Sword Quest. Nancy Fan Yi

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      “Ha! You think you can just walk out?” From above them, the slime-covered sentry, recovered now, leaped down and crushed them with his claws.

      Without thinking, Wind-voice twisted around and pecked madly at the face of the archaeopteryx guard. Not expecting such violence from a slave, the bird flinched, and Winger twisted free.

      “Fly!” Wind-voice shouted. “Fly!”

      “You filthy little slave!” the guard said, panting, and his claws gripped Wind-voice even more tightly as he made a second grab at the woodpecker.

      Winger dodged, leaping into the air, but hesitated, hovering. “Fly!” Wind-voice cried. Winger swooped around, but helpless to do more, he took flight.

      Wind-voice was no match for the stronger, heavier bird once the archaeopteryx had recovered from his surprise. In a moment he was pinned flat in the mud with the sentry’s claws gripping his throat. The claws squeezed tighter and tighter. Darkness began to close in on Wind-voice’s vision.

      “Halt!”

      The angry voice was faintly familiar to Wind-voice. The claws around his throat loosened, and he gasped for air. Sir Kawaka, he thought. Why was the commander of the Marshes Battalion intervening to stop the killing of a lowly slave?

      “This one is not yours to punish, fool!”

      Wind-voice wasn’t sure what Kawaka meant by that, and nobird bothered to explain it to him as he was bound and forced back to his dark den under the roots of the headquarters tree. But even in that darkness, when he closed his eyes, he could almost see the woodpecker, with his bright red head, zipping away to freedom.

      “Who let him out of the cave? Who?” Kawaka, garbed in silken tassels and grey-and-khaki uniform, shouted from a branch of his headquarters tree. Usually he only turned his profile to other birds, since his beak was slightly curved to one side in a way that looked half silly, half intimidating. “Crookbeak,” the other knights called him behind his back. Lower-ranked birds didn’t dare to talk about the beak, much less look at it. But now he was facing his soldiers, a bad sign.

      The fifty or so officers in the Marshes Battalion stood at attention, eyes either looking off into space or focused strictly on the knight’s forehead. Outside, lesser soldiers bustled about, sensing that something was wrong.

      “I did, Kawaka, sir.” The voice came from somewhere behind the barrel-chested local-resistance captains. “I was on maintenance duty.”

      “And you are?” Kawaka held his breath, trying not to shout at the fool.

      “Dubto, spear-bird, of the sixth elite band of the tracking division of the Marshes Battalion.”

      Kawaka strode along the branch, trembling with impatience. “By my teeth! Do you know why I kept this mangy little crossbreed so carefully all these seasons? He could have been a nice dumpling in the supper pot!”

      “Yes, sir,” said Dubto mechanically. “You kept him to give to His Majesty the Ancient Wing. It is well known that the emperor likes rare gemstones and rare birds. But the fledgling was weakening, sir,” Dubto said. “So I thought fresh air…”

      “Cheek!” Kawaka screeched. He marched about impatiently, the tassels on his chest fluttering with each huff of his breath.

      A year before, while on a trip passing over the seaside, four of his soldiers had raided a cliff. After two of them had drawn away the mother and killed her, the remaining birds had seized her scrawny baby. Seeing its strangeness, they had reported it to Kawaka.

      “All that work to keep him safe,” Kawaka blustered, “and now this incident has sown seeds of rebellion in his heart. But time is running short! You,” he ordered one of the birds, “put a heavy rope around 013-Unidentified’s foot. We must start the journey.” Kawaka snatched the yellow stone from its display stand and put it in a small wooden box. At least I have this. The emperor will be pleased with me, the knight thought.

      Ewingerale bobbed up and down in his undulating flight. Alternating between mad bursts of wing flapping and short glides where he tucked in his wings, he paused only to pull up the hood of his tattered vest. His round red head was dangerously obvious in the woods.

      But as the sun brightened, the hope that Wind-voice was still alive dimmed. The woodpecker’s long tongue tensed in his skull and he swallowed hard. How could the white bird not have been sentenced to death already? “Fate holds both grit and gold in store for us,” he whispered to himself. If Wind-voice was fated to die, there was little that Winger could do to save him.

      And yet, while languishing in that fetid cage, Winger had thought it must be his fate to perish, and Wind-voice had changed that. Maybe Wind-voice’s fate could be changed as well. Winger knew he could not simply abandon his new friend, not after Wind-voice had saved his life. If there was any chance – the slightest ray of hope – that the strange white bird was still alive, Winger would peck and hammer with all his might, attempting a rescue.

      I can’t do it alone, but where in these hills and dales can I find help? he thought. He had been shipped here as a gift to Kawaka by a lesser official. That bird had thought the woodpecker’s musical talents were something to enjoy, but clearly Kawaka had not agreed. The knight had ordered a guard to break all the strings on the woodpecker’s harp and had tossed the prisoner into the back of the burrow.

      A few days before, Kawaka had remembered him and decided he’d make a succulent meal. They’d tossed gigantic piles of potato peelings into his cage hoping to fatten him up, but he had eaten none of it.

      “Fate is good to me,” he whispered to himself joyously, for suddenly he spied a small wisp of smoke in the cedar groves north of the battalion camp. Perhaps some other birds lived nearby.

      But then his head snapped back at the faint croaks of “Hey ho, hey ho!” behind him. Down he dropped, his heart pounding fearfully. From the thorns of a hawthorn tree, he glimpsed Kawaka flying purposefully in the lead of twenty or so birds, all laden down with odd packages. They were heading northwest.

      His fears eased as he saw the archaeopteryxes streak past, not veering a feather from their straight path. The sight of white wings straggling behind an archaeopteryx made his neck prickle again. “Wind-voice is alive! Where are they going?”

      Winger leaped out of hiding and bolted towards the line of smoke. An egret armed with darts splashed out from a pond and ordered him to stop. Winger obeyed, pouring out a jumble of words so quickly that the sentry could hardly understand.

      “I’ll take you to Fisher,” the egret declared. “You can tell your tale to him.”

      Winger heard the camp before he saw it. The whetting of dozens of spearheads upon rock sounded like a brisk, deadly rain. Kingfishers, egrets, herons and mynas bowed before their work. They seemed to be preparing for battle. Some practised moves, jabbing with their spears, leaping back, and jabbing again in time with the grinding. Winger saw a great blue heron erect on a rock, and a stout myna leaning on his staff.

      The heron had the air of a leader, so Winger darted to the bird, gasping out his story. “My friend, he saved me. He released me from the lair of the archaeopteryxes. But they caught him, they kept him, he couldn’t – did you just see that train of birds? They were leading him away on a rope—”

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