An Unexpected Apprentice - Softcover

Chapter One

 

The merry piping stopped.

 

Tildi Summerbee looked up idly from the book she was reading, which was propped on the carved shelf beside the huge bubbling stew pot.

 

How strange, she thought, lifting the stirring spoon to her lips for a taste. Her youngest brother, Marco, usually played his flute all the way home from the fields as he, and the rest of her brothers, and the farmhands headed toward the big old house. Teldo, Pierin, and Gosto would sing along.

 

That was how she knew without looking out one of the round windows that it was noon, and that they were coming in for lunch. Now, at the beginning of June, the first crop of Daybreak Bank Farm’s sweet-smelling hay had to be cut. The work was hard, and it made her brothers hungry. It was a big job to feed them and their farmhands on an ordinary day, but even bigger at the times of haying and harvest, when hosts of neighbors came to lend their strength so that the expanded workforce could swiftly clear field after field. By the week’s end, all the hay around Clearbeck would be cut and drying, its sweet scent wafting in through the open windows, along with a fair bit of chaff.

 

She didn’t mind sweeping up. At least there wasn’t a mess of mud to scrub off the floors. The fine weather kept the ground dry. It was perfect for cutting hay.

 

A long wisp of her soft brown hair drifted down from her modest white cap and over one eye. Tildi tucked it back into place.

 

Where were they?

 

She strained one leaf-shaped ear to listen for the distant music to begin again. Instead of the friendly chatter of men and women she heard faint frightened shouts and cries.

 

One word rose above the others, and was repeated over and over.

 

“Thraik!”

 

Tildi threw open the nearest window and raised her eyes to the heavens. Her heart tightened in her chest. The greatest terror in her life had come again.

 

Against the expanse of pure blue she saw the black shadows swooping and diving. The torsos of the airborne devils resembled her people, the smallfolks, except that the monsters were four times their size. The thraik’s green-black skin glimmered as though it had been painted with grease. As did the wings, each a fan of long, yellow, spearlike bones with dark greenish skin stretched between them. Their faces were death’s-heads, the skin barely painted on the gaunt bones. Sharp yellow teeth crowded their jaws, giving them drunken, evil grins.

 

A huge thraik floating high on the air opened its maw and emitted an earsplitting shriek. The sound echoed on and on. Tildi gasped as she saw what was going on beneath it.

 

In the field below, a hundred yards away, a flock of thraik circled and struck at a tiny band of smallfolks. Marco had cast aside his flute and was defending himself with swipes of his scythe from a huge devil that slashed at him with its talons. Marco’s sunbrowned, round, normally cheerful face was set and pale. His fluffy brown hair was slicked to his scalp with sweat. Tildi knew what was in his mind. Not again!

 

Five times over the seventeen years of her life the thraik had returned to the Quarters. The winged monsters appeared in the sky from nowhere, and descended to maim and kill whatever they could find. Usually they attacked farm animals, swooping down too swiftly for the landowners to stop them. Once in a while an unlucky smallfolk not fast enough to get to shelter had become their prey, torn apart or carried off. No one knew where they roosted, since no one had ever returned to tell. The horrible beasts didn’t remain in any place for long, but their visits wreaked tragedy.

 

In her mind’s eye, Tildi saw the same horrible sight, an event ten years gone.

 

Waiting for their parents to return from town, she and her four brothers had been standing in the doorway of their house when thraik fell out of the sky, like black, rotting leaves. Tildi remembered screaming a warning to her mother and father. The devils swooped down upon the cart containing Bernardo and Gelina Summerbee. Her father had smashed at the beasts again and again with his walking stick. The beasts had not seemed to notice the blows at all. The largest thraik had tucked Gelina under its arm and hoisted her right out of the cart. Heedless of his own safety, Bernardo fought to save his wife, driving the creatures back, but they had the advantage of flight. He slashed at two hovering before him, but another dropped behind him and clasped him around the neck. Bernardo kicked and thrashed, but the thraik effortlessly lifted him up into the air. Struggle as they might, the elder smallfolks were helpless to break loose. Tildi remembered stumbling after her elder brothers, running desperately, trying to get to her parents. The monsters flew up out of reach long before Gosto and Pierin reached the cart. The children leaped, screaming and yelling threats at the thraik, begging them to bring their parents back. The thraik ignored them, and vanished through a tear in the sky. Tildi’s last vision of her mother had been Gelina’s frightened eyes staring back at her children as the sky swallowed her up.

 

Tildi saw that moment in her nightmares, and she was seeing it now. Not again! Not her brothers! She clutched the windowsill, wishing she could do something.

 

Marco thumped his opponent in the chest with the butt of the scythe. The thraik was knocked backward a yard or two in the air. It let out a tearing cry and flew at him, all four limbs reaching for his flesh. Marco braced himself. He brought the blade around in an arc. It bit through the thraik’s wrist. The creature shrieked as its left hand tumbled away. Blood sprayed from the limb, covering Marco in a black mist. The smallfolk spat, but he brought the scythe up, ready to defend himself again. The thraik opened its wings and rose high over the young man’s head, angling for a new strike. Tildi quaked with fear for his safety.

 

Beyond the slashing wings and whipping tails behind, Tildi could see the rest of her brothers and the farmhands fighting for their lives, wielding hoes, billhooks, rakes, even sticks as makeshift weapons. Tildi dropped her spoon and sought about for a weapon. She seized the poker from the fireside. They would not die if she could prevent it! What if she was a mere female? They were her family. She must help.

 

“Mistress, what should we do?” Mig and Lisel pleaded. Tildi had forgotten about them. The smallfolk sisters were daughters of the Summerbees’ farm manager, Mirrin Sardbrook, who must be out there somewhere with the thraik. They clung to each other, trembling, their large brown eyes round with terror. Tildi could see they would be of no use at all.

 

“Bar the windows,” Tildi said crisply. “I’m going to go help my brothers!”

 

Another shriek split the air. Tildi left the girls and dashed outside. She raced up the footpath and plunged into the swaying, chest-high hay grass, wielding her poker.

 

“Get back in the house!” her eldest brother Gosto shouted, waving her back. He swung a reaper twice as tall as he was at a black-winged creature hovering over him. The thraik lunged down. Gosto slashed the long blade across, severing a wing tip, but a talon caught the flesh at the corner of his eye. Red blood...