Hawkmistress! (38 page)

Jandria said, “What Lyondri said to you, Romy, was a message; he knows that I am here; no doubt he had you followed to see where the Sisterhood’s hostel was located outside the walls of Hali. Simply by being here, I endanger the Sisterhood, who have taken no part in this war; but I am kin to Orain and he might somehow think to trace Orain through me, might think I know more of Orain’s plans - or Carolin’s - than I really do. I must leave here at once, so that if Rakhal’s men under Lyondri come here to seek me, they can say truthfully, and maintain, even if they should be questioned by a leronis who can read their thoughts, that they have no knowledge of where I have gone, or where Carolin’s men, or Orain, may be gathered. And I am taking you with me, for fear Lyondri might try to lay hands on you, too. These other women - he knows nothing of them and cares less; but you have come under his eyes, and I would just as soon you were out of his field of notice … I would rather not have you at the very gates of Hali. Besides-” her smile was very faint, “Did you not know? A woman of the Sisterhood does not travel alone, but must be companioned by one, at least, of her sisters.”

Romilly had not thought of that - Jandria was Orain’s kin, and Lyondri Hastur could use her for hostage, too, even if he did not, as Jandria had feared, mean to put her to death. She said formally, “A ves ordres, mestra,” and finished saddling her horse.

“Go into the hostel and get yourself some bread and cheese,” Jandria said, “We can eat as we ride. But be quick, little sister.”

Is there need for such haste as that, or is Jandria afraid without reason? But Romilly did not question her; she did as she was told, returning with a loaf of bread and a great hunk of coarse white new cheese, which she stowed in her saddlebag - she was not hungry now, Jandria’s message had effectively destroyed her appetite, but she knew she would be glad of it later. She had a bag of apples, too, which the cook had given her.

She did ask, as they led out their horses to mount, “Where are we going, Janni?”

“I think it would be safer if you did not know that, not just yet,” said Jandria, and Romilly saw real fear in her eyes. “Come, little sister, let us ride.”

Romilly marked that they rode northward from the city, but the trail soon curved, and Jandria took a small, little-travelled road, hardly more than the track left by mountain chervines, which wound upward and upward into the hills. Before long Romilly had lost all sense of direction, but Jandria seemed never to hesitate, as if she knew precisely where she was going.

Before long they began to ride under the cover of heavy forested slopes, and Jandria seemed to relax a little; after an hour or so she asked for some of the bread and cheese, and ate it with a good appetite. Romilly, chewing on the coarse crust, began to wonder again, but did not ask.

At last Jandria said, mounting again and taking the lead-rope of the pack animal, “Even a sentry-bird cannot spy us out here. I know not if Lyondri has such birds trained to his use - they are not really all that common - but I thought it better to keep under cover till the trail was well and truly lost; all Gods forbid I should lead him straight to Carolin’s armies.”

“Is that where we are going?”

“The Sisterhood has a cohort of soldiers there,” said Jandria, “and your skills may be needed to train horses for the army. And I doubt not that the Sisterhood with Carolin’s army can make use of me, somehow or other. If Lyondri knew I was in the hostel - as he must have known or he would not have sent that message - then he might think, or Rakhal might think for him, that if he kept watch on me, I might lead him straight to Carolin’s rendezvous; even if he could not tear the knowledge of that rendezvous straight from my mind without even a leronis to aid him. So I hastened to get out of there, and into the cover of the forest, so that he could not set watch on the hostel and give orders to have me followed. I may possibly have moved faster than he, for once; and it may be that we are already safe.” But she glanced apprehensively down the trail where they had come, and then, even more apprehensively, at the sky, as if even now Lyondri’s sentry-birds could be hovering there to spy them out And her fear made Romilly frightened too.

That night they camped still within the shelter of the forest, and Jandria even forbade a cooking-fire; they ate the cold bread and cheese, and tethered the animals under a great tree. They spread their blankets beneath another, doubled for warmth (although the mountain-bred Romilly found it reasonably warm) and Romilly slept quickly, tired from riding. But she woke once in the night to hear soft sounds as if Jandria was crying. She wished, wretchedly, that she could say something to comfort the other woman, but it was a trouble far beyond her comprehension. At last she slept again, but woke early to find Jandria already up and saddling the horses. Her eyes were dry and tearless, her face barricaded, but the eyelids were red and swollen.

“Do you think we can risk a fire this morning? I would like some hot food, and if we are not pursued by now, surely we must have gotten away,” Romilly said, and Jandria shrugged.

“I suppose it makes no difference. If Lyondri truly wishes to find me, I am sure he would not need trackers, seeing that he read my thoughts of him so far away. It would not be Lyondri who pursued us, but Rakhal, in any case.” She was silent, sighing. “Build us a fire, and I will cook some hot porridge, little sister. I have no right to make this trip harder for you with my causeless fears and dreads; you have travelled so long and hard already, Romy, and already I have you off again when you thought you had found a place of repose.”

“It’s all right,” Romilly said, not knowing what to say. She would rather travel with Jandria than remain in the hostel with the strange women among whom she had made no friends as yet. She knelt to kindle a fire. But when they were eating hot porridge, and their horses munching at ease in the grass, Romilly asked, hesitantly, “Do you grieve for Lyondri?” What she was wondering, was this; Lyondri had been her lover, was she still bound to him? Jandria seemed to know what she meant, and sighed, with a small sad smile.

“My grief, I suppose, is for myself,” she said at last. “And for the man I thought Lyondri was - the man he might have been, if Rakhal had not seduced him with the thought of power. That man, the man I loved, is dead - so long dead that even the Gods could not recall him from whatever place our dead hopes go. He still wants my good opinion - so much the message, or warning, meant - but that could be no more than vanity, which was always strong in him. I do not think he is all evil,” she said, and stumbled a little over it, “The fault is Rakhal’s. But by now he must know what Rakhal is, and still follows after him. So I cannot hold him guiltless of all the atrocities done in Rakhal’s name.”

Romilly asked, shyly, “Did you know them both - Carolin and Rakhal? How did Rakhal come to seize his throne?”

But Jandria shook her head. “I do not know. I left court when Rakhal still professed to be Carolin’s most loyal follower, accepting all the favors Carolin showered on him as his dearest cousin who had been fostered with him.”

“Carolin must be a good man,” said Romilly at last, “to inspire such devotion in Orain. And-” she hesitated, “in you.”

She said, “But surely when you were with Orain, you met with Carolin?”

Romilly shook her head. “I understood the king was at Nevarsin; but I did not meet with him.”

Jandria raised her eyebrows, but all she said was, “Finish your porridge, child, and rinse the dish in the stream, and we shall ride again.”

Silently, Romilly went about her work, saddling the horses, loading what was left of their food. But as they mounted, Jandria said, so long after that Romilly had almost forgotten what she asked, “Carolin is a good man. His only fault is that he trusts the honor of the Hasturs without reason; and he made the mistake of trusting Rakhal. Even Orain could not tell him what Rakhal was, nor could I; he thought Orain was only jealous. Jealous - Orain!”

“What is Rakhal like?” asked Romilly, but Jandria only shook her head.

“I cannot speak of him fairly; my hate blinds me. But where Carolin loves honor above all things, and then he loves learning, and he loves his people, Rakhal loves only the taste of power. He is like a mountain-cat that has had a taste of blood.” She climbed into her saddle, and said, “Today you will take the pack-animal’s leading-rope, and I will ride ahead, since I know where we are going.”

When they had come out from under the cover of the forest, Romilly had again the faint far sense of being watched; that trickle of awareness in her mind that told her Preciosa was watching her; the hawk did not descend to her hand, but once or twice Romilly caught a glimpse of the bird hovering high in the sky, and knew she was not alone. The thought warmed her so deeply that she was no longer aware of fear or apprehension.

She and I are one; she has joined her life to mine. Romilly was dimly aware that this must be something like marriage, indissoluble, a tie which went deep into the other’s body and spirit. She had no such tie for instance with her present horse, though he had carried her faithfully and she wished him well and thought often of his welfare.

The horse is my friend. Preciosa is something else, something like a lover.

And that made her think, shyly and almost for the first time, what it might be like to have a lover, to have a bond with someone as close to her as the hawk, tied in mind and heart and even in body, but someone with whom she could communicate, not as the MacArans did with their horses and hounds and hawks, across the vast gulf that lay between man and horse, women and hawk, child and dog, but with the close bonding of species. Dom Garris had wanted her, but his lecherous glances had roused nothing in her but revulsion; revulsion doubled when it was Rory, who would as soon have cut her throat for her horse and cloak and a few coppers, but had wished to bed her as well.

Orain had wanted her - at least while he still believed her to be a boy. And … deliberately facing something she had not even clearly understood at the time … she had wanted him. Although, when it was happening, she had not realized what her own strange feelings meant. Even so, she would rather have had Orain as a friend than a lover; she had been willing to accept him as a lover, when she thought he knew her a woman and wanted her, in order to keep him as a friend. But had she never seriously thought of any man in that way? Certainly none of the boys she had grown up knowing, her brothers’ friends - she could no more envision them as lovers than as husbands, and a husband was the last thing she would have wanted.

I think I could have married one like Alderic. He spoke to me as a human being, not only as his friend Darren’s silly little sister. Nor was he the kind of man who would feel he must control me every moment, fearing I would fly away like an untamed hawk if he let go of the jesses for a moment.

Not that I wanted him as a husband, so much. But perhaps I could make up my mind to marry if the husband had first been my friend.

All during that day and the next, whenever she took her eyes from the trail, she could see, at the furthest range of her vision, that Preciosa still hovered there, and feel the precarious thread of communication from the hawk, strange divided sight, seeing the trail under her feet, aware of her own body in the saddle, and yet some indefinable part of her flying free with the hawk, far above the land and hillside slopes. Jandria had told her that they were travelling now in what was called he Kilghard Hills.

They were not like her home mountains - bleak and hare with great rock cliffs and poor soil of which every arable scrap must be carefully reclaimed and put under cultivation for food; and even less were they like the broad and fertile Plains of Valeron which they had crossed enroute to Hali. These were hills, high and steep and with great deserted tracts of wild country set with virgin forest and sometimes overgrown in thick brush-tangles so that they must cut their way through or, sometimes, retrace their steps tediously and go round. But there was no lack of hunting. Sometimes, before sunset, drowsing in her saddle, Romilly would feel something of her fly free with the hawk, stoop down and feel, sharing with Preciosa, the startle of the victim, the quick killing stroke and the burst of fresh blood in her own veins… . Yet every time it came freshly to her as a new experience, uniquely satisfying.

Once, she thought it was the sixth day of their journey, she was flying in mind with the hawk when her horse stepped into a mudrabbit-burrow and stumbled, fell; lay thrashing and screaming, and Romilly, thrown clear of the stirrups, lay gasping, bruised and jarred to the bone. By the time she was conscious enough to sit up, Jandria had dismounted and was helping her to rise.

In the name of Zandru’s frozen hells, where was your mind, you who are so good a horseman, not to see that burrow?” she demanded crossly. Romilly, shocked by the horse’s screams, went to kneel by his side. His eyes were red, his mouth flecked with the foam of agony, and, quickly sliding into rapport with him, she felt the tearing pain in her own leg, and saw the bare, white, shattered bone protruding through the skin. There was nothing to be done; weeping with horror and grief, she fumbled at her belt for her knife and swiftly found where the great artery was under the flesh; she thrust with one fast, deep stroke. A final, convulsive struggle, a moment of deathly pain and fear - then it was quiet, all around her stunned and quiet, and the horse, with his fear, was simply gone, gone from her, leaving her empty and cold.

Stunned, fumbling, Romilly wiped her knife on a clump of. grass and put it again into its sheath. She could not look up and meet Jandria’s eyes. Her damned laran had cost the horse his life, for had she been attending to her riding, she would surely have seen the burrow….