Wings of Flame Read Free

swelling of muscle just below the neck, the corresponding foot came up at once and held steady.
    Kyrem stepped forward and took the hoof, cleaning out dirt and straw and pebbles with the fire-hardened pointed stick the girl offered him. He moved to the horse’s rump, touched the plump rondure of it, and the hind hoof came up. The shuntali watched in astonishment as he finished all four feet, then stepped to the horse’s head and gentled it again, rubbing the soft fur at the base of the ears and murmuring. She saw him ease something within himself, letting it go like a sigh, settling into the place where he stood. “Good fellow,” he told the horse, and then to the stableboy he said, “Where are the others?”
    â€œOut at grass. There is no room in here.” She spoke so softly he could scarcely hear her. “They have had water and a scoop of barley each.” Ah, the feel of the warm muzzles in her cupped hands. “This one has had hay as well.” She stood watching Kyrem comb a black forelock with his fingers. Omber, the horse’s name was. She wondered if all Devans named their mounts. Such a shame to turn the sons of the south wind into beasts of burden. And yet, that closeness, that caress, the silent magic that had passed between the two, beast and master—she felt a sudden, fierce tenderness toward this Devan and his horse.
    Shouts sounded above, the hard, angry shouts that men use to incite themselves to warlike deeds. Then a scream, the hoarse, wrenching sound of a man’s death scream, and a sort of gurgle. “Devan dogs!” someone roared, and a panicky voice was calling, “Kyrem? Kyrem!” The youth and the girl stood rigid, motionless.
    â€œMy men,” Kyrem whispered, “they’re beset!” He bolted toward the ladder that led up into the inn. It took the girl a moment to realize that he was running toward, not away from, the fray. And he bore no weapon that she could see. “Wait!” she called, perhaps as loudly as she had ever spoken, and she ran after him. He had not gotten far. A dark mass of men blocked the top of the ladder, and in that shadow she could see the glint of long knives.
    â€œThere he is!” one of them barked and came down in a single jump to confront Kyrem. The shuntali saw him in the light of the oil lamp she still carried; it was the weasel-faced, rabble-rousing stranger in gray. His knife flashed, already poised to dart at Kyrem’s defenseless ribs. The shuntali did not have to think; she hurled her lamp at the attacker with force enough to shatter it against his face. Sparks flew along with shards of clay, hot oil splattered, and the man gave a startled scream as darkness fell. The girl had gone into an instinctive charge. She butted her head full force into the stranger’s belly, and he toppled against the ladder, bringing it and his comrades down on top of him. But his knife, flying loose, struck the shuntali above the eye. She fell.
    There followed a confusing time. When her head cleared, the girl saw Kyrem battling with three adversaries. He had found a long knife, and two of the others, by way of fate, had lost theirs, so the battle was not as uneven as it seemed. And Kyrem seemed to have that strange power in him again, swelling his muscles.… The others surrounded him but could not hold him, like so many jackals harrying a lion. He surged and swirled amid them as though he were an embodied energy, something elemental.… The shuntali watched, sitting up and blinking, wincing when they made him bleed. They might yet tear and worry him down—and there was a vague rustling noise she could not identify, a menacing hiss behind the panting and scrambling of combat. She could see the man she had felled stirring, that would make it four against one—she could see? By the light of flames. The lamp had set the straw afire.
    She scrambled up. Oily smoke stung her eyes and set her to