by Tony Daniel
“But they don’t really go away,” Wulf said. It had been four months since he’d killed Prince Gunnar. After a long wait for snow to clear, the prince’s body had been taken back to Sandhaven. But not by Wulf, as he’d expected. As he’d wanted. By his brother Adelbert. Adelbert with fifty men and Marshal Koterbaum along for good measure.
“It should have been me that went to Krehennest. You know that, Father.”
“Wulf, you’re twelve. Adelbert wanted to go. He’ll get to see his precious Chesapeake again,” Duke Otto said.
“I’m sixteen, Father,” Wulf replied.
The duke looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded. “Ah, right, right.” Wulf knew his father would soon forget his age again. For Duke Otto, his third son would always be a certain age in his mind. The morosis had seen to that.
Before he’d killed Gunnar, Wulf would never have talked to his father this way. Since then he was beginning to feel like it was not just his right to speak his mind, but his duty. But instead of getting mad at Wulf, the duke seemed to like it when Wulf spoke plainly.
So few people these days speak to Father like he’s an adult, Wulf thought. But I can see there’s still my dad under there, even if he is fading away.
“You’re a strange boy, but you have a good heart.” Duke Otto laughed at some private recollection. He motioned to the hunt master to bring the bird forward. The hunt master moved toward a large hawk that stood, hooded, on a staked perch. “Not that one, Finn,” he called to the faun. He pointed toward another. “That one.”
Wulf felt angry. He had felt angry a lot lately. “Adelbert wouldn’t need to have gone to pay a blood price if you had told Gunnar he couldn’t marry Ulla,” Wulf said.
I wasn’t going to yell at Father, Wulf thought. I promised myself not to get mad.
But his attempt to keep the anger out of his voice had made him sound cranky instead.
“Prince Gunnar is dead?” Duke Otto blinked, then shook his head, smiling sadly. “Ah, yes. Well, no one told me,” said his father. “I didn’t know if she liked Gunnar or not.”
“Not,” Wulf said. “Definitely not.”
The relationship of Ulla and Grer was public in the castle now.
In the town, too, Wulf thought. Even though they could see one another without sneaking around, they were being very careful to keep it as proper as possible. Ulla was ready to marry the smith, but Grer had insisted they take it slow.
“That you and I should be together at all is as outrageous to my kind of folks as it is to your’n,” Grer had told her. “So we have to make this strong and build it to last.”
Wulf gazed down at his hand. The burn had healed over the past months and was now a chunk of reddish tissue on his palm. It didn’t hurt anymore. The scar had a hollow place in its center, like a little valley cut into his hand. This formed the perfect outline of a dagger tang in his right palm. Because of it, he could hold weapons much better. His right palm dovetailed perfectly with the handle of a dagger or a sword.
But I would trade that ability in a moment for the chance to get feeling back in the palm of my hand. Wulf figured he never would.
Behind them, Finn was taking the hood off the largest of the birds.
It was a bald eagle.
“Wulfgang, Sandhaven controls our access to the sea,” Duke Otto said. “They’ve raised their tariffs to crazy heights. It’s hurting us. We have to get them lower or we’ll…what was I going to say?”
“I don’t know, Father. Maybe it was that, if the Sandhaven tariffs aren’t lowered, we’ll be ruined?”
“Alliance. We need one.”
“I understand, Father,” Wulf said. “And with a marriage alliance, we’d have a united front from the Greensmokes to the ocean. The empire would think twice before trying to move north.”
“Empire?”
“The Holy Roman Empire.”
Duke Otto gazed at his son thoughtfully. “How old did you say you were?”
“Sixteen,” Wulf said glumly.
A big smile broke out on Duke Otto’s face. “Really? My Wulf is sixteen. Did you hear that, Finn?”
The hunt master nodded. “Yes, Your Excellency.”
Chapter Eighteen:
The Flight
Then the duke turned his attention to the birds. He held out his arm, and the bald eagle leaped from its perch and, with two flaps, flew over and landed on the duke’s gauntlet.
Wulf backed away, giving his father plenty of room. This eagle was a female. They were almost one third larger than the males. Duke Otto looked at the bird, then turned to Wulf. “I think it’s time,” he said. “I want you to slip her today, Wulfgang.”
Slipping was the word for releasing the bird. To slip also meant that you were in charge of that bird during the flight. You had to watch it, follow it, and, when it struck prey, rush to the scene and help it finish off the kill.
Wulf gulped. He’d never flown a bird larger than a falcon. He’d brought his favorite of the owls in the mews, Nagel.
Finn came up beside Wulf and took Nagel from his arm.
“You can slip them both, m’lord,” the hunt master said. “The owl with the eagle at the same time. We’ve been training them together.”
Wulf was surprised. He’d read about this being done in an old hawking codex in the library, but he’d never seen it.
“What for?”
“Forests, where those sharp eagle eyes don’t help so much. You need ears to hear the rustles and bustles below the branches, and that owl is the eagle’s ears,” Finn replied. “It was tried out west in the pine forests, and worked. So your father said he’d like to see if we could match or even outdo those western eaglers.”
Finn unhooded Nagel.
With an expert flick of his wrist, he set her to flight. Nagel flew to a nearby tree limb and sat watching.
“Now let’s get you ready for the big one,” he said.
Finn returned and pulled off Wulf’s small gauntlet, suitable for owling. He helped Wulf into the larger, thicker gauntlet that was needed for slipping an eagle.
The land dropped quickly from this ridge between the rolling mountain peaks and a wide forest below down the slopes of the Dragonbacks. There were clumps of pines and cedars with their evergreen needles, but mostly the woods were filled with bare trees with a haze of green buds.
“I have a report from a herder I know from way back. Buffalo man,” Finn continued. “There’s a wolf pack that has strayed from the west valley where they belong. They have been feeding on the spring buffalo calves.”
“We’re going to hunt wolves today,” said the duke. He clapped his hands and smiled.
Wulf was excited despite himself. “I always wanted to see that.”
“You are going to be doing it,” Duke Otto said, and nodded toward the eagle. He held up his arm with the bird on it. Wulf lifted his own gauntleted arm. His father reached over and, with a turn of his wrist, set the bald eagle onto Wulf’s outstretched forearm. “Don’t worry. This girl is a wolf hunter.”
The bird was light, as were all birds of prey. But she was close to a half stone, which was much more than a falcon or an owl. Wulf knew he should easily be able to hold her up with one arm, but he couldn’t help moving his left hand under his elbow to steady himself. The eagle just looked heavy.
“Are you sure about this, Father?” Wulf said.
“Very sure,” said the duke.
Finn turned from gazing down into the valley. “The brushbeaters have stirred something, Your Excellency,” he said. “Looks to be at least a fox.”
Duke Otto nodded toward Wulf. “All right then. Get ready.”
“Yes, sir,” Wulf replied. He turned his attention to the eagle. She eyed him with a blank, emotionless stare.
“Does she have a name?” he said to the hunt master.
Finn looked at the bird as if he were sizing her up and only now thinking of a name for her. “Blitz,” he replied.
The eagle did not respond to hear
ing her name. Most hunting birds could not care less what humans called them.
I’m just a walking tree that gives you food, right, Blitz?
Birds were not pets. They did not love you. They did not care if you loved them. You also couldn’t get them to do anything by yelling at them or being mean. They did not understand human emotions at all. Nope, what they wanted, really all they wanted, was to hunt and to get fed for doing it. As long as you remembered those simple things about hunting with birds, you could get along with them. And if you could ever teach yourself to think like them, you could use them in really deadly ways.
But hawk, falcon, owl, eagle, or even from time to time a vulture, the basics of falconry were the same, and those Wulf knew from years of practice.
The eagle blinked, turned her white head toward the sky. After a moment, she opened her curved, sharp beak and let out a loud cry.
Wulf got ready to make the slip. He lifted his arm and called out, “Go, Blitz!” The bird spread her broad brown wings and instantly knew what to do. She lofted up with the movement of Wulf’s lifted arm. And then the weight was gone and the eagle was in the sky. She dipped for a bit, then found what she was looking for. It was an updraft air current, and she used it to glide higher and higher.
“Look at her soar,” the duke commented. “Finn and I slipped her with a vulture for a while so she could learn the tricks of saving strength and using currents. Then we trained her with the owl, your little owl, as a matter of fact.”
The duke had spent more and more time at hunting and riding since his mental failing started. It was like he was going through a second childhood. He left a lot of the day-to-day business of the mark to Otto, Wulf’s oldest brother.
Blitz swooped around behind Wulf, his father, and the rest of the hunting party, gathered speed, and then zoomed over their heads. Then he saw the little owl, Nagel, flying just behind the eagle, letting herself be pulled along in the wake of the eagle’s passing through the air.
That’s smart, Wulf thought.
There was no way the owl could keep up with the eagle on her own, but this way she let the eagle do most of the work. And it was very powerful work. He had felt the wind from the eagle’s wings as she passed over his head.
And then Blitz and Nagel were soaring down the mountainside and into the valley below them. The biggest thing Wulf had seen bald eagles hunt was foxes.
“So she’s really trained for wolves?” he asked.
“Aye, Finn and I think so,” his father replied. “Tell him, Finn.”
The faun did not look pleased that he had to speak, but he seemed to realize the duke wanted to tell his son about it himself but couldn’t find the words.
“You’ll remember her from when she was young, m’lord,” Finn said. “We started her on foxes with a make-eagle, a training bird, but she never cared much for them foxes. So we tried the vulture and then the owl with her. She took to the owl. But when we showed her a dead wolf one day she went wild. After that, it was all wolf training for that one.”
Wulf wondered how they’d done it. Probably with skin lures or carcasses pulled behind a horse. And then they would have set her on captured, live wolves when they could get their hands on one.
“And can she take down even a big one?”
“She can,” the hunt master replied. “She has. Undersized so far and in a field, not a forest. But I reckon she could down a big male if the time and place were right.”
Wulf and the duke watched the bird soar until she became a speck in the distance. “This is a huge slip. There must be a league of forest down there she is hunting. Aren’t you afraid we’ll lose her, Father?”
The truth was, he was more worried about losing the little owl. Nagel had always seemed like a good-luck charm to him. He would miss her if she disappeared into the forest. This sometimes happened even with the best-trained birds.
“She’s always come back,” his father replied. “And when she doesn’t, she’s made her kill, right, Finn?”
“That’s right, Your Excellency.”
“She’ll be waiting for us to find her and lure her off the carcass with some fishies.”
He stood silently beside his father for a while. Blitz soared one direction and then another, finding updrafts to keep her from having to flap too often, always scanning the landscape below her. The owl followed behind. If Nagel dropped too far back, the eagle slowed or doubled back to let her catch up.
Duke Otto pointed into the valley at the eagle. “She’s seen something.”
The eagle swooped in awesome curves back and forth—and then she came up short in one of her wide curves and suddenly headed in a straight line toward the west, away from the morning sun. She was a wheeling speck below. “Now let’s find out if she can make her kill.”
They watched as the bird shot across the treetops at her fastest speed, wings flapping in huge swooshes. But then, when she came over a clump of pine trees, she seemed to lose her way. She flew around in tight, overlapping circles.
“Ah, she’s lost it,” said the duke. He seemed very disappointed.
But Wulf was watching closely. A tiny speck rose from the trees below. It might have been a blowing leaf, but it rose up and up. It banked into a beautiful curve, and that was when he knew it was the little owl. She was practically blind in the daylight, but she still had her sensitive ears. She knew where the wolf was. And she was showing the eagle.
Something stirred in the hardwood saplings at the edge of the pines. Something was passing through the trees that was big enough to move them.
Then he saw the wolves.
There were gray-and-white splotches in the lighter gray of the bare forest below. But now that he’d picked them out, he could easily follow them.
“There!” cried Wulf. “Nagel has heard the wolves.”
“Who?” said Duke Otto. “What are you talking about?”
“The owl,” Wulf replied. “She hears them. Now, there it is! See the trees move?”
“Where?” The duke stared to where he was pointing. After a moment he chuckled. “Yes, yes. I see them. And so does my eagle!”
The eagle had followed the owl and spotted the wolves now. There was one that was hanging back from the pack.
This was what the eagle had been waiting for. Soon she was after it.
“A lone wolf,” said the duke. “Or maybe a leader, out hunting. They will do that at times.”
The eagle drew closer to the shaking below her.
The little speck that was the owl disappeared again into the foliage.
Closer—
And then, with a loud cry that even they heard at what had to be nearly a half league away, the eagle dove into the trees.
She disappeared.
The running movement stopped.
“She’s got it!” Duke Otto called out.
Or it’s got her, Wulf thought.
Chapter Nineteen:
The Woods
He called himself Steel. That was his Legionnaire name, a professional name that meant he was part of the Gray Goose Legion. This was the thousand-man regiment of paid soldiers working directly for the von Krehennest family of Sandhaven. Unlike the normal levies and bands, they had professional ranks. Sergeant. Lance captain. Lance commander. Captain. They called themselves Nesties.
Many Nesties were mercenaries, men who had traveled from or been driven out of other kingdoms and principalities. Some even came from across the ocean. The one thing they had in common was that they were all very good at what they did. They were dangerous killers. They usually preferred bills and poleaxes to swords, although they were experts with swords, as well. When ordered to kill, they never gave quarter to an enemy until that enemy lay unmoving in a pool of his own blood.
At least, that was the idea. For Steel, the Legion was a way to get ahead for his family. He and his brother were city rats. They were the sons of a silversmith who worked in Krehennest. They had been fairly well-to-do until a plague had taken Steel’
s mother and two sisters. After that his father had retreated into himself. His business fell apart. He spent his savings on wine. Soon they lived in poverty. Then the silversmith died and there was absolutely nothing left for Steel or his brother.
Except.
They did have their father’s brother. He was a teamster who also supplied horses to the Nesties. He recommended Steel and his brother to the Legion’s recruiter. The brothers had joined together. Since they could read and write, they’d come in as officer cadets and camp errand boys.
Over the next fifteen years, they both had done well. His brother, whose Legionnaire’s name was Rask, which meant “swift” in the Tidewater dialect of Kaltish, had risen to the highest rank of all. He was the commander of the elite faction of the Legion called the Hundred. Steel had only risen to lance captain, but that was all right. Besides, he had almost saved up the fifteen hundred thalers he needed to buy his next rank. The rich officers could depend on their families for the money. For Rask and Steel, it had taken years of looting and raiding to the south to get together the silver they needed.
To go viking against the Romans was the reason the Nesties really existed. They were there to protect the sons of nobles who had to make their mark in combat. But those young men of privilege could never, ever be killed by a Roman gladius. The Nesties were there to do the dying for them.
This expedition against the Mark of Shenandoah might be enough. He had eleven hundred saved. If he could get back home with loot or, even better, with an indentured servant to sell, he might raise the four hundred extra thalers he needed to buy lance commander.
Only that wasn’t going to happen.
Steel was dying. He hated the feeling. It wasn’t going to be death in combat. It wasn’t even a sickness he could name.
He simply felt his will to live leaking away.
It had started when the dark thing had arrived at the castle.
The thing was shaped like a man, but it had a vulture-shaped head. It smelled of death. And it was coal black from head to foot.
Instead of ordering it killed, King Siggi had welcomed it.