Master of Hawks

by Linda E. Bushyager

  “All right, but take it slowly,” he replied.

  Hawk decided to give Derek a brief rundown of what had happened and to wait until they were alone to present the details.

  “A company of about two dozen of Ramsey’s men is heading down the Buchanan Road and will probably be here by mid-morning. There’s a sorcerer leading the group.”

  He speared another potato and held it suspended near his lips as he talked.

  “When my bird reached the castle ruins, a pair of mind-controlled falcons attacked and destroyed it, and their master almost destroyed me.”

  Derek nodded. “I wondered what happened to you.” He stared at his hands, which rested palms down on his lap, and then brought them upward, palm to palm with the middle fingers touching the tip of his nose and the thumbs resting against his chin in a gesture that Hawk had learned to interpret as a sign of worry. Derek’s ruggedly handsome features remained as calm as usual.

  “Fortunately, I had greater range than he did,” Hawk continued, nibbling on the potato. “But the important thing is that without my hawk, I couldn’t determine if our messenger arrived safely. When I reported to Lord S’York, he said that we should continue on the assumption that the messenger did arrive.”

  Derek tapped his fingertips together and pressed them against his face. “Modica’s a good man, I’m sure he’ll deceive them.” He lowered his hands and gently rubbed his left thumb against the powerstones set into a massive ring on the fourth finger of his right hand. “So tomorrow we’ll have to deal with their advance party. That should be easy enough. And in three or four days their main forces should arrive.”

  Hawk scraped the last of the stew from his dish. “I’ll describe the fortifications I did see at Buchanan,” he said, “but I think we should be somewhere more private.”

  “Tomorrow,” answered Derek, rising. “You’d better get some sleep now; we’ll go over the details later.” He motioned the portly innkeeper over. “Stephen, can you find a room for Hawk tonight?”

  “Certainly,” the elderly man replied. “He can have my room.”

  “I don’t want to put you out … “

  “I don’t mind,” said Stephen, moving toward the stair. “I’ll show you to your room.”

  Derek gently tugged Hawk’s arm, pulling him erect before he could protest further. “You need plenty of sleep. You don’t realize how dangerous exhaustion can be to a telepath. Stephen can find somewhere else to stay.”

  The innkeeper nodded his agreement. “Besides, these beds are too soft anyway.”

  “And they have too many bugs!” shouted one of the onlookers.

  Hawk followed his benefactor through the laughter.

  4

  Leafy patterns of brightness awakened Hawk. For a moment he tried to recall half-remembered dreams of flight and danger, but then realized that it was well past dawn. He washed and dressed quickly, occasionally glancing through the window. Beams of sunlight slanted through towering beeches and pines whose trunks seemed too thin to support their height. The rays glinted off steel in the courtyard below. It had become a makeshift foundry. The rhythmic beat of hammer on anvil sounded like a drum urging him to hurry.

  Buckling on his sword belt as he walked, Hawk hastened downstairs into a common room bustling with activity far different from that of the previous evening. Now men and women were using the dining tables for workbenches as they made and repaired weapons.

  Hawk spotted Stephen talking to a young woman who was fastening feathers to arrow shafts. He hesitated and then approached them.

  “Excuse me, do you know where Lord S’Mayler is?” Stephen smiled and clapped him on the back.

  “There you are. Hope you slept well, Master Hawk. You certainly look better than when you dragged in here last night. All this banging and clanking didn’t disturb you now, did it? No, of course not, that room is real quiet, why I … “

  “I’m in kind of a hurry,” Hawk interjected.

  “No need, Master Hawk. Lord S’Mayler told me to look out for you. Said to tell you he’d talk to you later.”

  “Where … ” began Hawk anxiously, with growing certainty that he’d missed the fight.

  “He’s out stopping that company of Taral’s soldiers. Took a whole bunch of men up the road early this morning.” Stephen patted his protruding stomach. “You missed a mighty good breakfast, but we’ll find something for you.” He called out to a young man putting china away in an old oak sideboard. “Hey, Jerry, can you get something for this young fellow to eat?” The boy nodded and disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Lord S’Mayler said to make sure you ate a lot. He’s a mighty fine person; really cares about his men. You’d never know he was a sorcerer. Of course, the way some people talk about them you’d think magicians had three heads and as many fangs. But he seems just like one of us.” Stephen grinned sheepishly. “Of course, you’re a telepath, so I guess you’re more like him.”

  “Where are my manners?” Stephen turned back to the woman seated at the table next to him. “Miss Roslyn do you know Hawk?”

  As she turned Hawk recognized her as the guitarist from the night before. She still wore dark-green trousers and a walnut-brown leather jerkin trimmed with green osmur fur over a faded olive shirt, but now a leather strip tied back her waist-length golden hair.

  “No, I don’t,” she said, appraising him with cool sea-green eyes. “But I’ve heard about him. I’m glad to meet you.”

  “Hello,” Hawk replied, avoiding her glance and staring self-consciously at his mud-streaked boots. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t trimmed his beard in weeks and that he still wore the same travel-stained clothes.

  “I see you’re making arrows,” he stated inanely, awkwardly trying to make conversation. “Ah, what type of wood is that?” He pointed at a pile of unfinished shafts.

  “Orford cedar, that’s the best you can find here. In Greton we used norgen pine for arrows though,” she answered.

  “You come from the Greton Islands?” Hawk looked at her in astonishment. Greton lay over two thousand miles across the Eastern Ocean.

  Roslyn smiled in sympathy at his confusion. “I’m actually from the Eastern Kingdoms originally. After Taral’s troops killed my family, I went to Greton to stay with my cousin. When I grew up,” she paused, and a look of chilling intensity replaced her smile, turning her eyes from aquamarine into jade, “I returned to avenge their deaths.” Catching herself, she lightened her deadly serious tone. “Well, to do what I could.”

  “I see,” Hawk replied, not really knowing what to say. Although Roslyn looked about his age, perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three, suddenly he had the impression that she was older in maturity if not in years.

  “Here’s your breakfast,” interrupted Stephen, waving his hand toward the next table. He chuckled. “Maybe we should call it lunch.”

  While Hawk ate and half-listened to Stephen chat about the war and food, he watched the slender woman. Her long, tapered fingers moved in a precise, efficient pattern as she deftly attached pre-shaped feathers from the notched end of the arrow’s shaft to the crest, the portion composed of identifying colored bands. When she glanced at him, Hawk felt as if her compelling eyes could charm a child or command an army.

  He had finished eating and was trying to think of how to resume his conversation with the woman when the door to the common room burst open.

  Sweaty men poured in, causing instant commotion. Some brought in wounded comrades; others hastened toward the kitchen and asked for wine; a few shouted and loudly told their own versions of the battle with Taral’s soldiers. Stephen raced off to find food and wine for all.

  In the confusion Hawk found Roslyn standing beside him. “They’ve captured most of Ramsey’s advance party and killed the rest,” she said. “They’re converting one of the stores into a jail to hold them.”

  Hawk glanced up at her; she was taller than he had realized, probably five feet nine or five feet ten, he estimated. At five f
eet five he felt like a midget.

  “That’s good news.” He hesitated, strongly aware of her nearness, then added, “Roslyn.”

  “Please call me Ro. I’m more used to answering to my nickname.”

  “Ro.” His tongue rolled around the odd name that didn’t seem to fit her at all. It sounded too harsh for Roslyn.

  “The rest of Ramsey’s troops will be here soon,” she observed. “Then we’ll all fight. I’ll wager S’Mayler will make good use of those captured uniforms.”

  “We’ll need every edge in our ambush—Ramsey’s men outnumber us,” Hawk replied.

  Roslyn surveyed the activity around them; she could sense the tension that built as the more seriously wounded and a few dead were carried in—the anxiety that muted the initial excitement of victory.

  “Only a few dead.” She searched the faces of her friends and comrades. “How many next time?” Then she pressed her lips together determinedly, and with a note of authority shading her voice she asked, “Can you help me take these arrows to the supply area?”

  “Sure,” Hawk replied, glad for the excuse to go outside. He wasn’t used to being around so many people.

  He helped her gather up the finished projectiles. Balancing their armloads carefully, they maneuvered through the crowded room to the porch and dumped the arrows into a half-filled barrel sitting among piled supplies.

  Ro looked at Hawk intently and then said, “I understand you’re a bird-telepath.” Her eyes sparkled in the sunlight.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Can you contact other animals as well?”

  Hawk’s eyes shifted away from her face. There was something disconcerting about the way she insisted on looking directly into his eyes.

  “No, just birds,” he replied.

  For a moment Ro’s confident gaze faltered, and she looked shyly, almost guiltily away. Then she spoke softly. “I can sense animals.”

  Hawk tossed his head back and looked at her in surprise. “Really? Telepathy is very rare you know.”

  She glanced around the empty courtyard as though worried that someone might overhear. “My range is very limited, just a few hundred yards … ” Her voice trailed off, and then she added, “Almost any kind of animal … and I can control them … but I can’t mind read humans.”

  “That’s typical,” said Hawk. He smiled, thinking he’d uncovered what bothered her. She must be an untrained telepath, he thought; maybe she had never even talked to another ‘path before. Since the common people viewed psychic abilities with suspicion and superstition, anyone just discovering his or her powers would probably be frightened and hesitant to reveal them. Perhaps this was the case with Ro.

  “Telepathy generally are good at linking to only one species,” he explained, “whether it be birds, humans, or something else.” He glanced at her face and then looked away. He wasn’t used to talking to a woman, and he found her presence disturbing. Trying to ignore her nearness, he nervously plunged into a lecture on thought transference.

  “Thus, a telepath who can contact humans won’t be able to control animals, and a dog-telepath, for example, won’t be able to read humans or other animals. Of course, two humans linking with the same animal can contact each other through their animal bond until one or both of them break it.”

  “I’ve heard that,” said Ro, as she brushed back a long strand of blond hair. “But why is it that telepathy can link to only one kind of animal?”

  “Nobody knows for sure, though some think it has something to do with imprinting—like a duckling who thinks the first thing it sees is its mother. Well, maybe the first thing I linked with was a bird, and I’ve been doing it ever since. On the other hand, they know that psychic powers can be inherited.”

  “What about me?” she asked.

  “I don’t understand telepathy,” Hawk answered, “I just use it. I’ve heard of people who can contact both animals and men, but I’ve never met anyone before who could read all kinds of animals. Of course, I haven’t known that many other ‘paths.”

  Roslyn smiled at some inner joke. “I’ve got the most mixed-up bag of unique … ” Her voice broke off, and Hawk had the strong impression that she felt she’d said too much.

  “What else can you do?” he asked.

  “Nothing much,” answered Ro with deliberate vagueness. Her face showed no change, but as she continued Hawk felt she did so because she realized that not answering would raise more questions. “I sometimes get hunches about people, a sudden awareness of danger before it happens, a thought that comes true. It happens randomly … I can’t control it … but it doesn’t happen very often, really.”

  She stared at him so sincerely that Hawk almost believed that her powers were trivial. Then she looked beyond him, and her warm eyes became as hard as emeralds.

  “There’s Derek S’Mayler,” she said. Hawk turned to see his friend ride into the courtyard. “You wanted to talk to him.” Ro seemed glad to end the conversation, if not to see Lord S’Mayler.

  Hawk stepped off the white-timbered porch and waved at Derek. Handing the reins of his roan to a stable boy, Derek headed toward Hawk. When Hawk turned back toward Roslyn, she had disappeared. He stared at the doorway through which she had gone until Derek touched his shoulder.

  “Anything wrong?” Derek asked. He rubbed his perspiring hands against his trousers and tried to brush some of the dust from his deerskin jacket. Normally a fastidious dresser, he’d had one thought on his mind while riding back to Threeforks and during the confinement of his prisoners—taking a bath. However, when he saw Hawk’s worried expression, he paused in his pursuit of that objective and wondered if Hawk had any aftereffects from the previous day. He would need Hawk’s abilities as a telepathic scout in the days to come.

  “No, not really.” Then Hawk noticed the bloodstains on Derek’s clothes and a cut covered with congealed blood just above his left eye. “Hey, what about you? Are you hurt?”

  Derek touched his forehead gently, pushing back the raven-black hair that half-concealed his wound. “It’s just a scratch.” He followed Hawk’s gaze and noticed the dark red blotches on his trousers. Then he laughed dryly. “That’s not my blood, so don’t worry.”

  Derek studied Hawk. “Something does seem to be disturbing you though. Do you have any unusual symptoms this morning? Dizziness? Headache?” The smaller man shook his head. “Anything wrong with your telepathic ability?”

  “No, it’s not that. I feel fine; no headache this morning, no problems.” Abruptly Hawk realized that he hadn’t even tried to contact any birds. So he opened his mind to the sky and instantly sensed the abundant I life surrounding them. His awareness stretched toward his home, a tree house several miles northeast of Threeforks. There he sensed the minds of his trained birds. It was good to feel their presence. Relieved, he said, “I’m fine, I can still contact birds.”

  “Then what’s bothering you?” Derek looked at his friend with warm concern.

  “Oh, it’s just that woman.”

  “Woman?”

  “The one I was talking to as you rode in; her name is Rosyln. I can’t figure her out.” Hawk kicked absentmindedly at the dirty cobblestones with the heel of his boot. Each kick produced a small cloud of dust.

  Derek’s look became glacial. “Her.” He pressed his large hands together and stared at the peeling white paint on the porch wall. “She’s a strange one. She’s been fighting with the resistance in Cascar and Wessex—she’s a friend of Coleman S’Wessex.”

  Surprised at the bitterness in Derek’s voice, Hawk asked jokingly, “What’s the matter, wouldn’t she go to bed with you?”

  Derek did more than chase women, he caught them. In fact, many eagerly sought out the handsome, dashing sorcerer. He was eligible, powerful, and reputedly an excellent lover. Hawk envied his friend’s power over women and wished he had one-tenth of his assurance with them. However, he didn’t envy the reason for Derek’s drive to conquer women or his eagerness to dismiss them once they
had been won. Hawk knew that in his youth Derek had been deeply hurt by at least two of them, and he sensed that his friend now engaged in a game of revenge by dominating and using women.

  Derek’s reply slashed through Hawk’s thoughts. “No, she wouldn’t,” he said with resentment rather than disappointment. “And she won’t go to bed with you either.”

  The remark stung Hawk, but he shrugged it off as an unintentional slight, attributing it to the fact that S’Mayler had just been in combat and was tired and irritated.

  “And I’ll tell you why,” Derek continued. He hesitated and then spit out the words. “She likes women.”

  Hawk stepped back as though struck by a blow. He had not sensed anything at all like that about Roslyn.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She’s one of these women swordsmen—maybe she doesn’t look quite as obvious as some of them, but I can tell.” Derek’s normally calm features contorted as he tried to control his anger.

  Hawk attempted to insert some rationality into Derek’s reaction. “A few of those women are man-haters, but you know better than I do that most are more than willing to lie with a man. In these times almost all girls are given several years of training with bow and knife. It’s natural that some will become soldiers and fight for their land. Women soldiers are few in number, but they’re no novelty. Come on, Derek, you must have slept with half the women in camp.”

  Derek cracked a slight smile. “More than half. But Roslyn is different.” Then he paused, as if searching for something else to support his argument.

  Hawk forced a laugh. “Come on, just because a woman rejects you, it doesn’t mean she’s … , ” his face reddened, “a … ah … lesbian.”

  “At first I thought she was S’Wessex’s mistress … ” Derek looked triumphantly at Hawk, “but when I asked him about her he seemed shocked at the thought.” Suddenly he turned away. “That’s enough about her, you understand?”