Master of Hawks

by Linda E. Bushyager

  However, he was thankful that the falcon-telepath had not sensed him sooner and that Ro had gotten away undetected. He wondered where she was now, how far she had gotten toward the Sylvan forest of Alycia. He had no doubt that she was on her way, for they had decided that in the event that one of them were captured, the other would try to get the plaque to the Sylvan without delay. Their mission was far more important than the safety of one person.

  He squeezed his eyes together and tried to relax, knowing that he needed as much rest as he could get, but realizing that he was far too keyed up to sleep.

  In the darkness of his mind, he found himself visualizing Ro’s face—her sea-green eyes that could command or caress; her sweet, soft lips; her smooth, pale skin; the curtain of golden hair. And then he remembered her with Derek S’Mayler and her face shifted—her eyes filled with tears for another; her lips yielding to his kiss; her soft skin and hair caressed by another man.

  His fists clenched at the memory, and he felt surprise at the intensity of his jealousy. He’d known so few women in his life—he’d always been a loner, playing with the birds instead of with the other children; learning the ways of the forest while other boys learned the ways of love.

  What did he really know of love or even of his own emotions? Was he in love or merely infatuated? What did he feel for Ro? Affection, friendship, or lust?

  Why was he thinking about her anyway? It was obvious that she loved Derek, and obvious, too, that she thought of him only as a comrade in arms. She’d never treated him as anything but a friend.

  Besides, she was an S’Cascar and he was a nobody.

  Then he smiled at his foolishness; considering the circumstances, his speculations were meaningless. In all probability he would be dead in a few days, perhaps by his own volition… .

  He shuddered at the thought that had been lurking in the back of his mind, but he had to face it—he could not let them succeed in proving that he’d been sent by York, for that might jeopardize the N’Omb neutrality and ally them with the Empire. His best chance lay in the story that the N’Omb priest had unwittingly suggested. He would pretend to be one of the anti-N’Omb heretics that occasionally surfaced. Even if they didn’t believe him, they wouldn’t be able to prove that he had been sent by York; that is, unless their torture or truth spells succeeded. And if he felt that they would succeed, he would have no choice except to kill himself by using a mind technique he’d learned from another telepath long ago.

  A few weeks earlier he would not have thought that he had the courage to carry out such an action. But now he realized that he’d always had the will and that he would do it when the time came.

  Forlornly he wondered if he should do it now, before the torture even began. But he would use it only as a last resort, for he wanted to live, and against all odds he’d hold onto the thin hope of rescue or escape as long as he could.

  He opened his eyes and again studied the cell, searching for any weakness. It was quite dark now, with only a small patch of light filtering through the door’s window onto the floor. That opening was far too small to fit through, even if he could have removed the grille, and the door itself was securely bolted and locked from the outside. At the bottom was a slit leading into a cagelike contraption so that food could be sent in without breaking the silver shield.

  As he glanced at the heavy silver mesh inlay covering the walls, something near the floor caught his eye.

  Two tiny red eyes, reflecting the light from the hallway, stared at him. When he moved toward the wall they disappeared. He knelt and touched the silver embedded in the walls—the mesh had been patched and reinforced with iron to cover a rat hole. Running his fingers over the surface, he could find no break or weakness in the patch.

  He closed his eyes and once more tried to break through the barrier, probing at every seam and corner for an opening, but his thoughts came bouncing back to reverberate against his mind-shields with such intensity that he had to stop.

  Finally he studied the bare earth floor and the foul black hole in the corner that served for sanitation, but his thoughts found no exit there. Either it was also lined with silver, or telepathy just could not reach through the tons of rock and dirt to the surface.

  So he returned to the bunk and forced himself to relax until, at last, he dozed in a half-sleep of disconnected thoughts and images.

  Then he heard a noise that brought him awake and made him shiver—the rustlings and squeals of many rats. He suddenly felt almost grateful for the silver mesh.

  He tried to drift back to sleep, but the sounds continued and increased until it seemed as if there were thousands of rats in the walls. Abruptly the squeals ended in an unnatural silence that jerked him upright.

  Then he heard footsteps—a guard making his rounds. Suddenly the squeals began again and mixed with a scream that could have come only from a human throat. There was a thud, and the frenzied squeals became a roar.

  Hawk’s skin crawled, and he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, but he could not fight the compulsion to look through the window into the corridor. When he did, he saw what he knew would be there.

  The hallway was covered with a dark, living carpet of rats. In the center of the turmoil something large twitched and grew still, until only the rats that covered it moved. Then the rats’ frenzy eased. They grew quieter and began to disappear back into their holes.

  From the shifting mass of black came the sound of metal on metal. More of the creatures left, until Hawk could see several moving purposefully toward him, away from the shape that had once been a man. They were dragging a ring of keys behind them.

  That was when he realized that the rats were being directed.

  “Ro!” He breathed her name with sudden hope for himself and fear for her safety. Although it could be someone else, he knew that she could control almost any type of animal, although her range was quite limited. Was she now standing against the building’s outer wall, directing this attack?

  The rats began to climb on top of each other at the foot of his door, pulling the key ring up toward the lock. However, they could not climb high enough before their pyramid fell apart. He shuddered as several managed to climb the door and gnaw at the bolt.

  They pushed and pulled with teeth and paws, fell, then climbed back. Although they struggled, they couldn’t slide the bolt or maneuver the key into position.

  Then as suddenly as they had started, they dropped the keys and began to wander off. Unable to open the cell, whoever controlled them had given up. Gradually the rats disappeared, until only a few remained to chew at the guard’s body.

  Hawk stared at the keys, which lay tantalizingly close but beyond his reach. He listened to the silence of the empty dungeon, wondering if anyone else had heard the rats, but no one came. He had been taken down two flights of stairs to the dungeon’s lowest level, and evidently any other prisoners were on the floor above him.

  He watched, waited, and hoped until the hope became worry and the worry turned to fear—fear for Ro more than for himself and for the outcome of their mission.

  How could she try to rescue him instead of taking the plaque to safety? Yet as he wondered what he would have done if their positions had been reversed, he realized that he could not have left without attempting to free her—not because of any love he might feel for her as a woman, but because of their friendship, their comradeship.

  Again he considered his feelings toward her. He remembered the way she had killed the osmur; the rescue of the horses, though it had placed her in peril of the thing she feared most; the savagery of the rat attack that had torn the throat out of a guard almost before he could scream—what kind of man could love such a woman? One could respect her, perhaps even worship her—but really love her, take her to wife? Suddenly he wondered what sort of man her husband had been.

  Then he heard quick footsteps at the end of the hall. He took a deep breath and pressed against the door, straining to see who approached.

 
It was Ro.

  She avoided looking at the guard’s corpse as the last of the rats scuttled into the shadows. With swift efficiency she unlocked his cell and handed him the sword she carried. The blade was smeared with blood.

  As Hawk took it, he saw that she still held a knife.

  It had also been used.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. “The plaque … “

  “It’s safe enough for the moment, but we’ve got to get out of here, and quickly.”

  He followed her past the guard’s station at the bottom of the stairs. Without breaking stride, she swept his cloak from the table and thrust it back at him. Wordlessly he donned it and continued up the stairs after her.

  On the landing, a second guard lay with a deep wound across the side of his neck. Ro stopped long enough to take his sword, which was stuck into the rat she had used to distract his attention on her way in.

  She halted at the first floor and placed a warning hand on Hawk’s shoulder. There were footsteps and voices on the stairs above them. Hawk shrank back against the wall, gripping his sword tightly. Then he realized that the footsteps were receding—someone was climbing the stairs, not descending to their level.

  He waved Ro ahead into the long, silent hallway. At the foot of the door leading into the square lay yet another soldier. This one’s throat was cut, evidently by a knife, and his sword was missing. Hawk glanced down at the sword he now held.

  Outside, Ro led him through the streets to the alley where their horses had been tied, but the animals were no longer there. While his tension grew, he followed her down the dark alleyway through gray shadows cast by the gibbous moon above. He listened and waited for an alarm to sound behind them, but the city remained as quiet as a graveyard. Then they reached their horses, which were tied up almost at the end of the lane.

  Ro clutched his arm and whispered, “They’ve doubled the guards and closed all the gates for the night. I’m going to get into the guardhouse and release that gate.”

  “But how … “

  “I managed to make the acquaintance of one of the soldiers on the night shift at this gate. I hinted that I’d stop back to visit him late tonight … but I’m afraid he’s not going to get exactly the visit he expects.” She looked thoughtfully at the knife she still held and slipped it back into her boot. Then she tied the sword to her saddle, reached into the saddlebag, brought out a bottle of wine, and handed the reins to Hawk.

  “I’ll go up to the gate to meet my ‘date’ and get him to take me up to the guardhouse. You’ll wait at the end of the street. As soon as you see the gate come up, ride in. There should be three guards left. I’ll come out of the guardhouse, help you eliminate them, and then we’ll ride the hell out of there.”

  Hawk shook his head at the brazenness of her plan. “This sounds terribly risky—and what if our escape is discovered?”

  “It won’t be, not for a few more minutes anyway.” “How can you be so sure?”

  Ro smiled. “My sixth sense. I’ve learned to trust my instincts.”

  Hawk hesitated. Her instincts worked sometimes—he remembered the osmur; but they hadn’t been reliable enough to save her from the fire or to prevent his capture.

  “It will work,” she repeated, staring at him with those damned overpowering green eyes.

  He realized that he had very little choice. He knew of no other way to get outside the city walls; if the guard were doubled, it seemed an impossible task to get through the gates. Ro at least had a plan, even if it sounded far-fetched—and any plan was better than none. Besides, he could not forget the way she had managed his escape so far, and the trail of dead soldiers she had left behind.

  “All right.”

  He led the horses and followed her to the deep shadows at the end of the lane. A couple of hundred feet away lay the closed gate, and in the torchlight he could see four soldiers. Two lounged on the steps leading up to the guardhouse, playing cards, while the other two watched.

  “Get back,” Ro whispered. Hawk pulled back against the wall of the corner house.

  Ro fluffed her long hair, unbuttoned the top of her drab gray blouse, and then moved forward with a sway to her hips and a jaunty air far different from her usual determined walk. The wine bottle swinging from her right hand seemed to shift color as she walked—first red in the reflected torchlight, then silver in the moonlight.

  She began to hum, and Hawk remembered the tune, she’d been singing it when he’d first seen her at Threeforks. The soldiers heard her too and rose to their feet, suddenly alert. But when they saw a shapely young woman emerge from the shadows, they relaxed.

  A big, bear-shouldered man recognized her and called out. He moved toward her. They spoke for a few minutes, while Hawk watched and tried to catch their words, but he could make out only a few of them —something about the wine she’d brought. Then they laughed and one of the other guards snickered, and the big man put his arm around Ro in a way that made Hawk’s face redden in anger. She snuggled against the man and said something; they laughed again. Finally the big man took the bottle of wine and tossed it to his friends. With his arm tightly around Ro and her face pressed against his shoulder, they walked up the steps and into the guardroom. The door closed behind them with a thud that echoed over the deserted street.

  As his stomach knotted in fear and anger at himself for agreeing to such a crazy plan, Hawk mounted and prodded his horse forward. He hoped that the guards would not notice his presence in the shadows, and they didn’t, for they were too busy joking, drinking, and staring up at the gatehouse.

  He waited, hardly daring to breathe, trying not to think of what was happening in that room or of what he would do if the gate did not open. Sniffing the cool evening air, he glanced at the sky. From the positions of the stars and the three-quarter moon shining through slight wisps of cirrus clouds, he guessed that it was about two or three o’clock in the morning.

  Then the swoosh and banging of metal resounded through the still air as the iron gate crashed upward. Automatically Hawk spurred his horse at the sound and, with a yell, charged the three startled soldiers. He slashed down at them widely, trying not so much to engage one of them as to harass all of them and prevent them from running for the rope that led to the alarm bell on top of the gatehouse.

  The door at the top of the stairs flew open, and Ro ran down the steps, bloody knife in hand. One of the soldiers saw her and headed up the steps. In a single fluid motion she threw her knife with deadly accuracy and continued down the stairs. The guard staggered but managed to graze her side with his sword before she slammed into him while chopping down across the back of his neck with the side of her hand. He tumbled off the steps and lay still.

  Meanwhile Hawk engaged the two remaining soldiers. As he swung down at them, he lunged for his own sword, which was shorter and not so heavy. Despite the awkwardness of fighting a mounted opponent, the soldiers were attacking him forcefully, and one had nicked his leg.

  Then one of them made the mistake of trying to wound Hawk’s horse. As the soldier’s blade thrust downward, Hawk reined the animal into a partial rear and rammed his sword into the man’s shoulder. This maneuver disrupted the second soldier’s attack so that Hawk had time to pull his sword back and parry that guard’s next thrust.

  Meanwhile the wounded man stumbled away, his sword arm hanging uselessly at his side, and ran unsteadily toward the alarm bell. Ro instinctively dodged forward to stop him. The man heard her, whirled around, and drew his dagger using his left hand. Weaponless, Ro stepped back into a defensive crouch, thrusting her arms out as shields.

  While Hawk finished off his second assailant, Ro’s opponent lunged forward. She sidestepped the blow, only to slip on a patch of blood that ran from the body of the first soldier. She fell.

  As the dagger glittered toward her in the torchlight, Hawk spurred his horse into the soldier, knocking him down. His body skittered across the cobblestones, crashed into the wall, and lay still.

 
When Ro stood, Hawk noticed a widening red stain on her left side. “Did he stab you?” he asked as she mounted.

  “No, the swordsman on the stairs grazed my side; I’ll be all right. Were you hurt?”

  “I’ve just got a couple of nicks.”

  Then they were outside the gate, riding at a gallop into the woods. Once inside the trees they slowed.

  “What’s the matter?” Hawk asked when Ro pulled her horse up sharply.

  “The Sylvan plaque. I hid it in one of these trees earlier in the day—I couldn’t chance letting it be found on me.”

  She studied them for a moment. In the darkness it was difficult to tell one tree from the next, so she let her instincts take over. She wheeled her chestnut farther into the trees in the direction that suddenly seemed right and halted by the tree she identified more by hunch than sight. Reaching into the crevice where the tree forked in two, she found the Sylvan plaque.

  Hawk breathed a sigh of relief and urged his horse into the lead. As he headed through the forest to one of the country roads winding south through farmlands, he hoped any pursuers would think they had gone directly to Castle York and would search to the northeast.

  Although the moon was bright, gathering clouds began to obscure it, making it difficult to ride at full speed. At least the same condition would hamper anyone following them.

  When they’d traveled a few miles, Hawk glanced back at Ro. To his dismay he found that she was slumped forward.

  “What’s wrong?” he called.

  “I’m all right.” But her face was too white in the moonlight.

  “We’d better take a look at that wound,” Hawk said, stopping his horse. As he dismounted he felt a throbbing pain in his leg and realized that he’d almost forgotten his own cut in the excitement of the escape.

  Ro did not move from her saddle. “We’ve got to keep going; the alarm must have sounded by now.”