Andre Norton - Ware Hawk

“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.”