Kane’s mouth quirked, and Jenna spoke quickly to forestall the laughter she was sure was coming; what other reaction could she expect from this hardened warrior whose cold ruthlessness had elevated him to the status of legend?
“I know it sounds odd, to take a wild bird as a messenger, but—”
“No.”
She drew back a little, surprised.
“No . . . what?”
“I don’t think it odd, a bird as messenger. But most would. They followed this . . . ancestress of yours? On such a fool’s pilgrimage?”
Jenna drew herself up straight. “Marrifay was a very wise woman. It was only due to her leadership that they had survived thus far. Of course they followed her.”
“And she was your . . . grandmother?”
“No, this was much longer ago than that. She was the grandmother of my grandmother’s grandmother.”
Kane’s mouth quirked again. “So that is . . . seven generations?” Before she could answer, he went on. “Impressive. Not many can know their lineage back so far.”
Something in his voice made her uneasy, but she could read nothing in his face in the rapidly fading light. Nothing except the sternness that seemed his usual expression. She wondered that he dwelt on such unimportant things, then, with sinking heart, wondered if all she was saying was unimportant to him. Wondered if he had no intention of bestirring himself to help her, and therefore nothing she told him was of any consequence.
It could not be so. She could not let it be so. She went on determinedly.
“They soon came to a thick forest that ran rich with game and was dotted with clearings full of harvestable plants. It was, as you say, a miracle. The clan wished to stop right away, but Marrifay made them continue. At last she came to the largest clearing they had yet encountered, and she declared them home. For there, the bird sat waiting.”
She waited then, again expecting laughter at the least. Instead, he merely nodded.
“I see. The bird was a hawk. Hence Hawk’s Glade, and the Hawk clan.”
“Yes.”
She was pleased that he had guessed the rest of the story, and seemingly accepted it so easily, but it was that very ease that worried her; he did not seem a man to take well to such things. And she had more of the same to tell him, and she was certain he would laugh before she was through; to an outsider the tale could sound nothing less than absurd. To accept it would be to admit belief in inexplicable things, a belief that could cost one dearly were it found out by those many who looked upon such things as coming from demons, or worse. But she had no choice; he must know what they were dealing with in order to help them.
And he must help them. He must.
“It was not until they had been there some time that it became obvious this was no ordinary forest. Not only did it abound with game, but even after months of trapping the number did not seem to lessen. The crops flourished beyond anything anyone had ever seen, yielding so much there was abundance for all. There was the perfect amount of rain, and sun, and it was never too cold or too hot.”
“Paradise indeed,” Kane muttered. “I’m surprised you were not overrun with folk eager to partake of such bounty.”
“That was yet another way in which the forest was . . . unusual. On the few times when outsiders approached our village, even though they passed close by, they never stopped, as if they had never seen the village at all, though they must have.”
Kane’s brows lowered, and she felt his suddenly sharpened gaze as if it were a physical thing. She sensed it was not just the Hawk story that had caused this sudden intentness, but she didn’t know what else it could be. Perhaps he’d decided she was crazy, or worse, a witch or sorceress of some kind, and was even now wondering if he should kill her. She went on hastily.
“The Hawk clan has lived in peace since that time. There were minor disputes, as there always are among people living in a small place, but they were quickly resolved. Yes, like any other clan, we have the occasional outlaw, but they soon depart for other climes. We have little worth stealing, except that which cannot be stolen.”
Jenna tried to concentrate on what she should say next, but found it difficult under the steady gaze of those gray eyes. All she could do was remember how flat and dead they had looked. And she wasn’t sure she liked what she saw there now very much better. He looked away then, tossing a piece of wood on the cooking fire that had nearly died out. A shower of sparks arose, and a few moments later there was a series of loud snaps as the resin in the log heated and popped.
He lifted his head to look at her. “Why you?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Why were you sent to . . .” He paused, then lifted one shoulder, causing the pelt he wore to gleam in the last rays of sunlight. “To approach the lion?”
The lion. It was a lion’s pelt he wore slung over his shoulder.
The serpent’s tongue, the lion’s roar . . .
The storyteller’s words echoed in her head. So he’d been right all along. As he usually was. She had indeed heard the lion’s roar; it simply had not been in the way she’d anticipated. She nearly smiled.
“Jenna?”
She shook her head, as if the action would somehow release her from the odd sensation that seemed to make her senseless whenever he spoke her name.
“Why you?” he repeated.
“Because it is my duty. As the Hawk.”
“As what?”
“The hereditary leader of the Hawk clan.”
He seemed to go very still. “So that explains why you refer to them as ‘your people.’ You’re . . . the leader of this clan?”
She took in a deep breath. “Not . . . by choice. The Hawk was to have gone to my brother.”
“The Hawk?”
“It is the badge of office. A golden Hawk, that is passed from leader to leader. My family has held it since the beginning. They voted Marrifay as the first Hawk, and it has passed down directly to her descendants.”
“And now you hold it?”
“I do. My father became the Hawk after my grandfather died. It passed to my mother when my father died.”
“It passes out of the direct bloodline?”
He sounded merely curious, not critical, so she answered him evenly. “With the understanding it will pass to the children of the bloodline in turn. But while she held it, my mother was the Hawk as much as my father was, and so she was treated.”
“Interesting.”
Jenna shrugged. “When you marry a Hawk, you become one as if by blood, in the eyes of my people.”
“What happened to your brother?”
The anger burst through her, catching her unaware; it had driven her to complete her journey, but she’d been too weak for the luxury of it until now.
“He was murdered,” she ground out. “Just as my mother was before him. By a bloodthirsty, evil man who wishes to steal what must be given. And is willing to slaughter an entire people to get what he wants.”
She could see his face more clearly now, thanks to the firelight. Kane looked as if he’d just received an answer to a question that he had been carrying for some time.
“And what is it he wants?”
“Our forest. It is in his way, and he must go through it, to make his way north, or go a very long way around, since our forest is at the base of Snowcap.” Her voice was still full of anger. “He will kill us all, for a shorter path.”
“And now you wish revenge?”
“Of course I wish revenge,” she snapped. “But ’tis a luxury I cannot afford.” And then it struck her what he’d meant. “You think that is why I came here, to seek your help in avenging my family’s death?”
“Is it not?”
“It is not!” She rose abruptly, ignoring the twinge she felt i
n her ankle; she’d pampered herself long enough. “There is far more at stake here than my own pain or heartache. Yes, I wish revenge. They have taken from me those I hold most dear and left me alone. But my pain is insignificant next to the pain of my clan. They are dying, Kane. There are already so few left we may not survive. We know nothing of fighting. Nothing of war. We never had to learn.”
“Does not your magic forest protect you?”
She searched his face for some sign of sarcasm, but found only a coolness that reminded her just who this man was. “It protects only the glade itself, where the village is. Anyone who sets foot outside it, to check the snares, or harvest crops, is vulnerable.”
She paced before him, between the log he sat upon and the fire, thinking irrelevantly that the heat radiating from the man was nearly a match for that radiated by the fire. She put her right foot down solidly, ignoring the pain despite the fact that it was threatening to make her queasy.
“It is not for my family that I am here. It is for something much larger, much more important.”
She turned then, turned to face him, knowing this moment was crucial to her quest, that she must convince him now, and that she must not show the slightest sign of her terror that she would fail. “He values courage,” the storyteller had told her. “It will move him where little else will.” She hadn’t questioned the old man’s knowledge; by then she was already committed to what might yet turn out to be a fool’s errand.
“Can you see that, Kane? It is not my family, nor even my friends that have driven me to you. It is so much more. It is Hawk Glade and all it represents. Generation after generation living in peace, of people safe in their homes, of elders living to ripe old ages, their wisdom treasured, and children running happy and safe, and free to grow up to become whatever they wished to be. Of people freed of daily cares, and able to turn their hearts and minds to wondrous things, to paint, to tell stories that will forever be passed on, to make music so sweet and beautiful it squeezes your heart.”
“How,” Kane said, “are you certain you are alive?”
It took her a moment, then she smiled sadly. “Is that truly how you judge your life, Kane? By how much pain you experience?”
“Or how much I can inflict.”
The words were harsh, his voice bitter, yet there was something in his eyes, something she felt to the depths of her soul, a certainty that those cold words had been a cry of pain in themselves.
“Kane—”
Something of what she’d felt must have echoed in her voice, because he recoiled as if she’d offered him pity.
“I cannot help you.”
Panic seized her. “But—”
“I cannot,” he repeated, and stood. He towered over her, but her desperation made her hold her ground.
“But you must.”
“No.”
“If you do not, my people will die!”
“Then they will die.”
He once more walked away from her. This time it was she who felt dead inside.
Chapter 4
KANE STRODE through the night, each step pounding home his conviction; there was nothing she could say or do that would convince him to take up his sword again, to kill again. And while she might be willing to die for her people, he certainly wasn’t. And death would be exactly what he would be facing, if ever he left the safety of these mountains.
He wondered, mainly because it kept his mind off the woman who refused to leave him in peace, when he had become so convinced of that. Was it simply because Tal had told him, and he’d come to learn Tal was rarely wrong? Even when he refused to tell Kane where the prophecy had come from, from what source he had heard the prediction that if the mythical warrior known to all as Kane ever left his mountain haven he would cease to be, Kane found himself believing. He who never believed in that sort of thing, who thought people’s fear of magic and sorcery absurd because such things did not exist, found himself believing in this; such was Tal’s power of persuasion.
His power of persuasion and a record of never making a mistake, Kane thought wryly. That was hard to disregard. It was eerie. Uncanny. More even than the fact that the man apparently communicated directly with that silly raven of his.
Yes, if ever there was a man he could believe a wizard or worse, it would be Tal. And he liked him in spite of it. How could he not? Tal was the only man he’d ever known who didn’t look at him as either a myth come to life or a thing with which to terrify small children into behaving.
Or a tool to be used.
Kane stopped dead. No, he protested silently, not now. I cannot deal with this now.
But it was to no avail; the memories, so long held at bay, rose up in a wave, threatening to engulf him. Memories of another man, who had looked at him and seen only a tool to be used. A deadly, merciless, very effective tool.
He fought the memories down. Or tried to; it had been so long he’d almost thought himself free of them, and had lost the knack. He was losing now. The bloody images were growing stronger, the dying screams were growing louder, and the thread that held them all together was the remembrance of how easily he’d done it, stepping over and on the bodies of those he’d killed, or had killed, never taking his eyes off the goal, just as he’d been taught.
Until the day he’d looked down to find himself staring into the face of a child, a sweet-faced little girl, huddled protectively over the shape of a smaller boy. A child who reminded him of his own dead sister as she had so often tried to protect him. A child who had stared up at him with the eyes of an ancient, and begged him not to kill her brother.
Until the day he’d looked down at that child and realized he was ankle deep in blood and carnage. Until the day he’d looked down at that perfect, angelic child, and she had bent her head as if offering her slender neck to his blade in payment for the safety of the boy she sheltered. As his sister had offered her battered face to their father’s vicious backhand, so that he wouldn’t turn on the younger, smaller Kane. . . .
He was running. He hadn’t even realized it until now, until he had to work harder to draw air into his aching lungs, until the hammering of his heart echoed in his ears.
He didn’t stop. He knew he couldn’t outrun the evil visions, but he had to try. For if they caught up with him again he would be lost. Utterly, truly lost. Whatever tiny bit of his soul he’d managed to rediscover and hold on to here on the mountain would be lost, washed away by the flow of bloody memories. He knew it, without knowing how or why he knew.
He ran. Heedless of his direction, or the noise he made with his passage, he who usually moved with the stealth of the lion whose pelt he wore, instead crashed through the underbrush, recklessly, loudly.
In the darkness, a root caught his toe and sent him tumbling forward. He somersaulted, came to his feet in the same motion. He ran on. He hit a patch of loose shale and nearly lost his footing; he skidded downward until he reached solid ground again. He ran on.
It was the stream that was finally his undoing. He misjudged the depth and stumbled, at last falling to his knees near the far bank. The water was icy as it ran down from the snowfields above. He sat on his haunches, welcoming the cold, the numbness it promised. He would do it, he thought. He would end it, once and for all. He had to.
“Kane.”
It seemed faint, far away, but he was vaguely aware of someone or something close by. That it spoke his name told him it was human rather than predator, but who knew better than he that the most vicious predator of all was man?
“Kane.”
It came again, and he tried to lift his head. He saw a lean, wiry figure, clad in simple leggings and tunic and boots. He saw the raven’s head carved on the hilt of the dagger.
Tal.
Slowly he raised his head.
Tal took one look at his face and swor
e, low, harsh, and heartfelt. Kane felt, as much as he was capable of feeling anything at the moment, Tal’s hands strongly gripping his shoulders.
“Look at me.”
Kane blinked. Tal’s hands tightened.
“Look at me!”
Tal, Kane thought with an odd sense of detachment, could have commanded a battle force with that voice. He’d never heard it from him before.
“Damnation, Kane, look at me! Now!”
He blinked. Focused.
Tal’s eyes were glinting gold, reflecting far more light than should be available here in the darkness. Kane stared at the odd glow as if transfixed.
“Let it pass, Kane.”
Tal’s voice had changed, become soft, coaxing. Kane listened, then felt an odd sensation, as if he’d found some new source of energy.
“Release it,” Tal urged, never looking away, the golden gleam growing stronger, his grip on Kane’s shoulders never wavering. And slowly, bit by bit, Kane felt the pressure inside him began to ease. He heard Tal suck in a quick, sharp breath, as if he’d taken a blow. But when he spoke, his voice was as gentle as before.
“Give up the past, Kane.”
Kane took a breath. The string of grim, vicious images slowed. He took another breath. Tal kept looking at him steadily. Kane knew that the infusion of strength, and the lessening of pain, was somehow coming from Tal. He didn’t know how, couldn’t care; he could only take the gift.
“ ’Tis all right, my friend.”
Kane felt a shudder ripple through him as the images finally faded away. “I . . .” He shook his head. Blinked.
“Kane?”
He shuddered again, but this time it was from the cold of the stream he was kneeling in. “I . . . I’m all right.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
Fire Hawk Page 5