Ardneh's Sword

Chapter One The night was no longer thick with darkness, and the chill air had the feel of early morning, when the flapping and thrashing noise exploded atop the covered wagon's canvas roof. The noise jarred Chance out of some kind of pleasantly mournful dream, whose content vanished entirely, leaving only a feeling behind, the instant his eyes came open. His first conscious thought was: This time Mitra's made a really rough landing. Stupid damned owl. His second thought was: Something's seriously wrong. In the next moment, all thinking was shocked into a temporary halt. A little more than a meter above his face, the canvas sagged alarmingly. The slender wooden hoops that held it above the wagon's body were giving way, as if the whole weight of some creature considerably heavier than a giant owl had suddenly been dumped aboard. It was a rare event, though not unheard of, for the bird to come down on the wagon's top. Mitra's preferred and much more practical landing place was right at the front, on the narrow bench of the driver's seat, which was otherwise unoccupied at the predawn hour when the owl generally returned. Chance called out: "Mitra?" His voice cracked in the middle of the word, as it sometimes did these days. By now he was sitting up straight, confusedly brushing dark hair out of his eyes. The movement had brought his head close to the inward-bulging fabric just above, and the slash that came next, as if in answer to his call, opening up tough canvas like so much gossamer, sounded deafeningly loud. He threw up his hands to shield his face. First the bird's large predatory foot appeared, armed with razor claws. Next there dropped into Chance's hand a diminutive object that felt like a loop of fine chain with one small, irregular lump attached. His fingers closed automatically on this unexpected offering, just as the owl's foot vanished. Its place in the opening was immediately taken by a monstrous face, totally strange and alien, looming within an arm's length of Chance's own. The sheer visual shock of the apparition knocked him flat, cringing on his back. Two staring eyes, somewhat mismatched in size but each fully large enough to have been human, peered down into the wagon through the fresh gap in the canvas. They flanked a vaguely human nose, that no one could possibly mistake for the great bird Mitra's short but powerful hooked beak. The eyes now boring in at Chance seemed something either more or less than animal, and they were certainly all wrong for any bird. They glowed in a way that no owl's ever could. Instinct sent Chance's wiry, fifteen-year-old body rolling sideways, trying to put space between him and the hideous vision. Even as the boy moved, the thin, curving, wood supports upholding the wagon's roof sprang back into place above him, affording no clue as to just what solid weight had so deformed them, or what had happened to suddenly relieve the pressure. The fresh gap in the overhead canvas, abruptly emptied of nightmare, showed only the grayish blankness of the predawn sky. Horror had vanished, or at least retreated, but uproar continued. Chance's ears informed him that the noisy presence had already left the wagon's top, landing with an audible thump and wounded-sounding flutter somewhere on the nearby ground. The great bird was still uttering cries that were almost musical even in its terror. Springing into a crouch, shoeless but clad in shirt and trousers, Chance tossed blankets aside, jumped to the canvas door flap and pulled it wide open. The huge owl, one of its long wings extended in a way that suggested injury, met him in the doorway. The bird was struggling toSaberhagen, Fred is the author of 'Ardneh's Sword', published 2006 under ISBN 9780765312105 and ISBN 0765312107.