Ware Hawk

18

Though pain had been walled away, Tirtha had no strength or power to shift her helpless body. She could only see what advanced into a narrow range of vision. Crytha still knelt beside her, but two others now moved forward to stand, one on either side of the priestess, each in his own way memorable to look upon. One was tall, broad of shoulder, thick of body, as befits an axeman. For the weapon he bore two-handed before him was a double-bladed axe. His helm mounted a marvelously wrought dragon from beneath which he looked upon Tirtha with compassion. Yet his eyes moved from side to side at times, as if they were in a place where constant close watch must be kept.

His companion was younger, more slender, fair of skin, and he held a sword such as was common enough among those who had ridden along the border. He might not be wholly of the Old Race, yet he was plainly human born. It was he who spoke now.

“There comes a rider—”

Crytha made a small gesture. “Yes. But there is more than that one. Rane walks…”

The wielder of the axe shifted his weapon as if making sure of its balance. His features lost all softness, his upper lip lifted the way a hunting cat would snarl.

“We are too close to his source,” he said. “Best we…”

Crytha interrupted him. “She cannot be moved.” Her gesture was to Tirtha. “This must remain our field of battle whether it appears a fitting one or not. For she also has a part still to play.” Crytha got easily and gracefully to her feet. The three of them, Tirtha saw, looked beyond in another direction.

With infinite care she brought her small strength to bear, willed her head to shift. It lay a little raised, as it there were support beneath. Thus she discovered she could see farther, even look upon what still rested on her breast, her hands frozen so tightly to it they might have become a part of it. The casket was still hers.

She raised her eyes from it, to follow the others’ line of gaze. So she caught sight of Alon. He was not standing as they did, awaiting what came, rather he raced forward. She heard the high neigh of a Torgian, a cry of triumph from an equine throat.

There were many rocks about. She still felt a chill issuing from behind. Though they may have, through some trick of power, won free of that Dark cage, yet the newcomers had not transported her too far from it. From the amount of debris lying about, she could be amidst ruins of either a temple or perhaps a hold or a village. Between two still-standing heaps of time-eaten stone, marking nearly destroyed walls, Alon dashed. Moments later he returned, fingers laced into the mane of a horse, to the riding pad of which clung a man, his body drooping, his dark-haired head bare, half his face masked by a brown crust of dried blood. Yet no mask could ever again conceal him from Tirtha’s recognition.

Within her prison-body, her heart gave a great leap, as if to break all bonds of bone and flesh. She was half—three-quarters dead, yes. But here she saw another dead arise to ride.

The mount followed Alon, rather than being directed by its rider. Though his eyes were open, Tirtha wondered how much he really saw of what lay about him. The Torgian came to a halt, its head down, as Alon smoothed its rough forelock, murmuring to the horse the while. Now the rider stirred, strove to straighten. A measure of intelligence came into his eyes, piercing whatever daze he had fallen into. It was plain he both saw and knew Tirtha. Then his gaze traveled to those three who stood by her. She saw his claw waver toward his belt. He wore no sword now, there was no dart gun in its holster, but the glowing pommel of the weapon of power was still within his reach.

He dismounted, perhaps would have fallen had he not caught at the mane of the Torgian to steady himself. Crytha took a step or two ahead of her companions.

“Long awaited, come at last…” It was as if she recited part of a ritual. “Brother of the winged ones, you to whom the weapon, Basir’s Tongue, has cleaved and made choice, we give you welcome, even though it be not to your rest but perhaps your bane and ours.”

The Falconer stared at her. Now he loosed his hold upon the horse’s coarse upspringing hair, raised hand toward his head in an uncertain gesture.

“You—are—the—night—walker—” He spoke hoarsely, as if against his will. “You came to draw me back from death.”

“From death?” Crytha said, as his last pause lengthened. “No, you were not dead, Falconer. They left you for such, but while you serve the Great Ones, then death comes not so easily.”

“I serve the Lady.” There was a tightness about his mouth. Flecks of dried blood fell from his jaw as he spoke. His hair, as Tirtha could see in the ever brightening day, was matted with dust and blood along his skull over the left ear. “This lady…”

His claw pointed to Tirtha where she lay. “What would you do with her? Does your Great One claim her, too?”

“She does,” Crytha answered promptly. “And you, also, for what you carry.”

It was her turn to point, and her fingers did not indicate the sword whose light gleamed bright enough to contrast even with the day, but rather the dart-looped belt about his shoulder. He looked down, following the line of her finger. Then he reached up slowly and clasped what he had carried out of Hawkholme—that rod with its concealed roll of the unreadable.

“How…” He looked totally bemused, as if this were the last thing he expected to find.

“By the wit of your lady,” Crytha told him briskly. She crossed to stand before him, holding out her hand. He fumbled, freeing the dead man’s legacy, then gave it to her.

The younger man who had joined her had half turned his head, looked over his shoulder to where Tirtha believed might be the site of the cage from which she had been brought.

“There is a stirring…” he cautioned sharply.

He of the axe laughed, giving a small flourish of his ponderous weapon. “When is there not, Yonan? Let it stir. It must come to terms sooner or later—its or ours. And I will wager the weight of this”—again he gave a short dip and lift of his weapon—“that the result will not be altogether to the Dark’s liking, if at all.”

“He who comes is Rane.” Holding the tube of parchment, Crytha had moved back toward them.

“Meaning, Lady of the Shadow Sword, that I am too hopeful? Ah, when has it ever bettered a man to foresee an ill end? Such foreboding will sap strength before the contest even begins. And this is a foreseen meeting—what of your Great One?”

Crytha frowned. “You are bold, Uruk. One of the Four Great Weapons may be yours, but that fact does not open all gates for you.”

The man, still smiling, made her a half salute. “Lady Crytha, as a twice-living man I have seen much, heard much, done much. There is little left of any awe in me. I have been a god to the Thas, those underground dwellers of the Dark Rule, and I have twice been a war captain. We are facing now a battle, so I ask you frankly, what may we expect in the way of allies?”

It was not the priestess but Alon who answered him. The boy had advanced a little, the Torgian following him, and Nirel, one hand again on the mount’s neck for support, pacing along.

“You have us…”

Uruk turned his face toward the boy, and his smile grew the wider.

“Well said, youngling. Having seen how you broke from Rane’s cage and drew this lady with you, I give you good credit as one to stand beside in line of battle. And”—his gaze swept on to the Falconer who met it head up, back straight, with a lifted chin—“any man who carries one of the Four is a shield to the arm, a stout wall to one’s back. Welcome, you to whom Basir’s Tongue gives willing service. And”—now his eyes dropped to Tirtha—“Lady, you are of the Old Blood, and it is plain that this was a meeting planned out of the time we know and bow to. I know not what your weapon may be—is it left to you to be able to wield it?”

She looked down at the casket between her locked hands. “I do not know”—she spoke for the first time—“whether what I bear is weapon or prize. I only know that of it I am the set guardian, and this geas has not been lifted from me. I think that if you depend upon me for any weaponry you must plan again. This body is dead and I remain in it still only through a power I do not understand.”

She heard a breath quickly drawn and saw the Falconer’s claw swing forward and then back again against his body. Just the claw, she did not look higher to his face.

“Rane!” The younger man appeared to pay but little attention to the rest of them, his concentration was on what lay behind, which she could not see.

There came a crackling in the air about them, a feeling of Power gathering, sweeping. Not yet at them, rather for him, or that, which summoned. Uruk glanced once in the same direction his companion watched, and then he spoke to Crytha. His smile had vanished; there was a sharpness in his voice.

“I have asked—what of your Great One?”

“She shall do as she desires.” The girl was abrupt in her reply. She was angered, Tirtha thought, by his question or his insistence upon an answer to it.

Uruk shrugged. “It is true that the Great Ones make it a habit to conceal their plans from their servants. Well enough. If this is to be our force, then make you ready.” His sweep of eye passed over them all. “Rane, I do not know in person. In the telling any story grows the greater with each repeating of it. He is a Dark One who has his own strengths. It would appear we are about to test them.”

The short sword to which Crytha and Uruk had given a name was free in the Falconer’s hand. He stood away from the horse, came to Tirtha after the proper fashion of a shield man serving his employer. She looked up the length of his lean body. The tattered cloak had disappeared, along with his battered helm, his long sword, and dart gun. Now he worked his arm through the useless dart belt, tossing it from him. His hand showed blue as if the light of the sword pommel pierced his flesh.

Tirtha felt a new warmth. Her hands that had been so useless and dead—were they coming alive again? Between them, the casket blazed. Alon had come up on her other side. Even as the other three appeared to draw together into a unit, so were they also forming a common bond. The boy made a summoning wave with one hand. From the ground where Tirtha had not noticed it lying, there arose, swaying back and forth serpent-fashion once again, one of those coils of leather rope. The end of it swooped forward into Alon’s grasp. He twisted a goodly length of it about his bruised and blood-stained wrist as if to give it stout anchorage, and then he raised the loose-hanging portion to swing it back and forth.

Uruk’s axe was in plain sight, Yonan had drawn his sword, touched its point to earth, grasping its hilt in both hands. But Crytha seemed not to note all those battle preparations. Instead she had drawn the skin of symbols forth from its carrier, letting the rod fall free, and was studying it with care. Tirtha saw her lips move as if she shaped sounds, but there was also a frown of puzzlement between her eyes. Then, with a quick step, she was at Tirtha’s side, had stooped and laid the roll of skin on the lid of the casket. Once more back among her companions, the priestess then held out her empty hand.

Mist whirled, gathered, intensified. What she held was the Shadow Sword, save that Tirtha would now swear that blade had real substance and was of the same strong steel as she had seen in many a warrior’s scabbard. Along it runes glowed brightly, faded, then glowed again, as they might if they winked in and out of another time and space.

This Great One who might be moved to join with them or not—Tirtha’s thought went to her. It would seem that perhaps her active help was not to be counted on. Surely they had come out of the sealed room at Hawkholme with her aid, only then to fall straightway into the hands of the enemy. Or had that been all a part of a plan? Perhaps they were of no value for what they were, only for the services they rendered. Perhaps she and Alon had been deliberately given into captivity that they might be brought to this place at this hour. Tirtha was sure she could not depend on any concern for her as a person, she was but the means of controlling what was frozen into her grasp.

Controlling? Why had that particular word come into her mind? She had no control over the box or what it might contain. Hers was only the guardianship. Yet in her dreams the Lord and Lady of Hawkholme had known…

Tirtha looked to the casket. Warmth—the warmth had grown. The scroll fashioned of ancient skin hung across the lid, touched her two hands, for Crytha had left it unrolled when she had put it there. Tirtha struggled to grasp some wisp of thought hovering at the very edge of her consciousness, the importance of which—yes! It was important! Hawk was the guardian—she was Hawk!

But the Great One was not here, unless some portion of her dwelt within Crytha, now armed with the shadow sword. Certainly she was not in Tirtha. What could be done, must be done—that would be of Tirtha’s doing. She began her own moves, though her broken body lay inert. To use power only a little—that added to one’s talent. To be a guardian of Power—one did not remain unchanged! She was left only her thoughts.

She envisioned the casket as it had been in her dream, standing on the high table, open, an equal distance from both lord and lady. What lay within—what must be guarded? An open casket—perhaps now she was fatally loosing what should be bound—but she would be a part of this battle, not an inanimate prize for them to Fight over.

Two of them—lord, lady… Did it then take two, a man and woman, to complete the full pattern? Balance was ever a law of nature, perhaps of witchery also. Witchery—the Falconer had called it that, her own small dabblings in the unknown. Yet he carried now what this axe man out of Escore called a “named weapon,” one of four of power.

Two to summon—Alon?

Tirtha did not raise her eyes to the boy where he stood beside her. She tried to shut from her mind, from her, the outer world beyond. If they moved into battle, there was nothing at all she could do now to aid and... perhaps she could hinder. Therefore let her try this.

It was like feeling one’s way along a passage in deep dark, through unknown halls and runways, never sure of taking the right turning. Two and an open casket…

“Nirel…” Names, true names were of importance. He had given his into Alon’s keeping; yet she had been present when that was done. Therefore, whether he had intended it or not, it was also hers, though he might not have gifted it directly. “Nirel… Nirel…” Three times called—the power lay in such calling.

She did not look to him either. Had she even called aloud so that he could hear?

“Give me”—now she spoke deliberately, with the full power of her thought behind what she would say—“your sword hand.”

The metal claw—that was not the man. She must have flesh to flesh, even as it had been in Hawkholme with those others of whose blood she was.

Did he hear? Would he answer? Tirtha centered her thoughts, concentrated with all the force she could raise. Those dark corridors—yes! She had chosen a way that was open, though to where it might lead she did not know, and there was danger in this. But what could stand as true danger to one who was already dead-alive? Danger to him also, but at this moment they were all in peril, and who could balance one against the other as the worst?

Tirtha still watched the casket. However, she was aware of movement at her right. A shadow fell across the upper part of her body. There was the claw, wedged into it the sword, but stretching out to her breast and the casket was a true hand of browned skin, grimed with trail dust, bruised and blood-stained.

The casket—when they had tried to take the casket from her in the outer part of Hawkholme men had died. To take, yes, against her will, in opposition to the guardianship. This she invited, and she believed that she now held that right. If she were wrong, Nirel would die horribly. Yet if he had any such fear, the steadiness of his hand did not betray it.

His palm fell over her hands where she kept her locked grip. She could not feel the warmth of it against her own deadness or perhaps she could not because of the fire rising in the box.

“Raise!” Her voice rang out commandingly. “Lord of the Hawk, help me to raise!”

She saw his hand tighten over hers. A sweep of his fingers flipped away that roll of pictured skin. As if some breeze which could not be felt caught it, it fluttered up. But her inert hand so tightly clasped in his was moving—yes!

At that very moment there came a roar of sound so blasting they might have been struck deaf. Instantly, a vast wave of darkness followed, washing out from behind where Tirtha lay. Things moved in that darkness. She heard cries, saw quick flames that might have come from axe blades, from swords, even from the lashing of a cord whip.

No, this other task was for her, for Nirel. If he followed his warrior’s instinct now and arose to fight whatever had spread from the trap, they were lost! He must not!

The blue light from the sword in his claw still hung over her, joining the glow from the box. And his hand remained on hers! He was slowly raising that lid, even as she had asked of him. Still she could not see what lay within, for the box was so placed that the opening was on the other side.

The lid arose until it was straight up, and the glow from within burned bright and even. His hand remained firmly on hers, holding them so.

Now Tirtha cried aloud: “The time is served, Ninutra—Hawk bond is given.”

What loomed out of the dark before her, standing at the foot of her supine body—this was not the woman of the impressive face nor her priestess. This was another. Nor was he…

Human in his outward form, or did he wear that as he would wear clothing when he treated with her kind? He was weaponless, nor did he wear mail—rather a tight half garment, which seemed made of reptile skin clinging tightly to his lower limbs, reaching to his waist. It was black, but the edges of the scales glinted with the scarlet of new shed blood. Above it the dusky skin of his torso was smooth, his face awesomely handsome, his head capped with a tight-fitting covering of the same jet and scarlet scaled skin, enclosed at the brow edge by a broad band of scarlet gems. He raised his hands slowly, and Tirtha could see webs of skin as he spread wide his fingers.

He straightened them out flat as if waiting for something to be laid upon them. Nor needed he to voice his demand; he desired what Nirel and she together had uncovered.

“Time is served.” His lips did not move, but words rang into silence. For though that black cloud still swirled about, there was no longer any flash of weapons through it, no sound of a struggle.

“I… am… the… Hawk—” It was as if a heavy weight rested on Tirtha so that she had to force out those words with a pause for breath between each of them.

“You die—” he returned, with that same indifference she had sensed in Ninutra. “Your death can be swift and in ease. It can be otherwise…”

“I… am… Hawk. Lord and Lady—theirs the guardianship…”

“Lord?” There was mockery in that. “I see no lord, only a discredited beggar of a masterless fighting man.”

“He is what I choose by my own right…”

For a moment Rane made her no answer. He was looking, she knew, to Nirel. And as if she had seen it written on the air between the two of them, she knew what Rane would do, was doing now. He was calling upon age-old beliefs, all the prejudice of Nirel’s people, drawing upon their disgust for women which abode within the mind and memory of the man beside her, striving to use such to end this alliance. She could not fight this portion of the battle—it was Nirel’s alone. Perhaps it was already lost.

Yet still his hand remained on hers, and the claw-held sword was steady to light that joining.

What did Rane raise in Nirel? Tirtha could not guess. Nor could she reach out, she discovered, to aid the other in his fight. Would the fact of sword-oath, as great a bond as that was among his kind, be any armor against such an assault as this?

“Fool, die then!”

Rane’s palms turned down. He no longer waited for a gift. His fingers crooked. Through her ran pain—red pain—a fire eating away her body inch by inch. She struggled to keep back her screams, wondering how long she could. Let Nirel release this common hold, and that other—the victory would be his!

The fragment of skin with its scrawl of pictured symbols, which had been fluttering in the air above the box, though it could not be wind-borne, suddenly began to twist upon itself. Even through the haze of her pain, Tirtha saw it change. The twisting substance took on a bird shape—not that of the gray bird which was Ninutra’s messenger. This one was darker, black of feather as the clouds about them.

It… it lacked a foot, its head drooped, its wings beat with such a manifest effort that it could barely keep aloft. But it flew straight toward Rane. Then, with a last desperate burst of speed, it sped into his face as if determined to pluck out an eye, as Tirtha had heard the war falcons had once been battle-trained to do.

The Dark Great One threw up an arm to beat the flyer away. As he did, that claw, so close to her own body, moved also. The sword of power that had been found in a place of death hurtled through the air, crossing over the casket from which, in its passing, it appeared to draw more light—went on—aimed at the dark-skinned breast of him who threatened.

There came a blast of red, of black, if both could be the color of flames. Tirtha was blinded by that vast surge of energy, that upward flare. She felt the pressure laid on a hand coming to life—alive to agony. Nirel’s flesh against hers, so tormented and torn, was forcing down the lid of the casket, to seal it again. She twisted under a final upsurge of agony, and at last she screamed in a way that tore at the very lining of her throat.

Dreamy content, a feeling of lightness in the world—what world? Where? She was dead. Could one dead feel the beating of a heart, draw deep breaths of scented wind? There was no pain, there was only…

Slowly Tirtha opened her eyes. Sunlight beamed over her head—the sun of early summer. She was stronger, more alive than she had ever felt before in her whole pinched, grim existence, as if she had been truly dead before and only now awakened into life. Her body was whole. Instinctively she used a healer’s sense without thinking to assure herself of that. In fact, it was as if she somehow stood above and beyond that body and could see into it. There were no broken bones, no harm. She was healed!

She lay in a strange place—a round hollow filled with red mud that gave off an odor akin to certain herbs she knew. There came a tapping. She looked down. Mud had been mounded over her body, had hardened into a crust that covered her. A bird now perched upon the smaller hump above her upturned feet, and with its bill, it was chipping away at the covering which fell in flakes. A bird? No, a falcon, black and strong and standing on two feet!

There was a stir by her side. Quickly she turned her head. Nirel knelt there, even as he had done when they had united to open the casket. There was no encrusted blood matting his dark hair, no sign of any wound. His fine-drawn body was bare, unscarred. He, too, was picking at that which covered her, picking with two hands. The cruel claw was gone, he had ten fingers busy at his task.

She gasped and he smiled—such a smile as she thought could never have touched the somber face she had learned to know so well. Then he raised his restored hand, spread, retracted, spread again, those fingers.

“It…” The wonder of that or of her own healing encompassed her, and her voice was lost in it.

“It is witchery,” he said with such a light gaiety that she wondered if this could be someone else wearing Nirel’s body. Then she looked into his falcon eyes and knew that could not be so. “The witchery of Escore. We have been here long, my lady, but it has served us well.”

She remembered. “The casket!”

“There is no more geas for the Hawk,” he told her, as he pulled away with his new-found fingers a long strip of dried clay. “That witchery has been reclaimed by the one who set it, having once sent forth the casket into safety with those of your clan who swore to guard it when the Shadow fell here in the long ago. It was returned that it might serve now as a weapon in the right hands.”

“Ninutra?”

He nodded as he pulled off more of the clay, then clasped her hand, drawing her up toward him. She looked from those entwined hands to him.

“I am still a woman.” She forgot Great Ones and their dealings.

“As I am a man.”

“And a Falconer?” She could not yet accept this change in him. Dim in her mind was that dream vision, Lord and Lady under the Hawk, closed in a bond she had never known or thought to know, but which might possibly exist again.

He turned his head and chirped. The bird arose from the crumbled clay, gave a cry, alighted on his shoulder.

“In so much as this”—he lifted his free hand and caressed the feathered head which bent to his touch—do I hold with the old. But now I am a Hawk—did not you yourself name me so, my lady?”

Was there a shade of anxiety in that? Could it be that he looked to her for reassurance?

“A Hawk,” she returned firmly, and allowed him to steady her on her feet. More than their bodies had been cleansed and healed here. There might lie before them much that was of the Dark—more pain, more needed strength, but neither of them would walk alone again.

“Alon?” For the first time she remembered the third one of their comradeship.

“He too seeks a destiny—that which is truly his.”

Tirtha nodded. Yes, that would also follow. Alon in his own way was now free.

“A Hawk,” she repeated softly. “And let them ’ware all hawks henceforth, my lord, Nirel.”

His arm was about her shoulders where the weight felt right, a part of a life to be. The falcon took wing and spiraled heavenward as together they walked away from what was past and could be forgotten at will.