Skywarriors of Eoe Part 1 Read online

  Definitely not what I want to talk about!

  It’s bad enough that the skyfin caught me.

  The slime of the scales was venomously and could cause ugly inflammation.

  I looked at the cut that adorned my forearm. The blood-red line divided my white tabby fur as drawn with a ruler. I had longed for the afternoon for weeks and was determined not to get it ruined.

  I should stop acting like a clumsy kitten then.

  Although they are cute ...

  The kittens ...

  But I didn’t want to seem cute or cuddly today, rather ...

  ... well, desirable.

  If that’s even possible.

  Above me a bird chirped angrily and fluttered up. Its shadow merging with the frayed green patchwork carpet thrown by the afternoon sun through the crown of leaves. Teschtrees were called cattrees because of the dense canopy of leaves which looks like the Rasta braids of the Finyan warriors. Again something in which I broke with the traditions of my people. I wore my hair loose and shoulder length.

  All was quiet, nothing reminded me of the fog tide this morning. I could even smell the spicy scent of freshly cut grass that the wind blew over the hills. The first farmers were already back at work, relying on the skywarriors to clear the last scattered skyfins.

  I stared at the wound on my forearm and resisted the urge to lick it clean. The slim was no good in any place, neither on the wound nor in my stomach.

  Either we rode home to report that we hadn’t checked two plateaus because of my wound, or we finally took care of the last damn fog beasts.

  I was angrily hissing at the root and my tail twitched from side to side.

  I knew Hiron all my life, and we were friends almost as long. Inseparably what one did, the other went along with. And at some point he became ...

  … yes …

  What did he become?

  The man I want to love and kiss …

  I swallowed, obviously nothing had changed for him.

  In his eye’s I was still Tabira, the daughter of Chesoba´s prefect and the buddy girl he was hunting skyfins with.

  Maybe he doesn’t like that I could shred his back with my razor-sharp claws while having sex.

  Humans can be a little weird.

  Or it’s the tail …

  I squatted on the sandy shore. The weir was still closed so shortly after the fog tide and the Lineta was as motionless as a lake.

  Actually, the afternoon was perfect.

  I should be grateful for the fog tide, even though it bothered me I hadn’t seen the beast in the valley and Hiron had to rescue me.

  Why am I so upset?

  Men are happy to save their beloved. That´s a human thingy.

  That’s exactly the problem: I am not his beloved.

  Nevertheless ...

  Stop time.

  Click.

  And the wonderful hours would be preserved for all the time.

  Just me and him forever, not the Finyan and the human.

  But all the time would no longer be true if time stands still.

  Who cares, at least it would never end.

  I shook my head, tapped the water with my fingertip and stared at the face which was distorted by the concentric ripples. A slightly snub nose, finely delineated cheek arches, a narrow chin and a mouth that loved to laugh.

  It looks almost human.

  Apart from the vertical slits in the eyes and the fur at the end of the cheeks, or the pointy cat’s ears which poked out of my red mane.

  I look pretty human.

  My lips curled to a grin and exposed my fangs.

  At least at night and when nobody is looking closely.

  Yes, maybe I could be mistaken as an ordinary human woman then, even if I run on paws instead of feet and the largest part of my body was covered with black-striped white fur. Except of my face, the chest and the belly. My skin was as naked and rosy there as a human's.

  What does Hiron think about me?

  Does he see me as a maybe-woman or just an “it”?

  A warm feeling spread in my stomach again at the thought of him, while my throat felt as if someone was putting a rope around my neck and pulling it brutally tight. It would at least explain why he had not tried to kiss me so far …

  »Are you coming? The skyfins will not die of old age «, his voice ripped me away from my thoughts.

  I nodded hastily. »One second ... «

  I pushed the sleeves of my shirt up to the shoulder and flushed out the wound.

  That happens when I'm contemplating Heron’s back instead of concentrating on the fog.

  I gasped as the cold water penetrated the wound and scrubbed it out with river sand. Tears appeared in my eyes, but I bravely gritted my teeth. If only a trace of slime remained, it would inflame and I would have to face the consequences of my stupidity for weeks. Not to mention father’s comments.

  I got up, went to Gavan and rummaged in the panniers for something to bandage the wound with.

  Hiron cursed. »I did not realize it's so bad. «

  Oh, great...

  He swung off his horse.

  »It’s just a scratch «, I tried to dissuade.

  »Let me see…«, he took my arm and pressed the wound apart.

  I opened my mouth and screamed loudly. Claws shot out of my fingertips and colorful stars danced before my eyes.

  »Are you sure? «, he asked.

  I fought desperately against the reflex to pull my arm back and punch him in his face. I would have shredded his skin with my claws.

  »Yes, it’s clean «, I tried in vain to suppress the trembling in my voice.

  He looked doubtfully. »Sure? «

  The warm and worried timbre of his voice sent a shiver down my spine.

  »Yes «, I lied. The cut throbbed more hellishly than ever.

  What did I expect from washing out the wound with sand?

  I swapped the skyfin´s slime with river mud.

  Shit!

  But at least I could lick it out of the wound at home, or just let father and Mia send me to Arlon. Nothing against the old herbal doctor, but his ointments and tinctures proved to be a much greater challenge for my nose than for any human.

  But I don’t think I can avoid him this time.

  Hiron shook his head. » Stupid girl … «

  He pulled his cape out of the pannier, tore off a part of it and wrapped the rag around my arm.

  »I’ll take you personally to Arlon later, understood? «, he fastened the provisional bandage with a knot.

  Fierce pain whipped through my forearm. My ears jumped back, and I lifted the upper lip, involuntarily exposing my fangs.

  »Won’t help you «, he nudged my nose.

  I was angrily flashing at him and was torn between silly enthusiasm because he was so worried about me and rage.

  It’s none of his business!

  He doesn’t want me ...

  Or just as a friend.

  He got on his horse. »Let’s go. We should hurry, if we want to check the two other plateaus before evening. «

  The world was covered with fog. Only the highest mountains of Eoe were rising out of the wafting shroud. People had made them their home in eons and hewed hanging gardens and plateaus out of the rocky massifs, which rose like islands out of the white haze in which the fog beasts and the skyfins stayed. In the middle of each month, when the two moons Miai and Okine met, the fog rose violently and flooded most of the plateaus. It retreated as soon as the moons separated, but remnants of the deadly white flood often remained in small valleys and between hills, where stranded fog beasts were lurking.

  Deadly traps for farmers and their animals. Thus, the prefect sent out the skywarriors to guard the plateaus after every white tide.

  Hiron was right, there were only a few hours left before dusk, and we shouldn’t cross the narrow bridges between the plateaus at night.

  They were illuminated, but stories were told ...

  I sighed.

>   I had hoped that we were ending up with some bread and cold roast in the afternoon. A small picnic. Just Hiron and me. Maybe I would have finally found the courage to talk with him about my feelings. I knew it was silly. He was a human, and I was a Finyan, but maybe ...

  I mean, it’s not like he’s showing any interest for other women.

  Actually, he spent most of his time with me.

  Well, there’s Mia, my sister, with whom he hangs around now and then and she always has a nasty look when I go out with him.

  But Mia and Hiron?

  Never!

  They don’t fit together.

  All I have to do is overcoming my fear ...

  There would have been enough time today, if I hadn’t stepped on the damn beast.

  Since then we have been clowning around the wound on my arm and riding across three plateaus looking for clean water to wash it out. The way home to Chesoba would have been much shorter.

  He suddenly tightened the reins and stood up in the stirrups. “Over there! Do you see it?”

  He pointed in the village's direction.

  I turned around and narrowed my eyes. My position on the ground and Gavan between me and the village didn’t make it easier to see anything.

  But yes. Between the top of a red pine tree and Gavan’s twitching ears, a thin thread of smoke rippled into the sky.

  I frowned. We should be too far away from Chesoba seeing such details.

  A cold shiver ran down my back to the tip of my tail.

  That was no simple hearth fire…

  It was the signal fire on the skytower!

  Suddenly my heart felt like clamped in a vice and I could hardly breathe.

  The signal fire should alarm the dwellers of the village when catastrophes occurred. But nothing ever happened in Chesoba.

  Nothing that would justify to light the fire.

  My mind was racing. I couldn’t remember seeing it burning. Never. From the corner of my eye I could see that Hiron was as pale as I felt. There must have been a million reasons for lighting the fire. But I couldn’t think of a single one. When we were children, we had always played war between our great empire and the bastards from Essalia.

  An assault?

  That was ridiculous. The village was way too far away from the border to the southern countries.

  Cold fear grabbed my heart and crushed it in my chest.

  If it wasn’t Essalia, then...

  The death of the prefect!

  That would be a reason to light the fire.

  Absolutely.

  Father wasn’t old, not old like an old man, but in his youth he had fought against my people on the Ghostwind Planes and his left knee got shattered there. It wouldn’t be the first time he had failed with his cane on one of Chesoba’s countless well-trodden stairs...

  Which were still wet from the fog today.

  He wasn’t my real father, of course. He was a human, like most people in the village, but he had raised me for as long as I could remember. For me he was the only father I knew and his bitchy daughter Mia my younger sister.

  My heart raced, blood rustled in my ears.

  Please no!

  I jumped on Gavan’s back and pressed my paws into the stallion’s flank. The horse jumped forward. I forced him around the red pine and down a flat slope. Behind me Hiron shouted something I didn’t want to understand.

  Slow down, wait...

  What else could it be?

  I unsheathed my claws a bit and pressed them into Gavan’s side. Hiron’s voice faded away behind me. I had slipped on the damn stairs several times and I didn’t have to use a cane. Besides, I had as much of a cat as of a human.

  We raced around another tree. A branch appeared right in front of my face. I dodged it at the last second and the leaves hit my pointed ears.

  I cursed. My tail whipped back and forth on the croup of the black horse.

  Not father! Gods, please...

  We reached the muddy old lane in front of the bridge and Gavan wanted to slow down, but I forced him to keep the speed.

  Insane.

  The hooves thundered on the dark wooden planks. If the horse fell on the bridge, he would tear us both over the low railing into death.

  In a remote corner of my mind I hoped Hiron would be reasonable enough not to rush after me.

  At some point I drowned in the sound of drumming hooves and lost all sense of time. The plateaus reeled out continuously like green-brown-blue kaleidoscopes and every second extended to an agonizing eternity that separated me from the terrible certainty. I didn’t want to arrive but at the same time I wanted to go home to father and see he was well. I wanted to feel his fingertips on the wound and hear his worried voice asking me how it happened.

  I reached the periphery of the village of Chesoba, the low, colorfully plastered houses snuggled up to the mountain like beehives. At first glance they looked like the back half was missing, but most of the rooms had been hewn deep into the rock massif to waste as little as possible of the precious space on the plateau. The narrow main road turned in serpentines upwards to the village square…

  And was completely empty.

  The busy hustle and bustle had disappeared. There were no children playing, no gossiping women bringing laundry to the washhouse, and no peasants trying to bring their goods to the merchants. Not even a dog barked.

  Nothing.

  Chesoba was dead, as though the fog had not already disappeared, but was still wafting with the skyfins between our houses.

  I tightened the reins. Gavan snorted and slowed down into a light trot. I tapped his neck to calm myself more than him.

  It was spooky. The staccato of the hooves echoed from the walls of the houses. My ears were nervously moving from side to side. Somewhere a cat hissed and birds twittered in the orchard outside the village. The smell of freshly baked bread blew from a few open shutters and widow Tanati apparently boiled down marmalade.

  Chesoba was holding his breath. Caught in a single moment...

  It didn’t fit to my fear that something had happened to father.

  My pulse slowly calmed down a bit.

  Everyone would have met at the village square, if something had been happened to the prefect. It would be pure chaos. People would talk and scream, children would cry and someone would try to make himself heard. Sounds I would hear, even if half of the village lays in between.

  I slowed down Gavan.

  My neck hair was standing on end, pressing uncomfortably against my shirt and each step of the horse felt like someone was brushing my hair against the grain.

  What is going on here?

  Gavan almost ripped the reins out of my hand when he rubbed his head on the front leg.

  I cursed quietly.

  The horse trotted on. His black fur was saturated with sweat and the penetrant smell tortured my sensible nose. Details that were burned with exaggerated sharpness into my mind.

  All my senses were tense to the breaking point.

  The road turned. At the right side was the vegetable shop of the Eeres. I liked the old couple. They always gave me candied ginger when I was shopping for mother.

  They opened their shop at sunrise and closed it at sunset. Nice ordinary people who got everything they wanted in their life with the little shop. They would never close it while the stalls with their precious goods were still standing on the street.

  Neither would widow Tanati leave her marmalade behind, which slowly combined the aromatic scent of fresh fruits with the pungent smell of burnt syrup.

  How long does it take for marmalade to burn on a low flame?

  Not long.

  A few minutes maybe

  Mia would have known exactly, but I lacked any enthusiasm for domestic chores. I could lurk motionless in a bush for hours during the hunt or practice the same sword attack with father for an entire afternoon until I satisfied him. But when it came to cooking and sewing, I fled over five plateaus. Luckily, Hiron usually saved me when my
mother thought she had to bring me closer to my female duties.

  A stab went through my chest.

  No panic!

  They must be nearby.

  Whatever had torn the inhabitants of Chesoba out of their daily routine had not happened long ago and several hundred villagers could not have gone very far in a few minutes.

  It was even more surprising I couldn’t hear them.

  I approached the second curve, my ears twitched hectically from one side to the other.

  There!

  Quietly...

  It sounded like a crying child.

  But somehow dull, almost as if someone was pressing something against his mouth.

  Then all hell broke loose.

  The drum roll hit me like a punch in the face.

  I gasped for air and almost slipped from Gavan’s back.

  What the…

  The drums died.

  My heart raced, and I pressed my paws into the flanks of the horse. We hurried up the main street until it broadened into the village square. On the wooden podium in the middle, on which the priests held weddings and minstrels performed during festivals, stood a group of strangers. Two men, standing to the left and to the right, waved imperial banners.

  The centre was packed. All of Chesoba seemed to have gathered. Across the street in the first row I saw my father’s proudly raised figure, Mia standing next to him and behind them I thought to see mother’s blue-black hair.

  I got off from Gavan’s back and left the black horse there. He would wait for me there until I took him to his stable.

  What do the Imperials want?

  Never mind.

  Tax increases, the coronation of the prince...

  My pulse calmed down slowly.

  I roamed through the crowd. The empire rarely came to Chesoba, but it was a gratefully unspectacular reason for the signal fire. The tension fell off of me like the string of a released bow and suddenly I felt exhausted. I had ruined the afternoon with Hiron, the wound on my arm was still pounding agonizingly, my fur stank of horse sweat, and with some bad luck, Gavan would limp for the next few weeks because he tripped more than once.

  But Father is fine.

  Why wouldn’t he?

  I felt infinitely stupid, because I had risked my and Gavan’s life for nothing. I didn’t want to think of Hiron and the tongue lash he would inevitably give me...

  And which Father will bolster.