, which sent the young bird tumbling. “Don’t you dare try anything like that once we arrive there!” The guard rushed the white bird along so quickly that he had no chance to try an escape again.

013-Unidentified was nearly breathless when they did.

The winter palace of the archaeopteryxes was a miniature forest on bamboo stilts. It rose out of the middle of a slimy pond. The platform above the stilts had been covered with earth, and plants that thrived in mild winters were planted in it. They grew in a thick screen that hid the actual halls and buildings from view. As Kawaka and his train approached the palace, all 013-Unidentified could see was an arched opening between two trees, leading to a long, shaded green tunnel.

“Sir Kawaka, reporting for the annual tribute. I request an audience with the Ancient Wing.” Kawaka nodded at the gate guard. He felt the tension draining out of him now that he was safely at the winter palace. It was always dangerous carrying so many valuables across the Marshes. His train had been attacked this time by a ragtag band of herons, egrets and kingfishers, although they’d beaten them off with little trouble.

The sentry at the gate looked over Kawaka and his officers and stepped back to let them pass.

Carrying the wooden box on his back, Kawaka, followed by his soldiers, passed through the green tunnel and into a bright hall filled with winter jasmine. He looked over his shoulder and gave 013-Unidentified’s captor a quick frown, and the bird dragged the prisoner faster. Behind them came the string of gift-laden soldiers.

When they were in place, they all crouched and waited, 013-Unidentified forced down by two other birds. Scholars of the court stood on the left, knights on the right.

Solemn expressions were pasted on to faces as a low drumroll issued from the royal orchestra. “His Majesty, Emperor Hungrias!” hailed a small archaeopteryx, followed by the tooting of a bugle.

A large archaeopteryx in silk ruffles and a velvet suit sewn with glittering jewels swept a curtain dramatically aside and landed on a high whalebone perch in front of Kawaka. A golden ring that dangled from a hole drilled through his beak glinted in the light. “So!” the Ancient Wing said throatily, his eyes sweeping across the tribute that Sir Kawaka had brought. “So!”

“I have things of great value this year.” Kawaka bowed down at the Ancient Wing’s feet, smiling. “Your Majesty, I have fans of egret feathers for you, and I have this slave, this unidentified bird, of no known species.” His claws rested on the wooden box, but he didn’t yet speak of the yellow gem, hoping to save the best for last.

013-Unidentified was prodded forward, and a chorus of oohs and aahs came from the scholars. “Really?” Hungrias studied the scrawny white bird doubtfully. “He is the only one of his kind?”

The chief scholar of the court fluttered forward, armed with rulers and little hammers, and did a lengthy examination. He flipped through a heavy tome labelled The Complete and Thorough Record of the Class Aves. At length, he declared, “Yes, Your Majesty! This bird is not listed in the book! He resembles a dove, but has certain traits of seabirds. His feet are rather too muscled for a passerine, yet his head and neck clearly mark him as a woodbird…”

The Ancient Wing’s tiny eyes shut in bliss. “My, my, this is even better than the two-headed rooster that I got last year! Very tasty he was too!”

013-Unidentified yelled in protest. He tried to leap towards the emperor. “You shan’t!” It was all he could think of to cry. His separation from his mother, Irene, his seasons of washing dirty dishes in the Marshes Battalion…had he suffered all that just so that this fat bird would have a content stomach? How many other birds had encountered the same fate?

Immediately two archaeopteryxes pushed him roughly to the ground. The Ancient Wing puffed up in anger. But then, a noise broke through the hallway.

Emperor Hungrias straightened as a spindly messenger burst from the hall. The bird’s long tail dragged behind him and the wet feathers on it were torn and broken. “Message, Your Majesty, from Sir Rattlebones,” he gasped. Hungrias looked keenly interested, forgetting about the outburst of 013-Unidentified. Kawaka jumped.

“Go on,” Hungrias ordered eagerly.

“He is on his way back from inspecting the lands across the Augoric Ocean. He sent me ahead. I am to inform you that Sir Rattle-bones has succeeded in obtaining one of the Leasorn gemstones. It is red!”

“A Leasorn gemstone!” Hungrias nearly toppled off his whalebone perch. Inside the ruff around his neck, the feathers of his head were standing on end with excitement. “From the lowly birds’ stories,” he mumbled to himself excitedly, “they say there are seven of them. Is he sure?” he demanded of the messenger.

“It’s definitely a Leasorn?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Hungrias had never recovered from the disappearance of his son two years before. He grieved and ordered a fitting punishment for Sir Maldeor, but his heart was not satisfied. He brooded on the gemstones and the lowly birds’ legends until an idea formed in his mind – if only he could find all the rest of the jewels, he felt, he would recover the young prince too. He ordered his remaining knights to locate the gems and they hastened to obey. Now finally a stone was on its way to him! Hungrias grunted with pleasure. “Yes, yes, my little son will be back soon!” He turned to Kawaka, whom he’d forgotten was still sitting there. “When is Rattle-bones coming? Is there an estimated time?”

“He shall arrive at Castlewood four weeks from now at the earliest, or two months at the latest.”

“Indeed! I must see to it that we depart my Winter Palace early this year, perhaps tonight.” The Ancient Wing waved a wing to dismiss the messenger.

“Your Majesty!” Kawaka said, agitated. “I must mention the most important of my gifts to you! Look at this.”

He opened the wooden chest that he had been holding. His hopes for making the last piece of tribute the best that the emperor owned had been dashed by the news from his brother, and it was all he could do to stop his teeth from gnashing.

“Oh!” all the scholars cried. The chief strode forward. “Is this what I think it is?”

Heads tipped forward at the glowing yellow stone nestled in the box. 013-Unidentified craned his neck to see as well.

“Your Majesty, the former knight Maldeor went miles out of the Plains territory to find a Leasorn gem that is orange, and now my dear brother Sir Rattle-bones has crossed an entire ocean to find the Leasorn gemstone that is red. But I” – Kawaka allowed himself a humble bow – “a mere regional knight, have searched in Your Majesty’s own blessed territory and have found this beautiful yellow Leasorn.”

As proof, Kawaka flipped the gemstone over gingerly, and a facet with carvings was revealed. The chief scholar placed a small piece of fine birch bark over the stone, took out a tiny stick of charcoal, and traced the strange script on it. 013-Unidentified could see the lines clearly as the scholar held the bark up to the light, but the odd marks meant nothing to him.

“Indeed, indeed, Your Majesty,” said the chief scholar. “I do not recognise this script at all. Very strange, very strange indeed. I must study this further.”

“Two Leasorn gems!” Hungrias fanned his wings happily. “What a year for tribute this has been! We must celebrate. Tell the cooks to prepare a special meal. Oh, yes” – he pointed a wing at 013-Unidentified – “we shall see what this one tastes like tonight! Be sure he is still alive when he is placed on the spit. It improves the flavour so much.”

Dozens of pairs of hungry eyes fastened upon him as 013-Unidentified was dragged off to the kitchen, where he was lashed to a metal pole over a fire. Slaves, turning their faces aside, slowly rotated the spit as flames crackled eagerly.

013-Unidentified fainted from the heat.