// not when the harvest is done // he replied. // the garden must be allowed to recover in peace. but we will remember these skies always, and remember them well. we wi—//

Whatever he’d been intending to say was cut off as what sounded like a cannon exploded somewhere below us, and a hole the size of my torso was torn in the membrane of one wing. He howled, both aloud and inside my head, and I clapped my hands over my ears as if that would make any difference.

// hold fast! // he shouted, and launched himself higher, wings working harder than ever to compensate for the damage. The weapon fired again, but missed its mark as he curved backward, out of the projectile’s path. The wind bit at my face and eyes. I clung to his talon as hard as I could, refusing to consider the chance that I could still fall. I refused to have come this far and die as if all my efforts had been for nothing.

// low // warned Hunter, and folded himself into a dive so steep it felt like the skin was going to peel away from my flesh. No roller coaster had ever been that extreme, no drop that sheer, and I would have screamed if I’d been able to find the breath to do so. Instead, I clung to his talon, closing my eyes against the friction of the air beating down on them, and waited for it to be over.

Hunter shrieked, rage and defiance and pain, and the cannon spoke one more time, and I couldn’t open my eyes, I didn’t dare. But our continued descent didn’t feel any more out-of-control than it had before, and when Hunter hissed // land // in the space behind my eyes, I was able to brace myself for impact.

We hit the field still moving slightly too fast for safety, Hunter clutching me in his foreclaws while his hind legs pedaled frantically, trying to find purchase in the grassy earth. His stumbling turned into a run, and he slowed only momentarily, only long enough to drop me before he was launching himself back into the air. I staggered to my feet, preparing to shout after him, and stopped as I saw what he was doing:

The grass in the field was too tall to be tended regularly, but there were fences, and there were cattle. The rancher must have turned them out before fleeing, choosing to let them have a chance rather than leaving them to starve in the safety of their stalls. A big bull had assembled a small herd of his own, and was now lowering his head menacingly, pawing at the ground as he tried to figure out whether Hunter and I posed a threat.