CHAPTER 27
Victory comes with a price, pilgrim.
But what is victory other than
a costly illusion?
-FROM THE BOOK OF ST. ALBANS-
Softly I knocked on the rough wooden door of a small room found on the ground floor of one of Oslon’s aviary towers. It was a dilapidated old tower of logs and mud wattling rising only three floors above the log walls of the city. But large enough to hold twenty birds and with a few rooms to let for the rider of a Great Wing who cared little of creature comfort. For some riders such accommodations were a princely reward after riding in such bitter cold for weeks on end.
It took some time to find where the Mauk and my two blond maned wards had lodged themselves in the small town. It did not surprise me to find them in the stables of an aviary thanks to the ri
