Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(41)
Okoa placed his training spear in the rack and used the edge of his cotton shirt to rub the sweat from his eyes. He had hoped to get another hour of practice in before night drove him inside, but he knew that rider and whatever message he brought was meant for him. Practice would have to wait.
Eyes still on the approaching rider, he jogged toward the aviary. It was nothing like the great aviaries of Tova. Those were proper aeries, great stables high in the cliffs around the city. Each Sky Made clan had one, save Water Strider, who kept their namesake beasts in a cave system closer to the Tovasheh river. But Golden Eagle, Winged Serpent, and Carrion Crow preferred to be close to the sky.
The war college accommodated the riders of Tova’s Sky Made clans as best they could on the wide flat plains of Hokaia by constructing large wooden holding pens. The pens were laid out in a series of circles, each one two acres in diameter, with hitching posts, feeding troughs, and high open fences that served as walls. Plenty of room for the beasts to land but not to stay for any length of time in any kind of comfort. After all, Tova’s Sky Made scions were accommodated in Hokaia, as were all who came to study the ancient arts of warcraft, but no one wanted the Tovans to get too comfortable bringing their creatures there, most of all the native Hokaians.
Some enterprising students had hung clan banners by the gates to each pen, likely brought from home. First was the crow’s-head skull on a field of red, next the outline of an eagle in flight against a sheet of gold, then the sticklike insect on blue, and finally the green twist of a winged serpent. Okoa headed to the red banner. Once inside the pen, he looked up, hand shading his eyes from the setting sun, to watch the crow and rider land.
He grinned as the bird hovered briefly above him. Its talons were large enough to crush his head as if it were no more than a melon. It flexed them as if in greeting before it dropped to the grass beside him. A great gust of breath poured from its mouth, smelling like the corpse of some animal it had eaten during the journey, and it shook its massive head, feathered mane glossy from care. It let out an ear-blasting squawk, and Okoa laughed.
“Well met, Kutssah,” he said, patting the beak that the bird offered up. Seeing the creature made him miss his own mount terribly. His own Benundah would be five years old come spring, a great blue-black beauty Okoa had cared for since her hatching. But Benundah had not made the journey with him to Hokaia. There was nowhere for the bird to stay long-term, and it would be unkind to separate her from her kin for the years Okoa spent here, so far from Tova.
“Ho, Cousin!” a voice called from the beast’s back. “Stop making Kutssah soft!”
“Ho, Chaiya,” Okoa answered, his smile spreading even wider. “Kutssah is a warrior, like her rider. No amount of petting will change that. Isn’t that right, Kutssah?” He rubbed the crow’s beak again until she nudged his hand, contented.
“Soft!” his cousin repeated, laughing as he slid from his mount. He was tall and broad-shouldered, same as Okoa, muscles thick on his arms and shoulders from handling his mount and war training. He pulled his feathered helmet from his head and shook out his hair. His hair was more sun-lightened brown than Okoa’s midnight black, and he wore it tied back from his face in a series of intricate interlocking twists. Okoa preferred the Hokaia style of wearing two matching braids tight against the head and trailing down his back, a sound fighting style and better than the looser styles popular in Tova. But beyond the small differences, the cousins could pass as brothers. Square-jawed, broad-faced, with a touch of sensuality around the lips and mischief in the high arching eyebrows.
Chaiya’s panther-hide riding trousers were stained from heavy wear, as were his hide armor and the edges of the high-collared shirt that showed around his unshaven neck. It was a familiar uniform, one Okoa himself had worn before and ached to wear again.
He liked Hokaia, appreciated the education he was receiving here in strategy, leadership, and hand-to-hand combat. He was honored that it had been he who was chosen to attend the war college after Chaiya. But he had lingered at the school too long, a year past when he should have returned, and he was ready to go home. He wanted to see the cliffs of Tova again, to walk its bridges and wander its streets that ran through the clouds. He wanted to see his mother again, and perhaps even his sister. And he wanted to see Benundah.
“What brings you to Hokaia?” he asked.
“It is good to see you again,” Chaiya said, pulling him into an embrace. His cousin’s armor had acquired a thin sheen of ice from his time in the sky, and it chilled Okoa where it touched his skin.
A shudder rocked Chaiya’s body. Okoa untangled himself from Chaiya’s heavy arms, alarmed. He searched his normally steady cousin’s face. “What is it? Why are you weeping? Skies, what has happened?”
Chaiya was the toughest of all their brood. Stone-faced and impossible to upset. Loyal to the clan above all else, a soldier in a city that did not particularly require or appreciate soldiers beyond the ceremonial. But Okoa had always appreciated him, always admired him. He had molded himself after his older cousin, wanting nothing more than to follow in his footsteps and become one of the matron’s Shield when Chaiya retired. The tears running down Chaiya’s broad cheeks frightened him like nothing else could.
“Is it Benundah?” he asked. “Has something happened to her?”
Chaiya swiped at his eyes with the back of a leather-covered hand. “No, Okoa,” he said with a wry chuckle, “it’s not Benundah. She is fine, although she misses you.”