Hawkmistress! (29 page)

unconscious weight against her so that he would not fall from the saddle. But the men, too, had all they could do to manage the nervous chervines and the sentry-birds, who were uneasy, and, even hooded, kept making little squealing sounds and trying to flap their wings and hop around restlessly on their blocks. This made horses and chervines even more nervous; she wondered what their sharper senses saw, and would have tried rapport to find out, but it was all she could do, on the steep path, to hold herself and the unconscious child in the saddle without falling.

Once there sounded a high screaming wail, a paralyzing sound that seemed to turn Romilly’s blood to ice. Her horse started and snorted nervously under her, and she fought to control it. The sentry-birds fidgeted on their blocks, flapping their wings in panic. Romilly had never heard such a cry before, but she needed no one to tell her what it was; the cry of a banshee, the huge flightless birds who lived above the snow-line; all but blind, but sensing the body warmth of anything that lived, and their powerful claws that could disembowel horse or man with a single stroke. And it was night, when they actually could see a little, blind as they were in the light of the red sun. Their terrible cries, she had heard, were intended to paralyze prey with fright; hearing it now in the distance, she hoped she would never actually see one.

At the sound Caryl made a small pained noise and stirred, his hands going up to feel the lump on his head. The movement made the horse startle; his hooves all but slipped on the icy path. Romilly bent forward and whispered urgently, “It’s all right, but you must be quiet; the road is dangerous just here, and if you frighten the horse, he may fall - and so would we. Be still, Caryl.”

“Mistress Romilly?” he whispered, and she said crossly “Hush!” He subsided, looking up at her. Her eyes had adjusted now to the darkness so that she could see his small frightened face. Still gingerly feeling the lump at his temple, he blinked and she hoped he would not cry.

He whispered, “How did I get here? What happened?” And then, remembering, “Someone hit me!” He sounded more surprised than angry. She supposed that he, a pampered lowland child, had never been struck before, that no one had spoken to him other than gently. She held him tight in her arms.

“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered, “I won’t let them hurt you.” She knew, as she said it, that if Alaric offered any further violence to the child she would set herself between them.

He wriggled himself into a more comfortable position on the saddle; now that he could sit upright, and was no longer a dead weight who must be held to keep him from falling, it was easier to control her horse.

“Where are we?” he whispered.

“On the road to which you guided us; Dom Carlo brought you with us because he could not leave you lying unconscious to die of the cold, but he means you no harm. Alaric wanted you as a hostage; but Orain won’t let him hurt you again.”

“Lord Orain has always been kind to me,” said Caryl after a moment, “even when I was very small. I wish my father had not quarreled with him. And Father Master will be very angry with me.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Father Master says whatever happens to us is always our fault, one way or another,” said the child, keeping his voice low, “If we have not deserved it in this life, we have certainly done so in another. If it is good we have earned it and may enjoy it, but if it is bad, we must also believe that somehow we have deserved the bad too, and it is not always easy to know which is which. I am not sure what that means,” he added naively, “but he said I would understand when I was older.”

“Then I must be very young too,” said Romilly, unable to keep back a laugh - talking elevated cristoforo philosophy on this dangerous road, with the king’s men, for all they knew, hard at their heels! “For I confess I do not understand it at all.”

Orain heard the laugh; he pulled his horse aside and waited for them to come up with bun, where the path widened just a fraction. “Are you awake, young Caryl?”

“I wasn’t asleep,” the boy protested, scowling, “Somebody hit me!”

‘True,” said Orain seriously, “And he has heard about it, believe me, from Dom Carlo. But now, I fear, you must ride with us to Caer Donn; you cannot possibly return alone over this road. I would have trusted you not to betray us willfully, but I know from old that Lyondri has laran and might read in your thoughts which way we had gone. I give you my word, which, unlike your father, I have never broken, that when we reach Caer Donn you will be sent back to him under a flag of truce. He-” with an eloquent shrug of his caped shoulder, he indicated Dom Carlo, riding ahead, “wishes you no ill. But in this company I should warn you to guard your tongue.”

“My lord-” Caryl began, but Orain gave a slight, warning shake of his head, and said quickly, “If you would be more comfortable riding behind me, you may, when we have gotten through this path; this is no place to stop and change horses. Or if you will give me the word of a Hastur that you will not try to flee from us, I will arrange it that one of the pack-animals can carry you, and you may ride alone.”

“Thank you,” the boy said, “but I would rather stay with-” he paused and swallowed and said, “with Rumal.” She was astonished at his presence of mind; no other youngster, she was sure, could have remembered, even in this extremity, not to blurt out her secret.

“Ride carefully, then,” Orain said, “and guard him well, Rumal.” He turned back to his own riding, and Romilly, settling Caryl as comfortably as she could in front of her - it would indeed be easier if he could sit behind her and hang on, but there was no way to stop and change now - reflected that he had protected her even when he had nothing to gain by keeping her secret, and when he might have made trouble among his captors. An unusual youngster indeed, and cleverer than Rael, disloyal as she felt to her own little brother to think so.

He knew she was a woman. Though, she had thought sometimes that Dom Carlo knew and kept his counsel for his own reasons, whatever they were. And then, for the first time - so swiftly had affairs moved since she was awakened - she remembered Orain’s exact words when he came seeking her. Is Carlo with you? This is no time for modesty! Had Carlo, then, confided to Orain - or been told by him, perhaps? - that he knew her a woman, and, knowing that, did he think her such a woman as might be free of her favors, so that he might have found Carlo in her bed? Even in the bitter cold, Romilly felt the hot flush of shame on her cheeks. Well, riding with them in men’s clothes, what sort of woman could he think her?

Well, if he knew, he knew, and if he thought that of her, he must think what he liked. At least he had been gentleman enough not to spread it among these roughnecks. But she had begun to like Orain so much!

Again from the crags above them came the eerie scream of a banshee; it was closer now, and Romilly felt the throbbing, eldritch wail going all through her, as if her very bones were shuddering at the sound. She knew how the natural prey of the bird must feel; it seemed to stop her in her tracks, to wipe out the world around so that there was nothing except that dreadful vibration, which seemed to make her eyes blur and the world go dark around her. Caryl moaned and dug his hands over his ears with an agonized shiver, and she could see the men ahead of them fighting to control their terrified horses while the sentry-birds flapped, and the chervines made their odd bawling cry and stepped around, almost prancing with terror, on the icy path. One of them stumbled and went down and the rider fell, sliding some way before he could dig his heels into the ice and stand up, scrambling to catch his riding-animal; another beast piled into him and there was a clumsy sprawling collision. Swearing, they fought with the reins. The screaming of the hooded sentry-birds, their bating wings, added to the dismay, and again the eerie terror-filled banshee scream shuddered out from the crags above, and was answered by yet another.

Romilly gave Caryl a little shake. “Stop that!” she demanded furiously. “Help me, help me quiet the birds!” Her own breath was coming ragged, she could see it steaming in the icy air, but she put her mind swiftly to reaching out with that special sense of hers, and sending thoughts of calm, peace, food, affection. She could reach them still; as she felt Caryl’s thoughts join with hers, one after another the great birds quieted, were still on their blocks on the saddles, and Carlo and his men could get the riding-animals under control again. Carlo gestured to them to gather close - the path widened here just enough that three or four of the animals could stand abreast, and they gathered in a little bunch.

The crags above them were beginning to stand out stark against the paling sky; pink and purple clouds outlined the blackness of the rocks of the pass. Dawn was near. The trail above them narrowed and led across the glacier; and even as they looked, a clumsy shadow moved on the face of the rocks, and again there came the terrible wailing scream, answered by another from higher up. Orain compressed his narrow lips and said wryly, “Just what we needed; two of the damned things! And daylight still a good hour away - and even when the sun comes up, we might not escape them. And we can’t wait anyway; if there’s pursuit we should be away and across the path before full daylight, and well to the other side where the woods will conceal our traces! A blind man would be able to read our tracks on ice, and Lyondri’s sure to have half a dozen of his damned leroni with him!”

“We’re in the very mouth of the trap,” Carlo muttered, his face going silent and distant. He said at last, into the silence, “No pursuit, at least not yet - I need no leronis to tell me so

much. You were a damned fool to bring the boy, Alaric - with him to follow, Lyondri will follow us though the track led through all nine of Zandru’s hells! Now he has a second and personal grudge!”

“If the boy’s with us,” Alaric said, his teeth set tight, “we can buy our lives, at least!”

Caryl drew himself upright on the saddle and said angrily, “My father would not compromise his honor for his son’s life, and I would not want him to!”

“Lyondri’s honor?” growled one of the men, “The sweet breath of the banshee, the welcoming climate of Zandru’s ninth hell!”

“I will not hear you say-” Caryl began, but Romilly caught him around the waist before he could physically climb down the saddle and attack the speaker, and Carlo said quietly, “Enough, Caryl. A sentiment seemly for Lyondri’s son, lad, but we have no time for babble. Somehow we must get across the path, and though I have no will to hurt you, if you can’t keep your tongue behind your teeth, I fear you must be gagged; my men are in no mood to hear a defense of one who has set a price on our heads. And you, Garan, and you, Alaric, you shut your faces too; it’s not well done to mock a child about his father’s honor, and there’s harder work ahead of us than quarreling with a little boy!” He looked up again as the. shrilling shriek of the banshee drowned their voices, and Romilly saw his whole body tense in the effort to conquer the purely physical fear that screaming cry created in their minds. Romilly hugged Caryl tight, not sure whether it was to comfort the child or to still her own fears, whispering, “Help me quiet the animals.” It was well to give him something to think about except his own terror.

Again the soothing vibration spread out, and she knew her own talent, laran or whatever they called it, enhanced by the already-powerful gift of the young Hastur child. As it died into silence, Alaric said, his hand on his dagger, “I have hunted banshees before this, vai dom, and slain them too.”

“I doubt not your courage, man,” said Carlo, “but your wit, if you think we can face two banshees in a narrow pass, without losing man or horse. We have no deaf-hounds, nor nets and ropes. Perhaps, if we keep between the horses and chervines, we may manage to escape with a horse for each, but then would we be afoot in the worst country in the Hellers! And if we stand here, we will be taken in the jaws of the trap.”

“Better the beak of the banshee than the tender mercies of Lyondri’s men,” said one of the riders, edging uneasily away from his place at the head of the little cavalcade. “I’ll face what you face, my lord.”

“Too bad your skill with birds extends not to such creatures as those” said Orain, looking at Romilly with a wry grin, “Could you but calm those birds as you worked with hawk and sentry-bird, then should we be as well off as any Hastur-lord with his pet leronis!”

Romilly shuddered at the thought … to enter into the minds of those cruel carnivores, prowling the heights? She said weakly “I hope you are joking, vai dom.”

“Why should that laran not be as workable against banshee as against sentry-bird, or for that matter, barnyard fowl?” asked Caryl, sitting upright on the saddle, “They are all creatures of Nature, and if Rom - Rumal’s Gift can quiet the sentry-birds, with my own laran to help, why, perhaps we can reach the banshees too, and perhaps convince them that we are not destined for their breakfast.”

Romilly felt again a perceptible shudder run through her. But before young Caryl’s eager eyes, she was ashamed to confess her fear.

Carlo said quietly, “I am reluctant to leave our safety in the hands of two children, when grown men are helpless. Yet if you can help us - there seems no other way, and if we delay here, we are dead men, all of us. Your father would not harm you, my young Carolin, but I fear the rest of us would die, and not too quickly or easily.”

Caryl was blinking hard. He said, “I do not want any harm to come to you, sir. I do not think my father understands that you are a good man; perhaps Dom Rakhal has poisoned his mind against you. If I can do anything to help, so that he may have time to think more sensibly about all this quarrel, I will be very glad to do what I can.” But Romilly noticed that he too looked a little frightened. And as they moved slowly forward he whispered, “I am afraid, Rumal - they look so fierce it is hard to remember that they too are the creations of God. But I will try to remember that the blessed Valentine-of-the-Snows had a pact of friendship with them and called them little brothers.”