Ware Hawk

10

Yet strong as she thought herself to be, Tirtha did not have her way. The Falconer was stubborn, determined to fulfill his bargain. Though she ordered him twice to use that sense of duty by taking Alon over-mountain, swearing that she would be satisfied, that this would set the balance straight between them, he refused. Tirtha wondered if she must slip away from her companions, only she could not be sure whether the stubborn man would not attempt to track her. It was Alon who confirmed that suspicion when they were alone the next morning, the Falconer having taken the water bottles down to the stream.

“He is single-minded and that rides hard with him,” Alon observed. “These bird men are trained to what they believe is their duty. Thus he would pursue it and you to the end. You cannot shake us off. Lady.” He smiled and gave a small laugh.

Tirtha was not to be beguiled from her own sense of right. “There is danger waiting at Hawkholme. Did that not already strike at me?”

“And did you not then beat it?” he interrupted. “Yes, it waits, but you do not draw back because of it. Neither shall this Swordmaster allow any foreboding to lessen his intent. Nor”—he paused for a second or two before he continued—“shall I. There is in me”—his hands went to heart level at his breast, touching the wrinkled smock Tirtha had washed in a stream—“that I must learn to master and live with. Yachne would not teach me. Did she,” his face screwed up into a frown, “fear me?” He asked that not of Tirtha but of himself, as the girl was well aware. “Yet there was much of the power in her—one could feel it always. And I am not Wise. I am not—what then am I?” Again he spoke to Tirtha. “Have you seen my like before? They tell me many tales of Estcarp—that the old knowledge was treasured there, not lost, forgotten by the Old Race as it was here.”

Tirtha made fast the latching of her saddlebag. “I have not seen any male before who has commanded the Power. The Witches who rule in the north say such a thing is unnatural, and therefore perhaps of the Dark.”

Alon was on his feet in one supple movement, to stand staring at her, wide-eyed.

“I am not…” His protest came sharp and quick.

“Do you think that I do not know that? The Dark Ones cannot hide what they are to any of our blood. Also there is one man, Simon Tregarth, who has something of the talent. However, he is not of our blood, hut an outlander who came through one of the Gates. It is also true that his two sons command strange forces, and they carried them and their Witch sister westward into Escore so that they broke the old curse to open that land to all of our race again.

“Though perhaps to no peaceful purpose, for there were many evils loose there, and now they war. Those of the Old Race, who followed the Tregarth calling to the east, fight against many Dark perils. There have been scores of stories during the past few years, perhaps twisted in the telling as such often are. Still we hear of battles won and lost, a country rent by the will of things unlike human kind. It could be that Escore blood has ventured westward here.” She sat with her hands clasped together studying Alon measuringly.

“You said that you were son to one this Parian knew,” she continued.

“I said”—he was quick to correct her—“that that was what was told me. The truth is that Yachne brought me to Parian’s clan and told such a tale. So I was accepted, for the man she named as my father was blood-brother by sword oath to Parian—and it was true he was dead, his lady having vanished also after the battle, and was thought to be slain during the retreat that followed. That was Yachne’s story, but”—he drew a deep, long breath—“can one believe it? There are the Gates. Those I have heard of—even of Tregarth’s coming—and of that which the Kolders used when they entered this world and strove to make it theirs. Could it be that I am also such an outlander?”

His eyes were large, wide open, and there was that same eagerness in his face which he had shown the night before when she had asked of them their aid in farseeing.

“You have the look of the Old Race outwardly,” Tirtha observed. “Yet you have also power—and the measurement of how much is something I cannot make. I have only a scrap of the talent. I can heal a little; I can farsee when entranced; and I can dream. I am not your Yachne. Also perhaps I am now one who is walking straight into such danger as cannot be reckoned.”

“Still you must go to the Hawkholme,” he said slowly, and she did not need the ability to read minds to guess that he longed to ask her the reason for this journey.

Odder still was the feeling within her that, for the first time, she wished to share her secret. As if this small boy, with his oddly mature speech and apparent understanding, had a full right to know what had driven her for so long. However, there was no time for such a sharing, even if she had been willing to break the cautious silence of years, for the Falconer returned at a pace quick enough to set the bottles he carried swinging from his claw, his hand on the butt of his dart gun.

“We ride.” He swung past them to where the ponies and the Torgian were picketed, making it plain that he meant a hasty departure. Tirtha and Alon asked no questions, rather hastened to saddle their mounts. When the Falconer took the lead, he swung north, leaving the stream, holding his pony to a trot that was the best pace for such rough country.

Tirtha pulled level with him. “What have you seen?”

“We may have escaped notice.” He had resumed his helm and now the falcon took wing, ascending into the sky in ever widening circles. “But there were fresh tracks on the other side of the stream.”

She thought furiously. What she had done the night before, drawing the other two into it also? If there were any hereabouts with the faintest trace of talent, they would have been alerted as quickly as if she had purposefully marked a plain back trail or set a signal fire. Perhaps her action had been foolhardy, wildly reckless.

“Outlaws?” she asked. Most drifting through this country would certainly be men from the plains, not those generally receptive to whispers of the Power. Their passing would be by chance only.

He shrugged. “What can one read from tracks in the mud? There were two shod horses of a larger breed—the rest were ponies. A party of six I would say. They headed south and east.”

South and east—that was the direction they themselves must take. Tirtha had sensed in her trance journey that what she sought was not too far distant. Perhaps that ridge with its black veining might be only a day’s journey on. However, if they had to detour, it would add to the leagues of travel while their supplies were very low, and they might not have time to hunt or garner any fresh spring plants.

“How long since, do you believe?” she asked.

“Since sunrise.”

His curt answer offered a little relief. Dared she believe that what she had wrought last night had nothing to do with this near meeting? The evidence could point to another camp not too far away—or maybe pursuit! This Gerik—what motive could drive him to follow them? Tirtha could think of one lure—Alon. If the outlaw had guessed that one of the Old Race with unusual powers had slipped through his fingers at the massacre—would that be prod enough to set him following? Gerik—who was he? Was he an outlaw? Or shield man of some ambitious noble now raiding and fighting over the remnants of Karsten? She waved to Alon, bringing him forward until the three of them rode abreast.

“Who is Gerik? Does some other stand behind him?” She shot the questions quickly, saw the Falconer turn his head as if he understood the line her thoughts had taken.

“He is a raider,” Alon answered slowly, “who has come only in the past year into this country. His men—they are…” The boy’s face was pale, he moistened his lips with tongue tip. Tirtha knew well that she was forcing him back to memories that he had been setting firmly behind him. Still they must know all they could.

“His men…” Alon straightened a little in the large saddle. One of his hands rested against the Torgian’s neck as if he drew strength and courage from contact with the animal. “They are…” He turned his head farther to look directly at Tirtha and the Falconer. “I know it now.” There was a quick lift in his voice. “I thought that they were only—what Parian called the scum—those blank shields no lord would allow to ride under his banner, murderers and worse as some of them were. Only now I understand—there was a real Dark One among them!”

Tirtha’s hold on the reins tightened, and her mare near came to a halt. The Falconer’s hand, which had hovered near his dart gun ever since they had ridden forth, closed upon its butt.

“And Gerik—he was the one?” Somehow Tirtha kept her voice steady.

Alon shook his head. “I am not sure. Only that he is evil, but… No, I do not think that he is anything but a man, a true man, though there was in him…” His puzzlement was becoming distress. “When they hunted me, I was too afraid. Now that I am here and know more, I realize that I feared not death alone—though that was a part of it—but something beyond, which was worse.”

“Could they have learned”—the Falconer’s mind followed the same path Tirtha’s had chanced upon—“that you held control over Power?”

“I do not know, but then I did not know it myself. It was the fear of them that, I think, broke some barrier in me.”

“There were times in the past when barriers against power could be and were induced in children.” Again Tirtha recalled her researching at Lormt, which had sometimes wandered into side lanes away from the main search she had gone there to make. “Perhaps it was so with you, Alon.”

His distress was open to read. “Then could it have been me Gerik sought? Did I then bring the death—the…”

“No.” Only the Falconer’s mouth could be seen below the half mask of his helm. It was set and stern. “Do not think that is so, Little Brother. This Gerik was a raider, and by the looks of it, that garth was worth plundering. Also he may have had some old quarrel with the clan master.”

Alon’s face cleared a little. “He had with him a man whom Parian had warned off two moons ago, Yachne telling him that the man was dangerous, even though he had come with a message from Lord Honnor, and that was a true message as we learned later. The stranger had been with my lord for a full twelve moons and served him well. It was after that Parian felt ill, and Yachne went forth to hunt what would relieve him. But the same man rode with Gerik, I saw his face clearly. He was not of the Dark, the full Dark.”

“But you have said at least another was,” Tirtha persisted. “What manner of man was he?”

Again Alon’s face was haunted. “I cannot tell. I do not remember, truly I do not. I only know that there were some who would hunt me in the meadow and that they wanted to…” His voice broke, and he dropped the reins, raising his hands to cover his face.

Tirtha was quick to understand. “Put it from your mind. If it is meant that you should remember, then it will come to you at the proper time. Do not seek it now.”

He dropped his hands again. Once more that shadow of an age beyond his stature and his outward appearance crossed his face.

“I shall not seek such inner hiding again.” That came as a promise and a firm one. “But I do not have full memory either. Perhaps, as you say, that shall come to me.”

Tirtha looked to the Falconer. “Gerik seeks us, do you think?”

His head tilted back a little on his shoulders, and he did not answer her. The bird was winging in, settling on its perch. Once more she listened to the twittering exchange between the two of them. Then the man turned from the feathered scout to speak to them both.

“There is a party moving slowly southward. There are six, and one of them is strange.” He hesitated. “My brother cannot explain in what manner save that, though this one wears the appearance of a man, within the body’s shell, he is not as we are. Still neither is he Kolder nor one of the dead-controlled who once served Kolder. For that breed is well known to us of the Eyrie that was. This is something else, and it is wrong.”

“Out of Escore?” Ever since their encounter with the thing in the night, Tirtha had been alert for any other evidence that the monsters said to run with evil in the west were patrolling into this country. The wild-ness of this torn land, the chaos into which its people had been plunged, both reasons might well draw evil. The Dark reveled in such circumstances by all the old accounts.

Or—suddenly another thought crossed her mind—what of that which she had encountered, the presence manifesting itself as freezing cold, at Hawkholme. Could that also summon? If so, she must not lead her companions there. Though she did not realize it at that moment, Tirtha was glancing hurriedly from side to side as might a hunted one seeking some path of escape.

“There is something—” Alon’s hesitant voice barely broke through her preoccupation with her own alarm, but his next words did. “Lady, you carry a sword and on it there is a symbol—”

She must have centered her gaze on him so suddenly and sharply that she disconcerted him a little, for he faltered, and it was the Falconer who cut in with a question before she could speak.

“What is this about a symbol, Little Brother? The Lady is Head of Hawkholme, the last of her blood. What she carries is the House sword. What do you know of that?”

“You are a Falconer, Swordmaster, and your bird rides with you,” Alon replied. “But the bird which is like unto that on this Lady’s sword, that I have also seen—and before our meeting.”

“Where?” Tirtha demanded. On some piece of loot taken at the fall of the hold, tossed about from one thief to another through the years?

“There was another man who came just before the Moon of the Ice Dragon, when the thick snows fell and closed all the mountain ways. He guested with Parian for ten days, exchanged his mount for another. On his left hand he wore a ring of metal, which was not gold nor silver, but rather it had a reddish look, and it bore a carving like that on your sword hilt. He had the habit of playing with it as he talked, turning it around and around on his finger, and so one noted it.”

“What was his name?” Tirtha demanded.

“He gave it as Ettin and said that he was a blank shield from past service with the Borderers, one who thought of returning to Karsten. He…” Alon’s puzzled look was back. “I do not think he was of the Old Race, for he was fair of hair and had blue eyes.”

At the sound of that name, Tirtha had drawn so sharp a breath that she realized she had caught the attention of the Falconer. The dead man they had found who had worn the hawk crest—he had been a stranger, but this one… So many years, could it be true?

“You know this man who wears a lord’s ring?” Suspicion was certainly back in the Falconer’s voice.

“There was a child, years ago. The Old Race weds sometimes with the Sulcars. And there were Sulcar-men who rode with the Borderers, though their first allegiance is always to the sea.”

“And the lord’s ring?” Once more he was challenging her. Tirtha sat the straighter in the saddle, met his gaze level-eyed.

“There could be no such true ring. Hawkholme’s lord wore one of its like on his hand when he met death within his own walls. His younger brother, who was apart when the attack came, never possessed it. Perhaps it was loot fallen into Ettin’s hands. He might claim it, but its wearing was never for any half blood.” Her chin was high, and she spoke with force. “Of the true House, I am the last—nor would I have come into Karsten had it been otherwise.”

With his helm on, his face so masked, she felt, as always, at a disadvantage—even though the Falconer’s expression was never easy to read. He could believe her or not. If he chose to brand her liar (and did not his kind think in their innermost minds that all her sex were?), then she could declare their bargain broken and so be rid of the burden of leading him and Alon into dire disaster. For surely he would take the boy with him to save him from further contamination by one who was tainted like her.

However, what he faced her with now was a question that had undoubtedly been eating at him from the very start of this venture.

“What has Hawkholme to offer anyone?”

In other words, Tirtha knew he meant—what did it have to offer a lone woman who ventured into an act of sheer folly in seeking out a ruined and despoiled hold where perhaps no one had gone for more than the length of her own lifetime.

This was it—the moment when she must share part of her confidence or be defeated before she began. How much would he believe—that she had indeed been compelled by dreams to seek out a heritage, the nature of which she herself did not know, save that it was of the utmost importance and that it must be found?

“There lies in Hawkholme that which I must find.” Tirtha chose her words carefully, with no talk of dreams that had pressed so heavily upon her that all her life had led to this journey. “I must seek it out. Only it would seem that there are others who would have it also. I do not know why I must do this,” she felt constrained to add, though perhaps it was self defeating with such a listener. “It is laid upon me. Have you of the Eyrie never heard of a geas?”

Almost she thought that she saw his lips begin once again to shape the word “witchery” as they had done so often before. Yet he did not say it when he spoke after a short moment of silence.

“There was told to us the tale of Ortal…” He might be drawing something from deep memory. “Yes, I have heard of a geas—and of how such may be laid upon one, allowing no freedom until the deed is accomplished. Ortal took ship in the days of Arkel, who was the sixth Master in the Eyrie, because he offended one with the Power, and it was set upon him to obey, and no ransom offer from the Master could break it. It is a hard thing that you do then, Lady.”

That he would accept so readily her explanation of what brought her south was a relief.

“Then you know why I must ride. But again I will say to you, Falconer, and to Alon, this binding is not for you, and you should not follow me. I do not know what lies now in or about Hawkholme, but it is no pleasant or easy thing that I must do.”

He gestured with his claw as if to silence her. “Perhaps this Gerik is a part of what would prevent your accomplishing your task. We ride…” Without another word he pulled ahead a little, and she thought it better not to trouble him with any new protest at this time. That he was a strongly stubborn man she had known from their first meeting. It could well be that he now believed his honor was engaged, which would seal their companionship tighter than any bargain formally struck.

“This Ettin”—she turned to Alon, for he continued to ride beside her as the Falconer drew a little apart—“he was a young man?”

“He looked so. He did not talk much, but he had guesting manners, and Parian took a liking to him. He tried to tell the stranger that to ride alone to the south was a danger for any man, but his answer was always that he did as he must do. He had a fine mail shirt and a plain helm such as the Borderers wore, and his sword was a good one. But he had no dart gun nor any bow such as you carry. He was a good man, I think.”

She remembered a slender, fair-haired boy who had grown so fast, who had ridden with a small border company of patrollers when he was not far out of childhood—for there were few children along the fringe land. They learned early lessons which carried them into playing the parts of men and women. She and he had met twice under the roof that had been her first home, or the roof that had sheltered her from birth, but they had not known each other well. Kin of part blood they were.

How had the Hawk ring come to Ettin, and what had led him to attempt this lone journey ahead of her?

Was he also dream-led? Was there a power playing with them and perhaps with others also, such as that stranger whose mail had borne the Hawk emblem and who had died of wounds in the wilderness? Him she had never seen, nor had she heard of any of her House elsewhere in Estcarp. The Houses and Clans of the Old Race were tight knit, holding together the stronger because all else had been torn from them. If there had been other survivors of Hawkholme, then through the years—as refugees poured over the mountains and thereafter joined the Border legions—such would have drawn together, for there had been much passing of names and messages among all who had fled and were seeking the fate of kinsfolk.

The gravel-paved valley sloped upwards, and the Falconer waved back a signal to dismount, so that they advanced on foot at a slow pace, leading their animals, the bird taking once more to the air. At last, leaving the three beasts to be rein-held by Alon, the girl and the man crawled on their bellies to look down a far slope.

Nearly beyond eye distance traveled a party of riders, seemingly with no desire to hide their presence. To the east Tirtha sighted the landmark that had been so plain in her trance—the cliff with its black bands. She pointed to it.

“That is the first of my trailmarkings.”

“How do they ride?” He lifted the claw in a slight gesture toward the knot of men proceeding easily at a distance-eating trot.

She considered, then had to speak the unhappy truth. “They ride in the same direction as we must go.”

In her own mind she no longer doubted that their destination must be the same as hers—Hawkholme. Was Ettin one of them? No, if he had been among the riders at the garth, Alon would have known him. Nor could she believe that he, being who he was, had been drawn into any service of the Dark.

The Falconer studied the ground before them, in particular the fringe of trees to the east.

“With those for cover, and warnings from the Brother-in-Feathers,” he said slowly, “we follow.”

Tirtha thought of the sinister wood that would form the second stage of their journey. It was fitted perfectly for ambush, so she spoke of it while the Falconer listened. He glanced at the sky. The sun was well west, near time for a night camp, though it must be a dry one, and they might go hungry.

“They do not ride as if they believed any watched them. Men do not go openly through such a land as this unless they have reason to think themselves beyond pursuit.”

“Or else,” she commented dryly, “they set themselves as bait to draw those they wish to take.”

“Yes, there is that. But what Wind Warrior can do, he will, and in this open country he can see if they are joined or if they have any contact with others. You are right concerning the danger of the wood ahead. There even his sight cannot serve us, so we shall have to go with full caution. But for now, let us try for those trees and there take cover until morning. Or perhaps even wait out the coming day and move on at night.”

Night was when the Dark held its greatest power, and Tirtha did not forget that, with those ahead, there rode a servant of evil. On the other hand, perhaps the others believed that any such travelers as this party of hers would not dare a journey in darkness. There were so many different things to think on. Suddenly she was tired, as worn as if she had tramped for days along an endless highway. She wanted rest, freedom from this burden, this geas, which had been thrust upon her and which she must continue to bear because of the blood that had been hers from birth.