Hawkmaiden
Spellmonger Cadet Novel #1
By Terry Mancour
First Kindle Edition
Copyright © 2015 by Terry Mancour
Dedicated To Morrigan Laine Mancour
Author’s Forward
I started writing the fantasy series known as the Spellmonger series even before my kids were born. Writing good, compelling, and adult fantasy was my goal. As the Spellmonger novels have progressed, so has my life; I now have three children who, alas, would likely love to read my stuff, but there are too many naughty bits.
The Cadet novels, the first of which you now read, are my answer to this. It’s hard finding “Young Adult” fantasy that doesn’t treat either the issues of youth or the imagined realities of a fantasy world without feeling trite, patronizing, and fluffy.
Hawkmaiden isn’t fluffy. But it isn’t brutal, either. It isn’t an adult novel, but it doesn’t talk down to its reader, either. Only time and the market will determine whether or not it’s popular, but my goal was a fun, challenging read that requires kids to look up words they don’t know, because that’s how children educate themselves.
Please enjoy the book. You may always write the author at [email protected], and I particularly encourage you to do so if you’re a kid who liked this book – or if you didn’t. Tell me why, either way. I love hearing from my readers, and your feedback is important to how I write things in the future.
Because that’s how writers educate themselves.
Terry Mancour,
January 22, 2015
The Falcon’s Call!
From the moment Dara of Westwood spied the Silver Headed Raptor nesting in Rundeval Peak, the precocious redheaded twelve year old girl was enchanted. The youngest daughter of the Master of the Wood lived in ramshackle Westwood Hall, in the independently-minded Westwood estate of Sevendor. Her determination to capture a baby falcon and train it wasn’t hampered by the fact that Dara had never climbed a mountain, had never been trained in falconry, or even remotely had permission rom her father to do it. Dara wanted the falcon . . . and the only thing in her way was the mountain, an angry mother falcon, and her own fears.
But the daring climb up Rundeval and actually capturing the fledgling falcon is just the beginning of her troubles. Actually learning falconry and training the willful bird is a responsibility she had barely considered. Worse, there is trouble afoot in the domain: a new lord has come to rule over Sevendor and all of her people, replacing the corrupt old Sir Erantal. While everyone welcomes the change, the new lord is a wizard: a magelord, the first of his kind in four hundred years: Lord Minalan the Spellmonger. And he’s not alone. He’s brought thousands of oddly-dressed Wilderlanders with him, families escaping the wars in the west. . . . and settling in Sevendor.
Within weeks of holding his first court as lord of Sevendor, the wizard's magic begins to cause problems. Magelord Minalan turns Sevendor Castle, the entire mountain of Rundeval, and a good portion of the Westwood –including Dara’s home – into enchanted white stone when a spell goes unexpectedly awry one fateful night. As a result, Dara learns that she, too, may become a mage someday. Soon after she discovers that she can see through her falcon’s eyes and share her thoughts, the talents of a beastmaster, opening up a brilliant new world for her.
The folk of the valley have enough to eat for the first time in a generation, there are wizards all over Sevendor, and the castle glows with a magic light at night. The fortunes of the Westwood estate rise. But the Magelord finds foes as well as friends in Sevendor.
Though prosperity flows from the Magelord’s benevolent rule, the changes are frightening to some who have lost power since the Magelord came. Outside the Westwood, the other natives of the domain are upset by their magical lord and his strange new people, and there are whispers of rebellion. And outside of the domain, the neighboring lords, urged on by sinister forces, conspire to plunge Sevendor into war – with Dara and her family along with it!
What can one girl and her falcon do? When the Magelord leaves on business and his enemies close in on her home, Dara discovers she may hold the answer to saving them all! The fate of the entire domain rests with Dara of Westwood, the girl they’ll call the Hawkmaiden!
Hawkmaiden
Table Of Contents:
Chapter One The Eyrie On The Ridge
Chapter Two The Cottage In The Nutwood
Chapter Three Stealing Rope
Chapter Four Rundeval
Chapter Five Frightful
Chapter Six Training
Chapter Seven Sevendor Castle
Chapter Eight The Blizzard
Chapter Nine Wizards Of Sevendor
Chapter Ten Market Day
Chapter Eleven To Arms!
Chapter Twelve Under Siege
Chapter Thirteen Sevendor At War
Chapter Fourteen The Magical Corps
Chapter Fifteen The Lifting Of The Siege
Chapter Sixteen The Spellmonger’s Trial
Chapter Seventeen The Witchstone
Chapter One
The Eyrie On The Ridge
“It’s beautiful!” Lenodara said, barely able to speak above a whisper as she watched the magnificent hawk soar across the sky. It was massive, she could tell, even without anything around it for scale. And the way it soared through the air was majestic . . .
“It’s deadly,” her oldest brother informed her in a low voice. Kyre was five and a half years older than Dara (as everyone but her Aunt Anira called her), but unlike her other siblings (or her father, Anira, her cousins, or just about every other resident of sprawling Westwood Hall) Kyre never acted as if she were still a baby. He treated his youngest, twelve-year-old sister like an adult. That was just how Kyre was: mature and thoughtful. He pulled himself up the giant spruce tree limb by limb, barely disturbing the needles of the spruce as he climbed, until he had found her perch.
“It’s a Silver Hooded Raptor,” he continued, authoritatively, after studying the bird with his dark eyes a few moments. “They’re the king of the birds-of-prey in the Uwarri ridges. They can see a mouse take a leak six miles away, Uncle Keram says.”
Their favorite uncle would know . . . in his youth their father’s younger brother had been apprenticed as a falconer at Sevendor Castle, briefly. “Lords pay real gold for them – they’re supposed to be the best hunters in the world.”
“They can be trained?” Dara asked, not taking her eyes from the bird as it soared majestically above. “To hunt?”
“If you have the nerve,” Kyre chuckled, indulgently. “And the time. It requires a lot of patience and conditioning to train a bird to hunt. Keram has done it, though not with a raptor,” he added. “From what I hear, they’re too hard to manage, much less capture.”
“It’s a beautiful hawk!” she sighed, watching its graceful wings against the perfect, cloudless blue sky.
“It’s not a hawk, it’s a falcon,” corrected Kyre, shifting his weight on the branch to get a better view. “Hawks kill with their claws, usually, and are larger than falcons, who use their beaks mostly. Usually,” he emphasized. “The Silver Hooded Raptor is one of the largest falcons. Larger than many hawks. They nest on the highest peaks, in the most inaccessible spots in these mountains. That one must be new – I don’t remember that eyrie on Rundeval’s peak from last year,” he added thoughtfully.
If a Westwoodman didn’t remember a beast or bird in his wood, he wasn’t worth the name, Dara knew. The Westwood was the largest of Sevendor’s seven Yeomanries – manors and estates organized for production – and its economy depended upon the forest that gave the manor its name. And while Kyre wasn’t the most experienced woodsman in the manor, he was more woodwise than many men twice his age.
Of course
he looked half-wooden himself. His dark hair and eyes and his dusky complexion told him out as a Westwoodman as much as his thick leather vest over his woolen tunic. The Westwoodmen stood apart from any other people in Sevendor Vale. None of the Sevendori from the other yeomanries were nearly so dark as the men of the Westwood, though they toiled in the fields under the sun.
She, in contrast, had pale skin, red hair, and freckles that seemed to multiply every time she found herself in front of a looking glass. It was a rarer combination in their little land, but considered lucky – the birth of the “fire-haired” was seen as a blessing from Briga.
Her late mother Gessi had been similarly “Flame-kissed”, and had borne six children before she died bearing Dara, twelve years before – “flame spreads quickly!” was a Westwood proverb associated with the many children red-haired folk were reputed to have, and Gessi bore out the saying. Fertility wasn’t the only talent associated with red hair, however. Many of her flame-haired ancestors were rumored to have possessed second sight or other gifts from the gods. Westwood Hall had more than a few figures of legend the Flame had touched.
But to Dara’s knowledge she hadn’t shown any signs of greatness in her twelve years of life. In fact, to most of the folk of Westwood Hall, Dara was a pure nuisance. She was known among her kin for being impetuous and unrealistic, a dreamer. She had no idea how such an unfair opinion of her had developed.
“How can I get one?” Dara asked, her eyes following the bird carefully.
“You can’t,” her brother said with a chuckle. “When I say they nest in the highest peaks, I wasn’t kidding. Look, that one is nesting . . . at the crest of Rundeval!” he said, as the raptor landed on the tallest peak on the next ridge. “No one’s climbed Rundeval in twenty years. Not to the peak. Not even Father or Uncle Keram. I’d start with something a little more manageable anyway, if you want to learn falconry, Little Bird. Perhaps a kestrel or a goshawk. Or an owl.”
“I don’t want an owl,” Dara insisted. “I want a Silver Hooded Raptor. I want that Raptor, Kyre, I want it! I want that one!” she said, as the bird wheeled perfectly over the wood, slowing down so quickly she wondered how it stayed in the air.
“You can’t just go capturing a full-grown falcon to train,” her brother said, chuckling at her enthusiasm. “It doesn’t work that way. Adult birds are too wild. You have to get a nestling in the autumn, before they take flight, and train it from before it’s got its full fledgling wings. That’s a full-grown bird.”
“Then I’ll get a hatchling,” she decided. “If they can be trained to hunt . . .”
“You’re dreaming again, Little Bird,” Kyre laughed, as he started to descend the tree. She almost took exception at the nickname she’d borne since youth, but not against Kyre. She adored her oldest brother. “You’d need wings of your own to get to that nest. Look at it. No one climbs Rundeval. That’s why the Westwood stops at that ridge.”
“It’s not impassable,” she reminded him. “People have climbed it before!”
“No, but the high pass isn’t easy. I’ve been two-thirds of the way up, and it was hard as Anira’s biscuits. And from the pass you’d have to . . . wait, why am I even telling you this?”
“Because I’m curious,” she urged. “And you love me. And if anyone could get up there, Kyre, you could. Now tell me, once you got to the pass . . . ?”
“Once you got to the pass you’d have to make your way west, over those rocks, and then do a vertical climb up . . . hells, from here I’d say it was at least sixty, seventy feet – and that’s only got you partway there.”
“And then what would I have to do?”
“I have no idea,” he admitted. “I’ve never been as far, myself. Why do you want to train a falcon, Dara?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked, noting exactly where the bird had landed and committing it to memory. “I mean, falconry is a noble sport. If I could get Uncle Keram to teach me how, then I’d have a trade . . . and I wouldn’t have to worry about growing up so much.”
Her Uncle Keram was her favorite, perhaps because after her mother died, her father had been nearly heartbroken. Keram and Anira had only three children of their own, before the midwives told them sadly that they would have no more. So as a baby they had served as surrogate parents while her father worked through his grief. Dara shared a very close relationship with her uncle as a result. Less so, with her stern Aunt Anira.
That was part of the problem. Aunt Anira felt she should be preparing to go courting, at her age. As a daughter of the Master of the Westwood, her aunt constantly reminded her, she would be highly prized among the folk of the Vale. That prospect frightened Dara. She had only given up playing with dolls last year. She was not ready to even think about such things as husbands and children. Her reluctance to consider the matter had been the cause of much friction between herself and her foster mother.
“Don’t worry, Father isn’t ready to marry you off just yet, Little Bird,” he laughed, guessing her thoughts.
“No, but he could,” she reminded him. “Just ask Aunt Anira. He did it to Leska!” Leska was their eldest sister, and had been married to a boy from Gurisham the year before. She had always been eager to trade the Westwood for life in a village, and when she had met a husky farmer lad at market she had quickly persuaded their father to make the arrangements.
“Yes, but Leska was eighteen, not twelve, and she loved the boy, and she was Leska . . . can you really see her doing well in the Westwood? She’s been pestering Father to find her a husband since she was fourteen. She should be near Mother’s kin, and be a farmer’s wife. Far, far away from here,” he added. Leska had not been the easiest older sister to get along with.
Dara couldn’t help giggling. “Yes, I can see your point. At least you never had to share a room with her! But if I knew falconry,” she reasoned, “then Father wouldn’t even have a reason to consider it.”
“Not unless you wanted to,” agreed Kyre. “If you had a real trade, you could forestall it awhile, at least. You know, you might not mind being wed, one day . . . in fact, you’re about the only girl I know who isn’t consumed by the idea.”
“The thought of being chained to some peasant oaf in Sevendor or Genly . . . it makes me consider taking holy orders,” she confessed.
“Father would never marry you against your will,” Kyre assured her. “Nor me, for that matter. And I hear he’s had offers,” he added, slyly. As heir to the yeomanry, of course Kyre had had offers. It only made sense. But the idea of her oldest brother married off to some girl she didn’t even know made Dara angry for some reason. “But I don’t—”
“KYRE!” came a shout from across the fields, interrupting their lazy discussion. The spruce they were in was on the edge of the Westwood Hall compound, just by the hedge that shielded the main yard from the woods, proper. From this spot, if you climbed the big spruce high enough, you could see both the grand stone Hall as well as see over the rocky ridge that separated the Westwood from Sevendor Castle. A good place to daydream, and a popular place for Dara and her siblings.
The shout was loud, male, and alarmed. Dara wondered what was happening. It was a good three hundred yards to the manor house, but when the brass bell that hung from the peak of the barn started ringing that only meant trouble, she knew, if it wasn’t the three bells that signaled mealtime.
She and Kyre looked at each other for a split second before moving.
Kyre dropped from his perch soundlessly and was sprinting across the meadow like a hare. Dara followed more slowly, more clumsily, and with more trepidation. She didn’t want to slip and add more drama to whatever it was that was unfolding. That was the emergency bell, she realized, the one suspended from the watchtower. Not the dinner bell.
In fact, she noted as she landed on her hands and feet, the rest of the manor was already headed in to the Hall from the shops, sheds, and yards of the settlement as fast as they could. She pushed her legs to follow her swift-footed brother throug
h the gateway and into the outer yard and found her older cousin Larvan standing there, holding his bow and quiver and looking grim.
Holding two bows, she realized. He handed the other one to Kyre with just a hint of deference – Kyre was younger than Larvan, but he was the Master of the Wood’s heir, as his silver wolf’s head ring designated, destined to inherit his father’s important office and the manor in his time.
“It’s a man from the castle,” Larvan said, distastefully. “He’s on the other side of the ravine. He’s demanding that your father deliver his proper tribute.”
“And Father . . . ?”
Larvan smiled mirthlessly. “He is not inclined to make that delivery,” he said, simply.
Dara’s heart sank. That could mean fighting. And fighting could mean killing.
“It’s been brewing for a while,” Larvan said, as they walked back to the manor. Kyre strapped on his quiver and took a short sword from his cousin to set beside it on his belt, before he strung his bow. “Sir Erantal has sent three men to demand tribute this year. Father has sent two of them back empty-handed.”
That was news to Dara – she hadn’t been aware of the visits. Then again, most manor business was conducted around the Flame, and she was rarely involved in those matters, being twelve, female, and precociously curious.
“Why only two?” she asked, dumbly. The boys looked at her.
“The third seems to have . . . tripped and fallen into the ravine,” Larvan said, quietly. “It’s a shame. Everyone knows how treacherous that bridge can be.”
Dara realized he was being sarcastic . . . and that the third representative from the castle had never returned from his duty. That made her feel a little ill. She knew her Father had to do such things, to protect the Westwood from the knight-in-residence at the castle, but this was the first time she had heard of him actually having someone . . . killed. It sent a chill up her spine.
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