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17
This close to the water, the air was full of a fine, salty mist that stung their cheeks and set their noses to running. A sharp breeze gusted over the rocks on which they sat, having a late luncheon of cold ham rolls and ale from flagons kept cold by the air temperature and the altitude of their journey. Gulls wheeled overhead, screaming, and Oliver swatted at one that had designs on his roll.
Tessa hitched her cloak up higher against the chill, but tucked back into her own meal right after; Oliver had never seen her eat so heartily or unselfconsciously, and he smiled to himself to see the North creeping into her mannerisms, sanding away some of the fine polish of the South.
On the narrow strip of beach, the drakes were investigating the bones of some sea mammal, long washed-up and bleached by the sun. Percy tipped over a rib, and Alfie fussed at him for it; he looked properly chastened, afterward.
Beyond, the waters of the Narrow Strait ran quick and dark, their choppy surface flashing like so many fish bellies. Here on the Jagged Coast, the snow was beginning its spring melt, stubby brown shoots of beach grass poking up between the cracks in the ancient gray rocks on which they perched. “Narrow” though it may have been in name, the Strait was actually quite wide, the Merchants’ Widowmaker over on the Southern side visible as nothing more than a thin smudge of black on the horizon.
So far, there’d been no sign of a land bridge.
Tessa finished her roll and licked crumbs off her fingers – he’d never thought to see the day – and it was an effort not to chuckle. She still carried herself with the unmistakeable aura of a lady, though. A princess, now.
“Perhaps we haven’t gone far enough,” she said, frowning out at the water. “Maybe it still lies ahead.”
“Maybe,” Oliver agreed. “But I reckon we’re at least fifty miles inland at this point. And look.” He motioned out into the Strait, where the water rushed past them, its surface rolling, white and then black, the sunlight cutting triangles on the topsides of the waves. “There’s a current. If a land bridge lies just ahead of us, how is this water flowing? Wouldn’t it lie still?”
Tessa’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know.” Souring, she muttered, “I never studied bodies of water growing up.”
Oliver snorted. “Me neither, but there’s no teacher like direct exposure, I suppose.” He stood and dusted sand and grit from his trousers, offered her a hand. “We’d best be off if we want to be back in time for supper.”
The lengthy, overland journey that Oddmarr and his men had undertaken was made the work of a single day thanks to the drakes. They gathered up looped reins, remounted, and Percy and Alfie leaped aloft, force of their wings leaving patterns on the sand below.
Oliver leaned low on Percy’s neck, and watched Tessa beside him, the way she tipped her face into the wind, smiling, red hair streaming out from beneath her helmet. She wore a brand-new suit of light riding armor similar to his own, mostly leather with a few mail touches, as opposed to the steel Oliver had recently commissioned for the war. Her helmet was styled like his, complete with the horsehair plume, and she wore a man’s trousers and knee-high calfskin boots, as he did. They must look like a set, he thought, with their coloring, and that of their drakes.
He was little bit impressed with them, honestly, and if he preened over the picture he imagined them making, it was no one’s business but his own.
They flew low, now, hugging the Jagged Coast. From above, it resembled a set of endless broken teeth, with sharp points and strange cut-aways at the shoreline. Occasionally, he spotted a large shadow moving deep beneath the water, swimming against the current. Percy cocked his head, curious, and Oliver straightened him with a firm press of the rein and a light kick. “We’re not fighting sea monsters right now, old boy.”
They moved on.
Dark clouds were building to the west, and Oliver had decided it was time to turn back and return to Aeres when he spotted it: a swath of pale, dull earth lying across the water ahead. Percy, flying along with steady, regular flaps, lifted his head, frill extending, and let out a shrill sound of unhappiness.
Oliver patted his neck – “Easy, easy, you’re all right” – and steered him into a wide, slow turn over the top of the land bridge.
And that was most certainly the correct term for it. It wasn’t until they circled over it that he realized how much hope he’d placed in the idea that Oddmarr, chief of an untraveled, uncivilized clan, might have never seen such a thing before and overexaggerated its size. But no; wide enough for ten men to march across it abreast, the bridge spanned the narrowest part of the Strait, in a place where even the rocks on the shore were wicked and tall, forming a sort of natural canyon about fifteen feet deep.
Its construction, viewed from above, was part rock, part sand, part earth. Grass grew in irregular tufts along its surface. It looked like a natural structure, like it had existed here for decades.
He steered a still-fussy Percy lower and lower. “Lightly, at first,” he cautioned. “We don’t know if it’ll hold you.”
Flapping hard, Percy eased down, back feet first. Oliver left the decision up to him, and after a moment, he settled, all four feet firmly planted on solid ground. His wings stilled, but his head stayed lifted, neck stretched tall; his nostrils flared as he tested the air, and growled in his throat.
Tessa and Alfie landed beside them, and Alfie rumbled a low, disquieted growl of her own.
“They don’t like it,” Tessa called over, wind snatching at her voice and whipping loose tendrils of hair across her face. She plucked them away with a gloved fingertip and leaned over to look at the bridge below them.
“I know,” Oliver called back. “If it’s not natural” – though it looked it – “and the Sels formed it with magic, they should be able to sense that.”
For his own part, the fine hairs prickled along his nape, but he wasn’t sure if that was sixth-sense related, or a result of Percy’s unease.
Catch me if I go tumbling over the edge, he thought, and unclipped his harness to slide down Percy’s back.
Percy chirruped, but his boots landed without incident, and a few deep knee bends assured him the solidity beneath them all was real, and not some sort of mirage. He kicked at a dirt clod and watched it explode into powder, just as a dirt clod should.
Above, he heard the click of Tessa’s harness, and held up a hand in her direction. “No, stay. I’m just having a quick look around,” he said.
He heard her delicate sigh.
