107 - You Idiot Monster!

:degrade target deenay:

The sun was low and it was unlikely they’d make Gada Samapti so they’d be stopping to camp soon.  Not that camping with all these old campaigners and warmasters was that much of a hardship.  Their gear was good and if the three younger people had to do a lot of running around and the occasional lifting and hauling, well that was the lot of apprentices everywhere anyway.

The light shining across the desert was the colour of red gold and every shadow stood sharply stark black, making everything surreal as they trekked through another tsingy road, this time open to the sky.  The spires on either side were like pitter teeth, the red lightand Ky imagined that they rode through a mouth that hadn’t snapped shut yet.

Down here, so close to the badlands that made up Lainz, the road was wide enough for four birds abreast and Hara rode between Werfas and Ky.  Up ahead the Emir-al and the Amir were riding comfortably with Ilax and Kyrus and the zon had taken up the outer patrol.

“I thought you had it.  It looked like you had your control mechanism down!” Werfas was still chewing on the lesson earlier in the day.

“I had it.  It told me ‘acknowledged’ and I just don’t know why it fell apart.  I didn’t get any kind of information before it did.”  Ky shook his head.  “But I did have it.”

Hara shrugged without disturbing her hold on her bird’s hood, reaching up to scratch the back of its head with her gloved fingertips.  Surprisingly it didn’t try and take her hand off but made an odd purring noise. Ky turned to her and even if he couldn’t see her face he knew her well enough to get warm all over and want to crawl into her bedroll immediately with her.  “You got it once.  Next time you’ll get it without things falling apart.  I read somewhere that in the Great Hive you never know if you’re getting a natural bee, a modified bee, or a machine and they all work together.”

“That’s the story,” Ky said, coughing, turning away to look at Werfas who was grinning at them both.  “In the Basin, people tend to leave flying insects alone because they could be the Emperor’s.”

In contrast to Hara’s bird, Pikro was jittering on the road, practically hopping up and down, trying to flare its wings, trying to stop and scratch.  He had his hands full.  “Pikro, you idiot monster, stop that.” He set his goad into the chain under the hood and pulled the warbird’s head down.

A lone floater, probably a straggler from the fog, landed on the bird’s headstall and Kyrus didn’t have a hand to brush it away.  There was a click in his head and Pikro went crazy, yanked the goad right out of his hand, yanking Ky forward onto his neck.

He shrieked, beak open as far as the beakbreak allowed and bounced straight up into the air, shoving both Werfas and Hara’s birds aside, wings and tail at full spread. Ky was thrown back and he grabbed at the saddle pad, scrambling to grab the raised horn at the front where the reins looped.  It came apart in his fingers sending him sliding down the sloping back.

Ky flung himself forward, clawed at the reins, flinging one arm around his bird’s neck, as Pikro scrambled straight up the side of the road to the top of the tsingy spire and flung himself over to the next tip, screeching.

He clung to his bird’s neck with all his strength, both arms now.  His goad had disappeared in the first jump, the leather wrist loop snapped.  The reins had broken as easily as the saddle, the eyeflaps had stuck open but then falled off the disintegrating hood. The bird had scrambled up fifty feet of stone and jumped to a higher spire and was bracing to jump to a higher one still. “No, NO, Light, NO!”

Behind he heard the slap as a leather lassoes missed and hit the road.  “STOP, you’ll pull them down!” He heard the shout, didn’t comprehend it. If Ky fell now, if Pikro fell now, they’d be sliced apart by the razor sharp rock even before the fall killed them.