“And so, Anana,” he continued, “in a way I’ve already made love to you. At least to a woman—a thing with a woman’s face—with your face.”
“You must be feeling better,” she said, “if you can talk like that.”
“I have to joke a little, to talk about things far removed from death,” he said. “Can’t you understand that?”
She nodded but did not say anything. He was silent, too, for a long while. They ate cold meat and biscuits—it would be wise not to make a fire. Lights might attract the Bellers or the green eagles. Or other things that would be crawling around the cliffs.
XIII
THE NIGHT passed without incident, although they were awakened from time to time by roars, screams, whoops, bellows, trumpetings, and whistlings, all at a distance.
After breakfast, they set out slowly in the craft along the cliffside. Kickaha saw an eagle out above the sea. He piloted the craft toward her, hoping she would not try to escape or attack. Her curiosity won over whatever other emotions she had. She circled the machine, which remained motionless. Suddenly, she swept past them, crying, “Kickaha-a-a!” and plunged down. He expected her to wing full speed toward Podarge’s cave. Instead, behaving unexpectedly, as might be expected from a female—so he said to Anana— she climbed back up. Kickaha indicated that he was going to land on a ledge, where he would like to talk to her.
Perhaps she thought that this would give her a chance to attack him. She settled down beside the machine with a small blast of closing wings. She towered over him, her yellow hooked beak and glaring black red-rimmed eyes above his head. The cowling was open, but he held the beamer, and on seeing it, she stepped back. She squawked,
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“Podarge?” but said nothing more about Anana’s face.
One eagle looked like another to Kickaha. She, however, remembered when he had been in the cage with Wolffand when the eagles had stormed the palace on top of the highest monolith, the pinnacle of the planet.
“I am Thyweste,” she said in the great parrot’s voice of the green eagle. “What are you doing here, Trickster? Don’t you know that Podarge sentenced you to death? And torture before death, if possible?”
“If that’s so, why don’t you try to kill me,” he said.
“Because Podarge has learned from Dewiwan-ira that you released her and Antiope from the Tishquetmoac cage. And she knows that something is gravely amiss in Talanac, but she hasn’t been able to find out what yet. She has temporarily suspended the sentence on you—though not on Jadawin-Wolff—until she discovers the truth. The orders are that you shall be escorted to her if you show up begging for an audience. Although I will be fair, Kickaha, and warn you that you may never leave the cave, once you’ve entered it.”
“I’m not begging for an audience,” he said. “And if I go in, I go inside this craft and fully armed. Will you tell Podarge that? But also tell her that if she wants revenge on the Tishquetmoac for having killed and imprisoned many of her pets, then I will be able to help her. Also, tell her there is a great evil abroad. The evil does not threaten her—yet. But it will. It will close its cold fingers upon her and her eagles and their nestlings. I will tell her of this when—or if—I get to see her.
Thyweste promised to repeat what he had told
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her, and she flapped off. Several hours passed. Kickaha got increasingly nervous. He told Anana that Podarge was so insane that she was liable to act against her own interests. He wouldn’t be surprised to see a horde of the giant eagles plunging down out of the camouflaging green sky.
But it was a single eagle who appeared. Thyweste said that he should come in the flying machine and bring the human female with him. He could bring all the weapons he wished; much good they would do him if he tried to lie or trick Podarge. Kickaha translated for Anana, since they spoke the degenerate descendant of Mycenaean Greek, the speech used by Odysseus and Agamemnon and Helen of Troy.