Chapter Twenty-Eight Double Thunder #2
Sala could hear the officer speaking, giving orders, but none of the men moved except to back away from the victim, now nothing more than a mass of blood and flesh, and the birds that lay dead or dying around him.
In fact, there weren’t very many of them—a dozen or so, Sala estimated, still blinking to clear her eyes.
The majority of the birds had either been thrown away from the explosion or escaped into the air, and within less than a minute, they returned.
Screeching and jeering, they dived downwards right onto the victim’s body, and those who couldn’t get to it feasted with just as much tearing greed on the bodies of the fallen birds, some of them still alive.
The officer in charge was making notes in a small book.
The other soldiers were cautiously trying to get to the boxes that had held the explosives, but the crowd of birds prevented them.
Their savage greed had been roused to a state of uncontrollable madness; drunk with blood, they snapped and tore and rent apart every shred of flesh and bone on the rocks around them, more interested at that point in dead flesh and blood than in living, which might fight back.
The soldiers were passing around a bottle. Sala had seen enough; she took her cloud-pine in hand and soared up high, where the air was cleaner. When she could breathe more easily she oriented herself in all the ways witches knew, and set off back to the gryphons.
—
“He was bait?” said Malcolm.
“Exactly what he was,” said Sala.
Prince Keshvād’s expression couldn’t change, but the way he drew himself up and back was enough to express his disgust.
“What were they trying to do, though?” he said. “Not just set up an ingenious way to kill some poor prisoner?”
“It was an experiment,” said Malcolm. “To see if that explosive was any use against the birds.”
“And it wasn’t,” said Lyra.
Sala Riikola and some other witches were sitting nearby.
She said, “The officer in charge had precise orders. After the explosion he was beginning to measure how far out the blast had been effective, by counting the dead birds. But the other birds kept attacking him and he had to retreat with the rest of the men.”
“Did they tie the man down inside the ravine, or outside it?” Malcolm asked.
“Just outside.”
“I think they’ll try again, and next time do it further in. Exploding a bomb like that in the open air wouldn’t hurt a flock of birds as much as doing it in a narrow gully.”
“We don’t need to see them do it again,” said Gulya.
“Did the birds have a particular way of attacking?” said Lyra. “Did they follow particular leaders, or were they just a mob?”
“They were just a mob. They followed the strongest, as in any mob,” said Sala. “But no regular plan of attack. Biggest and strongest got to the prey first and ate most.”
“But they did follow, if they were led?”
“I think they did,” said Sala.
“What are you thinking?” said Malcolm to Lyra.
“I’m thinking of one afternoon on Port Meadow last year.
The swallows were gathering to fly south.
There were hundreds of them in a great flock, and they were excited by the sense of soon flying away, I suppose…
Anyway, as we watched them wheeling round and round over the river, Pan saw something odd.
I didn’t believe him at first, but then I saw it too.
In the middle of the swallows, flying with them, wheeling around just as fast, there was a dragonfly.
I couldn’t see what sort—it was going too fast—but it was certainly a dragonfly and not a swallow.
Normally you’d expect the nearest swallow to snap it up at once, but they were all caught up in the excitement.
Pan said it looked as if the dragonfly was leading them, but I thought it just looked as if it had forgotten it was a dragonfly.
And…that’s what I was thinking. That’s all. I don’t know why.”
The gryphons were silent. They had the habit of remaining absolutely still, like stone carvings; they never seemed under any compulsion to talk.
The witches, on the other hand, had listened closely to what Lyra said, and then began to talk among themselves, in their own languages, as busily as swallows in a barn.
Her story had clearly described something familiar.
Prince Keshvād said to Lyra, “You said the explosive didn’t work.”
“If they were trying to find a way of dealing with the birds, then that way wasn’t it. They could only kill a few at a time, and the rest just flew out of the way and came back.”
“This must be the explosive they developed to destroy the openings, the windows into other worlds,” said Malcolm. “And it does seem to have worked for that, up to a point.”
“Further back I saw thousands of soldiers,” said Sala Riikola. “They must have recruited them from every country. Even if the birds attack them all the way through the mountains, there will be many left.”
“Can we fly high above them?” said Gulya.
But no one knew the answer to that. One by one, gryphons began to withdraw and sleep. Groups of witches still sat together, talking quietly.
Malcolm and Lyra sat where they were for a minute or so.
“Are you cold?” he said.
“Yes, a little.”
“It’ll get colder. We’ll need to sleep close together.”
“I’d thought of that.”
“How did you manage in the Arctic?”
“I had the best clothing you could get. The gyptians made sure of it, and then Mr. Scoresby helped. He was a balloonist. He’d flown all over the Arctic. I think they’d have laughed at what we’re wearing here.”
“It can’t be helped.”
Asta said, “Get as close as you can. It’s the only thing to do.”
“My coat’s big enough to wrap around us both,” said Malcolm.
They moved together. Lyra thought he was thinner than he used to be, but he was still…Burly? Was that the word? He was warm, anyway, and that was what mattered most. She felt shy, of all things.
“Did you…” she began, but then stopped, because she thought he was going to say something, but he didn’t.
“Did I what?”
“I don’t know. Sorry.”
He shifted position to give her more space, and wrapped the big coat around her. She felt wide awake, but warm. Perhaps the vivid consciousness of his body close to hers would fade a little, and then she’d be able to sleep.
“Where’s the strangest place you’ve ever slept?” he said.
“In a balloon, above the Arctic. I mean, in the basket thing underneath it, not in the—you know. What about you?”
“In a grave, in the Gobi desert.”
“A grave? Why?”
“There was a sandstorm and it was there. Not a very deep grave, and the tenant had left long before. Were you nervous in the balloon? Or in the basket thing?”
“No…I was perfectly confident. Pan was with me, and the balloonist Mr. Scoresby was…Well, he just made me confident because he knew what he was doing. And besides, Iorek Byrnison was with us. The armored bear. I must have told you about him.”
“Sounds like a full load.”
“Well, I was young then. Lighter, I expect.”
“Will you tell me the whole story one day?”
“If you tell me everything about the flood.”
“I thought I had.”
“In that case I want to hear it again, including everything you left out. Like…Alice.”
“Alice certainly was in the story. You forgotten already?”
“No. But…Were you…I mean, before this began…Were you in love with Alice?”
“What a question, here in the foothills of the Tien Shan! Why do you ask that?”
“I’ve been wondering it for a while.”
“Have you? Well, since you ask, I was in love with her twice.”
“Twice?”
“Yes. The first time I fell in love with her was in a garden under the ground, when the flood took us into a tunnel and then into the garden of a great palace, or that’s what it looked like, with lights in all the trees and people walking about, talking and laughing and drinking wine.
Alice was on the bank looking after you while I mended the canoe.
And she fell asleep, and I looked at her face, because it had changed…
She always had a little frown, and kept her lips pressed together, looking fierce; but I’d never seen her asleep before, and her expression was relaxed and almost happy, and she was smiling, and she looked so lovely I fell in love with her and I wanted to kiss her but I was afraid she’d wake up, so I didn’t. ”
“She might not have done.”
“It wouldn’t have been right, anyway.”
“Did you stay in love with her?”
“Yes. You have to remember I was only eleven or something. And I’d always sort of hated her because she was a bully and she had a temper. It was just seeing her like that…It changed me. I never told her or let her think…But we were friends after that. Besides, she was older than me.”
“The difference probably means more at that age, though.”
“Anyway…I said nothing about it.”
“But you said twice.”
“Yes, I did.”
They were whispering now. The silence around them was full of fields, Lyra thought. Crosscurrents and different pressures, areas of intensity and of calm; fields of meaning, and whirlpools and vortices weak and strong.
“When was the other time?” Lyra whispered.