63 - Withholding Water Makes Them Meaner

The barns for the old flock were based on the Nadumon quick-huts that were unrolled, pumped full of air and then sprayed with water to harden them in place.  The bio lights crawled all over the ceiling, slowly, well out of reach of the birds, though several younger ones persisted in trying to jump and snatch them off the hardened arch of roof.  The autumn rains were wild this year although there seemed to be more water in them and less grit.

Kyrus stood just inside the door, with a row of closed buckets next to him, bird goad slanted across his forearm as he waited for the street boys to settle themselves.  And Emilian, who looked harder and thinner, even if his clothes were unpatched and new.

“Ye don got yer mountain, fountain with,” he said, looking around.  “Ye should. ‘e’s yer back, flack.”

“I’d like to speak High Lainz, here.” Kyrus answered.  “I don’t need Werfas following me around like a bodyguard.  He has his own things to do.”

“’High Flash? Dark, Kyrus… I don’ know High Flash talk.”

“You just shifted and quit rhyming. That’s a start.”

“So… is the Milar bulk boy yer…”

“None of your business.  M’da is married to the Milar warmaster, the Surdeniliarch.  Even the old Radiance acknowledged that he had no place in people’s bedrooms and said ‘marry who you like, lie with who you like.  That’s the new law.”

“Shit.  That loses me a fakkin lot of insults, Kyrus.”

Kyrus didn’t answer, but turned away, picking up a bucket.  “Grab a feed bucket and a water bucket.  Form a line along the safe wall and see if you can lure any of the old flock to you.  They know what the buckets look like.  They might come.  If they are aggressive, don’t feed them.  Either way fill the water troughs.  Holding back water just makes them mean.” He paused a second.  “Meaner.”

The old flock milled around on the other side of the cage, except for the old bull. He paced up and down the length of the wire, rapping his beak on the bars. Hliviet stopped in front of him, buckets in hand and the bull stopped to stare at him, then hissed in his face, biting the metal grating holding him back.  He raised a foot and dragged sparks from the grating with his claws and hissed again. Hliviet didn’t step back, but unclipped the water bucket and poured it into the trough in front of the big warbird.

He screeched and the rest of the flock came racing from the back of the pen to fling themselves at the grating, feathers flying, bedding getting kicked up, dust in the air, biting and climbing the safe wall, a wave of claws and tearing beaks and fluff.  The grating creaked under their weight and the boys mostly flinched back.  Kyrus, used to this, didn’t move. Emilian and Hliviet also stood their ground.

“We check the safe wall every day when they’re out.  They go out into everything but haboob and first rains.”

“Why ‘r we still tryin’ tah tame them?” Emilian asked, carefully, even as a youngster hammered its beak through the square mesh and then screeched when it found that it couldn’t open it to tear him up.

“Truth is, we’re not.  You need to see what the old warbirds were like, before you get a newflock chick of your own to raise.  You lot are going to be the pilots, if we go to a ground war with Prime. We’ve got a second hatch of the true-tame and this lot… excepting the hens that lay true-tame eggs... Will be let go.”

Hliviet pulled out a long worm from his feed bucket, with his hook and offered it to the old bull, who refused it. “Thisun won’t go iffn ye have any o’ his hens.”

“You’re likely right.”  My ma thinks that if we haul ‘em out into the deep desert by FireDrake, we should be all right.”

“Hope so.” Hliviet dropped the worm into the trough where the old warbird deigned to snatch it up. “Thisun holds grudges.”