47 - On the Road

Dear daughter,

I am once more safely where I need to be for the best continuance of my health. You ask if my travel was smooth and if I am comfortable.  Birds. Feh. Perhaps next time I shall walk...

Dukir  paused in his composing his cover letter in his head, pulled back sharply on his bird’s beak as it hissed and tried to start a fight with Zon Elemfias’s bird.  The woman threw a smile over her shoulder as she booted her bird behind the wing-joint to keep it from dropping back and engaging.  Some smiles you could see easily enough, veil or not.

“You Lainz are wizards just to make these birds go forward, much less fight on them!”

“Zon,” he couldn’t help the smile in his voice either.  “Tis liken to students it is.”

She snorted laughter.  “All oxidation and appetite, burning hot.”

The column was well spaced for troops in friendly territory... the night outriders setting flare torches in the sand to make sure no one lost the road, even in the moonlight.  The road glittered less than the sand on either side.

“That’s for true,” she said.

They had to leave the eyeflaps of their birds open their widest.   A lead-string of warbirds... the high-bred fancies from the Glorious Golds quit behaving and it devolved into a pile of squawking, hissing, bleeding birds and gear, but that was just behind them and not their problem.  Someone’s Amir was going to have choice words with that bird-handler.

“The tamest ones... you can feed full and then goad every step o’ t night,” he said helpfully.

“Why don’t we have such troubles with our riding birds?” She waved her bird stick vaguely behind her bird’s hooded head. 

“T’ey’re young yet.  Not breedin’.  This ol’ hen, she’s been broody a handful o’ times.  Two or three more and she won’t let nobody handle ‘er.  Used tah be worse.  We hadda bolt t’ey’re beaks shut and feed ‘em through a hole in t’ neck.  One year.  Set ‘em at yer enemy... let ‘em chop ‘em up... beggin’ yer pardon, Zon.” She grinned, not taking offense at what had been a tactic she recognized from the war.  “No lost ifn t’ey got chopped up too... T’ey’s dyin’ already and three-quarters crazy.”

“Sounds cruel.”

“Twas.”  He leaned forward to shove his bird stick in the loop and let the breakbeak open a fraction so his bird could pant.  “This aren’t much better.”

“Well.  Let us hope this doesn’t turn into a true war, then,” she said tartly, leaning forward to follow suit.  “If these fowl only looked to us the way dogs, cats, horses... other earthen animals do...”

“Heh.  Fluffies are people likers.  Don’ hafta be co-evolved now do they?”

She bent a sharp eye over her veil at him.  “Amir... do I know you?”

“Nah, Zon.  Certain not...”

She made a tsking noise.  “Of course.  I’m Elemfias.”

“Ahrom.”

“Riiiiight.  Nice to meet you ‘Ahrom’.”