Fire Hawk

by Justine Davis, Justine Dare

  And some, Jenna had decided when she reached her twentieth summer, never bloomed at all. Kane had made a poor bargain indeed, if he expected her passion to match her appearance; she just did not have it in her. As fascinating as she found him, as much as she found herself watching him simply to see him move in that powerful, gliding way, she knew she did not have it in her. She never had.

  Perhaps, Jenna thought as she clambered as quickly as she could up the particularly steep trail he’d sent her on today, he’d realized that she’d spoken the truth, and that was why he had not claimed her although they were fully a week into their agreement.

  She came to an abrupt halt in a small clearing as she came out of the trees to face a steep wall of rock, smooth in some spots, seamed with cracks in others. Still puffing a bit from the uphill run, she looked around curiously, but the trail seemed to end here. She waited, knowing Kane was close by; he always was. That he duplicated what she was doing with such ease was yet another goad that prodded her to keep going when she felt only like dropping to her knees and pleading for mercy.

  “Well?”

  His voice came out of the trees to her left.

  “What now?” she asked. “The trail ends.”

  “Does it?”

  He stepped out of the trees, as usual showing no sign of effort, not even quickened breathing. She wanted to take one of the stones from the detested pack and throw it at him. Except that he would probably just catch it and toss it back at her without a word, giving her only that annoyingly amused look that was still another goad that kept her going when she wanted to collapse.

  He stood beside her, looking up at the stone face of the cliff. Well, maybe not a cliff, it wasn’t quite that straight up and down, Jenna thought, but it was near enough.

  She risked a glance at him, wondering just what it would take to get this man to show the slightest sign of exertion. She wouldn’t ask for much, just a couple of deep breaths, a tiny drop of sweat, something. Anything. Anything that would move him from this seemingly impervious calm.

  Even passion?

  The thought hit her unexpectedly, and she nearly gasped. How could she so dread the call she feared would come every day, the call to join him in his bed, and yet spend so much time simply looking at him? And taking pleasure in it?

  Perhaps it was just that he was quite the most impressive man she’d ever seen. If ever one deserved to become a legend, it was this one. But the tales had omitted the beauty of him, of his stance, his way of moving, his eyes. . . .

  Her gaze flicked up to his face, unerringly drawn to the scar that marked his face, the thin, oddly neat white line that ran from his temple to his jaw. Knife? Sword?

  He turned then, catching her staring at him. At the scar. His eyes turned frosty, although he said nothing. Jenna started to utter a stumbling apology, then decided it would only make things worse.

  “If the trail continues,” she said instead, “I cannot see where.”

  “Can you not?” he said, his voice deadly quiet.

  “No, I—” She broke off suddenly, remembering how he had been staring up at the rock face. “Surely you don’t mean”—she gestured a little wildly at the crag—“that?”

  “It appears the only way.”

  “But that is impossible! I am no bird, to fly up such a cliff.”

  “ ’Tis hardly a cliff,” he said mildly. “And you may take off your pack.”

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice laden with mockery. “I suppose you have climbed it countless times, carrying your blessed sword?”

  “Countless,” he agreed, his tone unchanged.

  “Kane, I cannot.”

  It was the first time she’d ever refused anything he’d asked of her, but this, this was too much.

  He studied her a moment. “Have you a fear of heights?”

  “From a distance, no.”

  She thought she saw his mouth quirk. “It is not so hard. There are hand and toeholds aplenty. I will help you from here. And you will find the fear of falling a great motivator for improved balance.”

  “My balance is good enough.”

  “Good enough to fire a crossbow while running along a narrow stone wall? Good enough to shoot an arrow while leaping away from one shot at you? Good enough to move through the treetops like a wild thing, leaving no trail on the ground for your enemy to follow?”

  She sighed. He always had such reasons for everything he asked her to do, even the things that she could not see the purpose of. So many things to learn, and brutal, ugly reasons to learn them. And he had lived his life like this, with his mind taken up in such ways, how to kill and avoid being killed. She could not imagine such a life.

  But she could easily imagine it putting that dead look in a man’s eyes.

  She turned to face the steep wall of rock.

  “What must I do?”

  It was a moment before he answered, and when she glanced back over her shoulder, she caught a glimpse of pure admiration on his face that startled her. And then it was gone, and his usually expressionless mask had replaced it.

  “Climb,” he said simply.

  Chapter 7

  “YOU’RE PUSHING HER very hard.”

  Kane didn’t jump this time; he’d seen the raven circling overhead, far above even the woman who had nearly reached the crest of the rocky bluff, so he knew Tal was nearby. For the first time since she’d begun her slow, torturous climb, he took his eyes off Jenna’s slender figure. Tal was watching, not the woman clinging precariously to the stone wall, but the man who had set her to the task.

  “If I push her hard enough,” he muttered, “she just might survive a day or two when she goes back.”

  Tal didn’t ask why she was even still here, and Kane didn’t explain. He’d grown, if not accepting, at least used to the fact that there was little that went on that Tal did not know about. He only hoped he didn’t know the details of the bargain he and Jenna had struck; he wasn’t sure he cared to have his friend learn just how mercenary he could be.

  Tal looked thoughtful. “You almost sound as if you care if she does or not.”

  Kane shrugged. “I admire courage. I hate to see it wasted in a hopeless battle.”

  “Is it? Hopeless?”

  “A clan of farmers who have never held even a bow against a warlord’s fully armed force? How could it be otherwise?” He turned the subject before Tal could make him look at it too closely “Where have you been?”

  Tal waved vaguely toward the woods. “Rambling.”

  “You and your . . . companion have been scarce of late.”

  Tal grinned then, a flashing, brilliant grin that was infectious. “I saw you had decided to teach her. It seemed you had your hands full.”

  “Oh?” Kane drawled. “I thought perhaps you were afraid of my . . . student.”

  Tal’s grin widened. “Wary, perhaps. A man would do well to be wary around a woman as clever and determined—and as beautiful—as she.”

  “I thought you were free of such things.”

  Something flickered in Tal’s eyes, something shadowed and dark, and Kane wished he hadn’t said it. But it vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and Tal spoke easily enough.

  “I am. But because such things have no effect on me does not mean I don’t see them. I am not blind, my friend.”

  “Far from it,” Kane said wryly. “You see things no normal man could.”

  He didn’t deny it. For a long moment Tal just looked at him. “This . . . bothers you?”

  Kane glanced up at Jenna, who was nearing the top, both to check her progress and to gain a moment of time. Tal did not prod, did not persist. But the question he’d asked hung there between them, unanswered and disturbing.

  At last Kane faced his friend squarely. “I do
not know how to explain some of the things you know and do, without resorting to things I do not believe in. So yes, in that way, I am bothered.”

  “Yet you . . . remain my friend.”

  Kane’s mouth quirked. “ ’Tis worth the bother.”

  Tal smiled at his mocking tone, nodded in acceptance of the tribute, but his eyes remained serious. “Thank you. Some would not have your . . . tolerance.”

  It was as close as Tal had ever come to admitting there was something different about his unique gifts, something that would inspire intolerance in some.

  “I have known you nearly since I came here,” Kane said. “And while my judgment is . . . impaired in some areas, I do not doubt my first assessment of you. There is no evil in you, Tal. Only good. And that is rare enough in any man to be worth more than the dilemma I find myself in.”

  “Dilemma?”

  Kane grimaced. “Having a wizard as a friend, when I don’t believe in them.”

  It was Tal’s mouth that quirked upward this time. “Wizards, or friends?”

  Kane smiled wryly. “There was a time when my answer would have been ‘Both.’ ”

  “And now?”

  “You are my friend.”

  “And that is as hard for you to believe in as any wizardly doings, isn’t it?” Tal asked softly.

  Kane didn’t deny it. He couldn’t think of anything to say, and Tal already knew it was true. He glanced once more at Jenna. She had reached, at last, the top of the rocky face. It had taken her a very long time, but never once had she given up. She followed his called-out directions carefully, had sometimes been forced to stop and rest, but she had done it.

  She freed one arm from her last handhold, looked down and waved at him, triumph evident in every movement. She was, as Tal had said, beautiful. And never more than at this moment. He glanced back toward Tal, wondering if his friend were truly so dead to such things that he failed to respond to the lovely vision of Jenna in her victory, her slender body atop the precipice she had conquered, her red gold hair streaming in the breeze.

  Tal was gone.

  WAIT THERE.

  Kane’s words echoed in her head as she sat looking out from her steep perch. Wait for what? Not that she hadn’t earned a rest, a nice long one. Her hands and toes ached from the impossible climb, she had too many scrapes in various places to ignore easily, and the thrill of success was at last beginning to fade, leaving her with the daunting prospect of having to go back the way she had come.

  She flexed her sore fingers, groaning at the thought of putting them through that again, clinging to holds that were little wider than a fingertip. If the promontory had been any steeper, she doubted she could have done it. And if she were to be honest, now that it was safely done, it wasn’t that steep, merely a bit dizzying to one unused to climbing in such a way.

  And she did feel wonderful at having done it. And she had, as he had said she would, learned a great deal about balancing and controlling her body. Perhaps she wasn’t quite as angry at Kane as she’d thought—

  Her musing halted and her jaw dropped as he strolled out of the trees that ringed the top of the rocky bluff she had finally reached. She leapt to her feet. He looked so unruffled, strolling toward her with all appearance of ease.

  “Ready to go back?” He could have been asking her to take a Sunday promenade with him. “ ’Tis a pleasant walk, this way.” He gestured toward the trees he’d emerged from.

  “Are you telling me you . . . walked up here by some hidden, gentle path through the trees? While you made me scale that cliff like some mountain goat?”

  Her fury only seemed to amuse him. “I wouldn’t call you a goat, exactly, although you could use a bath.”

  “You . . . you . . .” she sputtered. She knew it was futile but she hit at him with her fist anyway. It was like hitting a tree trunk. And he laughed.

  “You’re the one who wanted the training,” he pointed out.

  She grimaced. She lowered her fist. She stared at him for a long moment. And then she sighed. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” She grimaced again. “And probably about the bath, too.”

  Kane chuckled. A little shiver went through her, as it did every time he laughed. He seemed so bemused by the sound, as if it had been a very long time since he had laughed. She wondered just how long it truly had been.

  She lagged a few steps behind him as he led the way down the path she’d not known was there. She’d spent much of the last week hating him, the rest being unwillingly fascinated. Even now she caught herself staring at him again, at the smooth power of his stride, the taut alertness of his body, as if he expected attack even in this place he called haven. His dark hair fell past his shoulders, gleaming whenever he reached a spot where sunlight worked its way through the trees. In her mind’s eye she could clearly see his face, intense, with planes more hewn than carved, that long, thin scar serving as warning as much as reminder. He was nothing like the men she knew. The faces she remembered were different in some fundamental way, not so much on the outside as in their expression.

  The faces she remembered, before the trouble began, were clear and untroubled. Soft even, she supposed. Kane’s jaw could have been chipped out of granite, and his expression spoke of trial, tribulation, and pain, and she wondered what dreadful sights he had looked upon in his years as a warrior.

  Were it not for the storyteller’s words, she would have thought him hardened beyond redemption. He’d certainly been unmoved by her pleas. Yet did it not speak of a soul not truly lost that he had come here at all, that he had turned away from his warrior’s life and come here seeking only to fight no more?

  A small twinge in her shoulder made her grimace, but it felt no worse when she moved it and she knew it was merely strain. She nearly laughed at herself then, for thinking there was any softness in this man. He’d pushed her, prodded her, yelled at her, and then seemingly gone out of his way to dream up even more absurd things for her to tackle. Everything, it seemed, except what she needed to learn.

  She wondered if he was testing her somehow, testing her resolve before he moved on to the weapons she needed to learn. She hadn’t failed yet, but if he kept pushing—

  Her thoughts halted abruptly. She hadn’t failed yet. She thought back over the past few days. He’d made her exert herself in ways she never had before. He’d made her do things she never would have thought herself able to do. But she hadn’t failed yet.

  And until today, when her shoulder was virtually well again, he had asked nothing of her that would have put undue strain on it. And however hard he had pushed her, however impossible she thought the task he set her to, she had somehow always found the strength to do it. Even when she would have sworn she couldn’t, she found that last ounce of determination. . . .

  Could it be? Had he judged her so well, that he had pushed her to her limit, but never beyond? Had he truly been that exquisitely careful, demanding everything, but never more than she had?

  She pondered this until they came out of the woods by the cave, much sooner than she had expected. He looked back at her and clearly read her expression of surprise.

  “You must be always aware of where you are, and where that point is in relation to everything else. There may be times when your normal path is cut off, and you must find a new way to reach your goal.”

  She thought of the morning when he had led her on a long trek through forest and clearing, uphill and down, sometimes seeming to double back on their own tracks. At last he had stopped, turned to her, and told her to lead them back. She’d stared at him in shock, having no idea which way to go in this strange place. She would not soon forget the lecture she’d gotten on watching her back trail in case she had to retreat through unfamiliar territory.

  “Retreat?” she’d said, embarrassed. “I would think that word unknown to the great Kane.�
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  “Knowing when to fall back is as important as knowing when to stand and fight. Those who are too proud to retreat die early.”

  This time she knew better than to dispute his words; she merely nodded in acceptance.

  “Good,” he said. “When you are on your own ground, you will know where you are, but there may come a time when you must take the battle to the enemy, in his domain. You must always have your escape planned, and more than one route. Make sure all your people know them, and know what to do should they get separated from the group.”

  She nodded again. This, at least, was what she had come for. Perhaps he had not let her even handle a weapon yet, but he had begun these lessons immediately. She wasn’t sure what use she would put them to, but she told herself not to question the teacher she’d come so far to find.

  She watched as he walked over to the cave entrance. He bent to pick something up, and when he came back toward her she saw he held a plump pheasant.

  “And you think our forest magical?” she said; she knew the bird had not been there when they had left this afternoon.

  “This,” he said, “is not courtesy of the forest.”

  “What, then?”

  “Who.”

  Her forehead creased. “What is it, some kind of offering?”

  “In a way.” He gave her a speculative look before he added, “ ’Tis courtesy of the local wizard.”

  Jenna blinked again. She sensed she was being tested in some way again, but she did not know what result he wished.

  “You have . . . a wizard?”

  Kane shook his head sharply, not in negation it seemed, but more at his own folly. “No,” he said, denying his own declaration in a very wry tone. “Just a friend who is far too clever.”

  He did not look convinced, and Jenna wondered just who this friend was. She would, she admitted, wonder about anyone with the temerity to befriend the mythical Kane.