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 about impatiently, 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 box. At least I have this. The emperor will be pleased with me, the knight thought.
Ewingerale bobbed up and down in his undulating flight. Alternating between mad bursts of wing flapping and short glides where he tucked in his wings, he paused only to pull up the hood of his tattered vest. His round red head was dangerously obvious in the woods.
But as the sun brightened, the hope that Wind-voice was still alive dimmed. The woodpecker’s long tongue tensed in his skull and he swallowed hard. How could the white bird not have been sentenced to death already? “Fate holds both grit and gold in store for us,” he whispered to himself. If Wind-voice was fated to die, there was little that Winger could do to save him.
And yet, while languishing in that fetid cage, Winger had thought it must be his fate to perish, and Wind-voice had changed that. Maybe Wind-voice’s fate could be changed as well. Winger knew he could not simply abandon his new friend, not after Wind-voice had saved his life. If there was any chance – the slightest ray of hope – that the strange white bird was still alive, Winger would peck and hammer with all his might, attempting a rescue.
I can’t do it alone, but where in these hills and dales can I find help? he thought. He had been shipped here as a gift to Kawaka by a lesser official. That bird had thought the woodpecker’s musical talents were something to enjoy, but clearly Kawaka had not agreed. The knight had ordered a guard to break all the strings on the woodpecker’s harp and had tossed the prisoner into the back of the burrow.
A few days before, Kawaka had remembered him and decided he’d make a succulent meal. They’d tossed gigantic piles of potato peelings into his cage hoping to fatten him up, but he had eaten none of it.
“Fate is good to me,” he whispered to himself joyously, for suddenly he spied a small wisp of smoke in the cedar groves north of the battalion camp. Perhaps some other birds lived nearby.
But then his head snapped back at the faint croaks of “Hey ho, hey ho!” behind him. Down he dropped, his heart pounding fearfully. From the thorns of a hawthorn tree, he glimpsed Kawaka flying purposefully in the lead of twenty or so birds, all laden down with odd packages. They were heading northwest.
His fears eased as he saw the archaeopteryxes streak past, not veering a feather from their straight path. The sight of white wings straggling behind an archaeopteryx made his neck prickle again. “Wind-voice is alive! Where are they going?”
Winger leaped out of hiding and bolted towards the line of smoke. An egret armed with darts splashed out from a pond and ordered him to stop. Winger obeyed, pouring out a jumble of words so quickly that the sentry could hardly understand.
“I’ll take you to Fisher,” the egret declared. “You can tell your tale to him.”
Winger heard the camp before he saw it. The whetting of dozens of spearheads upon rock sounded like a brisk, deadly rain. Kingfishers, egrets, herons and mynas bowed before their work. They seemed to be preparing for battle. Some practised moves, jabbing with their spears, leaping back, and jabbing again in time with the grinding. Winger saw a great blue heron erect on a rock, and a stout myna leaning on his staff.
The heron had the air of a leader, so Winger darted to the bird, gasping out his story. “My friend, he saved me. He released me from the lair of the archaeopteryxes. But they caught him, they kept him, he couldn’t – did you just see that train of birds? They were leading him away on a rope—”
The heron held up a wing and interrupted him. “A train of birds, you say? Were they carrying boxes and bundles?”
“Yes, yes!” Winger nodded eagerly. “And they are holding my friend captive. Please, can you—”
The heron looked down his long beak at the excited woodpecker. “My son, our goals are linked,” he said. “Kawaka has stolen the amber stone of the kingfisher tribe. If what you say is true, he is bringing our stone as tribute to the Ancient Wing, the emperor of the archaeopteryxes. We have prepared for weeks, and we plan to attack them today. You must show us where they were flying. Perhaps we can rescue your friend as well as our gemstone.”
Meanwhile, Kawaka winged on to meet his emperor. Hungrias had just arrived at his winter palace in the Marshes territory, where he went to escape the cold in the northern region of his empire, Castlewood.
“Hurry, hurry!” Kawaka called to his soldiers. He, as the regional knight, had to report to the emperor yearly with gifts and tributes. This year, twenty pack-soldiers accompanied him, some hanging on to barrels with hooked talons or clamped bills, others swinging silk stretchers, heavy with bales and boxes, between them.
013-Unidentified seized a moment when his guard’s head was turned to try to untie his leash, but the burly soldier who was holding the other end noticed and gave a terrible flick of the rope, which sent the young bird tumbling. “Don’t you dare try anything like that once we arrive there!” The guard rushed the white bird along so quickly that he had no chance to try an escape again.
013-Unidentified was nearly breathless when they did.
The winter palace of the archaeopteryxes was a miniature forest on bamboo stilts. It rose out of the middle of a slimy pond. The platform above the stilts had been covered with earth, and plants that thrived in mild winters were planted in it. They grew in a thick screen that hid the actual halls and buildings from view. As Kawaka and his train approached the palace, all 013-Unidentified could see was an arched opening between two trees, leading to a long, shaded green tunnel.
“Sir Kawaka, reporting for the annual tribute. I request an audience with the Ancient Wing.” Kawaka nodded at the gate guard. He felt the tension draining out of him now that he was safely at the winter palace. It was always dangerous carrying so many valuables across the Marshes. His train had been attacked this time by a ragtag band of herons, egrets and kingfishers, although they’d beaten them off with little trouble.
The sentry at the gate looked over Kawaka and his officers and stepped back to let them pass.
Carrying the wooden box on his back, Kawaka, followed by his soldiers, passed through the green tunnel and into a bright hall filled with winter jasmine. He looked over his shoulder and gave 013-Unidentified’s captor a quick frown, and the bird dragged the prisoner faster. Behind them came the string of gift-laden soldiers.
When they were in place, they all crouched and waited, 013-Unidentified forced down by two other birds. Scholars of the court stood on the left, knights on the right.
Solemn expressions were pasted on to faces as a low drumroll issued from the royal orchestra. “His Majesty, Emperor Hungrias!” hailed a small archaeopteryx, followed by the tooting of a bugle.
A large archaeopteryx in silk ruffles and a velvet suit sewn with glittering jewels swept a curtain dramatically aside and landed on a high whalebone perch in front of Kawaka. A golden ring that dangled from a hole drilled through his beak glinted in the light. “So!” the Ancient Wing said throatily, his eyes sweeping across the tribute that Sir Kawaka had brought. “So!”