by Stefon Mears
And now Cavan could see more than two hawks. Many more than two. Red-tail hawks, elephant hawks, vole hawks, goshawks and black hawks. All circling, but not all in this world at the same time.
“Eighteen,” he said aloud, counting as much by the aura of life that surrounded each bird against the between-sky as by their shapes. “I see eighteen hawks. Do you need me to name the breeds?”
“No, Cavan Oltblood. Cavan Orc-friend. Cavan Kingsblood. You have proven yourself for the moment. I will hear your words, and I will consider them.”
The Hawkspeaker clapped his hands together once, and the sound rang out like thunder.
“But first,” he said, “we will eat.”
Food sounded wonderful. Cavan’s wasn’t the only belly rumbling for the past hour. He was sure he’d at least heard Amra’s too.
He only hoped the offered food was something humans could eat.
* * *
More orcs brought the food. Roast boar and stewed root vegetables. Already prepared, fortunately. Cavan was willing to wait through a meal, but if they had to start a new cook fire here at the edge of the great Firespear encampment, and start the process from raw meat, he might not have had the patience.
Carrying the food were foundlings, by Cavan’s guess. Their skin was so pale green it was almost blue, which didn’t match any of the other Firespear orcs Cavan could see. They were thin through the shoulders, arms, and legs — so they weren’t likely great warriors — and they smelled far more of dirt and foul sweat than of blood.
Fortunately the smell of the boar overrode their odor. Uulsk had done her share of the cooking while Cavan and she had ridden together, and Cavan understood something of orcish spicing. Cavan thought he could smell the sweetness of goat blood over the rich smell of slow-roasted boar, but there was something more he could not place. Not the root vegetables stewing from the bronze pot carried by one of the foundlings, but something else. A heavier smell.
“Is that…” Amra said, sniffing the air, “is that roc blood I smell?”
“Very good,” the Hawkspeaker said. He did not budge to assist the foundlings as they spooned wild carrots and turnips into bowls made from large skulls — likely cattle or buffalo — then carved slices of boar to lay across the tops. “Most humans do not recognize roc.”
“But it’s too early in the year for the Feast of Tilnak,” Ehren said, confusion all over his face. “That’s not until midsummer, I think?”
“Very good indeed.” The Hawkspeaker laughed as he spoke, an easy, comfortable sound. “You surround yourself with worthy companions, Cavan Orc-friend.” To Ehren he said, “The roc was a gift from great Randech, and the reason we have remained here for so long. Three nights past it descended in the moonlight. Wounded. Wings burning, likely from dragonfire. We lost only six hunters bringing it down.”
Amra snickered. “Only three nights? You’re still butchering it, aren’t you?”
“All will eat well of this bounty. But only orcs shall enjoy the flesh.”
“The blood is honor enough,” Cavan said, hoping the blood seasoning wouldn’t make the boar inedible. “You have our thanks.”
The foundlings served. Not only the food, but horns of bloodale, a brew that began by the same steps used to brew regular ale, but at three stages along the lines was thickened with the blood of the vanquished.
During Cavan’s travels with Uulsk, she had moaned at length of how she missed the bloodale. How bloodale was the secret of orcish strength, and how traveling without it diminished her.
The bloodale served by the Hawkspeaker had to have been made with roc blood. Cannibalism was a major point of contention between the humans and orcs. Well, not just humans on the one side of the argument, and not just orcs on the other, but the point stood.
Even without considering the source of the blood, in Cavan’s opinion the brew was too bitter. He could taste the hops, at least, but the tang of the blood remained in his mouth after he swallowed. Not that it lasted, because even that tang was overridden by the boar. Its dense, muscled flesh served as little more than a delivery vehicle for the pungent, clattering taste of roc blood. So much stronger than its smell, and so much thicker in the boar seasoning than in the ale.
Cavan found himself using the root vegetables to distract his tongue while he ate. Giving himself some relief, at least, from all this blood without insulting his host.
Only halfway through the meal, he could tell that his stomach would not thank him later. Worse, he could not stop eating because he could tell the Hawkspeaker was watching to see how he handled the boar. Cavan was certain of that, even though he could have pointed to no particular cast to the Hawkspeaker’s features, nor any furtive glances.
There was just something about the Hawkspeaker’s aspect while they ate. Something that reminded Cavan of the way Master Powys could watch him without watching him.
The four of them — Cavan, Ehran, Amra, and the Hawkspeaker — ate in silence, the orcish way. For orcs, food was almost a ritual. Not through any words or gestures or timing, but through focus. Orcs ate every meal as though it might be their last, and so they gave food their whole attention.
The three orcs guarding the horses did not eat at this time, nor did the apprentice do anything more than order about the foundlings to make sure that everyone had their fill.
Cavan and Ehren finished their meals. Amra had seconds.
When the food was eaten and the bloodale drunk, and the horns and skulls taken away by foundlings, only then did the Hawkspeaker nod in approval and speak again. By then the sun had begun to set over Croma’s Forest to the west, purpling the sky above them and turning much of the western sky to shades of red and orange.
“So, Cavan Oltblood, what need could cause you to risk Firespear wrath to exchange words with me?”
“Much have I heard of the magic of Iresk the Hawkspeaker. Tales of your feats have—”
“And will continue to, I do not doubt.” The Hawkspeaker raised a thick, black eyebrow. “Do not mistake me for a chief or a splinter, who must be praised for five times as long as it takes to ask a favor. Need has brought you here, and I don’t think you were simply fleeing from those … dogs, I believe you called them?”
“Are you familiar with the human ways of ruling and inheriting land?”
The Hawkspeaker did not so much as twitch a muscle. He kept his yellow eyes fixed on Cavan. An orcish way of saying that the question was so obvious that it bordered on insult.
“You called me Cavan Kingsblood earlier.” Cavan nodded. “That’s true. I am a king’s bastard, and my uncle, a duke, sent his dogs after me to rob me of land I stand to inherit.”
“Asking the Firespear to help you press your claim might prove interesting,” the Hawkspeaker said. He gestured and the hawk on his shoulder took to the air. Another red-tail hawk alighted the same shoulder, differentiated only by having darker wings. But under the slowly darkening sky, Cavan couldn’t be sure.
“But,” continued the Hawkspeaker, “if that were your goal, you would have asked to speak to the chief.”
The Hawkspeaker smiled, and the smile was vicious. That smile did more than the scars on his shoulders or his missing ear to remind Cavan that the Hawkspeaker was also a warrior.
“Watching you prove yourself for that would have been interesting. But you came to me. I presume you seek a faster means to Oltoss than the road provides?”
Cavan nodded.
“I cannot promise you safe passage. Only passage.”
Cavan’s turn to stare unblinking at the Hawkspeaker.
The Hawkspeaker laughed. “A pity you were born a human. Very well. I will grant you passage, for the price of a favor.”
Cavan nodded. Always risky to promise a future favor, but he was starting to like the Hawkspeaker. And he needed to get to Oltoss quickly.
The Hawkspeaker looked at Amra. “You are the mightiest warrior of the three, and you managed a warrior’s portion of food. Promise that you will aid Cav
an in that future favor and I’ll grant you passage as well.”
Amra glanced at Cavan, then nodded.
“Which brings us to you.” The Hawkspeaker turned to face Ehren, who looked troubled by the attention. “You are no orc-friend. You are no great warrior. And you revere Zatafa, of all gods. Why should I grant you passage?”
Cavan wanted to answer. Had an answer all ready. But speaking for Ehren now would have belittled his friend in the Hawkspeaker’s eyes, which was the last thing Cavan wanted to do.
“It’s not enough that I only seek passage to aid an orc-friend?”
The Hawkspeaker shook his head. “And I need no blessings from the sun.”
“No,” Ehren said slowly, his smile building once more, “but your roc does.”
“Our cooks can butcher a roc.”
“But can they save all the meat? Three days since your hunters brought it down, and still they work just to butcher it. How much meat will they lose before they finish? How much will go foul?”
“No more than we would feed to the foundlings.”
“But a blessing from Zatafa can preserve it. Keep the meat whole and unspoiled until your cooks can finish with it. How many more orcs would eat well?”
“Even your foundlings might grow strong enough to join the clan,” Cavan said, caught up in the moment.
The Hawkspeaker laughed, and this time his laugh rang out into the growing twilight. The red-tail hawk on his shoulder took to the air, and Cavan thought he saw a flock of birds flee the nearby underbrush.
“Very well, Zatafista.” The Hawkspeaker came to his feet in a single, smooth movement as his legs unfolded beneath him. “My guards shall escort you to the roc where you shall grant your profane blessing while your companions wait here and I prepare the way. Our own priests will have to sanctify the meat before it is worthy again to be eaten by orcs, but you are right. There will be more food to go around.”
The guards stepped forward from guarding the mounts to surround Ehren as he, Cavan, and Amra came to their feet.
Amra looked worried about letting Ehren go off with the orcs, especially after all his worrying about blood sacrifices, but Cavan shook his head. This was no trick. He would stake — well, it seemed he would stake Ehren’s life on it. But he staked his own as well, because if anything happened to Ehren…
But Ehren smiled his confident smile, either certain of their intentions or certain that his god would save him if anything bad happened. Or maybe he was just smiling to unnerve the orcs. Cavan was never quite sure. But his white linen clothes were unstained by either their meal or sitting on the tramped-down wild grass, and his step was light as he joined his guards.
“Zatafista,” the Hawkspeaker said, just before the guards led Ehren away. When Ehren turned back, the Hawkspeaker finished, “I shall still expect you to aid Cavan when he grants me my favor.” The Hawkspeaker smiled. “But now I won’t expect you to violate your own faith to do so.”
“Then perhaps followers of Randech know something of wisdom after all.”
Cavan held his breath, but the Hawkspeaker only laughed and waved for the guards to proceed.
* * *
The quarter moon was half-risen by the time Iresk the Hawkspeaker finished his preparations. Ehren was well back by then, and Cavan could tell Amra itched to ask about the layout of the Firespears’ central camp. How many guards within the perimeter, how they were armed, the numbers they traveled with. All those sorts of things. Cavan could see those questions and others burning in her green-and-gold eyes.
But she knew better than to voice those questions here. And Cavan hoped she forgot them entirely, rather than risk asking them as they traveled through the passage the Hawkspeaker was preparing.
A passage along the borderlands between worlds. A place where gods and monsters walked. A place where space and time did not move as they did here. Cavan did not understand the details, not in the depth he might have had he succeeded as Master Powys’ apprentice, but he understood at least some little bit about it.
If they left tonight. They might arrive by morning. Or noon. Possibly the following morning. The arrival time was a detail that depended on factors Cavan had trouble reconciling in his head. Of one thing he was certain — this route would shave weeks off their travel. At the least. If they survived.
But first, the Hawkspeaker had to open the way.
He had not made his preparations where they ate, but back near the edge of the Firespears’ encampment. Shortly after Ehren had gone to bless the dead roc, the Hawkspeaker had called forth more attendants — more blue-green-skinned foundlings, by the look of them — who carried scythes and wood and woven baskets that smelled strange. Almost musty.
Cavan didn’t particularly think about smells though, any more than he wanted to think about food. That roc-blood-roasted boar did not sit right in his stomach. It hung in his mid-section like a tight ball of angry, and he could feel how it slowed his movements as his body attempted to beat it into submission.
The battle was a loud one.
Amra, despite her short-stature, seemed to have no similar problems that Cavan could hear. And her movements were as light and quick as ever, even if she’d had nothing to do but wait. Cavan would have sworn sometimes that the woman had the all-digesting belly of a dwarf. She certainly had the drinking capacity of a dwarf.
The foundlings led the procession a good distance from the encampment. Then, following the Hawkspeaker’s orders, they cut down the green and yellow wild grass in a wide diamond formation, some thirty strides across side to side. But the angles weren’t at the cardinal points the way Cavan would have expected. They must have signified something different.
Then the foundlings gathered up the stalks and carried them away while the Hawkspeaker’s apprentice took a maul that looked entirely too big for him and broke up any small rises or irregularities in the ground until the diamond of dirt was level.
Around the time the apprentice finished that step, Ehren returned. And if he had any problems digesting the orcish cooking, Cavan couldn’t tell. Ehren practically shone in the darkness, as though their meal had already processed for him and fueled his inner fire. Zatafa probably burned the meat away for him or something.
Next the Hawkspeaker took what Cavan had assumed was firewood, and laid the split logs end-to-end in the center of the clearing, forming part of the diagonal between two points. Chanting something in a harsh, guttural tongue, the Hawkspeaker then poured first water, then two kinds of oils over the logs.
The twelve logs. Cavan wondered what factor the number represented.
Ehren might have known something, from the way he nodded.
“What?” Cavan whispered.
“The twelve types of darkness.” Ehren never took his eyes from the work of the Hawkspeaker. “And water to quench. I’m not sure about the oils though.”
“Would you boys like to ask?” Amra said, apparently bored with the speculation.
Cavan and Ehren both shook their heads. Watching.
Amra sighed.
With the wood watered and oiled, the Hawkspeaker walked around one end of the wooden line to the far side. He carved marks in the dirt with his curved sword. Then he walked around the other end and carved different marks on the near side.
“Come forward,” the Hawkspeaker said.
Cavan led the way, Amra on his left and Ehren on his right, each a step behind. All three leading their horses.
The darkness was rising all about them now. Cavan could not see much beyond the diamond of dirt. The foundling assistants seemed to be gone, and the apprentice was somewhere in the background.
In front of them stood Iresk the Hawkspeaker. His skin seemed to darken with the night, deepening its shade of green even further. But his eyes. His yellow eyes seemed to glow even brighter than Ehren.
The Hawkspeaker reached into a pouch inside his lion skin belt and when he took his hand back out his fingers trailed rusty red…
Blood. It had to
be yet more blood.
It had been too long. Cavan had forgotten just how into blood orcs were. That was one reason he didn’t spend more time with them, even the ones he liked. That, and the cannibalism.
And yes, what was on the Hawkspeaker’s fingers smelled like blood, which made Cavan’s stomach gurgle and twist unhappily. But he could also smell something wild and floral, and underneath that something earthy. Apparently a number of herbs — and mushrooms if Cavan was not mistaken — had been blended into this bloody mixture.
The Hawkspeaker anointed Cavan beneath each ear, then beneath each eye. Beneath the nose came next, then beneath the lips, then finally the inner skin of Cavan’s wrists. The Hawkspeaker anointed Amra the same way, then Ehren. Then, to Cavan’s surprise, the Hawkspeaker anointed the horses as well, using the breastbone instead of the wrists they lacked.
To Cavan’s even greater surprise, the horses didn’t seem to mind the bloody paste.
More harsh, guttural syllables from the Hawkspeaker now, but this time Cavan could feel the breath of power within them. Every place he had been anointed felt cooler, almost icy, and a tingling began to spread throughout his body.
The night darkened around them. Even the bright moon above looked dull, tarnished. Its glow unable to shine upon Cavan.
“Mount,” the Hawkspeaker said. Cavan and his friends swung up into their saddles.
The Hawkspeaker spread the paste along his curved sword now, and when he whispered more power across it, the runes darkened to a blackness that seemed to suck light from the world around them. The darkness smoked, trailed as the Hawkspeaker raised his sword in both hands.
He stepped to the edge of the line of split logs.
With a roar the Hawkspeaker slashed down through the air, splitting the log he struck.
And with that, rending space itself.
Above the logs now was no longer visible the fields of wild grass, but a dark, pebbled trail within rocks the color of obsidian. Above the trail a midnight, starless sky.
“Follow the trail,” the Hawkspeaker said in Ruktuk. “Narrow or broad, do not leave it before the end. Go!”