Sword Quest Read Free Page B

to the burrow. Nothing was to be seen. The puddle where the sentry had been lying was empty. Holding their breath, they stepped outside.
    “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 gray-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, halfintimidating. “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 aboutimpatiently, 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