Outward I leaped, from the pyramid into the sky, with Bryce held like a child in my arms. Downward we hurtled—five feet, ten feet—with the wind shrilling cold around us. But I had timed my jump, had tried to time it, to the movement of the saddle birds racing by in formations.
Beneath us swept a troop of hesperns, those massive birds which are primarily used as transports and which compare in size to a vullwing or a sabrun like a Clydesdale compares to a Shetland pony. From inside the pyramid I’d seen them coming, a dozen of them. We struck one.
The hespern’s rider had not heard or seen us, did not know what was about to happen as I drew my legs up and hit him in the shoulders with my knees. He was snapped forward brutally over the neck of the bird. Bryce smashed down across the man’s ba
