Andre Norton - Ware Hawk

“Tirtha!” That came like an arousing shout uttered in her very ear, drawing her into far keener awareness than she had had since they had fought that battle for the casket across her body. “Tirtha!”

The call, having found her, fed energy to awaken and strengthen her.

“You live…” That was no question, rather a demand. “You live!”

Which was folly. Still that bit of her which was able to respond could not say this was not true. She wondered if the fact that she still must fulfill a guardianship, that she had not been absolved of the geas, kept that small ember of life aglow in her.

What sought her—this was not the Great One who had rent open their prison. Nor was it the Dark Lord who commanded here. The Falconer was dead. Alon?

As if she had asked that aloud, there came an instant strong reply—wordless, yet unmistakable. The boy lived, nor had he retreated so far into his inner hiding place that he could not reach her.

“Where…” She found it exhausting to bring out even the beginning of a question. Let the dead, or the almost-dead rest; she resented being bound by any will.

“East…” It would seem that she need not form a full thought, that Alon could pluck meaning from what was vague even to her. “There is a Dark One—he believes me in his hold. But I have seen the bird twice!”

The bird that had flown into the storm? What had the bird to do with them? Oh, just let her go! Tirtha strove to will herself back into peaceful nothingness.

“Messenger… They come!”

She did not care. The fleeting strength that touch had brought was not enough to hold her. She slipped once more into the dark.

Then it was dark and yet not truly dark. Rain no longer beat on her face. Somewhere, not too far away, there must be a fire, for there was a ruddy glow, though she could not turn her head to find its source. She stared unblinkingly upward at rough stone. They must have taken refuge in a cave.

This could have been one of many such camps as far as her slight hold upon the living world could tell. Tirtha lay looking up at that rock. Perhaps the dying, or the dead, dream of life, and this was such a dream. She was content that the pain was gone and that there seemed to be a barrier between her and any contact with the real world or the unreal one.

“Tirtha!” Once again she was being summoned back, she thought, sluggishly and resentfully. “You are awake—I know it!” There was some heat of anger. Alon might have been hammering at a door that had refused to open to him.

“The bird—it is out there in the night! I have heard it call twice. They are coming! This Dark One—he knows it, he will try me!”

There was nothing left in Tirtha to raise an answer. What moved Alon had no meaning for her. A shadow appeared between her and the fire as a tall shape loomed above her. The shadow leaned forward, so her moving eyes saw a helmed head, a face in partial darkness. A second shadow was now beside the first, someone dragged to her side even as that miserable prisoner had been brought to her to steal the casket—a smaller, thinner shape.

“He’s scared into an idiot, Lord. Look at the face on him.”

“Yes, look at him, Gerik! This waif you would have hunted for your pleasure has more strength in the smallest finger of his hand than you can summon to swing that sword of yours! Idiot? Ah, far from that. He is hiding—hiding! But there is a trick or two that will peel him out, even as you peel a fos-crab out of its shell after a good steaming.”

Hands hard and heavy on its shoulders crushed that smaller shadow to its knees beside her.

“I thought as how he was so very precious. Lord, that none of us was to lay finger on him. Yet you want to risk him…”

“There always is a time, Gerik, when one plays for high stakes. I do not think that this one will be risked. He is of another heritage. Among such, like does not prey upon like. It may diminish him somewhat. However, that can be risked for what we shall gain. To transport this other carrion only slows us, and time has become our enemy. We are not the only seekers, and I will tell you, Gerik, you would find some who come searching such as you would not care to face.” Laughter, low and heavy in contempt, came out of that shadow. “Now!”

She did not know what he did to the boy he held prisoner. There came no cry out of Alon, nor was there any longer any touch from him to her. He must have retreated into his own refuge.

“Seems like he isn’t too quick to answer, Lord!” Gerik said after a long moment. “We could try a trick or two…”

“Silence!” The word was sharp enough to stop even Gerik in his covert rebellion.

The two beside her seemed linked unmovingly. Tirtha sensed, very far, the faintest touch against her near-buried self, a lapping of power that perhaps might well have blasted one who accepted or was forced to accept it fully. The smaller shadow moved a fraction, its arms hanging limply from the shoulders and prisoned in its captor’s grip raised, the hands extending toward Tirtha’s body. That lapping power arose the stronger—exultation fed it.

Then there came a tearing cry, so wild and strange that it might have been a shout a man charging into battle would voice, his nature drowned in a lust for blood and death. Another shadow appeared, over the shoulder of the standing man. She saw it clearly. The bird that had been born from the body of the falcon!

The man at her side stumbled back a step. One of his hands fell away from Alon’s shoulder, while the boy sagged forward as one whose full strength had drained away. Now he lay across her, his rain-wet hair drifting over the lower part of her face, as motionless as she herself. Though Tirtha did not believe that he was dead—or dead-alive as she was sentenced to remain.

The bird now perched on Alon’s shoulder, twisting forward its long neck so that its eyes were very close to her own as it gazed steadily at her. No, no bird! This was again that head, that face she had seen in her pain back in Hawkholme.

Only for a moment did the bird stare into her eyes, or the face thus look upon her. Then it swung about to confront the man shadow, and from it came once more that sound which was a name, “Ninutra!”

From the man it so confronted, there sounded an answering cry. Or was it a summons for help—a backing for himself in some struggle he now feared unequal?

“Rane!”

He might have laid a goad to the bird. The thing hissed viciously. It fairly leaped from Alon’s body straight for the man who had been trying to jerk the boy up again. The blow it delivered was out of range of Tirtha’s sight, but she heard a cry of pain, then an oath. He was no longer between her and the fire, and she could hear other cries, not all in the same voice. It would seem that the bird was waging battle with more than one.

Alon remained where he was. She could not feel his weight upon her, his voice reached her in the faintest of whispers, which the cries and sounds from beyond covered.

“They fight. The bird has drawn blood. But the Lord summoned, and there will be more than one come to us. Also there is one who follows. Time is drawing in. Oh, Tirtha, hold—hold, for the end is far from decided.”

She guessed that he had used speech lest that which had been summoned, or the lord, having extended his own power to that summoning, might pick up their touch by mind. But she could make no answer. Nor did she desire to do so. This was no longer her battle. It was rather a trap wherein she was held, from which she longed to be free.

The clamor lessened, and then a shadow strode once more between the light of the fire and her body.

“What’s to be done with the boy now, lord?”

“See he’s well bound and stow him safe.” The reply was sullen. “There is too much abroad now to try again.”