CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
WINGS OVER THE JUNGLE
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
