She could not let this pass. If they had known enough to set such a trap, and she had no doubts that was what it had been, then they knew too much. They knew Hawk Glade was here, even though they could not find it. And if Druas was as Kane had described him, he would not stop until he did. He would find them, and because they had made it difficult for him, he would make it as appalling and monstrous as possible for them.
And she suspected he had just made his first move.
She lay sleepless long into the night. Visions of Lucas’s face haunted her. She remembered when the boy had been born, and how his parents and both his sisters had doted on him, yet he had remained remarkably unspoiled, giving back as much affection as he got. She remembered when Cara’s parents had been killed, early casualties of the battle they had not yet realized they were in, their bodies found on the path down from Snowcap, where they had ventured to show Lucas snow for the first time. Cara and her sister and Lucas had survived then, but now only Cara was left of them all.
“No!”
She sat up straight, her own protest ringing in her ears. She could not, would not accept it. She would do something. If she was right, and there was some motive to Druas stealing Lucas away, then she had to believe he was still alive.
And she had to do something. It was up to her; Kane had only been gone for two nights, and would not return—if he indeed returned at all—for two more. Besides, she guessed his ever-practical, ruthless mind would decide one small boy was not worth the risk.
We cannot afford to hold any one life too dear. . . .
He’d said as much, when he’d finished her sentence as he’d walked out of the night and stunned them all into silence.
You must think of yourselves all as already dead.
As much as she hated it, she knew he was right; only that kind of single-mindedness could possibly save the clan, and that some would yet pay the same price so many already had. But she could not accept that even the children must die. The adults, they had made their choice, when they had agreed to stay instead of attempting to flee, with Kane to lead them. But the children . . .
It was still dark when, decided at last, she rose and dressed quickly. She would go to the pond, she thought. She would go and see if perhaps there was some clue, some hint that Cara, in her frenzy, might have missed. Perhaps they had even left some message, some demand. Something. Anything. She could no longer just sit here and wait. Kane had counseled caution, but that had been before Druas had stolen a helpless child.
She hesitated, then picked up the small, lightweight crossbow Kane had made for her. She’d practiced with it until her shoulder ached, but now she hit her target more times than not, and it comforted her to carry it.
She felt no fear as she made her way toward the pond. Even in the darkness she knew her way; she knew every bit of Hawk Glade and the forest that surrounded it. It was only when she reached the pond that she would have to exercise due care, and it was for that moment that she carried the crossbow. She would not assume, as Cara had, that because there was no sign there was no one there; Kane had taught her too well for that.
When you least expect it you should most expect it, he had said, after one of his pointed lessons where, when she’d thought herself alone, he had startled her half out of her life by sending an arrow whistling past her ear to thud into a tree trunk barely a foot from her.
When she was within sight of the pond, when she could see the smooth surface of the water, she halted. She found a likely spot of cover and crouched behind it, waiting. It was a precaution she didn’t really think necessary, her faith in the protection of the forest was unshaken, but Kane had taught her never to take anything for granted when dealing with a ruthless enemy.
She waited for a long time; Kane had taught her patience as well, and that quiet waiting often prodded an enemy into betraying himself. Of course, Kane had also once taught the forces she might be facing here; she wondered if any of his teachings had been carried on after he’d gone.
And she wondered if the thought that had occurred to her during Cara’s painful recital could possibly be true.
As the gray light of dawn began to push back the night, the pond became more visible. And still Jenna heard nothing. Nothing to indicate there was anyone here but herself. She held her breath, straining to hear, but there was no sound other than the steady beat of her own heart, and the occasional trill of an early-rising meadowlark behind her.
When it became light enough that she was sure she could not miss any sign left behind by the men who had taken Lucas, she rose slowly, loading a bolt into her crossbow and drawing the string back until it caught on the nut for the trigger. She stepped out from her sheltered hiding place. She was not sure exactly where she would lose the safety of the forest; it was one of the problems of those born in Hawk Glade that they did not see it as others did; for them the glade was always visible, so there was no way to tell how it appeared to others and where the invisibility ended.
She should ask the storyteller how it appeared to him, she thought suddenly. And if he still saw it as an outsider, perhaps he could help them mark the boundaries, so they would know for certain. She should have thought of that when he’d first arrived. She would ask, as soon as she—
They were there, at least a dozen of them, before she could react. She whirled to run, but found them behind her as well. Surrounded, she raised the crossbow to her shoulder, wondering if she could take at least two of them down before they were upon her. She searched the slowly approaching men, looking for some sign of rank. Just as she found it, an epaulet of ribbon on one man’s shoulder, someone cried out, “Is it her?”
The man with the marking answered. “It must be. She matches what the boy said. How many can there be in these parts with hair the color of fire?”
Jenna shifted her aim coolly, centering the bow on the man’s chest; the bolts Kane had given her, he had said would pierce even the finest armor if fired with enough power—or at close-enough range. She figured ten feet was close enough.
The man she aimed at laughed as he kept coming toward her. “She has the fire to match her hair, just as the boy said. We have the Hawk.”
So she had not only walked into a trap, it had been a trap baited specifically for her. Jenna’s stomach knotted but she fought it down.
“They may,” Jenna told him, proud of the steadiness of her voice. “But you have nothing but the grave to face.”
He stopped, hesitating in the face of her unwavering aim and unruffled voice. “Do not be a fool, girl. There are too many of us.”
“I do not care how many others there are. I care only that you will not live past your next step. Or anyone else’s next step.”
“If you fire at me, you will be dead before your next breath.”
“I do not think so,” Jenna said, hoping she sounded more certain than she felt. “If your orders were to kill me, I would already be dead.”
The man looked reluctantly impressed. “So she has a brain as well,” he muttered. “A dangerous combination. I see why Druas wants her taken.”
He moved as if to take another step. Jenna’s finger tightened on the trigger of the bow. He stopped.
“If you kill me,” he said, “ ’tis the boy who will pay.”
Jenna froze.
“Druas will kill him most painfully. He delights in it, you know. It would give him great pleasure. He needs only to have an excuse.”
“Why has he not killed him yet, then?”
The man laughed. “Clever girl. Because he wants you, of course. If you come willingly, the boy will live. If you fight, he will die. But either way, he will take you.”
She could fight, could perhaps even kill one or two of them. But she could not win, that was obvious. He was right about that. “Why should I take your word that he will not be killed anyway?”
>
“Because it is your only chance. He will die otherwise.”
Kane had been right. She had thought with her heart instead of her head, and because she had ignored his warning, she was now faced with a decision that was really no decision at all. She had been unable to accept what he’d told her must be, and because of it, she was here, now, in enemy hands, with little hope of survival.
She lowered her bow, unfired; the bitterness welling up inside her made it far too heavy.
She had failed. She had failed at everything, failed her people, her family, her heritage, and in a strange way had failed Kane as well. Her people would die, and Kane would go back to his mountain alone, to live in utter isolation, probably to never remember the woman he had tried to help except as a hopeless fool who should never have left her precious glade.
KANE LAY IN the darkness, staring upward at the few stars that shone between the thick branches overhead. Sleep continued to elude him, although he rarely did more than doze lightly when he was on a foray such as this.
He’d been afraid his skills would have deteriorated too much in the years on the mountain, but they came back with a speed that surprised him. After the first day, it had been as if he’d never been gone, as if he’d never stopped this living on the edge, ever aware of his surroundings, expecting attack from any direction at any moment.
The only difference was that now, he found it hard to believe he had lived most of his life in this way. If nothing else, that simple awareness told him he had indeed achieved, at least in part, the transformation he’d been after. Tal was right, he’d been fighting within himself. He’d gone to the mountain to change, to leave his old life behind him forever, yet he’d fought the inevitable results of that change. He’d fought the gentling, the softening, thinking it wrong somehow, or impossible.
Yet how could a man such as he had been change, except to soften? He could certainly become no harder, crueler, or more ruthless than he had been. He began to understand what Tal had been telling him all along. He closed his eyes wearily.
“I wish you were here, my friend,” he muttered.
He meant it. He could well use Tal’s wit. And his magic, even if that was truly what it was.
’Twill take that to beat him, he thought. Even in his mind he did not name the enemy. For fifteen years, since he’d turned sixteen, he’d worn that man’s armor, had fought for him, killed for him.
Slaughtered for him, he corrected in silent abhorrence.
And now Druas had others who would do the same, others drawn by his high pay, and willing to put up with his brutal discipline for the chance at spoils of all kinds.
His eyes snapped open; he could not risk sleep, not now, not with such memories stirring so near the surface. He had no wish to wake with a scream on his lips, betraying his position to anyone who might be nearby. He had no idea if he was back within the supposed protection of the forest, or even if he believed in it. Without Tal around to provoke him, he found it hard to believe he’d ever taken such nonsense seriously.
If you leave these mountains, Kane the Warrior, you will no longer exist. You will cease to be. I have seen it, and it is truth.
Tal’s long-ago words, spoken on their first meeting, haunted him now. He’d stared at the man who would become his friend warily, wondering what kind of crazy man he’d encountered. Just the distant, unfocused look of those eyes was enough to rattle him, but the unshakable certainty of his voice had put the seal on it; he scoffed, he laughed, he shrugged . . . but he never forgot the warning. And in time, when he’d come to realize how rarely Tal was wrong, he’d come to believe.
So why, then, was he still alive?
“He didn’t say when,” he muttered to himself, wondering at the oddity of mixing reasoning with magic as he sat up, giving up on sleep for the moment.
He was too weary to deal with the paradox and turned his restless mind to more worldly concerns; the terrain he’d covered in the past three days. He had always had a knack for remembering ground once he’d walked it, and he now had a true picture of the forest in his mind, a grimly accurate assessment of the strength of the force that beset them, and thanks to a short exploration outside the forest after darkness had fallen tonight, he knew just how solid Druas’s stronghold was; the situation was not encouraging.
After he had slipped past the few sentries that remained on the perimeter—Druas was indeed nervous, he thought with satisfaction, to have drawn so many of his men back to protect his stronghold from the threat he could not find—it had not been hard to find the place. Arlen had said the stone-walled bastion was the largest structure for five leagues in any direction. Druas was following his old habits, taking over an easily defensible place that had belonged to some wealthy man he had murdered.
Kane had sat there, staring at the stone walls, thinking of all the times he had carried out Druas’s orders. He thought of what Arlen had told him about who the man who had owned this place had been, that he had an attractive wife and daughter. And tried not to think of what had happened to them; he knew they would have been turned over to Druas’s men as soon as the place was secured.
Druas himself had little interest in such things; blood and carnage and victory and land gained were his passion. Kane had also held himself above those kinds of spoils; rape was not to his taste. The drive for land seemed somehow easier to accept; that was one reason it had taken Kane a long time to realize just how evil Druas was. And how evil he himself had become.
But it hadn’t been until the day he himself had nearly killed that child, the day when she had offered herself in the hopes her small brother might live, that he had finally recognized that he was no better than the man he served, that he was perhaps even worse, because he carried out the orders of a cruel, vicious man when he knew they were vile. And the reason he had done it would win him no mercy when it came time for a final accounting.
Nor would the fact that he’d cast his lot against the man now, Kane suspected. He’d done too much, and come to this side far too late for that.
So why was he here?
He knew the question was pointless. He knew why he was here. He was here because even risking the fulfillment of Tal’s grim prophecy was better than sitting in that cold, empty cave wondering if Jenna was dead yet.
He scrambled to his feet, knowing now that sleep was not going to come. And as long as he was awake, he decided he might as well be moving.
He took the course he would have taken had it been light. His sense of direction and memory of the terrain was a skill that had never failed him; he was as sure of his path as if he’d traversed it countless times. But for once he wished he was less certain; he would have welcomed having to concentrate every step of the journey. It would have kept his mind off other things he’d already spent far too long thinking about.
Once, as he walked, the faint rustle of wings behind him made him stop in his tracks. A winged night hunter brought only one thing to mind, Maud, and he looked around, wondering if Tal was about to appear out of the darkness. But neither the clever raven nor the more clever man materialized, and after a moment Kane kept on, smiling wryly at his own fancifulness. The memory of that night when Tal’s voice had come to him in the cave had never left him. He’d been half expecting to see him since he’d arrived here. But Tal had said his powers were useless here, that the spell of Hawk Glade was too strong.
Only now did the significance of those words truly strike home to him. If Tal knew his powers were useless here, then he had been here. Perhaps even then, when his voice had echoed impossibly inside the cave.
Kane didn’t know what unsettled him more, that Tal was quite possibly nearby and yet not showing himself for some reason of his own, or that he himself had begun to think this way, accepting his friend’s mysterious capabilities as if he’d always believed in such things.
But he
did know what unsettled him most; the simple fact that even this, the contemplation of his best and only friend being some kind of sorcerer, was easier to confront than his thoughts of Jenna.
Cursing himself for a fool, he lengthened his stride. As he went he forced himself to consider the limited options left to them. He knew as well as he knew anything that Druas would not retreat, that he would not give up his plan to cut a path straight through the forest rather than go around. The man was unyielding and inflexible once his mind was set. And if he was opposed, his bullheadedness only grew stronger. There was no turning him away with resistance. Only richer plunder had ever turned him.
He thought about this as he strode on through the night, wondering what it would take to convince Druas it was greatly to his advantage to change his plans. There were no other plums ripe for the picking in this vicinity, and Kane doubted if Jenna would approve of solving their problem by intentionally passing it off to other innocents anyway. Harrying their enemy into passing them by was one thing; deliberately inciting them to attack others instead was something else again.
As he approached Hawk Glade in the light of dawn, he was still turning over ideas in his mind, wondering if there was some way to plant a rumor among Druas’s men of fabulous riches elsewhere, near enough to be tempting, yet far enough away to ensure the safety of Jenna’s people.
He stopped abruptly, instinctively, as his eyes told him he was about to collide with one or more of the trees before him, all of them growing so closely upon each other, their branches so intertwined, that passage between them was impossible. The impenetrable thicket stretched onward out of sight in the gray light of early morning. Anyone in possession of their senses could see there was no getting through, that this portion of the forest would have to be circled.
Which meant, he supposed ruefully, that he had lost possession of his senses.
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