Fire Hawk

by Justine Davis, Justine Dare

  He soon became aware that the legend of his warrior prowess was well known to the entire clan, and his physical presence did nothing to dispel the whispers of superhuman strength and utter ruthlessness in battle. He’d not heard some of the more exaggerated claims before now, and didn’t know quite how to feel that some actually seemed to believe he was immortal, except to wryly observe that it was quite likely he’d disprove that part of the legend fairly soon.

  That he was helping them was apparently the crowning achievement of Jenna’s short reign as the Hawk, and when she had announced to them that he would be acting as their general, the people had looked at her with almost as much reverence as they did Kane.

  That they loved her over and above the reverence was something he could not help but see, nor could he miss the reasons why; she knew each of them well, and despite the heavy burden she carried, she never failed to greet each of them daily, and ask if there was anything she could do to help them. They responded with a familiar yet respectful devotion that was tinged with the same sense of awe they exhibited toward him. What was missing was the fear, and while it had always suited his purposes before to have people fear him, he found it oddly bothersome now to have them all watching him so warily.

  All except the storyteller, who seemed only mildly amused by the entire situation. That alone intrigued Kane, and he planned to investigate that soon.

  He had spent the past few mornings with Arlen, learning the boundaries of the glade, although Arlen explained with no evidence of doubt or self-consciousness that they did not know exactly where the protection ended. Kane had been a bit taken aback when, at his request to see where the enemy was, the man had strode to within sight of Druas’s main encampment without making the slightest effort to conceal himself. Arlen had explained patiently that they would not be seen, as long as they stopped in the place he indicated.

  He’d not been able to make out much at this distance, other than that, as he himself had instructed long ago, Druas’s men had set his tents in a random pattern, so as to give no cover to any approaching enemy. He saw only a few men—Druas had indeed left a minimal force here—and they were too distant for Kane to tell if he knew them. He doubted he would; not many men lasted with Druas very long, and he was sure most of those he’d commanded would be long dead, either in battle or by Druas’s own hand for some offense real or imagined.

  When he’d told Arlen to carry on as they had been before his arrival, Arlen had nodded without hesitation; Jenna’s declaration that his orders were to be considered hers clearly was being taken seriously.

  Jenna.

  His stomach knotted, and he tried to shove aside the tension merely the thought of her wrought in him; it was as useless a task as fighting the need to come here had been. And the nights since he’d been here had been a torture unlike any he’d ever experienced, even when he’d been captured by Druas’s main rival and had discovered Druas was not the only one with unique approaches to convincing prisoners to talk. Fortunately he had managed to escape—killing only a single guard in the process, not the dozen the legend seemed to have progressed to—before experiencing more than a taste of it.

  But he would have welcomed it over the hell of lying in his makeshift bed beneath the trees, aching beyond belief for the woman who lay in the small cottage mere yards away. The woman who had once warmed his nights with an ardor he’d never thought possible for him, and was certain he would never find again, in this life or any other. The woman who had taken his breath away when he’d seen her standing there, lit by fire, in a dress that clung to her body, turned her eyes an even more vivid blue, and her hair to pure flame.

  He had thought of naming a price for his help, the same price he had demanded of her on the mountain. He had thought about it long and hard, and the temptation of sharing that sweet, hot passion once more had been a lure he had been hard put to resist. He wasn’t even sure why he had resisted it, why he had decided against it, except that the seductive memories of that time on the mountain seemed marred somehow by how they had come about.

  And, he thought wryly, the very real chance she would refuse him this time.

  Now, as he walked through her village, he glanced around at the people who hushed at his passage. Would it destroy the homage they paid her if she were to take the infamous warrior she had brought here to her bed? Or would it somehow, in some strange quirk of man’s mind and the power of myth, enhance it, as if they saw the joining of their precious Hawk and the one they saw as more myth than man as somehow fitting?

  By the heavens, he was getting feebleminded if this was all he could think about when there was an army bigger than any he’d ever seen in all his years in armor somewhere out there, waiting. He picked up his pace, aware of the eyes fixed upon him in the same way he was aware of the movements of any around him when he was preparing for battle.

  He didn’t really know where he was going; he just wanted to get away from the staring. He purposefully avoided Jenna’s cottage; she of them all he did not want to deal with right now. A smaller, even more modest hut caught his eye, the hut he’d seen the storyteller go into after Jenna had made her announcement that he was in charge. The door stood open, and he changed direction and headed that way.

  He wasn’t sure what the protocol was here, but he’d never paid it much mind before and felt no need to now. He called out a hail, and then stepped inside.

  The old man sat at a small table, bent over a piece of parchment, a quill in his right hand. It looked like the feather of a hawk, and Kane caught himself wondering fancifully if it was from the original hawk that had led these people here.

  “A moment, Kane the Warrior,” he said without looking up, and without the slightest trace of surprise or curiosity in his voice.

  “You expected me?”

  The old man finished the line he was writing, then lifted the quill from the page. For an instant he still touched it, running a finger over the soft feather as if the texture pleased him. Or as if in memory of something. Then he sat it down and looked up at Kane.

  “I expected you sooner,” he said.

  “Did you?” Kane asked.

  “I knew you would not long be able to resist your curiosity. Sit,” he added, gesturing toward a stool like the one he sat on. Kane took it gingerly; it did not look particularly strong, but it held him despite his size.

  “You know too much,” he said abruptly.

  “You underestimate your own fame. It spreads across the land, until there is not a man, woman, or child who has not heard of Kane the Warrior. You are legend.”

  Kane’s mouth twisted. “I never sought it.”

  “I know. But you have it, all the same. ’Tis why these people accept you so readily. They know you are a man who knows what they do not, who can do what they cannot.”

  “They will learn to do it, or they will die.”

  “Yes.”

  He said it calmly, so calmly Kane’s brow furrowed. “Who are you?” he asked again, then added pointedly, “I mean your name, not some clever dodging of my question.”

  “This from the man who goes by only Kane? I would have thought you would not require names from all you met.”

  Kane winced inwardly; the old man had stabbed true; what right had he to demand another’s name?

  “I am the storyteller here, nothing more,” the old man said again, leaning back against the table.

  Kane’s gaze narrowed. “And what are you elsewhere?”

  Something flashed briefly in the old man’s eyes, and Kane was reminded of the resemblance he’d forgotten until now. But today, in the light of day, he looked like nothing more than an old man, gray and weather-beaten. The resemblance to Tal was only in the eyes, and he supposed the sheer intensity there could make that so.

  “I am but a traveler, a . . . scholar of sorts, I suppose you could cal
l me.”

  Kane was not satisfied, but he had no time to dwell upon it, not with Druas camped on their toes. And the man’s words brought something else to mind.

  “You were not born here,” he began.

  “No. I came here . . . when Druas began his bloody rampage to the south.”

  Kane thought of asking where exactly he had come from, but guessed he would get yet another vague, parrying answer. Instead he asked, “Then you are not one of them. The Hawk clan, I mean.”

  “By birth, no. By philosophy? Yes.”

  “Philosophy.” Kane snorted. “Perhaps you should use that as your defense. If you cannot fight them, bore them to death with impractical visionary notions.”

  To his surprise, the old man laughed heartily. “I know some old stories that would quite likely do just that. There’s a tale of voyages in search of scholarly learning that goes on for days on end, and I promise you, ’twould at the least put you to sleep.”

  To his further surprise, Kane found himself laughing in turn. And when he voiced his next question, the challenging tone was gone.

  “You are not one of them, so perhaps you can explain. Why do they stay? Why did they not pack up and leave when they heard Druas was on the march? They had to know they had no hope to defeat him.”

  “They know. They have always known. But they have known as well that this is their place of destiny. It is sacred to them.”

  Kane’s lips tightened. “Their destiny is extinction if they persist.”

  The storyteller lifted a heavy brow, surprisingly dark beneath the silver of his hair. “You are saying you cannot help them?”

  “I am saying one man cannot defeat Druas.”

  “They do not wish to defeat him, merely to . . . turn him.”

  “If it were anyone else, I would say it might work. But Druas has dug in now. You have made him angry. He will not be moved.”

  “You have seen this before?”

  “Countless times. He is inexorable once his mind is set.”

  “Does he never encounter others who think they are also immovable?”

  “Of course.”

  “You have seen this firsthand? When you were with him?”

  Kane nodded, the old memories flitting around his head with the persistence of the flies that clustered on the bodies of the dead. He fought them off; he could not afford to fall prey to them now. He got to his feet and walked to the doorway, looking out at the village that was so unexpectedly peaceful.

  “I saw those who fought him,” he said at last. “Men fiercely determined to resist him. But they soon learned.”

  “And who taught them, Kane? Who carried out the lessons Druas ordered?”

  He spun around on his heel. He stared at the old man, who met his gaze with the same courage Jenna did. There had been nothing of accusation in his tone, nor was there any in his weathered face.

  “Who, Kane?” the storyteller asked quietly.

  “I did,” he spat out. “As well you know.”

  “I do,” the storyteller agreed. “But I was afraid you had forgotten.”

  “What I did in that time,” Kane said, his voice hoarse, “is not something I will ever forget.”

  The old man looked at him steadily, with that same compassion in his changeable eyes that he’d seen so often in Tal’s. “Perhaps you should not forget. Perhaps even evil memories have some use, if they keep you on the new path you’ve chosen.”

  Kane sucked in a breath at the uncanny accuracy of the old man’s guess.

  “And perhaps you can turn them to some good use,” the storyteller added. “If you are the force that made Druas immovable, then perhaps you will be the force to move him.”

  ARLEN LOOKED away guiltily, and Kane knew he’d been staring at the scar on his face. Imagining it the result of some huge battle or fight, he supposed. And he probably wouldn’t believe the much uglier truth if told it, Kane thought. Arlen was a good man, but he showed the signs of having been raised in a place like Hawk Glade; he trusted too easily and could not quite accept the utter evil of the man they were fighting.

  “The stronghold, how far is it from here?”

  “ ’Tis just outside the forest, to the west,” Arlen said.

  He watched from his seat on the fallen log as Kane paced before him. The shadows were long now, the growing darkness heightened by the thickness of the trees surrounding them.

  “It was already there when our clan first arrived here, according to the story,” Arlen went on when Kane did not speak. “Claren of Springwater, the old man who lived there, was the descendant of the man who built it, generations ago. He was a gentle soul. He and his wife and daughter often traded with us, game for grain.” A shadow crossed Arlen’s face. “They are dead now. Murdered, Mary and Regine raped and tortured. And Druas now lives in their home.”

  Perhaps, Kane thought as he looked at the sudden hardness of Arlen’s expression, he was not so trusting any longer. He sat on the log beside the man who was as close to help as Jenna seemed to have.

  “Describe it to me again.”

  It took a moment for the man to gather himself and go on, but when he did, it was in brisk, unemotional tones. He knew when there was no room for emotion, Kane thought approvingly. Or he had learned, in the harshest of ways.

  The diagram Arlen drew in the soft dirt was much as Kane had expected; square, corner towers, flanking towers, battle parapets around the top of the walls, and an inner courtyard with the various structures necessary for the maintenance of such a household. It was not large, but the stone walls gave it strength, and gave Druas a great advantage.

  “Did Claren not have fighting men of his own?” Kane asked.

  “But a few. They died trying to hold Druas off. But they were older, and he had not had any need of renewing his forces. There has been peace here for generations.”

  A sharp retort, that anyone who thought peace could be kept without cost was a fool, leapt to his lips, but he held it back. He was not sure why, except that he saw no gain and felt no pleasure in further berating a people who had already had their concept of life ripped apart.

  “What you said, when you came here,” Arlen said slowly, “that we should think of ourselves as already dead . . . is this the way you lived as a warrior?”

  Kane met the other man’s curious gaze, seeing in his eyes both genuine curiosity about something obviously foreign to him, and the wariness of asking anything at all of the legend. But he had asked, and Kane had to credit him again with more nerve than he had first thought.

  “It is the way I lived all my life,” he said.

  Arlen shook his head slowly, almost sadly. “ ’Tis a terrible way to live. Perhaps we have taken the protection of our glade too much for granted.”

  Kane gave Arlen a sideways look. “Jenna has spoken often of this protection. You all believe in it?”

  Arlen looked startled, and it took a moment for Kane to realize it was at his use of Jenna’s name. He wondered what the man would think if he knew that Kane the Warrior had taken far more liberties than simply using her given name rather than her title.

  “Of course we believe in it,” Arlen said hastily, recovering. “It exists. Countless times we have seen travelers pass us by without a look, when they could not have helped but see us were it not for the magic. ’Tis what keeps us safe. We can go to meet those we wish, and those who appear a threat we simply wait and let pass. They never even know we are here; they see only an impenetrable wood. It has ever been thus.”

  Something tugged at the fringe of Kane’s mind, memories of the times on the mountain when he’d been certain he’d been spotted by those hunting him. Yet they had passed on as if they had never seen him. Their weapons had never been drawn, nor had they shown any sign of even suspecting he was there, when he
knew they could not have missed seeing him.

  Countless times we have seen travelers pass us by without a look, when they could not have helped but see us were it not for the magic.

  Tal.

  Tal had been with him each time it had happened. Had Tal done something like this, had he used whatever his powers were to protect him? The thought, which once would have had him laughing in scornful disbelief, now made him feel an odd warmth.

  “Who put the spell on this place?” Kane asked softly.

  Arlen shrugged. “That we do not know. Legend has it that the first Hawk, who was also a healer, saved the child of a wealthy man, who offered her whatever payment she desired, including the services of his own sorcerer.”

  “And this place is the result?”

  “So says the legend.”

  Arlen shrugged again, in the manner only a man who had grown up with a legend and therefore found nothing odd in it could. But his warm brown eyes turned troubled then, his distress visible even in the last dim light of dusk.

  “But even the magic will not be enough if Druas does not change his course. What must we do?”

  Kane resisted the urge to say there was nothing they could do, that Druas would have his way if he had to burn this entire forest to the ground. He wondered for an instant why he was suddenly compelled to be so careful about his own words, why he felt the need to protect these gentle people from the grim truth. He’d never done anything like it before, and he wasn’t sure he liked it. He wasn’t sure he disliked it either, and that bothered him even more.

  “Have you any builders?” he asked.

  Arlen’s mouth went tight with pain again. “We had the best of builders in Latham, but he is dead.”

  He didn’t waste time on useless condolences. “No one else?”