Inside, she smelled blood enough to make her choke. Likard ran up. He’d been weeping. Others were still crying as they wriggled aimlessly here and there like so many decapitated eels.

“Are you just always that sloppy about fixing the cursed bird’s hood?” Likard shouted at her.

“What?”

Unlike the big, open barracks rooms, the lofts had separate sections and separate entrances, linked by corridors for the fawkners to move quickly from one cote to another. She ran ahead, but the side door to the loft where Tumna sheltered was already open. She staggered to a halt inside. Two young men sprawled on the floor, one headless. Tumna’s feathers were stuck out in a rage, and she was still swiping at them with her talons, rolling them over as if they were toys. Her hood was crumpled in a corner, as if it had hit the wall.

“Slow down,” wheezed Likard, behind her. “Cursed if those two hells-bitten bastards weren’t hopeful fawkner’s assistants at all, but agents for the cursed army, come up here to kill the eagles while everyone slept. They slaughtered Trouble and Surri in the first two lofts. When they snuck in here ready to stab Tumna and Sweet, I tell you that cursed ill-tempered raptor must have torn off her hood and skewered them. She ripped the head clean off that one. May he rot and roast and freeze in the hells.”

Tumna was alive. Exasperated, the huge raptor chirped, glaring at Nallo in the muzzy lamplight as if in complaint: Thugs disturbed my night’s rest! How like them!

Nallo began sobbing. Folk came up to touch her as if to make sure she wasn’t a ghost, while others ran up and down the corridors to see if anyone else was sneaking around, anyone not accounted for. Murderers!

The shouting and anger and all manner of voices churned as if a storm blew through. Trouble dead. Volias dead. Surri dead, whichever eagle she was, and her reeve with her. Nallo hadn’t even learned every reeve’s name yet, much less figured how to tell the eagles apart.

Sweet, still hooded, shifted restlessly on her night perch, much disturbed. Pil appeared at Nallo’s side.

“The hells,” he muttered, sounding very like a Hundred man. “After that time Sweet pulled off her hood, I made sure to fasten it correctly. I’m glad you didn’t!” He fixed his eagle with a possessive stare.

“Where’s Volias?” she asked, surprised into speech by his volubility.

“At rest by the dead eagles. Him and the other reeve. What now?”

“No one’s in charge! All the senior reeves are cursed dead, aren’t they? After that first day, I don’t think I exchanged more than twenty words with the commander, eh? ‘How’s the training going? Ofri treating you well?’ ”

“Who will the others listen to?”