The Last Mortal Bond (Chronicle of the Unhewn Throne, #3)

by Brian Staveley

No winning this one, she thought, fixing her eyes on the leach. The man smiled at her. Please, Hull, just let me carve that smile off his face before they bring me down. Before she could reach him, however, before the leach could speak, before anyone could loose another arrow, a great shape exploded over the compound’s far wall. It was a bird, but seemed bigger than a bird, the twin golden wings wide as the sky, blotting out the sun, throwing the whole courtyard into shadow. Below, hanging from the talons by a tangle of makeshift rope, hung half a dozen Kettral, Gwenna’s Kettral, the men and women she had trained or tried to train—Qora and Delka, Fruin and Chelt—their eyes wide with anger and horror, knuckles white where they clung to the madness of straps, and where they hung on, also, to another figure, small as a boy, utterly untethered to the bird’s talons, relying only on the hands of the others to hold her as she leaned so far out it seemed she had to fall—Annick, her bow a blur in her hands, her eyes still as stone as she drew and fired, drew and fired, drew and fired, her bowstring’s twang lost in Allar’ra’s ear-shattering scream.