Fire Hawk

by Justine Davis, Justine Dare

  For a moment he simply listened, not for any sound from within the dense thicket, but for any sound from outside it, any threat on the flanks or from the rear. He heard nothing. When he was as certain as he could be that it would not get him killed, he took a deep breath and closed his eyes; he had not yet managed the kind of faith that would let him do this with his eyes wide open.

  He walked forward, straight into the impassable barrier of trees.

  A moment later he heard the sound of voices. He opened his eyes. The village was there, unchanged since he’d left it three days before.

  Or perhaps not. There was a knot of people gathered, even at this early hour, in the yard before Jenna’s cottage. They looked disturbed. Worse, they looked distraught. He spotted Cara, the pretty blonde who was Jenna’s friend; tears streaked the woman’s face beneath reddened eyes that looked as if she had been weeping for days.

  And then someone called his name, in such tones of relief that he felt a shiver of foreboding.

  “ ’Tis Kane, come back! He will save her!”

  Jenna.

  He knew it with a certainty he did not, could not question. He knew it just as he knew it was this that had driven him to walk through the night to return here. He fought the sickness that roiled inside him and walked toward them.

  “Where is she?” he asked without preamble.

  For a moment they said nothing, but glanced at each other somewhat fearfully. Cara began weeping anew, and Evelin put an arm around the girl to calm her.

  “Where is she?”

  It was a demand this time, given in the tone of a man well used to instant obedience. Arlen drew himself up and faced Kane as a man facing execution.

  “She is taken. Druas has her.”

  Chapter 20

  KANE FOUGHT down the nausea that rose in his throat. Jenna, in the hands of the man who haunted him, the man who had made him what he was, a cold, ruthless soldier who never questioned orders, only followed them.

  Don’t blame him, he ordered himself sharply. You’re the one who went along. You’re the despicable coward who couldn’t stand up to him, wouldn’t even try to stop him.

  “What will you do?”

  Kane looked at Arlen, his expression betraying nothing of his thoughts. When he spoke, it was not in answer; he had no answer. Instead, he asked for the details of Jenna’s capture. He listened impassively as it was explained to him. He did not even grimace as Evelin laid a long lock of fiery hair across his palm, explaining that it had been found near the pond, tied to the branch of a low-growing shrub.

  “ ’Twas left as proof Druas has her,” the healer said.

  “You’re sure of this?” Kane asked, his voice flat, unemotional.

  The older woman eyed him for a moment, then drew something out of the pocket of her smock.

  “As certain as this can make me,” she said, handing a narrow triangular strip of cloth to him.

  Kane did not need to unfurl it to recognize it. He knew this pennant too well; he had carried it for a decade. Yet he let the small banner unroll anyway, staring fixedly as the emblazoned viper came into view.

  Druas.

  And then, heedless of his weariness after his sleepless night of travel, he ordered Arlen to show him the place where it had happened.

  Arlen was frightened, that was clear. Whether it was of going to the place where the boy and Jenna had been taken, or of he himself, Kane didn’t know. But Arlen drew himself up and nodded, and started off.

  He was a good man, Kane thought as they left Hawk Glade and started through the forest. He was a good man doing his best in a situation he was not suited for; he was afraid, yet he had never shirked the dangerous tasks that had been assigned him.

  This was true courage, Kane thought suddenly. His own much vaunted bravery had been merely the result of not caring overmuch if he lived or died; it was when you did care, when you feared death, and risked it anyway for what you believed in, that the true worth of a man came out.

  Which proved, he supposed as he followed Arlen through the trees, that what he himself possessed, whatever it was, was something much less commendable. This was no surprise to him, merely another reason to despise what he was. Another reason to wish he’d had the courage to simply end it instead of running away and hiding.

  Another reason he wasn’t good enough to bow before the likes of Jenna, the Hawk. Her pure, noble courage was far too rare to be squandered on the likes of him. That she had paid the price he’d demanded of her without flinching, indeed with an innocent, honest response he’d never expected or known before—and certainly did not deserve—only made her more extraordinary . . . and he himself more contemptible.

  But it was too late to undo the past. Nothing could change what had passed between them, and Kane admitted ruefully he would not even if he could. He would not give up those precious memories of nights spent cradling her in his arms as she slept, memories of losing himself and all the pain and self-disgust and bitterness in the glorious heat and sweetness of her body, memories of the odd sensation of pride that had overtaken him countless times as he had watched her determinedly set herself to learning what she needed to help her people.

  And not for his own life would he give up the memory of the night she had invited him, free of the coercion of their bargain, into her bed.

  No matter that he did not deserve any of it, he would keep those memories, treasure them as he’d treasured little else in his life. They would not keep him warm at night, but they at least would remind him it had once been possible to overcome even the fierce chill that held frozen what little he’d kept of his soul. It had been possible. With Jenna.

  He fought off the swirling emotions; he had no time for such things. He’d never had time for such things, had indeed thought he’d successfully purged even the capability of feeling them. Until Jenna had come into his pitiful life and brought them all surging to the surface. Until Jenna had taught him he hadn’t killed them, he’d only buried them alive.

  He saw the glitter of water through the trees in the instant before Arlen began to slow down.

  “ ’Twas there that the boy was taken,” Arlen said with a gesture of one hand that betrayed his nervousness with a tremor.

  “And you’re certain Jenna came here?”

  “She loved the boy. ’Tis what she would do.”

  Kane’s jaw tightened. Of course it was. He had to look away from Arlen’s weary, tense face; the look of worry in the man’s eyes reminded him too much of the kind of woman Jenna was, to inspire such love in her people. And it was then, when he moved his head, that he spotted the lone figure crouched by the edge of the pond.

  His instant reaction was to tense; it was not like him to be so unaware of another’s presence. But when he saw the morning light reflecting off the pond and glinting on the silver hair of the man beside it, he relaxed.

  “Go back,” he ordered Arlen. “I will return shortly.”

  Arlen hesitated. He shifted his feet nervously before blurting out, “We must do something. We cannot leave her in that butcher’s hands.”

  “I know.” Kane said it flatly, coldly. But Arlen apparently understood Kane’s tone was not aimed at him, for he did not cringe away as most did when they heard it. Or else he had again underestimated the man’s nerve.

  “We will follow you, all of us. We know little of fighting, only what Jenna—I mean, the Hawk has taught us, but we will die to the last of the clan to save her.”

  “I know,” Kane repeated, but this time his tone was low, soft, nearly wondering. “Go now.”

  This time Arlen obeyed, with a haste that betrayed his gladness to be away from this place. Kane did not watch him go; he had turned back to look at the motionless figure beside the pond. The old man did not look at him, although Kane thought he had to have realized he
was here.

  He wondered briefly if this was some sort of contest of wills, if the old man was refusing to come to him, or simply waiting to see if Kane would come to him first. Kane found he cared little about the balance of power between them at this moment, and started walking. He spared an instant to think of the oddity of that idea, that there was a division of power between him and this old man. Yet he could not deny that there was something commanding about the storyteller, some sense of mastery that made the thought less improbable than it seemed it should be.

  He came to a halt before the old man, who was still crouched at the water’s edge, staring at the glassy surface as if the answer to all the questions of the universe were displayed there. He did not react to Kane’s presence at all.

  Kane was not used to being ignored, and he opened his mouth to speak. But something about the intensity of the storyteller’s concentration forestalled him, and he held his tongue. That intensity, that focused intentness, reminded him of something, but before he could pin it down the man shook his head sharply, as if coming out of a reverie.

  The storyteller showed no surprise at Kane’s presence, so he had at least been aware of him despite his engrossment. He stood up. Not, Kane noted curiously, like an old man whose joints protested the long time in an uncomfortable position, but like a young man, easily, smoothly.

  “She stood up to them,” he murmured, still looking at the water. “Held them off by picking out their leader and drawing her bow on him. She has more courage than even I thought.”

  He spoke as if he’d witnessed it, Kane thought. Perhaps his storytelling again; had not Jenna said he spoke of great battles as if he’d been there?

  “I should have been able to help her,” the storyteller muttered angrily, glancing at Kane. “It’s this spellbound place.”

  “Why,” Kane said neutrally, “would you think you could have helped her, against Druas’s men?”

  The old man looked startled, and for a moment Kane wondered if perhaps he’d been wrong, that the storyteller hadn’t been aware of his presence after all. Then the old man glanced down at his weathered hands, as if seeing them for the first time. The movement made his silver hair fall forward in front of his eyes, and Kane saw him look at it. His mouth twisted ruefully.

  “This place is enough to make a man forget who he is,” he said in a voice that matched his expression.

  It was an odd thing to say, and not for the first time Kane had the feeling that there was much more to this old man than he or any member of the Hawk clan knew. And he had not forgotten that the storyteller had so far avoided answering any direct questions about his identity.

  As if he sensed Kane’s thoughts and wanted to head off any more of those questions, he asked one himself. The one Arlen had asked, the one Kane himself had not answered.

  “What will you do?”

  Kane still had no answer. He stared down at the glimmering sheet of water, as the old man had, but he did not expect to find any answer there. Unless he drowned himself in its cool depths, this pond held no solution for him.

  His mind was lashing out, flogging him with accusation and guilt. He was Kane the Warrior, yet he stood here, pondering, while Jenna was in the hands of the man he hated most.

  “Do you still have some . . . loyalty to Druas?”

  Kane’s head snapped up, his hand instinctively reaching for the hilt of the sword that hung at his side. The old man didn’t move, didn’t even react, as if he hadn’t seen the threatening motion. He merely watched Kane thoughtfully, assessingly. And something in those eyes stayed Kane’s hand.

  “I should kill you for that insult,” he muttered.

  “But you will not. For you know there was no insult intended.”

  He did know. He was not at all sure how he knew, but he did. He released the sword.

  “What will you do?” the storyteller asked again.

  “No doubt what I’ve always done, against Druas,” Kane heard himself say in bitter tones. “Nothing.”

  “Always?”

  A shudder rippled through Kane. He fought it, wondering why he had let such a thing spill from his lips to this man he barely knew. But there was something about him, as Jenna had said. . . .

  “Always. I never withstood him. I followed his orders, carried them out even when they made me sick. Even in the end I had not the courage to strike him down, but only to run away and hide.”

  “But you found you could not hide from such things,” the storyteller said softly.

  Kane drew himself up; there had been enough of this foolish talk. “Some things should not be allowed to be forgotten. And some men never forgiven.”

  “Are you speaking of Druas? Or yourself?”

  “Both,” Kane said coldly.

  “That explains it, then.”

  “Explains what?” Kane asked, a bit snappishly.

  “Why you could not let go of the memories. You have not forgiven yourself. If you do not, they will haunt you forever.”

  Kane met the old man’s wise gaze steadily. He said nothing. Understanding sparked in the old man’s eyes, those eyes so like Tal’s. For an instant, he wondered. . . . But he had no time for such thoughts now. Jenna was in deathly danger. And he was to blame, as he was to blame for so much else.

  “I see,” the man said, as if he did indeed. “This is the punishment you’ve sentenced yourself to, a lifetime of torture, haunted by memories you cannot change.”

  “Those I have destroyed would find it too light a penalty.”

  “Perhaps.” The storyteller gave him a look that was devoid of judgment, of censure, a look that held only a world of empathy and wisdom. “But there is one thing wrong with your deductions.”

  “Wrong?”

  The storyteller smiled, a slight, gentle smile. “You,” the old man said, “are not the one to pass final judgment, Kane the Warrior.”

  He said it like a benediction, and a shiver of odd sensation brushed over Kane. But before he could even acknowledge it, the man asked yet again the question Kane had no answer for.

  “What will you do?”

  His own thoughts about Druas came back to him, echoing in his head like Maud’s harsh cries. There was no turning him away with resistance. Only richer plunder had ever turned him.

  And suddenly the answer was there.

  “There is only one way to save Jenna and put an end to this,” he said slowly, suspecting that he’d known the answer all the time, but he had not wanted to face it. He felt more the coward than ever; it should have been obvious to him from the beginning.

  “There is a way, then?” the storyteller asked, sounding more curious than anything.

  “Druas is a man of . . . determination. He will never give up anything he has gained or hopes to gain. Unless it is to get something he wants more.”

  The old man studied him for a moment. “And there is something Druas wants more than he wants this land?”

  “There is one thing he wants above all else. Something he has been hunting down for years.”

  “Hunting down? It sounds as if he wishes it dead.”

  “He does,” Kane agreed flatly.

  The old man drew back slightly, looking uneasy for the first time. “And what is this thing he so badly wants to kill that you believe he might give up this battle for it?”

  Kane drew in a long, deep breath, his mouth twisting bitterly.

  “Me,” he said.

  JENNA STARED AT the man before her, not sure if it was his reputation or his appearance that was making her stomach knot. He did not look like evil incarnate; instead he looked like a twisted rendition of a fallen angel. He was tall, nearly as tall as Kane, and nearly as dark-haired for all that he was clearly at least twenty years older. His brows were thin, oddly, almost femininely arched, gi
ving him a rather demonic air. But in fact he was probably more well favored than Kane, handsomer . . . until you looked into his eyes.

  His eyes were pale, the irises rimmed oddly with a circle of black, giving them a frighteningly eerie look. But more unsettling was the fact that they were utterly dead. There was not a trace of human life or feeling in those eyes, as if the man had absorbed somehow the death he surrounded himself with.

  She had thought Kane’s eyes cold, remote, but next to this man’s, Kane’s were vivid with life. Even the pain she so often saw there was a sign of life, life that was missing in this man. And she knew in that moment that she and the storyteller had been right, that Kane was not beyond redemption. He only thought he was.

  And she found herself clinging to that knowledge as if it would help her get through this, as if just the thought of Kane was powerful enough to give her the courage to survive. It was, somehow, and she fought her inner shaking to a standstill.

  “You are not afraid,” Druas said, those pale, eerie eyes fastened on her. He sounded intrigued, and that made Jenna nervous. She fought that down as well.

  “Why should I be afraid of a man I merely find contemptible?”

  To her surprise, Druas laughed. It was a sound as empty and lifeless as his eyes. “Brave words, when I hold your life in my hands.”

  “My life,” she said with a shrug, “means little.” Kane’s words came back to her, and she added, “I consider myself already dead.”

  Druas drew back, staring at her. “Spoken like a warrior.”

  If only you knew, she thought. “Shall we save some time? I will not help you, nor tell you anything. Nor will my people give up. So do what you will, and get it over with.”

  Druas continued to stare at her for a long, silent moment. Then, thoughtfully, he turned and walked to the table behind him and poured something from a large jug into a silver goblet. He sipped, all the while watching her. He was an impressive man, tall, strong, commanding, imperiously handsome, and she began to see why he was so often victorious.