Sunwing (12 page)

Another huge breath of air was forced into his lungs.

“You will help the Humans finish the work they have started, wiping each other off the face of the earth. And the metal disc they gave you shall be our first assault. There is a place called Bridge City, where you can drop the disc. It is home to millions of bats, and to as many humans … it is their greatest city, and you will destroy it.”

Goth felt himself wrenched off his feet and slammed to the Stone. It was as if a huge beast had had him in the vise of its jaws, and finally let go. He choked in more air. His ribs sang with pain.

“I’m sorry, Your Highness,” whimpered a guard, “one of the little bats escaped.”

“Find it, then,” Goth snapped, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He turned to Voxzaco. “This eclipse, how long does it last?”

“No more than seven minutes,” the priest replied.

Seven minutes to sacrifice one hundred offerings.

“And according to the Stone, it will come in only three nights,” Voxzaco added.

Goth whirled on the guards. “We will send out our soldiers immediately. Capture owls and birds, and as many northern bats as we can find. Take them all from their roosts and bring them back here. We have three nights to find one hundred offerings—fall short of that number, and you yourselves will lie on the Stone. Do you understand?”

“Yes, King Goth.”

“Then make all preparations. Hurry.”

With every wingstroke, pain seeped through the gash in his stomach, and Shade had to struggle to keep up with Chinook and Caliban. They flew in urgent silence over the city, and for the first time, he noticed how battered it was: streets buckled, buildings collapsed in rubble, huge spaces where there was nothing at all but a scorched crater. Their flight path took them over sullen stone buildings with tiled roofs, many in ruin. Off to the west, he could still see the flicker of flames from the big building the bats had destroyed, and the wail of Human sirens filtered through the pungent air. He wondered if the Humans down here used bats to carry their weapons too. The eastern sky was starting to pale: dawn was coming.

Flying behind Caliban, he could see the ugly scar in his belly. Must have ripped his disc off too. He was a big bat, larger even than Chinook, but his ribs pressed through the skin of his flanks, and his face had a gaunt, somewhat savage look to it. Shade wondered how long he’d been down here, and what he’d had to do to survive.

“What’s your colony?” he asked.

“Mastiffs,” Caliban said bluntly, without looking back, “from the western forests.”

He didn’t seem very eager to talk. Chinook had said nothing since they’d set out; he just flew, his stunned eyes fixed on the horizon. Shade didn’t even know where they were being led. He tried to comfort himself with what Caliban had said earlier: There were others searching around the burning building for more survivors.

Maybe Chinook’s parents.

Maybe your father.

He clamped down on his thoughts, angry with himself for even hoping. He’d hoped for so long and been disappointed so often—what was the point?

From behind him came a sudden intense flash of light, and for a split second it was as if the night had become day.

“Don’t look back,” Caliban snapped.

Shade looked. A huge plume of light and smoke was billowing up from the far horizon. Even after slamming his eyes shut in pain and horror, the image of that monstrous thunderhead still burned before him. Moments later, the earth and air rumbled as the sound from the explosion reached them.

“That’s one of the owls,” said Caliban.

“What d’you mean?” Shade asked.

“They put little ones on us. But the owls carry much bigger ones.”

Shade remembered seeing the Humans enter the owls’ artificial forest with their metal sticks, and cage the drugged birds. He thought of the young owl with the lightning in his plumage, and felt sick. The sheer size of that blazing cloud—nothing could have survived the sweep of it.

“The Humans pick night flyers,” Caliban was saying quietly back over his wing. “Bats, owls, both of us have echo vision. That’s important. That’s what they use to guide us. I saw a dead owl once; it had a siren in its ear too—you know that metal stud—just like us. The Humans pick their targets, and send us in to do the work for them. They don’t get hurt. The owls can carry more metal. Far bigger explosions, like that one behind us. Lucky for us, the targets are usually way out of the city. So far, anyway.”

Shade thought of the large disc on Goth’s belly. Would his make an explosion like that too? But Shade knew Goth would survive. He always did. He was somewhere out there in the jungle, carrying his disc, a flying catastrophe.

“We’re close now,” said Caliban, jerking his chin. “Up there.” It was the last place on earth Shade would have flown for safe haven right now. High on a cliff overlooking the city towered a giant metal statue: a Human Male, arms outstretched beseechingly—except that his right arm had been blasted off above the elbow, by fire, judging from the melted, twisted look of the stump.

“Statue Haven,” said Caliban, leading them in high toward the peak. Shade could now see the metal Human’s face. There was something achingly kind about the expression, and it made him angry. What right did Humans have to look this way, after what they’d done to all of them? It was a lie. The Humans were evil, like Goth had said all along. He didn’t want to go any closer, but Caliban was diving down to the amputated right arm, and Shade followed with Chinook.

Amid the fused and twisted metal of the stump was a small opening, and Shade trimmed his wings for landing. As he approached, he could make out, just inside the entrance, two bats standing guard. With surprise he noticed they clutched wickedly sharpened sticks.

Caliban shouted out to the guards, and the sticks were quickly pulled back inside. Never had Shade known bats to fashion weapons, and it made him shudder—what terrible things they must be protecting themselves against. The bug that had nearly eaten him was frightening enough. He imagined an army of them, leaping up the statue and flooding inside. The bats needed those weapons.

He landed behind Caliban and shuffled farther inside to make room for Chinook. Shade eyed the guards, a Brightwing and a Graywing, both worn down by hunger but with ferocious determination in their weary faces.

“We’re glad to have you,” one of them said to Shade as they passed.

The passage sloped upward inside the statue’s arm, working back, Shade reckoned, toward its shoulder. There, at the summit, the passage ended, opening out into a yawning vertical cavern: the hollow inside of the statue. It reminded him, just a little, of Tree Haven, his and Chinook’s lost home back in the northern forests, and he felt his throat swell dangerously with homesickness as he heard the echoing flutter of wings, the squeak of voices.

“How many are here?” Shade asked Caliban. He couldn’t bring himself to ask about his father directly—he was too afraid of seeing Caliban shake his head, mumble an apology. It had happened too many times.

“Thirty-six, including you two,” said Caliban with a weary sigh. It was obvious to Shade he was used to keeping track, day by day, as the numbers of this makeshift colony changed, sometimes for the better, sometimes the worse. “But let’s hope they find more survivors back at the building.”

It was a tragic assortment of bats he saw now as he fluttered down into the cavern. He swept the ledges with his echo vision,
desperately searching for a banded Silverwing male. Many of the bats still had bits of metal chain dangling from their bellies. Some had wings cruelly clipped by injury; others had large patches of furless scar tissue caused by horrible burns. All had a lean, wild look to them, and none of them was his father.

At least now he knew for certain. His father, like so many others, had died in flames. He was surprised and guilty that he felt so little. He felt like a colossal empty cave without even echoes inside. What was wrong with him?

He looked up as two more bats swept through the entrance tunnel into Statue Haven, and heard Caliban call up to them: “Did you find any other survivors?”

“We searched all around the building for as long as we could. There was no one.”

Shade looked at Chinook. All the life seemed drained from his eyes. Even his body seemed smaller somehow. How was it he could feel only numbness for his own father’s death, but seeing Chinook like this was almost too much to bear? He’d have done anything to get the old Chinook back: boasting, swaggering through the air, calling him Runt.

“I’m sorry, Chinook,” he said, pushing his nose against the other bat’s neck.

“I knew I saw them,” said Chinook dully.

Anger boiled through Shade’s head. You’re such a fool, he raged at himself. Marina lost her parents, and now Chinook has too. You at least always had your mother. Others too: Frieda, Marina, and Chinook. You had a family, but it was never enough. Should’ve just stayed in Hibernaculum with them all, been grateful for having something. Because now what was there?

“You’ve lost family and friends,” Caliban said matter-of-factly. “We all have. But we’re going to survive.”

“How long have you been here?” Shade asked.

“Varies. Some several weeks, some over two months, like me.”

“You haven’t tried to go back north?”

Caliban gave a harsh laugh. “A long journey. You’ve seen what the jungle is like. The bug that nearly ate you was the least of it. There are owls, and snakes big enough to swallow you alive and give you a long look at their gullet before you’re squeezed to death. There’re eagles, falcons, vultures. And the cannibal bats. Thousands of them.”

Even though he’d known, hearing Caliban say it still filled him with dread. Goth by himself had been terrifying enough. Thousands was beyond imagining.

“I know these bats,” Shade said.

“How?” Caliban said.

“There was one the Humans had up north, named Goth. They took him to the same building as us, and chained him with a metal disc, a big one. He got dumped out with us tonight.”

“Chances are he’s dead, then. At least that’s one less.”

“He doesn’t die,” said Shade simply.

Caliban looked at him strangely. “Doesn’t matter either way. There are enough of them to run the night skies. Even the owls stay out of their way.” He shook his head. “The total reverse of what we’re used to. Owls scared of bats. We’ve lost a few to them. Nothing on the number the cannibals have taken, though. They hunt in packs. Just a few weeks ago we were almost fifty here.”

“We’ve got to get back north,” said Chinook, and Shade turned to him in surprise; he’d been so quiet. “We’ve got to try to warn the others before it’s too late. There’s Frieda, and your mother. And Marina too, maybe.”

“No argument,” said Caliban. “And we would have embarked much earlier. But we’ve still got wounded. We’ve had to wait for
everyone to heal. No one gets left behind here. That’s the rule. We all stay, or we all go.”

Shade nodded, filled with admiration for this small group of determined bats.

“You two need some rest now if you’re coming with us. There’re some berries I came across that seem to quicken the healing. You’ll want some on your wounds.”

“Thank you,” said Shade. He wanted sleep. Deep sleep that would take him through the weeks and months until he could wake up somewhere else, somewhere safe. With surprise he realized how relieved he felt. Someone else was in charge here, and Shade trusted Caliban on instinct. He didn’t want to make plans anymore; he only wanted to follow orders. All his life he’d never done what he was told; he’d always doubted what others said—and look where it got him. He was finished with all that. Take a break from being a hero. Marina was right. He was tired of the very idea of thinking.

Caliban returned with a berry in his mouth and proceeded to chew it into a paste, and spread it onto Chinook’s stomach.

“Every few weeks,” the big mastiff said, “more bats get dropped over the city. And every time we go see if there’re any survivors. There used to be more. Sometimes the discs wouldn’t explode; sometimes the bats would veer away in time.” He smiled angrily. “The Humans are obviously getting better at it. I’m amazed you two survived. Good thing I found you when I did, though. That place where you roosted was a bug nest. More would have come. I’ve seen them eat each other while mating. The female just bites the male’s head right off. Still, they taste all right.”

“You eat them?” Chinook asked in amazement.

“When we can. Plenty of meat on them. Which is good, because hunting’s tricky here. We go out in twos and threes, and
stick close to Statue Haven. Without this place, we wouldn’t have lasted a night in the jungle.”

Caliban mulched up another berry in his mouth and began applying it to Shade’s wound now.

“We were getting ready to leave a few nights back, but then we lost our leader. If anyone could’ve led us back north safely, it was he. I’m just a pale replacement. He was one of the first to get dropped here. Saved me when I came. He’d been in the Human forest for months, and he’d seen some of the things they did to us. Tests.”

“What kinds of tests?” Shade said.

“Making sure the bats were strong enough to carry the discs, figuring out how to make them explode. Getting the sirens to work, and stay in their ears. A lot of bats died in that building, burned to death, or their wings singed so they could never fly again. He survived it all. But the jungle beat him. He was a brave bat. Cassiel saved a lot of us.”

“Cassiel Silverwing?” Shade could hear himself asking the question, as if he were hovering high in the air, watching himself speak.

“That’s right.”

“What happened to him?”

“The cannibals ate him.” Caliban looked at him strangely, and his matter-of-factness faltered for a moment. “You knew him?”

“He was my father.”

Marina flew south.

Every night, Achilles Graywing’s convoy grew as it was joined by other refugees driven from their winter roosts by the owls. Marina felt comforted to be flying with so many bats, even
though she knew a single elite platoon of owls could slash a bloody path through their ranks.

She and Ariel tried to talk to all the newcomers, asking them if they’d seen any Human flying machines, either on the ground or in the air, heading south. The answers were vague: The sky was full of Human machinery, going in all directions. Shade could be anywhere by now. Anywhere.

It was getting warmer. They’d left the snow behind, and last night her heart leaped when she saw grass again, and even a few flowers.

But despite the weather, Frieda was flagging. She lagged behind, her breath rattling. Marina and Ariel and the others had started taking turns carrying the Silverwing elder on their backs. Marina was amazed at how little she weighed, as if her ancient bones were starting to hollow out. During the day, she slept long and hard.

Marina looked across her wing at Ariel. Every dawn she combed her hair, and made a fuss of her, asking if she was warm enough, well fed. At first it made Marina feel awkward—she’d spent so much time alone, she wasn’t used to such attention. She was used to taking care of herself and doing things her own way. But she couldn’t deny she liked it. And being so close to Shade’s mother was strangely comforting, a way of being close to Shade.

“I should’ve gone with him,” she said hopelessly, probably for the tenth time, she realized. “We’re never going to find him this way.”