by Andre Norton
Tarlach bowed his head formally. “Again, thanks given.—To the house greeting,” he added in the formal guesting ritual, “to those of the house good fortune. To the day a good dawn and sunset, to the endeavor good fortune without a break.”
Ouen and Duratan led their guests through the gate and across the open court within to a large barrack-like building standing lengthwise against the second remaining wall. This they entered and ascended to the level above with no delay made because of one host's age or the other's disability.
“Most of the older inhabitants are housed below since the stairs would be a trial for many of Lormt,” Ouen informed them, “but our guests and those of us who do live up here find the greater solitude restful. For that reason, too, the infirmary is located on this floor.”
“For us, that is well,” the Captain answered for his Lieutenant, as was their custom when among those of other races. “My people prefer to remain apart as much as possible.”
The old scholar led them down a seemingly endless, poorly lighted corridor but finally stopped before a heavy oaken door, which he drew back to reveal a small sleeping chamber outfitted with a square table and a couple of roughly made chairs as well as with the more usual furnishings of such a room so that it could also function as a study. A newly laid fire burned cheerfully upon the hearth and was already beginning to warm the air nearest it.
“Is this still satisfactory, Bird Warrior?” Ouen questioned.
“More than satisfactory.”
His attention returned to his host after his quick, almost instinctive examination of the room. “I hope your people will pardon our lack of courtesy if we fail to give them greeting this evening. We have been long in the saddle. …”
“We should rather be angered if you felt compelled to come to us before you were rested.” He paused. “Your saddlebags and your comrade's will be brought to you, naturally, but the Lady's …”
“I will assume responsibility for them.”
A small dark form had silently followed the human's into the building and now rubbed against Tarlach's legs. He reached down and scooped Bravery up. “I shall keep her cat with me as well.”
“Your animals, too, are welcome, furred and feathered alike.”
The mercenary Captain wanted only to end this interview and be left in peace, but they had been well and unquestioningly received, and the time was come to give some account of themselves, if no more than identifying the house to which they were bound. Custom excused him from disclosing more, as it had at the time of his initial arrival. Falconers did not name themselves before those of other races or discuss their own concerns with them, nor did they let their tongues run with the business of those to whom they bound their swords.
“The woman you tend is the Lady Una, Holdruler of Seakeepdale. Of High Hallack,” he added, since few of the Dales were known by name in Estcarp, save among the Sulcar and others like them, chiefly merchants—and blank shields—who had direct dealings with that continent.
“She to whom your swords are bound?” Duratan inquired.
“Aye,” he answered curtly, “but as I told you earlier, I have my own work here, which I should like to resume as soon as I have rested and my other duties have been discharged, assuming that you have more for me to see.”
“There are more records, some dealing directly with your race. They are very old—”
“The older the material, the more valuable to me.”
“There is not much that you have not already seen,” Duratan warned, “and that is very fragmented. Your kind have never been generous in sharing information about yourselves—”
“What we do possess is yours to examine,” Ouen interjected hastily. “We have been pressing ourselves to seek out still more for you. The Turning opened vast stores for us, and we had not even probed all which had been free for our study before that. We have not yet been able to catalogue the half of what we have in charge here.”
“I shall need everything you can produce.”
“We will do our best for you. Indeed, your request is a favor to us. Many of the community thoroughly enjoy a specific search like this and relish the challenge of it.”
The Captain nodded his thanks. He hesitated then, and his eyes involuntarily flickered toward the door and the dim hall beyond. “You will inform me of your healer's conclusions?”
“Of course, as soon as we have anything to report,” Ouen answered.
His hosts took their leave of him after that. They led the second Falconer to the chamber to the right of his, which proved alike to it in every basic respect.
Brennan thanked them but returned at once to the corridor. “I will be a while with my Captain. Can you have food brought to us? And wine?”
“It is being prepared now.”
Tarlach set Bravery down on the foot of his bed. She looked lost, he thought. She was an extraordinarily small animal, scarcely larger than a kitten of five or six months although she had attained her full growth, and the most of what one saw of her was in actuality fur. Her body itself did not weigh two pounds.
She looked even tinier now, huddled as she was with the misery she no longer bothered to conceal. Bravery knew that he was aware of her true relationship with her human and that she need not screen the extent of her understanding and suffering from him.
He sat beside her, stroking her gently, but she seemed to derive no consolation from his touch, and he withdrew his hand again. What comfort could he hope to offer, he who was utterly bereft of it?
Storm Challenger made a crooning sound deep in his throat and flew down beside the little cat. He began preening her in the manner of his kind when one of their own was lashed by loss or pain.
The Falconer's throat closed. He stripped off his helmet and carefully set it aside, then buried his face in his hands. It was as if his winged comrade was already giving condolence for the Holdlady's death. …
He straightened at the sound of a knock and reached for the helm again. He had no wish to deal with any of these Lormt folk with his face unscreened, particularly now. He relaxed again in the next moment as Storm Challenger announced it was Brennan who sought admittance.
To the surprise of both men, the falcon Sunbeam streaked inside and settled on the bed beside Bravery, giving every sign of a distress as deep as the cat's own, so that the mammal's pink tongue darted out to rasp along the feathers of her neck and breast.
“She realizes, too, what the Holdruler's death will mean for all of us if it should end thus,” the Lieutenant said, although the depth of his war bird's obvious misery still amazed him. He had never seen one of the females grieve this intently even for the man she had chosen to follow.
He had more than that to concern him at the moment. He removed his helmet as Tarlach had done and placed it beside his commander's with a sigh of relief. It was good to be free of its weight for a while.
“We should have a few hours of peace now,” he observed.
“Yes.” Tarlach forced the shadow of a smile. “I, for one, can use it—you are well quartered?”
“Comfortably enough. My place is a twin to this one.”
Brennan glanced at the bed. “Why not lie down for a while? I have requested that food be brought to us, but I think sleep would benefit you more.”
“It will not come. I am overtired, I suppose.”
His eyes turned to the fire. “If the Holdlady dies, she will probably take our hope with her.” His mouth hardened. “She was right as usual. We can expect to make little headway in the villages without her presence and word to support our cause.”
“Maybe the women will listen to us anyway,” the other reasoned. “They will fade along with us if they do not.”
“Listen but hardly trust,” he answered bitterly. “Why should they? What do they know of any of us, or we of them, save that bands of us go among them each season, or in some cases but once in the year, to sire young on them, as would beasts under a stockman's control.”
The
other frowned. “Tarlach—”
“No, let me go on. I am but trying to reason this through as they are likely to do. While we had the Eyrie and the mountains around it, we could hold them close, and even then, I think, one or two periodically slipped away into Estcarp seeking richer or different lives. When the Turning forced us into the lowlands, change became inevitable. We should have seen that. Our females’ villages are now but a short space from holdings of the Witches’ race. Already, we are losing women in great number. In another generation, or two at the most, too few of breeding age will remain to continue our kind as a viable people.
“They cannot but be even more strongly aware of that fact than we are, but still, were I in their place, I should be most unwilling to let myself be lured into another highland fastness where I might be even more tightly chained, and my offspring after me. The Holdruler's presence, the fact that we are working together, her testimony regarding what we are striving to build could go far in convincing them, and even that might not be enough. Without it, we have almost no weapon.”
Brennan scowled. “A column still controls each village and can compel—”
“Our treaty with Seakeep precludes that.”
“Ravenfield is yours.”
“It is a large Dale but not big enough in itself. We need full, free access to Seakeep's lands as well, which we will be denied if we violate our agreement with its Lady.” His eyes narrowed. “Even if our oaths meant nothing, we could not ride against her or any other Dale in order to seize it. High Hallack remembers Alizon's invasion all too well, and her lords would very quickly unite again to quell any such attempt on our part. Even at the height of our strength, we would not have been able to sword-carve a kingdom for ourselves there, where the Hounds with their Kolder weapons failed. If we did try, we would doom ourselves for a fact. Who would be able to trust us enough to hire our swords after that?”
“I never suggested any betrayal. …”
“No.” He sighed. “No. It is my weariness, I suppose. I seem able to see only gloom.”
Brennan hesitated. “You are right. We have to win the females’ consent if we are to succeed, but do not forget that we need the favor of the Commandants as well. If we bear ourselves too strangely in our approach, we could find ourselves outcast with nothing accomplished save our own ruin.”
Tarlach shot a quick look at him. Was this a veiled as well as an open warning? Had he betrayed himself, revealed what Una of Seakeep had come to mean to him? His comrade's expression gave no sign of any such meaning, but …
There was no dishonor in what lay between him and the ruler of Seakeepdale, and were he a man of any other race, were the circumstances binding him different, they would be wedded lord and lady, but he was a Falconer, the Captain of a full company, one of the few such remaining to them, with five hundred men following and dependent upon him. That, he might have chosen to surrender, naming Brennan Captain in his stead pending the Warlord's approval, but chance and the generosity of the Lady Una had placed within his hands the means of preserving his race from nearly certain extinction if he could convince his kind to avail themselves of it. He dared not violate custom now, whatever the wish of his heart. Or of hers.
Falconers were a race apart from every other, walled off by the cold, strange lives they led, or appeared to others to lead. When Sulcar ships had brought them to this northern realm from their ancient hold in the south in the distant past, they had been accompanied by women and young, accompanied as herders were by their beasts. They owned no kinship with them and had settled them in several widely scattered villages, each under the control of a column, while the males, mercenaries even then, had raised and settled in their Eyrie, visiting the females of their race only to beget the next generation upon them.
Pride and shame and fear had kept them silent about the reasons driving them, and so over the long years, they had grown ever more tightly in upon themselves, ever further apart from other men even as they drew away from their own mates and offspring until only the friendship of their comrades and their falcons remained.
They had not always lived thus, but one black day, a being of the Old Ones, the Old Dark, had come upon them, and she had battened on them, enslaving them in bonds so heavy and cruel that the terror the memory of her rule invoked was still a flaming brand within their hearts.
Jonkara had been able to work her will only through females, but every Falconer woman was potentially her tool. Most whom she tried to command refused, dying in the making good of their refusal, but some she did break, and a very few gave service of their own will in exchange for the measure of her power which she bestowed upon them. Every woman so commanded was altered in spirit, becoming herself something vile and cruel, delighting in the pain and degradation of those around her. Through these corrupted shadows, Jonkara gained complete mastery over every man who had been joined by any bond of affection with the women who had been.
In the end, her power had been partly broken at great cost, and those who survived had left, fled, their old seat, for Jonkara was only chained, not slain, and they knew she waited, ever waited, for a woman to come and shed for her the blood that would set her free once more—to wreak awesome vengeance on those or the descendants of those who had so bound her.
Because of that threat of renewed bondage, the Falconer males had taken the only step that they believed would ultimately defend them should Jonkara regain her liberty. They severed themselves from all attachment, all caring and affection, for the women of their kind, cutting them completely from their lives and company save only during their brief times of mating.
This he had always known, but it was only since taking service with Seakeepdale that the other side of the tale had come to him—why the women of his race, who had been by repute as proud and valiant as any of the males, had consented to such banishment and had endured in it for so long. The men in Jonkara's thrall had been slaves and cruelly used, but they had been men and themselves still. Those women who she broke lost infinitely more and in so losing became instruments of great evil. Their fear of her return had to be vastly stronger, powerful enough to have held them—or most of them—passive through all the ages since their flight north, and even now, with the pressure to seek for better, brighter lives at last overcoming the weight of history, it was not to heal the breach with their men that they sought, but to depart from them entirely, perhaps as much in a final effort by some inner spirit to protect them as to escape from them.
A timid rap called him out of his reverie. A man's voice announced that their food was ready.
Brennan slipped on his helm again and went to the door. He took the well-laden tray with a nod of thanks and closed it again.
“They have sent a portion for the falcons and Bravery as well,” he remarked approvingly as he set the big platter on the table. “Our part is plain but looks edible, and there is more than enough of it.”
Tarlach glanced at it without interest. “Take whatever you will. I have no mind for food.”
The Lieutenant would hear none of that. He made his comrade eat and forced wine on him, the small amount necessary to combine with his exhaustion to bring him oblivion at last.
After seeing Tarlach settled, he retired to his own chamber to take the rest he himself so badly needed.
Ouen's chamber was little larger and scarcely more richly appointed than those to which the two Falconers had been shown, but it was both home and private office to the aged scholar, and Aden, Lormt's healer and an avid seeker of knowledge herself, knew she would find both him and Duratan waiting there for her report when she finally left her patient.
The gray eyes fixed anxiously on her. “That poor young woman, how does she fare?”
“She rests and is beyond discomfort. It is too early to say more as yet, but her injuries are severe. Pyra is with her now, as someone must be until the crisis is over, for good or ill.” She shook her head in mixed admiration and amazement. “That ride was hard on her, but those Bird
Warriors did well in getting her here as quickly as they did.—I can hardly credit their like with rendering such service.”
“Do not be surprised,” Duratan told her. “I fought beside Falconers when I was with the Borderers. They do not often bind their swords to a woman, right enough, but once their oath is given, they will fulfill it in every respect, spirit and letter, however unpleasant they might find their duties. During the flight from Karsten, matron and maid and maid child were numbered amongst the refugees, and never did I witness a breach in courtesy or in the burden laid upon the able when they assume responsibility for those less strong and less skilled.
“Even beyond sworn duty, most of them seem bound by compassion as well. Had they discovered that lady injured upon the trail, they would almost certainly have done what they could for her, though they probably would not have ridden such a race for her sake.”
“They have given her at least the chance for life,” the woman said, “but we now have to deal with them, or with their leader at any rate. How do we handle him?”
“Why, as we have done, by showing him such hospitality as we can and he is able to accept,” Ouen answered in surprise. “That and by continuing to permit him to study our records as soon as he is rested and free to do so, of course.”
“Ouen! Teacher, you know full well what I mean! It is my trove that he will be using next. Pyra is of their race, and she is also studying those same materials.”
“She will have to share them. Both are not likely to want the same record at the same time.”
“That is not what I am saying,” she snapped in exasperation. “This is not like you, Ouen.”
“Nor is it like you,” he responded pointedly.
“The fear I saw in Pyra when she learned of the company we have here is unlike her, too!” She caught her temper before it escaped her. “She does not want to be dragged back to her village again before she has both the heal-knowledge and the knowledge of her people which she came to get, or to be taken to some other settlement entirely. She of a certainty does not want to be slain because she took the initiative to seek out that learning, as is not beyond the realm of possibility according to what some of our earlier guests have told us.”