Wild Hawk Down Read online

Warder, had found time to tie up her rich brown hair in a bun, pulling her face tight to match the tension in her eyes. Kol had excitement written all over his guileless, open face. Despite his being eight years older than Pevan, when he stood next to Jashi she couldn't help but think of him as the younger Warder.

  Barrit, the town's stout Guide, stood bent at the waist, his hands on his knees, panting. Probably he'd been heading into the old city when the bell rang. Pevan fought down a twinge of worry. With Rel and Dora away, and Dagdan busy with guard duty, the trio were all she had to work with.

  Except for Notia, for whose absence Pevan breathed a short sigh of relief. Four Knot the woman might be, officially, but she hadn't nearly the experience needed for this and she'd only try to take charge. It was always the Gatemaker's job to coordinate defence during incursions, even if the town had a spare Clearseer, which they didn't. They'd miss Rel, but she still had the two Warders to call on.

  Jashi said, "It's coming up from the South, over the brow. Staying high for now, and we couldn't reach it."

  "It's only here as a distraction." Pevan waved a hand at the Warding Hall. Van Raighan had said the town wouldn't be harmed. Could she trust him? He'd seemed so determined. And while a Wildhawk was a nightmare for anyone travelling, it offered little threat to a town where people knew to get indoors during an attack. A shiver ran down her spine, and splashed ice through her viscera. Unless the town lost its Stable Rods.

  Barrit opened his mouth to say something, jowls quivering, but she held up a hand to cut him off. She said, "There's still a risk to the Warding Hall, we'll have to be careful how we handle this."

  "One jumper, one watchdog?" There was a twinkle in Kol's eye, a wildness familiar from past incursions. He wanted to be the jumper, she could tell, but she didn't fancy having to hang on to him long enough to carry him to the Wildhawk.

  Still, the plan was right. She nodded. "Jashi will be jumper." Kol's face fell, but she ignored him. "Barrit, I need you to watch the Stable Rods in case Van Raighan tries anything. He's only a Witness, but shout for Kol if he brings friends. Kol, you'll wait here until we've got the Hawk clear of the town." They couldn't just kill it until they'd at least made the attempt to drive it back to the Sherim.

  Pevan scanned the southern sky, squinting against the sun. The hillside above the town sparkled green-gold, rich with spring growth, but she couldn't pick out the Wildhawk. Barrit straightened and walked into the Warding Hall, still looking the worse for wear. Well, he was old for a Gifted, but he'd be a match for Van Raighan. Kos went to the door, leaning against it where he’d be able to see both inside and out. Sound thinking; she'd have to try to remember to commend him for it.

  "The Old City?" If anything, Jashi's face tightened further as she spoke.

  Pevan nodded, closing her eyes to focus on the gutted old tower block that was her preferred accelerator. She tied it to the wall behind her with the ease of reflex, felt the wind rise as the Gateway opened. The tower would serve to give them the air-speed that would bring the Wildhawk in range; now she just needed to know where the elusive Wilder was relative to the new town. "Where do we start?"

  "The Webberats' place."

  That explained why Jashi looked so grim, at least. Far too close. Pevan wrapped her arm around the other woman, grabbing a handful of her dress at her hip. She felt her own clothes tighten as Jashi took hold of the leather strap at her shoulder. The harness should provide more strength than plain fabric, but Pevan hadn't tested it yet herself.

  Jashi nodded her readiness. Pevan counted, "Three... two... one..."

  At 'Go!', the two women charged at the open Gateway. A couple of yards short, they bent as one and dived the last of the way. The Gate swallowed them, as tactile and resistant as air, and they emerged at the top of a four-hundred-foot plummet. Rings of shattered concrete, plaster and steel whistled past, the remains of the building's interiors, wrecked in the Realmcrash. By some fluke of engineering, almost the whole central part of the tower had smashed through, leaving a perfect vertical accelerator for a talented Gatemaker.

  While Jashi screwed her eyes tight shut and curled her chin to her chest, Pevan squinted into the rushing air, spinning the Gate with her mind, focussing on making sure it went exactly beneath them. The thought of failure never crossed her mind. Long practice had the Gateway open and waiting before they were half-way down.

  Passing through was like putting on a dress made of lead. The reversal of gravity punched down Pevan's throat and into her gut. Jashi gave a strangled cluck, but her grip didn't slacken. Pevan shrugged off the lingering dizziness and turned her eyes to the sky as they rose toward it from the paved patch behind the Webberat house.

  Sunlight blazed off the high, white clouds. Pevan resisted the urge to reach out for them, instead shielding her eyes and peering sunward. The back of her mind marked off the seconds; five to the peak of their flight, five on the way back down. She felt the gentle brush of Jashi's Warding reaching out on three. On four, she spotted the Wildhawk.

  High above them, a gossamer curtain draped lazily over the sky led the eye gracefully to a sinuous, shining body. The whole thing rippled in the high-altitude wind. It didn't so much fly as swim, maybe even just float. Pevan couldn't judge the size of the creature against the blank blue backdrop, but it was a large specimen. High enough to be no threat to the town for now, but there was no telling when it might stoop.

  For a moment, a glorious moment that never lost its magic, the two Gifted seemed to float, eyes on the deadly, shimmering angel above them. With the air almost still, Pevan didn't have to raise her voice for Jashi to hear. "Range?"

  "Not even close." The other woman's voice came back breathy, exhilaration mixing with her fear. Leaving Kos behind had been the right choice; he'd have been too excited, not nearly afraid enough. Jashi would stop Pevan taking too many risks.

  Her internal count reached six as she shifted her weight against Jashi, letting the resistance of the air they fell into turn them head downwards. Already, she reached out towards the hollow tower in the old city, tying it through her brain to the ground beneath them. The Gateway began to snap into place, but she held back, balancing her Gift against First-Realm logic until she was sure she had the spot exactly beneath them.

  She let it open just on the cusp of eight while the air began to harden, forcing her eyes closed. Well, she didn't need them now. The Gateway took her, and Pevan heard as much as felt the pressure change as they passed from ground level to the tower. She wrapped her free arm around Jashi's waist, burying her face in the other woman's shoulder, narrowing them to a more streamlined profile.

  Pevan released the Gateway behind - above - them and immediately spun another in its place, the other end on the ground below. It opened before her count reached eleven, while the wind tore at her clothes, punctuating the rushing in her ears with the snapping sound of her skirt flapping. They passed through just short of thirteen, still accelerating. Pevan resisted the temptation to let her mouth be dragged open.

  She had less than a second and a half to realign her Gateway and get them back to the Wildhawk. She placed the other end of the Gate by the Webberats', though she knew she could get closer to the Wildhawk than that. One thing at a time. The corners of her eyes cooled where tears squeezed out between her tight-shut lids. The Gateway opened with a fraction of a second to spare, tight on the margin as ever.

  The switch in gravity as the two women burst out of the ground was no worse for the greater speed, but repetition gave the wave of nausea greater punch. Small chance of actually throwing up; for the instant of transition Pevan could feel the contents of her stomach forced hard towards her feet, enough to make her regret the extra sandwich at lunch. She pulled her wits and breath back together, picking up and resetting her lapsed count. Eighteen seconds this time, nine up and nine back down.

  By five, it was safe - more or less - to open her eyes. Air swiped the moisture from them instantly, left her blinking, but she picked out the Wildha
wk more quickly this time. They hurtled upward, Jashi's Warding racing ahead. This time as they approached the peak of their arc, almost four times as high as their first attempt, Pevan saw the Wilder's scintillant wing twist as the Warding washed over it.

  The snake-like body rolled back over itself, away from Jashi's bubble, turning East. The sky itself seemed to ring with the creature's trumpeting challenge as it flowed around and began to descend. Pevan's count hit nine, and their moment of hanging motionlessness seemed a breath held by the world itself. Would the Wildhawk stoop?

  She needed to turn their heads down before the fall began in earnest, which took away the option of waiting to see what the Wilder would do. Pevan led the turn again, trying to guess where the creature would be in another eighteen seconds. Federas spread beneath her, clearer and more accurate than any map. Her next Gateway moved them a hundred yards up the street, right to the south-eastern corner of the town.

  The guess held good. The two women speared upward almost directly underneath the Wildhawk. The creature had twisted into a lazy descent, far from a full dive but enough to be a warning. Its wings had narrowed to faint lines of glitter along its flanks, a spray of membrane fluttering in its wake. For a moment, Pevan