Andre Norton - Ware Hawk

She realized that to sit staring into the growing dark would avail her nothing. The Falconer was on watch and upon his skill she depended with unbroken trust. These were his homelands after all, and he knew best what need be feared.

Tirtha sought to empty her mind and sleep. For a space the dreamless rest that had recently been hers settled down upon her.

When she awoke it was to the summons to take her place on watch. He answered her question before she asked it.

“Nothing.”

Nothing but the night, and the memory that picked at her, of what had crept upon them in the dark before, and of that other night when she had been caught by the cry from the dead, shown something which she thought was hers alone. She sat cross-legged, moving now and then to the animals to smooth her hands across their rough-coated hides, sending soothing thoughts into their minds. For she did not believe that it was hunger alone that kept them restless.

Far keener than the senses of her own kind were those of the beasts. They could measure danger at a greater distance than even her thought-sweep might reach. She no longer wished to try that—knowing that any creature of the Dark could seize upon it as a guide and so be drawn to them.

Yes, out there somewhere, things moved that were not of the world she had known. Legend and the chronicles of Lormt—neither had made such real. One had to confront them for one’s self, sniff the foul stench of evil, see it—then one accepted and understood.

The falcon—what had it seen prowling about these ruined heights? It must be a descendant of those that had once been the pride of the Eyrie. Perhaps such birds, too, had their own legends of another time—one in which they had been companions to men and ridden out to war on a saddle perch. A legend that today had drawn the winged scout to give its warning. Tirtha wondered if the Falconer had longed for that free flyer to join with him. Or was it only once in the lifetime of each that bird and man united into a fighting, living whole, and when one died there was no second such coupling? There was so much Tirtha did not know and could not ask. For she was certain her companion would count it an intrusion such as might even be strong enough to break his sword oath. His secrets were his, just as hers were hers.

If evil did run that night, it did not seek their camp. Nor did the mounts show any increasing uneasiness. However, Tirtha was not in any way lulled into believing that her fellow traveler’s warning had been exaggerated or false. With the morning light she roused from an uneasy sleep to see him carefully checking his dart gun, slipping his small supply of its loadings in and out of their loops on his shoulder belt, as if he would make certain they were ready to hand at a moment’s demand. There was only a limited number of them, and Tirtha realized very well that they would be used, if it were necessary, most sparingly and with all the skill he could summon.

She sat up, shrugged aside the folds of her cloak, to thought-listen. There was the essence of life forces which marked man, ponies, Torgian. Nothing else abode here. Caution limited her to a very narrow sweep, but even so fleeting a touch had alerted the Falconer, for his yellow-fired eyes were sharply on her as he turned helmed head in her direction.

“That is folly.” He spoke with cold precision. If they had fallen into slightly easier ways with one another during the days past—very slightly easier—that had changed. Perhaps sight of the ruins of his people’s hold had fastened on him the bonds of their long training. She was not of the kin, and she was that distrusted, even hated thing—a woman.

Tirtha refused to be irritated by such change in attitude. All knew the Falconers and their ways—what else could she expect?

“There was nothing during your second watch?” She made only a half-question of that, knowing well that, had there been invasion of the camp territory during her rest, he would have aroused her, even as he had on that other night.

He finished with his examination of his ammunition. Now he drew sword to inspect its edge, his attention seeming more for the steel than for her.

“It is out there, perhaps watching, spying.”

“You know because your falcon would have it so?”

Again he swung a cold and quelling gaze at her. “I have no falcon.” The words were like icy pellets hurled across the small space between them. “The free one and his brood have scouted afar. There are movements through these heights. One needs not touch to know.”

She must not provoke him. Instead Tirtha nodded. “Yes,” she agreed and went to wash her face in the chill water gathered in the basin. The sting of it, like a swift slap, awaked her fully.

They allowed the mounts another short period of graze while they broke their own fast, eating most frugally. Having filled the water bottles, watered their horses, and saddled up, they moved on, the Falconer riding ahead, Tirtha bringing up the rear.

It did not take them long to get beyond the stream and the ragged growth about it, picking a careful way around rock falls. As far as Tirtha could determine they now headed southward. She had no way by which she could calculate how much longer this mountain travel would take. All roads and known trails had been destroyed with the army that had marched along them, on the day the mountains had been moved.

They had been on their twisting trail, having to backtrack sometimes to seek another route (for hereabouts the ravages of the overthrow were far worse and more apparent to the eye), for a period of time well into the morning when they came across the first signs of that drastic wiping out of the invaders a generation ago.

Their discovery was signaled by one of those harsh cries that Tirtha associated with the Falconer, though the sound had not issued from the lips of her companion—rather it echoed from some point ahead. There was a division of possible ways here, and at that sound, the Falconer turned unhesitatingly into the one from which that cry had come.

Ahead, after they had wound their way around another slide of jagged and cruelly broken rock, was a space nearly choked with a fall, even as had been the site of the Eyrie. On a boulder that overtopped Tirtha’s head as she rode, perched a bird—like the one that had answered her companion’s call the night before.

The sun-struck gleams from metal caught in and among that tumble of cracked and broken stone. There were red stains of rust streaming down from some of these twisted and crushed weapons. Other scraps had remained oddly untouched by the years and the weather, as if they had lain ensorceled during the time since the disaster. A roundish yellowed stone, when touched glancingly by the mare’s hoof, rolled over to show that it was a skull.

The falcon screamed again, and the man he appeared to summon slid from his mount, leaving reins dangling. He went to climb that crumbling hill toward the waiting bird. Tirtha watched them narrowly. There was certainly no open path across this battlefield between men and the unleashed Power—why then had they come here?

She saw him reach a rock that brought his head on a level with the waiting predator. Then his hand shot forward as he jerked at one of those bright bits of metal, its surface showing no rust. There was resistance, which his strength bested. What he drew into the open was a hilted blade—not the length of a full sword—nor yet that of a long dagger, but somewhere between the two.

The bird was watching him intently, its head forward as it looked down. Now, as the man pulled forth that weapon, it again uttered a cry—a scream that might be one of fierce triumph—and rose into the air a fraction with a beat of wings. The Falconer held out his arm straight and still, still, and the feathered hunter came to perch on his wrist. It settled there as if it had chosen a resting place it liked well. So it remained for a long moment while the eyes behind the mask-helm and those within the feathered skull met and held a gaze Tirtha knew was silent communication of a kind unknown to her race.