Andre Norton - Ware Hawk

His falcon, which had so oddly taken on that other-seeming when death finished it—what had been its real end? And who or what was Ninutra?

Even thinking that name opened a new inner path of thought. This time Tirtha did not see a woman’s face, rather she felt a warmth throughout her whole body—inward surely, not in her drugged and deadened flesh. While…

The air twisted, turned. Could air twist and turn? In spite of the bobbing of her head, that constant motion which was disruptive to clear sight, Tirtha detected movement overhead, and it was in the air! A gathering of fog—whence came a single patch of fog on such clear a day? Some small cloud might have been dispatched to hang directly over them, traveling steadily with them. Was she the only one who saw it? She heard nothing from those riding about her.

Fog? No, shadow! Only one should not be able to see an airborne shadow at midday! It twirled, lengthened, solidified. The same sword that had hung above the three of them back at Hawkholme was now visible, growing in both breadth and length. They traveled under it, and there was a threat in it.

Not for her; Tirtha had already decided that. This was a manifestation of the same power that had aided them at Hawkholme. Like the gray bird, it was representative of a warning, a challenge. She half expected to hear the scream of the bird, perhaps that name uttered out of the air overhead.

What she did hear was a loud cry that must have issued from the man leading the pony to which she was bound. He had reined in and jerked the pony in turn to a halt. Her head had fallen a little to one side so that she could see his arm stretched upward as he pointed to what hung above them. There were other exclamations. Then came the voice of the one she had not yet directly seen—that Dark Lord who commanded Gerik in spite of the outlaw’s will.

“It is a vision only. Are you such as to be frightened by shadows?”

“There are shadows and shadows.” Again Gerik spoke, his impudence hardly controlled. “If it is a vision. Lord, then whose? And it has an uncanny look to it. I do not think that and your cup-brother would deal well together. You have said that there will be those in Escore to hail us with ‘well done’ since we bring that dead thing over there with its hell box, and this youngling whom you drag along in spite of the death-coming look to him also. Well, are we not in Escore, or so you have told us? Where then are your friends? Does it not seem that it is those with little liking for you who have found us first? I say”—his voice came a little louder now as if he were approaching the pony upon which Tirtha was tied—“that we have fulfilled our part of the bargain, Lord. This dealing with Powers—leave witchery to them who know it better than we. There are good enough pickings in the Duchy; why should we go hunting trouble?”

It would seem that the only man Tirtha held in sight agreed with that. For he who had led the pony dropped the rope and backed his mount away from the smaller beast. A moment later he was joined by another, who looked much like him and was surely close akin to the one she had seen stop behind them on the trail.

Above them all now the sword had taken on such firm substance that it looked—at least to her—to be a very solid object suspended in the air and of a length that only a man near the height of a foothill could have put hand to, had it indeed been a weapon to be used.

The Dark Lord laughed.

“It is too late, Gerik. As I told you once—though perhaps you did not believe me—those who take service with my lord (and by pledging your aid to me in certain matters, you did just that) are not released at their will. No, not until he has had his full usage of them! Try to retreat—if you can!”

The two men within Tirtha’s range of vision looked a little pale beneath the dirt and the wind-browning of their faces. Both turned as one and used the spur. Their small horses bounded forward down the back trail. However, they had only gone a length or two before they slowed and cried out, as beasts do, in an extremity of terror.

Crouched in the grass confronting them was such a creature as Tirtha had never seen, though the thing she had faced in the mountains had been strange and evil enough. This was in its way worse, for it had nothing about it of any sane animal. Rather it was insectile, as if one of the harmless spiders, which wove morning webs in the meadows, had grown nearly pony size in an instant. The thing was furred with coarse, bright scarlet hair, thickening about the joints of its huge limbs into vast masses. Across its head was a row of pitless dark eyes above mandibles that clicked, while a thick green slime oozed from those threatening crunchers.

The riders were fighting their horses as the mounts whirled, dashed back past Tirtha, carrying their riders with them, away from that creature, which squatted and eyed the party with an intent glare.

“Yahhhhh!” It must have been Gerik himself, the man who had refused to be totally cowed by his employer, who bounded up. He had a heavy spear in his hand, holding it with the ease of one who had victoriously gone into battle many times before, and he must have had iron control over his wild-eyed and now screaming horse, for he was forcing it to carry him straight forward, the spear aiming directly at the monster crouching to close the back trail.

The spider creature did not await Gerik’s charge. Rather it leaped, apparently willing enough to spike its hairy body on a spear in order to reach its enemy. It was Gerik’s horse that reared or dodged. The pony’s mad fear gave it an agility never meant for such a stocky body. Losing footing the beast crashed side-wise, carrying the man down with it, but not before the spear pierced the thick abdomen of the monster.

Perhaps it was his example showing that the monster could be attacked or the compelling personality of the man who had led them, which now brought those who had first fled back into combat. They returned into Tirtha’s line of vision, spurring toward that mass of animal, monster, and man interlocked on the ground, their swords out, flailing at the heaving red-haired form, slashing at any part of it they could touch.

The downed pony screamed as only an animal in dire pain and fear can do. There had been no cry from its rider. Perhaps the shock of that spill had made Gerik an easy prey to the creature. But the thing itself was in dire straits. Twice it strove to draw itself together for another leap. The dribble of poisonous stuff from its mouth parts ran in a thick green stream. It had lost two legs, hacked off by the frenzy of those who attacked it.

A sword thrust, well aimed, cut into one of those intelligent, malice-filled eyes. He who had been so lucky in that stroke tried again. A stream of the evil green slime sprayed outward, sending him back screaming, dropping his blade, tearing with both hands at the skin of his lower face. He began to run in circles, howling like an animal in its death throes.

Part blinded, lacking two limbs as it did, the spear driven far into its paunch, the thing managed to raise itself from the now silent yet still twitching body of the pony and swung to face its second attacker. One foreleg, armed with a vicious looking claw nearly as long as Tirtha’s forearm, stabbed out at the fighter who backed, then stood his ground, aiming shearing strokes at the creature. His steel met the claw and rebounded. It would seem that this part was not so vulnerable. Once more that envenomed spray arched through the air from the monster’s mouth.

The man leaped back, more lucky than his comrade, as the creature made a jerky move to follow. Then a head and arm, the upper portion of a body, arose from where the thing had squatted over its first prey. Gerik was on his knees. His two hands gripped the hilt of a sword, and he stabbed into the round body now half turned from him. If the claw had been armored well enough to turn away steel, the body of the thing was not so protected. That sword, driven by all the strength the man could summon, sank into the wide back, hilt-deep. There came a fountain gush of black liquid spurting up and over Gerik, who fell, hidden again from sight.