Andre Norton - Ware Hawk

A moment of silence and then, “Perhaps you are not so great a fool as you would seem, Gerik. Yes, he is still alive, even after your kind attentions and earnest discussions. I think he has enough of a hand left to do our bidding. He may not be a true Hawk, but there is a part of the proper blood within him, unless that was all spilled during our time of reasoning. So he may be able to achieve what must be done. Get him forth and try! I do not like this storm, there is the smell of Power here, such as is no friend to the Great One.”

Tirtha lay within her shell of death and tried to understand. The bird man—Nirel—dead? It would seem so. For a moment she felt a thrust of strange pain, though not from her dead flesh and splintered bones but rather from another part of her. And the boy—that was Alon—him this “Lord” would take as captive to present to some greater doer of Evil. But it would seem that the casket was still hers, or at least within the guardianship of her dead body—and it had already caused death to one who would take it from her. That was true—the guardianship might pass only by right and by free gift, she knew, perhaps had always known in some hidden part of her.

So—one of the Blood? One to take from her even in death if it could be… And she had not the power—no longer any command. Again she knew the swelling fire of anger—a rage that filled her world. She could not be foresworn—she was the Hawk and in her hold this…!

Still the rain blinded her eyes which she could not close or blink; but she could hear, even as she heard voices now, whimpering sobs of pain, the cries of one broken and vanquished. She saw approaching her three shapes half hidden by the storm, two dragging a third between them. The two, who carried rather than led that helpless one, hurled him to the ground beside her, so he fell out of her range of sight. Then one of his captors stooped and caught a fistful of hair, drawing him up into her murky vision once again.

She saw a face bearing such scars and mutilations as made it a mask of horror, yet that part of her imprisoned in death felt emotion only vaguely, as if it were such a distance from her now that it was one with the helplessness of her own body. The other guard grabbed at the limp and helpless man, seizing an arm down the scorched and beaten flesh of which water runneled. There were fingers on a hand that was fire-shriveled. All but two of them were bent at impossible angles, but the hand was dragged forward above Tirtha, and though she could see only a fraction of movement, she realized that it was being made to reach for the casket, which must still lie upon her breast, perhaps tight in the hold of her dead hands.

The guard dropped that hand. She heard a scream such as could be torn only from one suffering the deepest agony that the Dark might devise. His body arched into her sight, nearly won to its feet in that last terrible torment, then fell back and away. There was silence, save for the battering of the rain and the distant beat of the thunder.

“You see, Lord, even your half-blood could not do it.”

There was a sound in answer that was no word, rather a hissing of sheer rage. Then he who had been so addressed apparently mastered his flaming anger.

“Well enough. The puzzle remains. We shall take the dead with us, since no one seems like to master her. Sling her over a pack pony and let us be gone. There are those who can be summoned by the very smell of Power, and we are in debatable land.”

“You ride for Escore, Lord?”

“Where else? Get your men together, Gerik, and let us be about our business. As for the cub—I shall see to him. She, at least, will need no guards.”

“Lord, my sword-oath serves only this side of the border. We do not ride crosswise into what lies eastward.”

Again that snarl. “You will discover, if you try otherwise, Gerik, that your oath is more than you deemed it at its taking. When I speak, you ride where and when it is my desire that you do so.”

Once more a length of silence. Tirtha discovered that while she might no longer sense by physical means or judge by what she saw, still she was keenly aware of all about her. That Gerik was cowed was untrue. He was in a little awe of the one he addressed as “lord,” but already a wily and subtle mind, well melded with cruelty and ruthlessness, was twisting and turning to find a way free. Murder was the least, perhaps, and the most forthright of the thoughts now in the outlaw’s head.

However, for the time being, he was willing to adopt an outward show of being completely under the other’s domination. She heard stamping of hooves on stone. Moments later she was lifted, and inwardly waited for the pain to strike—no, she must have been right. Her body had died, and it did not matter how roughly slack flesh and broken bone was handled. She felt nothing save that she was indeed lying across a pony’s back and that she had been lashed in place there.

Alon had made no sound. She wondered then if once more he had fled back into that hiding place he had found during the attack on the garth. But he had certainly not become invisible, for they spoke of him as booty to be carried off.

They rode under the fall of the rain, eastward bound. Behind them they must be leaving the dead. She had no idea what might have happened to the unfortunate Rudik, but that the Falconer had found the end of his journey and that the tortured rag of humanity they had brought to rob her had been finished, Tirtha did not doubt.

She hung in her bonds unfeeling, and at length she was able once more to flee imprisonment from the shell of her inert self, sink back into the darkness. Still she was not free. Even in death the casket rode with her, and she came to believe that she would be bound in essence of spirit as long as it existed and was not returned to the one who could claim it by full right.

Was that the woman figure she had seen in her mind—the one the bird had called upon as Ninutra? If the bird had flown free from the keep to summon help, help had not come. Tirtha wondered about what had happened when Nirel and Alon had gotten her out of the destroyed secret chamber. But all that was very far away and had no more meaning for her. She need only wait and hope that that wait would not be long, until the final meeting wherein it would be decided once and for all whether a blood-oath might hold past death and how strong such a tie would be against the Dark.

Tirtha thought once more of the woman—not to make any plea—that was no longer in her power. If this Ninutra was the prime mover who had set the geas into action, then it must be her time and place and power that would bring the end into view. Surely there would be freedom thereafter, but perhaps even yet—though she no longer had a body worth the struggle—a final battle lay ahead.

Perhaps time and death had no meeting place; or perhaps it was that, even though dead, she was still held to the world she knew. Tirtha drifted between a place where she knew nothing and was at rest and being remotely conscious of what lay about her. There was the rain and storm, winds that buffeted the land, vicious strikes of lightning, though the fury of the unleashed weather led the commanded of this party to make no concessions. They rode through the worst of it as if there were clear sky above.

Tirtha’s vague touches of the outer world caught strange, floating fragments of thoughts that were not her own. She did not try to gather or consider them, yet she knew that those who rode were certainly not united. There were fears here, anger, dour resentment, weariness, but above all fear. That emotion gathered force, aimed in one direction, toward the leader under whose orders they journeyed.

During one of her feeble contacts with the world she was transfixed, caught. Not by any confused emanation from those whose prisoner she now was, but by a far more vigorous and demanding force.