Cry of the Falcon (Falcons Saga Book 4)

by Court Ellyn

  Bryk stopped abruptly, pointed at twin columns flanking the roadway like gateposts. “You may venture no farther than the markstones. Step beyond this point, and you may never leave Ersteng. Our word is stone.”

  Laral ducked his eyes, afraid to risk so much as a glimpse of the city’s secrets.

  Bryk turned to the left and took a side street that meandered between cottages. Faces peered from windows. Shutters slammed shut. The street dead-ended below a sheer rock-face set with three doors. Upon a mossy lawn a dwarven matron milked a goat. Sitting cross-legged beside her to observe the process was Lesha. Her dress of faded gray velvet had somehow been fashioned into leggings. Her hair shone brilliant gold, and her fair face had darkened in the relentless highland sun.

  “Henn,” called Bryk. The matron glanced up. Lesha glanced, too, looked back at the goat, looked up again and scrambled to her feet.

  “Daaaaaa!” Her cry echoed through the streets of Ersteng. She came running, and she was sobbing before she reached him. Her arms were fierce and strong as she clung to him, and the most exquisite laughter burst through her sobs. Laral stood her back half a step so he could examine her face. Gaze upon it. Yes, his little girl was really here and not some fleeting shadow in a nightmare aching with loneliness.

  “How did you know where to find us?” she asked.

  “I’ve been tracking you for weeks.”

  “Andy said you were. He said Arvold would find you. He knew. He…” The light dwindled in her eyes. “I think he gave up hope though. But you should’ve seen him, Da. He started the whole thing. He says I did, but it was him. That’s how we got out of there.”

  He brushed a lock of hair from her eyes. “I know.”

  “Did anyone else escape?”

  “A few.” No need to trouble her with details.

  She wilted into him. “I want to go home, Da.”

  “You will,” he said against her hair. But not yet. There was much to be done first. “You’re safer here.” She nodded and rested upon his shoulder.

  There was a scuffing of feet, and Laral figured Tarsyn was feeling more than a little awkward. He let Lesha go. “I … I brought your suitor.”

  “My what?” she asked, as if she’d never heard of such a thing. Soft, subtle things like romance must’ve been far removed from her mind. She leaned around her father. Her eyes widened. Tarsyn stood in a shadow between two pools of lantern light hardly looking like a courtier in his torn hunting garb. All polish and haughtiness had shed off him like excess fat. She whispered his name like a statement of disbelief.

  He glanced up at her, sheepish, afraid perhaps that she might scoff at his presence.

  “He’s earned the right to call on you,” Laral assured her. “When you’re eighteen, if you can still stand the sight of him, well, we’ll see about the rest.”

  Lesha spun away. “Oh, Da, I look awful!” She fussed with her hair, her ragged garments.

  Laral gestured at Tarsyn. “That’s your cue, kid. Don’t fuck it up.” He turned his back to give Tarsyn privacy enough to affirm his lady’s enduring beauty.

  Henn had left her goat and motioned Laral toward the middle door. As he approached, Bethyn ducked under the lintel. If Lesha was radiant, her mother had been drained of light. She stared out from the door with flat eyes. Blank as they were, they were not empty of thought or feeling. Mountains of words and storms of emotion lay locked behind them.

  Was it resentment he saw? Blame? Dear Goddess, not that. Rage and sorrow he could bear, but not blame.

  Tenderly, carefully, he laid his hands upon her shoulders. Her arms were sticks, her eyes too large for her delicate face. He had seen her this frail before, when he found her a prisoner in her own house, when he’d made that brainless and oh-so-noble promise to let nothing hurt her again. Yet here she was, the dusty crystal he had let fall.

  Her face had lost its symmetry. Yes, her jaw was swollen, misshapen, though any bruising was long gone. The thought of anyone striking her nearly unraveled him. His fingers traced the injury. Bethyn glanced aside, as if the tenderness was something to be endured—as if it were an arrow trying to pierce through her armor. “Henn says I may lose a few teeth,” she muttered. “It doesn’t matter.” She shrugged away his hands, straightened her shoulders. “I think Andy was waiting to see if you’d show up. We’re going to lose him.”

  Henn explained everything she had done, and she had done everything she knew. The boy’s heart, she said, was simply worn out. “There’s fluid. It’s squeezing his heart, hampering his breathing. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Mother’s mercy, Andy was drowning. Like Leshan drowned in his own blood.

  “But Lord Daryon, he can heal,” Laral exclaimed. “If he’s not allowed into the city, we can carry Andy out.”

  “Don’t move the lad,” Henn pleaded.

  Laral turned to Bryk, to No’ak. “Will not the elderen make an exception, just this once?”

  It took hours of debate, long into the night, but the leaders of Smedrhault finally agreed to smuggle the avedra into the city.

  “I don’t care about your damned iron,” Daryon declared. Cloth covered his eyes. “Keep your bloody secrets.”

  Bryk removed the blindfold and pointed him toward the middle door. Laral gestured him inside.

  Andryn lay upon a bed perfectly sized for him. Though he slept, his brow was creased with effort, his fingers clenched the woolen blanket tucked tightly about his small frame, as if he feared a passing shadow might snatch him away. The hollow of his throat collapsed with every labored intake of breath. Air whistled in his chest, as if he was trying to breathe through a crushed reed. Blue tinged his eyelids, his lips, his fingernails, and his white-knuckled hands were ice.

  Laral sank into the chair that he had occupied during the unbearable hours of waiting for the verdict. He watched the avedra intently. For a long time Daryon stared at the boy, then he closed his eyes and listened to the ragged breathing. At last, he eased onto the edge of the bed, laid one hand across Andy’s forehead, splayed the other across his chest.

  It didn’t take long for Daryon to reach a prognosis. His body slumped, the hope draining out of him. “This is nothing like a blade wound, or even a disease. I cannot change the condition he was born with. I am sorry.” He was unable to meet Laral’s eye as he ducked out of the room.

  Laral pursued him to the threshold, considered throttling him and dragging him back, force him to try something. But a whisper stopped him. “Da?” Laral dropped to his knees beside the little bed, took up Andy’s hands and chafed them roughly. “It’s a dream … isn’t it? You’re not really here … this time either.” His throat and lungs must be scored raw; his voice sounded like gravel in a tin can.

  “I’m here. You’re awake, my son. You were right. You were always right. I was just a few steps behind you.”

  A smile tugged at cracked lips.

  “I almost turned back for you,” Laral said and cursed his voice for cracking. What good would it do for Andy see him break into helpless, wracking sobs?

  “You did?”

  Laral held up his thumb and forefinger a hair apart. “I was this close. You’re indispensable to me, Andy. I missed you every step of the way.”

  The boy tried to suck down a mouthful of air, but a whistling gurgle stopped it short. “No, I’m not a very good squire.”

  “Why in the Goddess’ name would you think that?”

  “I lost the dagger. The one you gave me.”

  “No, Andy, look.” Laral unlatched the dagger and sheath from his belt, raised it for him to see. “I got it back for us. Truth be told, I lost my sword, too.”

  “You did, really?”

  “That big bastard knocked it right out of my hands. It’s still up on the mountain somewhere.”

  Andy grinned at that. If even his father could drop his weapon, then maybe it was all right that Andy had, too. “Is he dead? Lohg?”

  “Yes.”

  Andy nodded, frowning. Th
e news seemed to make him unhappy. “He helped me … when I couldn’t … stop coughing. He gave me medicine. He carried me. For days.”

  Laral found that difficult to imagine. He had glared into those malicious red eyes, and there was no pity in them. A soft spot for weak and helpless things was the last thing he expected from a great brute like Lohg. That was something reserved for the tenderhearted, like Lesha. Puzzling. Perhaps ogres were not the brainless eating machines everyone made them out to be. Well, not all of them.

  “Your sister told me what you did, to save her and your mother. You’re a brave young man.”

  “I’m not so brave, Da. I was just angry. And scared.” Andy turned his face away. His eyes glistened with tears.

  With firm fingers, Laral turned his face back. “Listen to me. Bravery is not a feeling. It is an action. Bravery is daring to act when you feel most afraid. And that’s what you did.”

  “Am I … am I as brave as you, Da?”

  “Braver. So much braver.”

  “I would’ve been … a good knight, then?”

  Goddess help me, he knows. He knows what’s coming. “You already are, my son. All you lack is the knighthood. And we can remedy that easily enough.”

  Andy tried to laugh, but it only excited a convulsion of coughing, a wrenching, howling wet spasm that threatened to tear his body in two. Inwardly, Laral screamed to every power in the heavens to let his son’s misery be his own instead.

  When the fit passed, Andy collapsed onto the sweat-stained pillow. Laral smoothed the curls from his brow. “So what do you say? Don’t talk, just nod your head.”

  “I’m not old enough,” Andy rasped.

  “Bah. I count the White Falcon among my friends. Don’t you think he’d make concessions for me? So?”

  Andy grinned, gave a shallow nod.

  “Hmm, well, we don’t have a sword. Will Guardian suffice?”

  Andy tamped down the urge to laugh.

  “Right. Do you, Andryn, son of Laral and Bethyn of House Brengarra, swear to protect your king and kin, to remain steadfastly loyal to them all your days? Do you swear to fight with courage, fairness, and honor? Do you swear to adhere to the virtues of high moral character, bringing honor to yourself, your sovereign, and your kin? Upon your honor, Andryn, do you so swear?”

  The boy’s eyes sparkled in wonderment. “I do so swear.”

  “Then by my right as your father, I declare you a knight of Fiera.” He wrapped Andy’s fingers about Guardian’s hilt.

  “Da?”

  “Yes, son?”

  “I know it’s just a game.”

  “No game. My noble knight.”

  ~~~~

  46

  Bethyn clutched Laral’s arm with motionless fingers as she watched the flames rise. For once her fingers did not absently play his wrist as if it were the neck of her lute. The music inside her was silent. Laral prayed it hadn’t died with Andy.

  With the dawn, Laral had carried his son through the gates of Ersteng to a pyre of fragrant spruce boughs, and doused the shroud with perfumed oil that Henn had most generously given him. A handful of dwarves had turned out to pay their respects. Whether their gesture was mostly one of curiosity, Laral didn’t care. Daryon and his five hundred warriors stood at attention, grave and silent. Wouldn’t Andy have been delighted to see them arrayed in their armor?

  Lesha sobbed into a kerchief, at times doubling over to keen loudly and shamelessly. Tarsyn was there to draw her up again. But Bethyn was silent. She had wept through the night and now stood beside the pyre detached from feeling. Laral drowned in it. He hurt so deeply he could barely draw breath. It was all he could do to stay on his feet, to swallow his sorrow and hold onto it until he found a moment alone.

  A clean morning wind lifted Andy’s ashes high among the world’s tallest peaks, where snows gleamed white, where clouds gathered to become thunderstorms, and where falcons took wing.

  Three days after Andy’s funeral, Laral finalized preparations to depart. He hated to leave his family so soon after finding them. The longing to hide with them in Ersteng was so strong that it almost overrode his sense of duty. But he had grim work to do. Work that wouldn’t wait. At least he could rest in the fact that Wren and Lesha were safe.

  Bethyn watched him in silence as he laid out his surcoat, freshly washed; his sword belt, with a sword supplied from Ersteng’s armory; and Guardian. In the embroidered pouch that he wore against his chest he carried a handful of Andy’s ashes. The pouch was meant for his own ashes, should he die on a battlefield far from home. Never did he imagine it would carry the ashes of his child.

  He had to work stooped over. His head sported bruises from the times he had thoughtlessly tried to stand upright beneath the low ceiling of Henn and Bryk’s house. While he polished his boots, he wondered if Wren resented him for leaving. She had never been afraid to voice her opinion, but when Laral told her he didn’t mean to linger she merely closed her eyes and nodded. He swiped at the jar of bootblack with an oily cloth and glanced at her motionless hands. “Maybe the dwarves have a lute.”

  The suggestion seemed to anchor Bethyn back in the room. “A lute?” she asked. “Oh, yes, Lesha might like to play.”

  Lesha, but not Wren herself. Laral sighed and swallowed the ache in his chest.

  “You’re leaving that young man here with us?” Bethyn eased onto the edge of a stone-framed bed.

  “There’s nothing Tarsyn won’t do for you and Lesha. He’s a good man.”

  As if he’d heard them whispering about him, Tarsyn hammered on the door and admitted himself without permission. He was in a frantic state. “M’ lord, I can’t find my rapier.”

  Laral scrubbed at the toe of his boot. The bootblack covered the scuffs inflicted by stone and blade, but the damage still lurked underneath. “I gave it Bryk.”

  Tarsyn’s face registered betrayal. “But it’s mine. I can’t leave without it.”

  “I thought not. He’s hidden it my request. You’re staying here.”

  “No, Laral, don’t leave me behind.”

  The words cut deep, deeper than Tarsyn knew. Goddess’ curses, not again. Laral set aside his boots, took Tarsyn by the elbow and escorted him outside, where Wren couldn’t hear. In a shadowy corner between cottages, Laral told him, “I have lost both my sons. I won’t risk losing another.”

  That got Tarsyn’s attention.

  “Watch over my girls for me. I will send for you as soon as I can.” He couldn’t begin to guess when—or if—that day would come. “If we lose our foothold down below … if everything falls apart—”

  “It won’t.” Youthful enthusiasm, tireless hope.

  “—stay here, for as long as the dwarves will let you. And promise me this: if battle breaks here in Ersteng, don’t be brave and make a stand. Get out with Lesha and run. Don’t look back.”

  Understanding dawned in Tarsyn’s eyes. The full weight of the future, of future hope, of future generations, settled upon his shoulders. He nodded. “I promise.”

  In the afternoon, Laral helped Drys and Kalla barter with the dwarves for supplies. No’ak was good enough to sell them one of Vosti’s donkeys to help them haul everything until they reached a town that would sell them horses. “She’ll serve you well. A sturdy thing, but never been to the lowlands. Watch her she don’t eat too much.”

  “I owe you more than I can ever repay,” Laral said.

  “Ach,” No’ak said, waving away the notion. “Keep yourself alive, and pay me a visit sometime. We’ll smoke a pipe.” They shook hands, then No’ak led his cousins and the four remaining donkeys from Ersteng’s gate and into the sunshine.

  “Doesn’t hurt to make a few friends along the way,” Kalla remarked as Laral stooped to help her sort through sacks of foodstuffs. The dwarves had sold them mushrooms the size of steaks, salted meat, a strange vegetable that was dried and stored on its own stalk, oats for man and donkey, and a keg of beer.

  “Not at all,” said Drys, winding t
he rope he’d purchased. “Friends make a long journey worthwhile.”

  Kalla groaned. “But not less tiresome.”

  “Right!” Drys declared, then realized he’d been insulted.

  Kalla shook her head and laughed.

  That’s when they heard a voice: “My, but you’re tall.”

  Laral turned and found a young dwarf with eyes as green as malachite, an upturned waifish nose, a scattering of freckles, and red-gold hair braided elaborately about her ears. Her statement hadn’t been directed at him, however. She stared at Drys in awe.

  Kalla turned away fast, started sorting supplies she had already sorted.

  Drys glanced between Laral and the dwarf, sure he was being tricked. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Tall, I said.” The dwarf’s flushed round cheeks filled with a smile.

  Drys strained his neck, tried to grow an inch. “Are you mocking me?”

  “No! Why should I mock you? You’re Lord Zeldanor, ain’t you? Aye, my grandfather’s second wife’s great-great-nephew.” She seemed pleased by her recitation. “I’m Ebha.” She made a sign of greeting with her fingers.

  Drys stared back dumbly. Laral wondered if he ought to give the man a nudge in the ribs. He was sure to miss a glaring opportunity.

  The dwarf was persistent. “Your father’s reputation is well-respected here. The elderen say you look like him. Though I expected you to be shorter. Grandda’s second wife is short, you know, even for a baerdwina.”