M. Scott - The Coming of the King

The princess turned her brightened gaze on Hypatia. ‘Just now, it’s an order. If that changes, you can be sure I will let you know. The gates are open. We shall walk the first quarter-mile to the shore’s edge, then we can let the horses run.’

The falcon screamed as she launched from Iksahra’s fist; a high, keening note that cut the cool morning from horizon to horizon, so that Hypatia would not have been surprised to see the sky split apart and the night leak back through.

Such power to behold, such fury. From launch to height, the bird’s spread wings became a bar of slate grey, lost for a moment as she streaked low across the brilliant sea, then found again as she leapt from the wavetops and spiralled upwards to become, in so short a time, a scribble, lost in the aching wilderness of the sky.

They were galloping now; Hypatia and the Princess Kleopatra, racing along the marginal land where sea met shore and harsh grasses kept the one from sweeping away the other. They were lying flat to their horses’ necks, letting the reins free, trying to keep up with the bird and the Berber woman who had loosed it.

Ahead, Iksahra sur Anmer was a mosaic of black limbs and white linen tunic set against pale grey sands and a paler horse. She had seen the woman and the girl who were following her, Hypatia thought, but she had not slowed her mount. Kleopatra’s cousin, the Prince Hyrcanus, had not seen them and was not likely to unless they placed themselves physically in front of him; he had eyes only for the Amazon who led their wild hunt along the shore.

He had good reason. Tall and lean, the woman sat her horse with the ease of a born rider, and hers was not a fair-limbed, kindly mare such as had been given Hypatia, but one of the fire-blooded horses the Berber tribes bred to keep their children safe from harm, that were kept in their tents and fed dates and asses’ milk and the last of the water in drought, that fought with teeth and feet against wild beasts and bandits with equal ferocity but could be led by a three-year-old child, that could carry a woman in the last hours of pregnancy so smoothly her waters would not break.

Iksahra wore man’s garb again, as she had at the docks — likely as she did all the time — and the fine linen weave of her robes wrapped around her in the wind of her gallop. From arrogance, or for necessity, she rode without reins, leaving her hands free for the hunting birds that rode with her, clinging on arched perches mounted on either side of the pommel.

She untied the tiercel as she rode, pulling the leash free with teeth that shone white against her skin. He raised his wings and lifted lightly, using the wind of their running to hold him a hand’s breadth above her gauntleted wrist.

‘Would you see him hunt along the ground, while his mate rides high in the sky?’

Even at a shout, her accent was light, dancing over the consonants, softening the vowels. Hypatia had drawn nearly level and found herself looking into a face of sculpted oak, with spirals tattooed across cheekbones and nose and ice-black eyes that threw her a challenge she did not fully understand. At least there was some humanity there, which was an improvement on the cold of their last meeting.

They drew their horses to a halt. The hounds flopped to lie on the sands, tongues a-loll.

Hypatia said, ‘I would see your bird do what he does best.’

‘What he does best is to fly high and kill.’ The dancing voice laughed, not kindly. ‘But he will hunt and return to me if I ask him. Or if Hyrcanus does. One day, the king’s heir will hunt these lands. We are teaching him the skills he needs.’

We. A woman and her hunting beasts, laying claim to royal pretensions. A horse halted level with theirs.

From Hypatia’s other side, Kleopatra said, ‘Perhaps my cousin could wait? The falcon is stooping to her kill. Such a thing deserves to be watched alone.’

She spoke with her aunt’s voice; if they had closed their eyes, they would have thought Berenice among them.

Iksahra did close her eyes, hooding them against the outer world. With a nod that was, by a hair, courteous rather than curt, she set the tiercel back on his perch again and turned her horse to the sea to watch her falcon at work.

They heard the bells first, the high whistle in the wind that was a prelude to a death. Faster than she had disappeared, the falcon grew in the sky, became a pinpoint and then a falling arrowhead, fixed in shape with the wings curved back, taut as a drawn bow, sleek slate grey.

Hypatia saw the prey-bird late, as a streak of sand-coloured movement flitting along the shore, piping reedily. Moments later, it died in a punch of talons on flesh and bone. Feathers danced high in the air, light as husks in a threshing yard.

Iksahra pursed her lips and whistled a single short note. The falcon made a tight turn, dragging the shore-bird in one yellowed foot, and brought it to hand, landing hard. Shore-webbed feet and a long, curled beak hung down, senseless in death. Three drops of blood smeared the pale doeskin glove.

A gasp came from Hypatia’s left, a small noise, drawn from the soul, such as one might make at the height of love, or in extremes of pain. And that high whine again in her ear, so that she turned her head only a fraction, too little to draw attention to herself, and so saw the Princess Kleopatra as few people could have seen her, laid raw to the world, open, unguarded and uncaring, moved to a joy beyond words.

It was gone in a breath, in a heartbeat. Kleopatra turned her horse neatly on its hocks. Her eyes were flat again, the granite-sea of her aunt’s.

‘Teach me,’ she said. ‘Now. We could ride for Jerusalem at any time. Saulos said so. You might not come.’

‘Kleo…!’ Hyrcanus stared at her in horror, flicking his eyes to Hypatia and back in exaggerated horror. Kleopatra gave a curt, scornful laugh. ‘She’s the Chosen of Isis. She knows everything.’

‘Does she?’ Iksahra asked.

‘I know that the royal family will go to Jerusalem some time soon,’ Hypatia said, truthfully. ‘I have no idea at all if you’ll go with them.’

She didn’t say that she had no idea yet as to why they might go, except that it must be an emergency: no royal family travelled at night unless they were in haste and in secret.

Iksahra favoured her with the same hooded gaze as before. ‘Where goes the king, so go I. The princess can learn as easily in the deserts outside Jerusalem as here.’

Kleopatra shook her head. ‘There are going to be riots, maybe war. And whatever starts here will spread to Jerusalem within days, my aunt, the queen, said. The hunting might stop. You have to teach me now.’

‘Kleo, you can’t learn in a day. I’ve been learning for nearly two months and I truly don’t know what I’m doing.’ Hyrcanus was kind; warmth laced his voice, his eyes, his hand as he leaned over to take his cousin’s arm.

She shook him off. Her fiery green gaze was locked now with the Berber woman’s; green on black, hot, fierce passion locked on a gaze that was cold as loss. There was hate in the core of Iksahra’s soul, but it was locked so tight that Hypatia doubted if even the woman herself could feel its fire.

Iksahra broke away first. She looked out across the sea. The falcon fed on her fist, throwing gobbets of feathered gore left and right, ripping at the flesh beneath. The tiercel tilted his hooded head, hearing, not moving.

‘The falcon is sated. If we flew her now, she would find a tree and not come down for three days. When we go to Jerusalem, we would lose her.’

‘The tiercel then.’

Hyrcanus said, ‘If she wants to fly it, I don’t mind.’ He was a prince and he still thought he was party to the decision.

The Berber woman stroked one dark forefinger down the rosy breast of her smaller hunting bird. ‘So,’ she said. ‘This is the tiercel. He is the male. He is smaller. He is weaker. But still he gives his heart to us. Is that what you want?’