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The sun was dipping low over the fields and meadows before Dax's exhausted eyes spied the verdant crown of the Salix tree in the distance. Turning to the exhausted Sylk at his side, he nudged him with a wingtip, "Look! We are nearly home..."
Sylk looked up, pain and weariness evident in his eyes. Too tired to speak, Sylk nodded and tightened his grip on the length of twisted grasses held between his tarsi and tied around his thorax, the dead weight of the captured Hawker slung below and between them growing heavier by the minute. The journey back had been hard on them both, but blissfully uneventful.
Two Rangers led the way, with Yslana taking rearguard, each bearing one of their fellow soldiers. Dax wondered again at the impressive fortitude and physical resolve of the Emerald Rangers; he and Sylk were sharing the weight of the Hawker and he had never felt so tired, his wing muscles aching even though they had assistance from a rising platform of summoned Ar. Even with their numerous injuries, the Rangers appeared physically inexhaustible, their long wings scooping through the air in a blur, carrying their comrades as if they were only so much dandelion seed. The look in their eyes described a different story, however: one of loss, sorrow, and fear.
Once within sight of the hefty bovies waddling slowly across the waterlogged meadow, the mismatched group of Rangers, Hawker, scribe and farmer boy was met by a trio of Emerald Citadel guards who escorted them back to the Salix, through the leafy curtain and onto the South Branch where the journey had started just a few hours before. A hush settled over the busy landing area as all eyes turned to watch the three Ranger bodies lowered gently onto the rough surface of the branch. Dax shuddered involuntarily as the sound of the dead Rangers' papery wings rustling against the coarse bark reminded him of the place those handsome wings would soon take in the Emerald Oriel. Looking around, Dax saw that these were not the only Rangers to have fought their last battle that day, in the crowd he spotted at least half a dozen Jraconi lying unmoving on the cold bark, being tended to by their Emerald brethren.
Dax and Sylk had barely lowered their own cargo to the branch surface before a quartet of burly Ranger guards buzzed over, Lansas at the ready. Through the confusion of legs, wings and spears that quickly surrounded the Hawker prisoner Dax saw one of the clover stems that entangled the captive had shifted slightly, thus exposing a portion of his face. Dax realised with a jolt that the Jraconi, lying trapped and motionless on the floor, was now fixing him with one eye. Dax shuddered under the malevolent gaze and quickly turned away. It wasn't until he saw the Hawker being carried away unceremoniously into the Southern Entrance, that he realised he had been holding his breath.
Slumping down onto his belly alongside an already collapsed Sylk, Dax watched as Yslana and her two remaining Rangers rose back into the air, carrying their dead companions into the cool darkness of the Southern Entrance, following the guards and the Hawker captive.
As the Rangers passed the boys, Yslana turned to them and afforded them a curt nod before turning to speak with the Ranger to her right.
At this, unable to control themselves, both boys started to giggle, the day's events washing off them in an instant. Sylk shrugged, "Of course, you know that she was looking at me just then, not you..."
Dax laughed a little too loudly, "No way, come on, she was clearly impressed with the way I caught that Hawker, not the way you fell mandible over clasper..."
At that, Sylk fell silent, all the breeze blown from his wings, "You are right of course...What were we thinking, following that damn patrol, all because of a pretty Ranger who wouldn't even look twice at an inkstain like you, or a flowerboy like me...Holy Thau, Dax, you saved my life back there! I could have died..."
"And when I gets you home, you will wish you was dead!" The boys spun around at the voice immediately behind them. Looming over them was Sylk's dad, Heptorus, and the look on his face was almost as terrifying as the look from the Hawker's eye a minute earlier.
"I've just bin told by them Rangers that my idiot son and his imbecile friend followed a damn Ranger patrol out into them wilds...and nearly got smashed at the hands of some damn Hawkers. Holy Thau, Sylk, tell me this ain't so or I swear you will be scraping fungus off leaves with your mandibles till the end of the season!"
Sylk spluttered a half-reply, struggling for words, his pathetic attempts halted by a sudden high pitched scream from overhead. Dax looked to the skies fully expecting to see a Hawker swooping to attack. But it was much, much worse. Impera, Dax's mother, slammed down through the air, landing so close to Dax that the hard leading edge of her left wing smacked him across the back of his head. This collision was no accident, however, and she began to rain down blows with her wings on his back and shoulders shouting, "Why on earth? What did you do? Where did you go? What happened? I heard you almost died! I-I could have lost you..."
Then her eyes settled on the network of wicked-looking dark veins scoring across Dax's wing, now slowly fading. Quickly, her screams and blows subsided, and she collapsed, her head hung low, wings slumping, "My poor boy, my little Dax..."
Dax felt lost, his mother had always been his rock, the centre of his chaotic life, and he had never seen her so weak as she looked now. Realising that his actions had caused such anguish in the one he loved the most he reached out a foreleg to try to comfort her, but she brushed him away, rubbing her face quickly with a tarsus. Lifting herself up to her full height, Impera pushed her shoulders back, her eyes bright, and raised her wings in readiness to fly.
"Dax, I will see you at home immediately."
Impera leapt into the air, and dipping her wings at Sylk's father she said, "Heptorus, let us give thanks to Holy Thau that he brought our sons home alive and well..." and with that she was off, disappearing out of sight over the edge of the branch heading in the direction of her home.
Dax, his limbs numb with guilt, and his heart heavy rose uncertainly into the air, muttered a quick "G'bye" to Sylk, opened his mouth to say something to Heptorus, thought better of it, and darted off glumly after his mother.