Sloan had unslung his rifle from his saddle. He aimed at the lowest of the two black-winged shapes and fired.
There was a horrid, shrill scream across the heavens. It did not come from the eagle that was suddenly plummeting earthward with crumpled wings. It came from the other great bird and, as it screamed, it was swiftly hurtling upward and westward in flight.
"The other!" cried Shan Kar. "He must not get away!"
Sloan fired again, and again. But the second eagle was already a receding dot against the sunset.
Shan Kar clenched his fists, staring after it. "He'll take word to L'Lan. But maybe—"
He started in a run toward the spot farther down the ridge where the first eagle had fallen.
"What the—?" Sloan exclaimed, lowering his rifle. "Is he crazy?"
"Native superstition of some kind," Eric Nelson said but was coldly conscious that he did not believe it himself.
The two eagles, in their purposeful reconnoitering of the pack-train, had been too uncannily reminiscent of Nsharra's strangely purposeful horse and wolf and eagle.