climb where he could, and levitate to the next ledge whenever he got stuck.
This plan worked well, but he had underestimated the height of the
cliff and the difficulty of the climb. When he was only half way up, the
eagle had swooped back onto its nest. Tarkyn pressed himself in against
the rock face and waited motionlessly while it fed a large rat to its insistent
fledgling before taking off again. After a few minutes, Tarkyn cautiously
resumed his ascent but by the time he was sitting on a ledge just below
and some thirty feet short of the eagle’s nest, he was running out of both
time and energy.
Here, he could hear the incessant squawking of the eagle chick. He
could see the eagle far above him, circling in a thermal that brought it
out over the ravine and then sent it out of sight over the top of the cliff.
Each time it disappeared from sight, he scrambled a few feet closer to its
nest, and froze each time the eagle’s path brought it back into the open
sky above him. At last, he was within ten feet of the nest. Now that he
was close to it, Tarkyn could see that the ledge on which it rested was
wider and deeper than it had appeared from below and there would be
room for him to stand on it while he found a secure place for his leather
pouch. The eagles had chosen well. The cliff face was completely smooth
in every direction around the ledge, so Tarkyn would have to levitate
himself across the last stretch.
He waited until the eagle circled out of sight then made his move. He
glided the short distance across the gap, to land in a crouch next to the eagle
chick. The chick immediately addressed its complaints to him, at double
the volume. Before he could even straighten, the sun was blotted out by
huge wings as a second eagle came at him from behind, its fearsome talons
spread before it. Tarkyn threw up his shield, instinctively cowering back
against the cliff face as the enormous bird swooped in to land straddling its
chick defensively, its hooked beak only inches from Tarkyn’s face.
Oh no! Of course there are two of them. I should have known that. Tarkyn
lowered his arms and slowly uncurled himself. He leant, still crouching,
against the back of the ledge, and raised his own amber his eyes to look
directly through the bronze haze of his shield into the hard amber eyes
of the eagle. Tarkyn was by no means safe, even within his shield. If the
eagle forced him off the edge of the ledge, he doubted whether he could
wave away his shield and then incant his levitation spell as he plummeted
downwards, in time to avoid smashing onto the rocks below. And when
the time came to leave the eagle’s ledge, he would have to drop his shield
before he could levitate. No, not safe at all.
Slowly, Tarkyn removed the pack from his back and set it down in
front of him. Without taking his eyes off the eagle, he felt around inside
until his hand closed on the last of his game pie. He brought it out
slowly and raised the edge of his shield so that he could push the offering
towards the eagle. The eagle tilted her head so that she could see what
Tarkyn had laid before it. Then she shrieked her derision at him.
With no conscious effort at all, Tarkyn found himself slammed hard
against the cliff face as the sound assaulted him. But despite this, he kept
his eyes firmly locked on the eagle’s. At the smell of food, the chick’s
cries became even more plaintive as it struggled beneath its parent to
reposition itself and stretch out far enough to reach the pie. The eagle
gave it an impatient nudge back with her beak but the chick was not to
be denied. After several frustrated attempts to quell her chick, the eagle
flapped into the small space between Tarkyn and her nest so that she
could reach the piece of pie.
Pastry was not the easiest substance for an eagle’s hooked beak to
grapple with and it took several attempts before most of the pie had
disappeared down the chick’s throat. During the
Similar Books
