Warlock

journey.”
        
        “Shall I send the Squealers aloft?” Fremlin asked, having set his cages off his shoulders.
        
        “Perhaps it is time for that again,” Richter said.
        
        Two of the black creatures were released, a different two this time. They took to the air with a display of pure joy, dipping and swaying, zooming across the heads of the men before rising over the stalks of bamboo and disappearing to the northeast.
        
        Daborot made a warmer supper than they had been used to since the mountains, and a sort of feast was held in celebration of having gotten this far. Some of the levity of the feast was gone when, inside of an hour, the Squealers had not returned.
        
        Half an hour before dark, almost two hours after the ascension of the Squealers, Richter suggested that the bird master dispatch another of his charges to scout the way and to determine what had happened to the earlier pair.
        
        Fremlin worked with set lips, his face grim, lips bloodless. He spoke to the bird he was about to send aloft, holding it in his hands, cooing to it in a manner that was altogether loving and altogether sober. The bird listened intently, without any of the normal chortlings of good humor which accompanied a chance to fly.
        
        Then Fremlin threw it into the air; it took wing and was gone without acrobatics.
        
        Darkness came too swiftly.
        
        The stars rose.
        
        And the Squealer fell. It dropped from the darkening sky and flapped desperately as it tumbled along the ground. It gained its feet and skittered about somewhat dizzily, making screeching noises that were painful speech.
        
        Fremlin ran to it, calling softly in that inhuman tongue, scooped the bird into his hands and held it to the light.
        
        “What has happened to it?” Richter asked. His own face was tense in the flickering orange of the campfire.
        
        “An arrow in its wing. Through its wing, and grazed its back,” Fremlin said.
        
        “Will it live?”
        
        “It may, it may,” the bird master said, though he did not seem to be the one to administer the proper medicine, for he shook so violently he appeared to be a man fighting a fever.
        
        “Ask it of the others,” Richter said.
        
        And Fremlin and the bird fell to conversation. Everyone was silent as the master elicited information from his charge, and sat forward expectantly as Fremlin turned to deliver the news.
        
        “It says the ramparts of a walled city, partially in ruin, lie to the northeast no more than three miles. The walls are guarded by men in the liverie of Jerry Matabain, so this is the place which we seek.” His voice was hurried, the words stumbling over one another. If he stopped long enough to think, his mind would be swept with emotions, and he knew it.
        
        “The other Squealers?” Richter asked.
        
        “Dead,” Fremlin said.
        
        “How can the bird know for certain?”
        
        “He has seen the men, and he has been shot by them. He surmises that the others were killed, and I reached that same conclusion myself before he spoke his fears.” He pressed the bird to his chest, warming it. It shuddered pathetically, pecked at its bedraggled wing. “But that is not the worst,” he added.
        
        “And what is the worst?” Richter asked.
        
        “The bird thinks the men may have kept him in sight with the idea of dispatching a plane in this direction. He would have taken evasive action to mislead them, but he required all the energy that remained in him to reach us and warn us.”
        
        In the night above them, to the northeast, the curious drone of an aircraft rode the currents of the cool breeze, drawing nearer…
        

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    19
        
        
        
        “The fire!” Richter called, snapping the mesmerized men into action as the hypnotic hum of the approaching aircraft grew steadily louder.
        
        Mace leaped forward, cursing beneath his breath, and tipped a pot of soup onto the flames, stepped back as the hot coals sputtered, as pungent steam rose into the darkness before their faces. A second man, a red-haired youth called Tuk, kicked at the glowing embers, stomped them to death with quick bootheels.
        
        Overhead, the