Hart finished gutting the third of the horned herbivores he’d taken down and placed it in the Sarah O.’s storage compartment behind her starboard wing.
A hoarse, cawing sound drew his attention, and he glanced up to see what looked like a bird perched on an outcropping of rock, its feathers black, but not the sleek purple/black of the sky-dweller.
“Well, hello,” Hart whistled. He cut off a strip of meat and tossed it to the bird before cleaning his knife and sliding it into its sheath.
The bird seemed startled at first, but then pleased. It gobbled down the piece of meat, then whistled and cawed back at him. It had a fairly high level of intelligence, although it wasn’t really sentient: it could be trained to perform somewhat complex tasks.
“So you’re a corvid, are you? And Kes wanted
