Hawk the Slayer

by Terry Marcel

  It took two hours to reach his destination.

  He remained at the edge of the forest, in deep shadow.

  “This is Voltan. I have words for you,” he shouted across the intervening space between him and the monastery.

  The door of the church inched open and the slight figure of Sister Monica appeared in the pale crack of light from within.

  “I know you hide the one called Hawk behind your doors,” he continued. “Hear me and hear me well. Tomorrow, when the moon is high, I shall return. Hawk and the gold will be given to me or you shall have your Lady back with her innards tied around her scrawny neck and this place will be wiped from the face of the land.”

  As silently as he had come, he withdrew back into the lonely forest.

  “Dammit,” fulminated Ranulf. “I could easily have skirted round the edge of the wood and ended his black hearted life once and for all.”

  “Remember he still has the Abbess,” countered Hawk. “As much as I desire an end to Voltan’s life, the risk to the Lady of this Church is too great. But the die is now cast. The conflict really begins.”

  Sister Monica slammed the great doors.

  “This is your fault,” she cried with frustration. “We’ll all die because you killed his son.”

  “There would have been no ransom gold if it hadn’t been for Hawk,” Ranulf flung back at her.

  “And it should have been paid.”

  Sister Monica wrung her hands. She felt so helpless. It had become clear to her that these men were playing some ritualistic game of war and the naïve ones like herself and her sisters were mere spectators to be tolerated in the background.

  The Abbess only existed as an excuse for conflict. There had to be another reason for the hatred which existed between Hawk and Voltan and the Lady Abbess was a useful pawn to contain it. How many times had other innocents been manipulated to give credence to an act of aggression? Somehow she would find a way to end this lunatic game of men.

  “We must suffer because of your quarrel with this man,” she accused him and flounced from his presence.

  Hawk felt the accusation bite deep.

  Somehow the original intention of championing the defence of good had leaked away; to be replaced with the need for revenge.

  The sister was correct. While he and Voltan weighed up one another and prepared for the other’s eventual death, outsiders who touched their lives did suffer.

  And their ghosts would haunt the corridors of his mind forever.

  He remembered Eliane.

  17

  ELIANE

  He remembered Eliane.

  Her gold spun hair falling down across lightly sloping shoulders.

  About her brow was a thin band of gold filigree. Eyes wide and clear grey beneath a high, noble forehead. A delicately-shaped narrow nose. Mouth wide and generous.

  She held her head proudly but not arrogantly. How she would have hated being termed arrogant!

  He saw her again, waiting at the end of the laburnum grove at her father’s house, racing to greet him the moment he passed beneath the great gates of Froy. The fair Eliane of Froy.

  The sheen of her long, clinging, saffron chiton flowed from her shoulders over firm young breasts into a fold tucked under a gold rope belt about her tiny waist. It then fell free past narrow hips and thighs to envelop her lissome legs. Her small feet peeped below the hem, shod in soft buckskin.

  The coolness of her mouth; the butterflies her lips traced on his face and body. The strength that lay in those slender brown arms which always surprised him when she wanted the embrace to go on.

  So many things to remember from such a short time together …

  Their wedding celebrations were in full swing. A merry tune was being played by a group of pipes and tabors and Hawk and Eliane led the dancers in a galliard. When it came their turn, she tightened her grip on his hand and skipped him out of the hall and into the garden.

  The arbour in the laburnum grove was cool and quiet after the merriment in the hall. They kissed deeply with a peaceful langour.

  “A fine thing for us to do on our wedding day,” she scolded him. “The guests will wonder where we’ve gone …”

  She tried to keep a straight face but his solemn expression made her laugh and kiss him again.

  A shadow moved in the bushes and the tall figure who emerged made them move apart like guilty children.

  “Voltan, my brother,” called Hawk. “You are not enjoying the festivities?”

  He tried to keep his tone light but he felt not a little annoyed that his brother had followed them and for what purpose?

  Voltan stood there silent, his jaw working. Twice, during the ceremony, Hawk had caught sight of him and had thought at the time his brother had a rigid strangeness to him but had forgotten about it in the intricacies of the wedding ceremony. Now he realised that Voltan was biting back hot anger.

  “How could I enjoy them?” Voltan exclaimed bitterly. “When these festivities should have been for my marriage to Eliane?”

  “Eliane was never your betrothed,” answered Hawk, taken aback slightly. “She had a free choice.”

  “While I fought alongside our father, you were here turning her love for me to hate with your silvery tongue.”

  Eliane was shaking her head in disbelief. She moved between the two brothers.

  “You and I were friends. Nothing more,” she said as carefully as possible. “I love your brother as he loves me.”

  She raised a tentative hand towards Voltan. “Cannot you find happiness in your heart for our marriage?”

  For the first time, Voltan looked at her directly and she was unprepared for the naked desire she saw in his eyes.

  “No! No!” He seized her wrist and his grasp was meant to hurt. “You were mine—and shall be again.”

  Abruptly, he let her hand fall and retreated a few steps. “Take care, little brother.” He riveted his eyes on Hawk. “Watch for me in the night.”

  With that he turned on his heel and swept away savagely through the bushes.

  Eliane clung tightly to Hawk.

  “He has changed and it frightens me.” She shuddered in his arms. “His mind has turned in on itself.”

  She unlooped a crucifix from around her neck. It was cunningly wrought in wood and gold enamel with a prominent boss on the crosspiece, carved in the shape of a rose. She hung it around Hawk’s neck.

  “Wear it. It will protect you.”

  He studied the cross knowing what she meant and buried his face in her sweet-smelling hair.

  Voltan’s words hung in the air bleakly. It would never be the same again, Hawk realised. The green years were all gone. There would always be the hidden bond of brotherhood binding them in some way but their friendship had been irreparably broken.

  The day ended and velvet night breathed upon the two lovers as they lay under the stars, drowsy in the evening vale of summer. Eliane lay in the crook of his arm and he listened to their soft breathing, remembering the softness of their first kisses and the wildness of their last. He drew in the warm odours which rose from her body and wished he could sleep this way forever.

  “Now we are as one, my love,” she whispered and lifted her hand to his mouth.

  He kissed the petals of her fingertips lingeringly as if each one might be for the last time.

  Their time together was drawing to a close did they but know it: the days at their hunting lodge by the lake.

  A messenger brought word to Hawk from his father. The news was bad and depressed him.

  “My father worries at the reports from the North,” he told her after they had walked in silence along the shore of the lake. “Dark forces are moving and the country is being put to the torch. Soon we may be defending our own lands.”

  “My love, if there is to be fighting, then my sword will stand by yours.”

  He held her defiant face between his hands.

  “Brother may fight brother,” he told her softly.

 
“Voltan?”

  “He has joined them,” he answered bleakly. “The stories they tell of him are past all belief. What happened to him?”

  “The darkness was always there within him, my love,” she comforted him.

  Hawk poled the small boat back across the lake to their intimate bivouac shelter on the far bank. Dusk brought a tiny chill and Hawk conjured up a warming fireglow. The rustle behind the tent caught Eliane’s attention.

  The scream froze on her lips. Hawk only heard the sharp snap of a crossbow string. The bolt caught him in the upper shoulder. Light cascaded about him. Eliane’s frozen scream thawed and swept about him, then a black rushing shape he dimly recognised as the outline of a crossbow arced at his temple and darkness sucked him down into a pit of hell—

  —filled with Eliane’s screams and walled around with faces made of fire which revolved about him like some macabre reel danced by demons.

  Time ebbed and flowed.

  The spinning rondelay slowed, the face separated from the redness, became the wildly grinning face of his brother, Voltan, dragging to him a struggling Eliane.

  Beside them the early evening fire sparked as their churning feet flicked dust fragments into it.

  The bolt in his shoulder had sucked the energy from him and his attempts to raise his head and focus threatened to make him lose consciousness from nausea. His feeling of impotence only magnified his anguish.

  “The next one will send you to hell, little brother.” Voltan’s voice pierced the haze and Hawk saw him aim the crossbow with his free hand. “And what sweet revenge to tell our whining, peace-loving father about your death. Then will he heed my bidding.”

  Voltan drew Eliane closer to him and she struggled against his physical nearness.

  “Look well, Hawk,” he gloated. Behind him the setting sun made a burnished mirror of the lake. “The last thing you will ever see is the woman you love in my arms.”

  “I will still be his,” Eliane cried, heavy with hatred. “For I would rather be his than have your snake hands touch me. I loathe each breath that keeps you alive.”

  He hit her vindictively with the back of his hand, sprawling her by the fire.

  Hawk flexed his chest but the rope which tethered him to the tree was inflexible. The movement uncovered the crucifix about his neck and the reflection of the sinking sun shafted directly from it into Voltan’s face as he prepared to fire the final arrow.

  It had a strange effect on Voltan. He faltered, branded by the distorted glare of the image, unsure of his next act. Disoriented, he did not see until too late Eliane seize a burning brand from the fire and plunge it directly into his face.

  The oily resin stuck, smeared from the oozing torch and bubbled like ignited sulphur.

  He fell to the ground, snarling like an animal, his hands clawing, tearing, gouging the smoking tar deep into the flesh.

  Like a fiery stake it had cauterised the eyesocket and the ball of the pupil had disintegrated with a fizzing slurp.

  Eliane burned through her bonds on the embers of the fire, seized a cutting knife from in front of the tent lodge to free Hawk.

  He was weaker than a child and they staggered and fell, clambered into the safety of the small boat in which they had day-dreamed on the lake so lyrically a lifetime, it seemed, ago. Eliane poled the boat frantically away from shore.

  Voltan fired the crossbow, incoherent with pain.

  Hawk felt Eliane suddenly grow rigid as the shaft hit home, guided by some evil nemesis. The pole fell from her hands and the boat, out of control, was caught by a draught of current which swung the vessel out into the middle of the lake and thence to the far side of the sheet of water.

  The boat rocked on a sandy beach for a long time before Hawk summoned up sufficient strength to wrest the stricken Eliane ashore. He knelt on the ground, clasping her gently in his arms.

  “I will ride for help,” he said softly.

  Her hand squeezed his weakly. “No, beloved … there is not time.”

  Each furrow of pain which lined her face caused him unbearable anguish.

  “Voltan goes to destroy your father … You must go …”

  Her voice became so faint he could hardly hear her whispers.

  “Eliane—I cannot leave you.”

  His mind shut down. He wanted time to cease and so let him alter the course of events; to relive a different chain of occurrences. But the reality remained.

  Eliane’s face had the lustre of sleep lying upon it.

  They had been as man and wife for only five short days.

  What kind of perverted destiny could take the life of someone as vibrant as she?

  18

  VOLTAN’S CAMP

  Ranulf cleared his throat loudly. Hawk had slipped into one of his dark broodings and was oblivious of people and things around him.

  “Don’t think too badly of her,” Ranulf counselled gruffly and for a moment Hawk was caught between two realities, thinking the veteran was talking about Eliane. With a wrench which always left him with a panicky feeling in his stomach, he realised Ranulf meant Sister Monica.

  “She’s only frightened and confused,” the older man said.

  Gort nibbled at a rind of cheese, extracting the very last edible portion from it. He cocked his eye back and forth from Ranulf and Hawk. The young Lord didn’t seem to be in a talkative mood and the hanging silence was heavy with a sense of despair.

  “She blames you for our coming,” he cautioned Ranulf.

  The veteran shrugged it off. “I know.”

  Night had fallen and the main chapter of the monastery was shadowy, lit in tiny pools of light by a few, guttering candles atop an iron sconce. The good sisters had taken themselves to their cells, leaving the men to use the main part of the chapel.

  “What now?” asked Crow suddenly in his strange, lilting voice.

  Hawk roused himself to answer the elfin bowman but his heart was still filled with an aching loneliness.

  “Voltan will kill the Abbess, as he says, and will not stop from razing this place to the ground even if I were to give myself up. To try and fight would be futile. He has too many men.”

  A gloomy hush followed his solemn words, filled only by their own breathing.

  Gort finished the red wine, cupped the earthenware mug in his big hands.

  “If you’re getting stung by wasps,” he said as a complete non sequitur, chuckling to himself at the thought of what he was going to suggest, “you can either cover up your head or you can search out their nest and destroy it.”

  He underlined the final part by crushing the empty mug into powdery fragments.

  Hawk took stock of the big man’s words. His moody indecision was lifting and he was finding solace in action.

  “Then let us find ourselves a wasps’ nest and bring the odds in our favour.” The others were rousing themselves from their own self-induced lethargy. “Crow, go and find the woman. Tell her that I need her help once more. We shall meet before dawn where the road south enters the Great Wood.”

  “Woman, we need the use of your magic,” Hawk greeted Meena.

  The first pale light of day streaked the eastern sky above the vista of trees which stretched as far as the eye could see: Great Wood, the territory of Voltan.

  They tethered their horses in a safe place and proceeded on foot into the dimness of the tangled thicket. The forest loomed above them, sometimes opening out for a breath of fresh air into a clearing. A brook was near by and they traced their steps along the lightly running water’s edge.

  There was an ominous quiet lying over the woods and somewhere a lone bird called its solitary song. A wind hurried the leaves this way and that.

  Meena, though sightless, led them, picking her way over the terrain unerringly.

  They all found themselves listening intently for something, anything lurking deep within the sleeping woodland, shadows between the trees. All was silent. They came upon a glade, a secret place of the mouldering dead.
r />   Burial stones crumbled at crazy angles and ancient mounds had been dug up savagely at some time in the past: whether by hands long dead or wild animals was immaterial. They moved on into the thicket ahead.

  A sharp wind with pointed teeth snarled among the less dense parts of the forest but died to a whimper in the deep stillness of the towering pines.

  Meena stopped and raised her hand.

  “The camp is up ahead. I cannot tell how many guards there are,” she said. “I shall prepare my powders.”

  She unhooked a leather purse at her waist.

  Crow, on a signal from Hawk, loped softly ahead. Before him reared an enormous beech tree. Without changing his stride, he launched himself on a prodigious leap upwards. His moccasined feet seemed to brush against the bark and propel him up on to a high branch.

  He could now descry Voltan’s encampment.

  A few desultory bivouacs led in increasing numbers towards a large pavilion tent. Here and there the embers of the night’s fires sent weedy streamers of smoke skywards. Two guards leaned on their pikes, eyes heavy lidded with sleep. Elsewhere, horses moved restlessly, tethered to the nearest available branch.

  Crow called down softly to Hawk.

  “There is no sign of the Abbess,” he said and prepared his bow for the signal to attack.

  “She must be there,” concluded Hawk.

  “I am ready,” said the woman, laying her potions of powders on the ground before them. “The magic will not last long but will gain you a little time.”

  She set the end of her staff against the magic mixture. It licked out a tongue of blue, curling flame which ignited the powder silently. A cone of smoke twisted up instantaneously from the detonation and, filled with its own devilish life, shot out tentacles of vapour towards the sleeping encampment.

  The two guards started in amazement at the weird billowing carpet of smoke which had come from nowhere. Two arrows arced overhead, unseen and unheard by them until they vibrated deeply in their chests. One guard dropped immediately but the other let out an eldritch scream of death which had the camp scrambling to life.

  Crow leapt down from the tree as easily as he had ascended and, together with Hawk, Gort, Baldin and Ranulf, dashed through Meena’s mist amongst the tents, their goal to reach the pavilion of Voltan and rescue the Abbess.