Andre Norton - Ware Hawk

Still silent, the man from the forest took another stride to the left until he fronted Alon with his compelling gaze. Tirtha twisted about in the Torgian’s saddle to witness that meeting. There had been no change of expression on the stranger’s face, in fact no expression at all. For all his partaking of any of the emotions of the living, he might well have been one of the infamous dead-alive from which the Kolder had fashioned their armies. Yet this one was very much of a power, and what dwelt within that outer covering of mankind was to be distrusted, perhaps even rightly feared.

He gave the boy only one long, searching stare. Then once more his attention shifted to Tirtha herself, and for the first time he spoke:

“Welcome, Lady, to that which is rightfully yours.” His voice was surprisingly gentle and courteous in tone. He might have been greeting a guest at the door of a holding, the plate with bread, salt and water held ready for the sealing of the guesting bond.

She found her own voice, glad for the breaking of the silence that had covered much.

“I make no claims on this land,” she returned. “This is no rule hold of mine.”

“It is of the Hawk that was,” he returned. “Though the years have dealt hardly with it of late. And do you not”—he made a light gesture with one hand to the sword she had bared—“carry the Hawk’s weapon by right of blood?”

How he knew this (had he picked it out of her mind though she thought she was closed to his probe?) was a blow, but Tirtha believed that she had not allowed him to guess he scored against her.

“Hawkholme lies beyond. I make no claims, wood lord. If the years have wrought a difference, then let it so abide. Rule you as you will.”

To her amazement he bowed gracefully with the ease of one who had been born to sit in a hall’s high seat.

“You are gracious, Lady, and generous,” though if she was not mistaken there was clearly a note of mockery in that. “To give freely what cannot be held might seem to some to be a superfluity. I do not believe you deal in such. You seek Hawkholme, but you are not alone in that. I think”—for the first time there was a curve of his well-cut lips as if he smiled—“that it might be amusing to see how you will deal with them .”

“And who are they! ” the Falconer demanded.

The stranger’s smile grew a fraction wider. He shook his head.

“Such a valiant company.” His mockery was at last open and it had that in it which stung, though Tirtha had long ago schooled herself against any serious acceptance of her quest. “Such a very valiant company! And who can say whether the Greater Powers may not be amused enough to allow you, in your time, some advantage. I think I shall step aside, since you. Lady, have been so gracious as to invest me in my rulership, and allow this game to be played to the end without me. It”—now he glanced at Alon and his smile faded a fraction—“might have certain aspects that do not appear openly at present. So…” he swept her a second bow, then gestured. The haired things broke their circle, opening a way before Tirtha, who faced that gap in the wood where the path led on again. “Pass, Lady. And when you come into your full inheritance, remember that what you have surrendered was by your choice, and you have made a bargain…”

“I have not!” she caught him up. “There is no oath-swearing between us, forest lord. No oath-taking nor giving. I have said only I do not want what you have claimed. What I seek lies elsewhere. But you are not sworn to me, nor am I turf-enfiefed to you!”

He nodded. “Cautious, yes. As well might you be, Lady. I will concede that we are not oath-bound. I owe no shield service and come not before your high seat.”

“Be it so.” She said the old words denying fiefship with emphasis. No pact with the Dark. Perhaps in even accepting this much from him, she was making a mistake. But it was true—even if all Hawkholme hailed her as liege lady, which she did not expect—she wanted no rulership over this dire wood.

“Yet”—the Falconer urged his pony a step or so closer to the stranger. He had not sheathed the weapon of power, and in what appeared a half-involuntary motion, the man from the forest raised his hand as if to shield his eyes from the shine of the weapon. “Yet, still you have not answered me. Who are they with whom we shall deal?”

The forest stranger shrugged. “To you I owe no answer, Swordsman. You have chosen your own road. Ride it or leave it as you will. What you find on it is none of my affair.”

“Still,” Alon’s childish voice broke through the antagonism that Tirtha could almost see forming between the two of them as a darker and even more ominous shadow. For there was something in the Falconer that answered to this other as one drawn sword rises to meet another when the battle is enjoined. “Still, since you have told us some, do you deny us the rest?”

He sat quietly on the mare, a child looking thoughtfully at the man. Tirtha watched the two of them. With every hour they rode together, she was surer that Alon was more than she could understand, that he was no son of the Old Race, but something different and perhaps far older and longer tied to the Power.

The features of the forest dweller lost their imperviousness. He registered cold anger now. Still it was anger strictly curbed, one that might consume but could not be released.

“Seek you also…” His voice had dropped, it held almost the hiss of the scaled ones in a slight slurring of the words. “You are not yet a commander of the Great Lords! Nor do you command me! ” With that he turned and was gone, as if his will alone had wafted him from their sight. The haired ones scuttled back into the shadows, leaving the three alone.

Tirtha made no comment, falling in with the Torgian behind the two ponies, which now paced abreast down the wider trail leading out of the clearing. She was disturbed more than she wanted to admit, still she made herself face the fact that those she rode with were certainly not what they outwardly seemed. Alon, she had accepted from the first as a mystery, for his introduction into their company had come through such a feat of the Power as she had never known. However, the Falconer, whom secretly she had dismissed as a dour fighter with perhaps pain of body and mind behind him, but one so narrow of belief that he would or could have no part in any life save that he had been bred to—what indeed was this Falconer who had named himself and still was a man divided? One who strove inside him (of this she was somehow sure) to unite two vastly different ways of thought. He carried his weapon of power, and he had used it this night as one trained in at least the lesser mysteries. Yet he clung to his role of fighting man, and he had fronted the man of the wood openly to demand an accounting as would any blank shield on escort duty.

No, she was faced with many puzzles and perhaps two of them, which might yield difficulties in times to come, were the innermost natures of those who companioned her.

Why should she now question them when she must also honestly question herself? She was no longer sure either of Tirtha or what Tirtha might do or become. All she was certain of was that she must reach Hawkholme. What would chance thereafter? Her dream had never led her any farther than that single room somewhere within the ruined pile in which had been hidden that casket. She did not even guess what it held and what she would do with it thereafter. She was sure that the forest man had been right in his mockery. They were riding on blindly into perils that could be far greater than any this wood held.

It would seem that they had passed the worst the forest could offer. The withdrawal of the forest lord and his crew—the granting of an open road to them—ended her foreboding, the need for listening which held her since they entered on this forgotten road. He had released them—for what? Trials which he undoubtedly thought much worse and which would give him a perverse pleasure (even as he had admitted) to see them meet. She had no doubt that he firmly expected a sure and final defeat for them from such a meeting. Knowing that, her old stubbornness arose, and for all her realization that there was little in the way of preparation she could make against the unknown, Tirtha rode on with a straight back and high-held head, sword still in hand, threading among more thinly spaced trees and the shaggy brush that marked the other side of the wood—morning and Hawkholme lying before them.