Andre Norton - Ware Hawk

Alon was lifted off her, taken from her sight, lying limp in his guard’s hands. Once more Tirtha was allowed to drift into her blessed nothingness.

What came to arouse her next was pain—a memory of it, or so it would seem, not a part of her. Still she carried it with her as one carries an annoying burden one is ordered to bear. She looked out upon the world, losing her hold on nothingness with reluctance. There was sky above her again—dull and gray, but from it no rain flowed. Her head jerked to and fro so that she caught glimpses now and then of mounted men, mainly one who rode beside her, leading the pony on which she was lashed. She gathered she had been bound to that mount in a strange fashion, face up, probably because of the casket that must still be frozen into position on her breast, making this the only way she could be transported.

More than her surroundings, the girl grew aware of what was awakening inside her. Not only the pain, but also her thoughts were coming alive once more. She had, not this time answered to Alon’s call, rather to something else—a reaching out from…

Warmth—the casket! What she bore was alive? No, that could not be true. It was metal, unless it cradled more than she could have guessed—some sentient power? One could believe anything of the Great Ones and that what she bore was of their earlier possessing, Tirtha no longer doubted. There was feeling within that thing, which rested not far from her heart, to the covering of which her hands were still frozen. Her head bobbed again to give her a quick glance down the length of her body.

Yes! She held the casket as firmly as she had since she had taken it up from its resting place at Hawkholme. The rope, which helped to bind her to the pony, also was looped carefully about her hands as if those who transported her had doubts about her being dead and had thought that she might rouse, to throw the treasure from her, perhaps into some place from which they could not fetch it forth again.

Dead? For the first time her less sluggish thinking began to doubt this. The drug Alon had fed into her at her urging had been a huge dose of what was meant to give healing sleep. Perhaps it had paralyzed her body, taken the pain but left her living. The thought of being forever so enchained was much worse than any physical pain, striking her as hard and swiftly as a sword thrust.

The sky appeared to be lightening a little. Now with the bobbing of her head she sighted a patch of blue. Since she faced the tail of the horse, back the way they had come, she caught sight of what must be the rear guard, a single man who rode as one who was uneasy, turning watchful eyes on the back track. There was no mark of any roadway. This was all open moorland with a round mound or hill here and there. The spring growth was already high and green. She saw a hawk wheel into the upper air, a flock of smaller birds turn sharply, forming a fan pattern against the enlarging patch of blue.

As Tirtha became more and more alert mentally, breaking through layers of shadows that had wrapped her around as a moth might lie encased in its cocoon, she watched the rear guard with greater care. Twice he pulled to a halt, sat looking back over his shoulder. Yet the land behind was so open one could view it for an ever-lengthening distance. Even she—who had no control over her eyes and had to watch those portions the movements of the pony allowed her—saw nothing move there.

Again her interest awoke so that she longed to reach out. Alon? No, she dared not attempt to touch the boy; she did not know how deeply he was kept captive, not only physically, but by the talent of the Dark Lord. Surely that Lord could sense, since he must be very alert to any manifestation of the talent, any attempt on her part to contact her fellow prisoner. So feeble a gift as hers would lie as open to his reading as one of the record rolls of Lormt.

Still—were they pursued? She remembered Alon’s whisper of one who followed. The raided garth where Gerik had caused red ruin—could that have set on their trail some band of a lord’s following determined on vengeance? Tirtha believed not. Hawkholme lay too far inland. No one would have followed the raiders with such single-minded fury unless it was their own homestead that had been so despoiled, and Gerik had left only death behind him at the garth that had been Alon’s home.

There remained Alon and that Wise Woman Yachne who had taken him into the homestead. Why had Yachne tried to protect and hide one who was manifestly not of her race or kind? Had she perhaps foreseen a future in which Alon could be forged into a tool or a weapon of her own? The Power had always been a danger to those who could summon it even slightly—in itself it was a peril. He or she who could accomplish a little began to yearn to be able to control more. If that inner desire became great enough, it corrupted. Such corruption was of the Dark.

Yes, Tirtha believed that one who valued, who craved Power above all else, might trail behind and seek, single-minded, to regain what had been lost. Even though the odds against any success were very, very high. Yachne had been said to be a Wise Woman, a healer of sorts, which meant one limited in talent. However, that did not also mean that the face she presented to the world was more than a mask. She could well have come out of Escore on some business of her own, adopting a lesser role in Karsten than she would play among those with whom she was bred. Alon had been her charge or her possession.

Tirtha had not realized how much her mind had cleared until that faint pain began to increase. Her body, which had been so dead, was coming awake. She cringed inwardly, realizing the torment that lay ahead, carried as she was, if the action of the herb began to fail. The end could be that she would face such pain as that poor remnant of a man from Hawkholme must have felt before the last act his captor had forced him to had released him forever. Tirtha knew some of the disciplines of pain-containing—had used them during her journeys to combat the ordinary small trials of any tramping of the roads, but they had never been meant to cope with such an ordeal as would be hers now. There was no one to aid her, unless she could provoke the lord of this party to finish her off as they had done the Falconer. Perhaps it would come to that, if she could persuade him that the casket would be his after such a merciful stroke.

Only, what she held could not be so easily surrendered. That knowledge was deep in her. Tirtha was still guardian, dead or alive, until released from her bond. A provoked sword thrust would not be the answer.

The rear rider had reined in his mount once more, facing the back trail. He was a brutal looking fellow, clad in rusted and badly mended mail, a pot helm a little too large. Its ill fit appeared to bother him, for he put up a hand now and then to tug it more firmly in place. All the rest of their party that she could not see plodded on, drawing her, in turn, farther and farther away from the rear guard who still sat where he was, his horse’s head hanging as if it had been ridden too far and too long.

This was a quiet group. There was no conversation among them, only a snuffle of bit, the whiffling snort of mount now and then to break the silence. Pressing in on Tirtha came their combined feelings of uneasiness, fear. She remembered more clearly Gerik’s protests about crossing the border. There were hills between fabled Escore and Karsten, though not the stark mountainous country that formed the Eastern barrier back in Estcarp. Even so, crossing into such debatable land was nothing to be taken lightly. Those of lowland blood, with their hatred and fear of what the Falconer termed witchery, would have little desire to push on.

The Falconer… Shot down… she had a dim memory of hearing that. He must have brought her out of the crumbling fortress-hall with Alon’s help, only to meet death. What had become of his power sword? She was somehow sure that none in this company would dare to claim it. It had come to him, and there were many old tales of weapons that chose their masters—or mistresses—serving no others. Now her memory grew vivid for an instant or two, and she remembered his body arching over her and Alon, keeping from them, or ready to do so, the tumbling walls. A blank shield served his employer to the death—that was the code. Yet it was Tirtha’s thought that in the end the Falconer had not lived only by the code, that, woman though she was, he might have forgotten her sex in that moment and viewed her as a shield-mate cut down in battle. She remembered his dark, hollow-cheeked face and what lay always in the depths of his eyes—that strange yellowish fire that could be heightened by anger or perhaps by hidden thoughts she had never understood. He had found peace, which was all she could wish for him.