Kingsblade

Chapter 4 - Shadows of Doubt

[ Y E A R   1 0 1 6  ,  T H E   S E C O N D   A G E ]

Later the following morning. You can put your time traveling shoes away for now. 

FLIGHT.

There was something uniquely comforting, Liliana decided, for a wingwoman to be in flight. The way the world stretched out below her in a giant mismatched carpet of hills and farmland, disrupted only by the winding rivers and lakes. Then, a familiar sight would appear on the horizon. At first, hazy suggestions of mountains like the fat fingers of a sleeping giant reaching up to catch the sun. But then, as you flew over the thick forests of Aikerness, they grew so much that they dwarfed even the giants.

The Sikkim.

There were thousands of mountains: young and uneven rows of stubby, green shoulders rising and falling like the round scales on a caiman's tail. Gradually these would give way to sheer-faced, saw-toothed ridges still miraculously covered by green, and finally, the gray giants streaked in snow stood behind. Beyond that final ridge lay the Fangs and beyond the Fangs, no one knew for sure.

Liliana smiled. Above the world, she detached herself from its troubles and tribulations. Her responsibilities did not exist in the sky. War did not exist in the sky.

They were eagle-riders. Legends, whispered by the townsfolk they died to protect. Liliana was one of the best, but she still wondered what it would be like to believe this ugly reality of war and destruction was a myth—to live in a world filled with simpler concerns like whom she would marry and whether or not it was going to rain.

"You would die of boredom," Nanook quipped.

"And you are eavesdropping on my private thoughts."

The harpy eagle's laugh rippled through Liliana's mind. "I could not resist the allure of your alternate self-portrait of sewing by a window."

Liliana glared at the back of Nanook's gray-white head and ruffled his crown feathers. He laughed again, and this time, she joined in until their voices faded into the wind.

I would get bored, Liliana conceded. Nanook was right as usual. But sometimes she believed that boredom was better than war.

Her shoulders sloped forward gently as her body melded with the rhythm of Nanook's wing beats from where she sat upon him, her legs hanging down to rest near his broad, feathered chest.

The grime of battle clung to her despite the whipping of the wind as they soared. Nanook hated blood, but he tried to forget for Liliana's sake. They spoke little of their fears, Liliana and Nanook. Hers – the fear of the dark, his – the fear of blood. Discussion was not necessary. In war, weakness simply was not an option.