Juliano, for his part, was grieved at the risk Bethania took on herself, but agreed nevertheless. He was minded at first to enjoin Sir Micah to make the care of his cousin his chief thought, but left off from that when he looked on that knight's honest face and lost any doubt there was no need of it. Instead he asked only if Sir Micah judged himself ready.
“There is no question of that,” the daring knight said. “I have spent all my life learning knightliness, and when I cross bridges, oft they have men on them who would rather I not. Next to those crossings, this one seems mild. Have no fear of that. Nor have I failed in going here to there even when bearing a like load, for my sister is close to your cousin in size.” He knelt then that Bethania might take up her place like an archon chosen by the people of a lordless city to guide them, and who in truth must rely more on them than they on him.
The knight, so laden, walked to the edge of the cliff, asked pardon of the bridge-tailed rabrab, and began the crossing with no heed for the gasps behind him. It was the watching Upani who gasped, not the knights, who had trust in their peer, and not Bethania on his back, who made no noise but gripped him tighter so that he would start from the pain were he less used to it.
But all he did was to speak in this way. “Have you visited far Luros, or hope to do so one day? It is not my home, but I traveled there for the reason of its renown in knightliness. It seems to me right that a man of some town or castle should stay within it for his training if such can be had there but go abroad if, by becoming squire to a better knight, he might be a boon to the country which has a claim on him. I, however, was not one such as those, but rather an orphan who walked from place to place in the tracks of wise Simasoon, learning that and those from him. There is no scholar in any country, this is the sure verdict I reached in my travels, who after an hour of speech with Simasoon would not know twice what he did. Today I have heard that nearby Chrysasty has eclipsed Luros in knightly fame on that side of the sea, and when I find no more deeds to do in this land I hope to go there and see it. That is a spring-season city, new and growing, unlike Aequinium, which I hope to see sooner. Luros is old as well. The ancient custom known most in Luros is to pour water over all the people who enter the theater for the first play of the season. I never thought it odd when I lived there, but now I am sure there must be some history behind it, for I have seen it nowhere else. Another custom is the parade of masks, and that I have seen in cities elsewhere, and villages even.”
All the time that knight talked, he paused not ever that Bethania might answer, and did not wish that she do so, but rather that the calmness of his speech should calm her as well. He guessed also, rightly, that she had shut her eyes tight and would open them were he to stop, as his sister always did when as a child he carried her in that wise, and he was minded to prevent that.
Sir Micah, however, looked, as did the knights and Upani, then far away. They felt also the wind as it blew and made the rabrab's tail to sway, a little only, but that enough for their hearts to freeze and their limbs to lose strength. Breda, the child, cried while Emery Upana held her, unaware of the feat being done but frightened by the quiet there that none dared break from worry the knight would be startled by it.
But their worry had no purpose to it, for Sir Micah ignored what was not the twin paths his feet walked and how Bethania's weight sat on him. The air beneath him and what lay at the bottom of it bothered him not at all, for he did not look at it, and to the lament that rose from time to time when the Upani lost mastery of their voices he gave no ear, and neither did he think on what he would do if he slipped. For he would die, as would his charge, and he had no mind to allow that. He stepped, leaned, stepped, straightened himself, stepped, and no foot did he put wrong. So intent was he on his walking that the ground was close under him again before he noticed it, and did so no sooner than this, that the two lengths of tail became uneven as one anchor was farther than the other.
He assured his companion the trial of the ravine had been overcome and set her down. “I will leave it to you whether you allow your siblings and cousins to praise you for the rest of your days, or if honesty must win and you tell them it was no hard feat, for you at least. They must think you whimpered and wept as they would, but were you to go on a dozen such trips you would have no more trouble from that than would your sisters at being sent to the well, buckets in hand. I deem honesty the better course in all things, but truth heard by the wrong ear becomes a lie. Simasoon told me that, and I have seen myself the proof of it when words not meant so are heard as a boast and are robbed of their worth thereby,” Sir Micah said.
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“I will think on that, sir knight.” Bethania promised that with quivering speech, still unsteady from the trial but able to stand and to walk. And that she did behind the knight, toward the sound that they heard which they took for the saena's woeful cry. And they were not wrong in that.
The noble bird lay on its side, one wing folded beneath its great body as large as a prize-winning chariot and the three horses that drew it all together, or larger. Its other wing that once split clouds in swift flight showed how poorly its owner had fared those many years past. For the blues and the reds of its feathers had faded so that a rich man would bring suit against the merchant that sold them as belonging to any bird rarer than the partridge, and neither did those dull feathers cover all the wing, but there were bare patches. Even such was the state of that bird that was the finest in the world, a ruler of the skies ever holding to the right, punishing the wrong and those who did it. Its talons used to gripping hapless prey and raking proud rocs to their woe opened and closed on air and nothing else.
No vigor had the saena to stretch its ragged wings and fly, and if it had, the clouds were too high for it, as fetters bound it to the heavy earth as Sir Micah had foreseen. He set about the freeing of the bird with the hammer and spike, both borrowed, while Bethania opened the sack her family gave her, full of rabbits and fish, and offered the food with a hand that had recovered its firmness.
Nor did the saena refuse. Its careful beak snatched the meat with hardly enough time between lunges for Bethania to flinch, which she did, but held her arm straight for all that. Soon the saena regained all the strength that it had, peerless as it was, and its plumage showed such color as the sky has when the sun rests its weary rays on the wide and deep ocean for a time before it withdraws from the field that the stars may dance there and give cheer to sailors by their movements. The saena then turned its noble head to Sir Micah and watched as he strove to split one link from the next. The moment the cruel chains fell, mastered by practiced might, that noblest of the sky's travelers raised itself and seized its airy throne with its world-enfolding wings, renewed in their splendor, and the knight and the lady marveled at the majesty of it.
Their awe and surprise waxed all the greater when that matchless bird took the two of them in its talons, one in each, and crossed the ravine by a road higher and surer than the unusual bridge of tails. The Upani roared when they saw it and raised their swords and pointed spears, an iron forest. They praised as well the two the bird set down before it rose again and flew a halo-round course above the body of Aequinians and knights, and at that the many and eager armsmen began their march under the saena's shadow toward the castle.
The camasotes knew woe then. A greater flier than they, defter and bigger in the fight, fell upon them so heavily that many were slain by its talons and more by its beak, and still others by the arrows and missiles from ground-dwelling men they no longer had such ease in avoiding as before, hindered by the saena as they were. Sir Thurbert slew not one or two only but a dozen or more, and his fellow knights did much. The yard had none of the beasts in it when an hour had passed for that most of them died and the last few fled, but not soon or swift enough to save themselves against a lord among birds.
The Upani rejoiced then far more than had they gained the castle without effort, just as a fire causes cauldron-bound water to bubble and rage as it does not in the river or lake from which it was taken. Nor was there a man or woman among them who was unaware that he had seen and been a part of an episode that would be passed down from the aged to the young for so long as their family spread its branches over the earth, there or elsewhere. But Juliano soon recalled them to the task before them, which was to remove the vile nests of the camasotes that it were better for the women and children never to view.
Then the camp moved within the walls. Every man labored to make the keep new again so far as could be done with such supplies as the Upani had brought, and with those the walls grew high and sheer. There the knights and all the households together had the first feast in that castle for years, all without furnishings but with cheer and merriment enough that the people overlooked the lack. And Sir Micah, Bethania, and the saena were served first together, for the sake of which they took the meal out of doors. The rabrab though was served not at all, for it had left without their knowing, and none there saw it again in their lives.