The feathers came down like the sky had finally decided to answer for something.
Not one this time. Not two. They fell in a slow black-crimson drift across the whole frozen field, dozens of them, then dozens more, each one turning lazily end over end through air that had nothing in it to shed them. No wings. No shapes. Just feathers, and the awful patient quiet under them, and the growing certainty in my gut that the thing Brunhilde killed had never been the problem.
It had been the scout.
There's more of them, Wren said, low. A lot more. I can feel them the way you feel a headache coming.
"Brunhilde."
"I know." She hadn't turned. She stood over the grey ruin of the first bird with frost sighing off her shoulders, her azure eyes already lifted to the dark. "When one finds prey, the rest follow. I had hoped to be gone before they arrived." A pause. "Hope was always a poor tool."
'So we've got a flock. Of murder-birds. In the dark. Where we can't see them.'
