Suddenly, with no reason or provocation, the mare Sasha was seated on shot forward.
Sasha cried out and teetered, but managed to hang on. She pressed herself against the horse’s neck, grasping frantically for the lost reins. Kjell lunged for the mare, but was too slow. He shouted, alerting his men, and mounted Lucian, pursuing the spooked mare now racing toward the cliffs, bolting like she’d seen a rattler. Sasha could only cling to the horse’s mane, her veil whipping free, the panels of her yellow dress streaming behind her. Kjell spurred Lucian forward, covering the space between the galloping mare and his stallion. Lucian’s superior size and strength made the smaller horse easy to catch, but the mare was undeterred. They flew across the plateau, the drop looming closer, the mare heading straight for the ledge at full speed. Kjell attempted to turn the fleeing horse, to cut her off and change her course, but the mare simply charged ahead, dropping her head and, if anything, increasing her speed.
“Sasha!” he shouted, needing her to look at him, to know what he was about to attempt. She turned her head slowly, her face pressed to the mare’s neck, her eyes wide with horror. If she let go she would, at the very least, be badly hurt. If she didn’t let go, she would go over the edge with the crazed horse.
Kjell drew abreast of the mare, matching her pace. With the experience born of warfare on horseback, of wielding a shield and swinging a sword, of holding on with nothing but powerful legs and sheer terror, he lunged to the side and snaked his right arm around Sasha’s waist. With absolute faith, Sasha released the mare’s mane and hurled herself toward him as he dragged her free. Pulling her across his saddle, his thighs anchoring them both to the stallion beneath him, he bore down on Lucian’s reins, turning him to the left and demanding he halt.
“Whoa, Lucian! Whoa!”
The stallion drew up immediately, slowing until he could safely stop. Pawing and tossing his head, he whinnied desperately as Kjell and Sasha watched the brown mare, without ever slowing or altering direction, careen over the edge and disappear. There was no equine shriek of terror, no smattering of rocks marking her descent, no fading sounds of alarm. She was just . . . gone.
Kjell’s men had joined in the pursuit, fanning into a circle to corral the crazed animal, and they drew up around them, breathing hard, faces shocked. A gull, flapping wildly, feathers fluttering, rose up from beyond the cliff’s edge like it had been startled by the falling horse.
“We’ve disturbed their nests,” Sasha gasped, her face pressed into Kjell’s neck where she clutched him tightly.
She was breathless, panting, and Kjell was still lost in the horror of the narrowly-avoided tragedy. Then Sasha was pushing herself upright, her hands braced against his chest, trying to catch her breath and communicate simultaneously.
“Captain, the Volgar! We’ve disturbed their nests.”
***
From beyond the cliffs, in the space where the horse had disappeared, the sound of beating wings filled the air, a hundred times greater than a flock of gulls, rising over the edge and making the horses shudder and scream.
“Get back!” Kjell shouted, knowing a battle near the drop would favor the Volgar, not the King’s Guard. They raced back toward the hard-packed path that cut the savannah, back across the distance they’d just traveled, chasing and being chased, exchanging one horror for another. But the Volgar didn’t swoop and drop.
They were thin, their skins papery and yellow, their wings shredded like a spider’s web. These weren’t the Volgar who grew large and fat in the valley of Kilmorda. These were Volgar who were becoming extinct. Their eyes glittered desperately, and their beaks snapped and clicked, beating at the air high above the soldiers, frantic for blood but too weak to take it. They circled like vultures, looking for an opportunity—a smaller victim, an exhausted horse, a space between soldiers.
“Dismount and draw together!” Kjell roared. The horses were accustomed to battle, to the shriek of the winged beasts, to carrying a warrior while he wielded a sword, but Kjell couldn’t fight with Sasha in front of him. He slid from the saddle, dragging her with him, his arm around her waist, not even waiting for Lucian to come to a complete stop.
The horses shuddered but didn’t bolt, and the soldiers clustered quickly, drawing the horses down, creating a formation with their backs facing inward and their lances bristling outward. The soldiers on the outer edges knelt, the next row crouched, the inner rows stood, and the soldiers in the center held their lances at near vertical, protecting the formation from directly overhead, making a sphere of sharp edges around both man and beast with Sasha pushed to the center and told to crouch and cover her head.
They watched the birdmen swarm and circle, waiting for an opening.
Kjell saw it before it began, the horror of bloodlust, of hunger and desperation. The Volgar had no sense of self-preservation. Or maybe they had lost all instinct in their desire to eat. They started falling from the sky, several birdmen sacrificed themselves upon the upraised spears. The impact impaled them but also dislodged the lances, creating an opening for the beasts behind them and breaking the formation. One birdman hit the ground and immediately lost a wing on Kjell’s sword. Another bird plunged, then another, their wings folded to increase their speed.
“Scatter!” Kjell roared, commanding his men to change the formation. His men immediately widened the circle and released the horses, slapping their rumps to make them run, creating chaos and distraction.
“Brace!” Kjell ordered, and his men dropped to their knees, still back to back, their lances butted against the ground. Kjell remained standing, giving himself greater mobility, awaiting the next bird’s arrival, his sword black with blood, his stance wide. One birdman drew up middive, distracted by the galloping horses, and the Volgar in his wake catapulted past him. The Guard let them fall, expanding their circle and contracting it, keeping Sasha in the center, protecting her even as the birds pounced.
One minute Kjell was brandishing his sword, separating a birdman’s body from his head, the next he was on his back, looking at the sky. Sasha pressed him into the grass, her eyes pupilless in her face, her skin leached of color, her hair tumbling around them.
Then she was lifted straight up off the ground, dangling over him from the talons of a birdman, her eyes still strangely blank, her arms reaching for him as she was propelled upward.
The birdman stuttered mid-flight, as if the weight of the woman proved too much for him in his weakened state. The other Volgar began lifting off, eager to share the birdman’s catch and escape the weapons that had already decimated more than half of their flock.