Hawkmistress! (50 page)

Horses, down and screaming, sliced open by swords and spears … men lying on the ground, dying … she could not tell whether Carolin’s men or Rakhal’s, and it did not matter…. A picked group of men swept down toward where the blue fir-tree banner flew over Carolin’s guard … Sunstar! Carry my king to safety… and a part of her rode with the great black stallion, thundering away with the king, to form a compact group, awaiting the charge again.

Flames seemed to seat the air; it was filled with the acrid smell of burning flesh, men and horses shrieking, and death, death everywhere….

Yet through it all Romilly kept still, hovering over the field, bringing the bird’s-eye pictures of the battle to Carolin’s eyes so that he could direct his men where they were most needed. Hours, it seemed, dragged by while she swept over the field, sated with horrors, sickened with the smell of burning flesh….

And then Rakhal’s men were gone, leaving only the dead and dying on the field, and Romilly, who had been in rapport with the remaining sentry-bird (she knew now that it was Ruyven who had siezed her bridle and led her horse to safety atop a little hill overlooking the field, while she was entranced in rapport with the bird) returned to her own awareness, sick and shocked.

Dying horses. Seven of them she had trained with her own hands in the hostel … dead or dying, and Clea, merry Clea who had talked so lightly of death, lying all but dead on the field, her blood invisible on the crimson tunic of the Swordswoman… . Clea, dying in Jandria’s arms, and an empty place, a vast silence where once had been a living, breathing, human being, beloved and real….

There was no rejoicing on this battlefield; Carolin had felt too many deaths that day. Soberly, men went to bury the dead, to give the last few dying horses the mercy-stroke, Ruyven went with the healers to bind up the wounds of those who had been struck down. Romilly, shocked beyond speech, set up the tent aided only by Ruyven’s young apprentice, who had a great burn on his arm from the clingfire that had rained down on the army. Three perches were with the baggage, but only one bird perched alone, and Romilly felt sick as she fed her … the carrion smell was now all around them. She could not bring herself to sleep in the little tent she had shared with Lady Maura; she searched through the camp at the edge of the battlefield till she found the rest of the Sisterhood, and silently crept in among them. So many dead. Horses, and birds, who had been part of her life, into whom she had put so much time and strength and love in their training … the Sisterhood had set her to training these horses, not that they might live and serve, but that they might die in this senseless slaughter. And Clea, whom Jandria had carried dead off the field. Two of the Sisterhood called to Romilly.

“Sister, are you wounded?”

“No,” Romilly said numbly. She hardly knew; her body was so battered with the many deaths which had swept over her wide-open mind, which she had felt in her very flesh; but now she realized that she was not hurt at all, that there was not a mark anywhere on her flesh.

“Have you healing skills?” And when Romilly said no, they told her to come and help in the digging of a grave for Clea.

“A Swordswoman cannot lie among the soldiers. As she was in life, so in death she must be buried apart.”

Romilly wondered, with a dull pain in her head, what it would matter now to Clea where she lay? She had defended herself well, she had taught so many of her sisters to defend themselves, but the final ravishment of death had caught her unaware, and she lay cold and stiff, looking very surprised, without a mark on her face. Romilly could hardly believe that she would not laugh and jump up, catching them off guard as she had done so many times before. She took the shovel one of the Swordswomen thrust into her hand. The hard physical labor of digging the grave was welcome; otherwise she caught too much pain, too many wounded men, screaming, suffering, in silence or great moans, their pain racking her. She tried to shut it all out, as Ranald had taught her, but there was too much, too much….

Out on the field, dark flapping forms hovered, waiting. Then one swept down to where a dead horse lay, already bloating, and thrust in his beak with a great raucous cry of joy. Another flapped down and another, and then dozens, hundreds … feasting, calling out joyously to one another. Romilly picked up a thought from somewhere, she could not tell whether from one of the Swordswomen beside her at the grave, or someone out of sight on the dark campground, the defeat of men is the joy of the carrion-bird, where men mourn the kyorebni make holiday … and dropped her shovel, sickened. She tried to pick it up, but suddenly doubled over, retching. She had not eaten since morning; nothing came up but a little green bile, but she stayed there, doubled over, sick and exhausted, too sickened even to weep.

Jandria came and led her silently inside the tent. Two Swordswomen were tending the wounds of three others, one woman with a clingfire burn on her hand which was still burning inward, another unconscious from a sword-cut across her head, and still another with a leg broken when her horse fell and rolled on her. One looked up, frowning, as Jandria led Romilly inside and pushed her down on a blanket.

“She is unwounded - she should be helping to bury our dead!”

Jandria said gruffly, “There is more than one kind of wound!” She held Romilly close, rocking her, stroking her hair, soothing her, but the girl was unaware of the touch, lost in a desperate solitude where she sought and sought for the dead… .

Romilly wandered in a dark dream, as if on a great grey plain, where she saw Clea before her, laughing, riding on one of the dead horses, and Prudence perched on her fist… but they were so far ahead, no matter how she raced, her feet were stuck as if she waded through thick syrup and she could not catch up with them, never, never….

Somewhere Romilly heard a voice, she felt she ought to know the voice but she did not, saying, She has never learned to shut it out. This time, perhaps, I can give her barriers, but there is really no remedy. She is a wild telepath and she has no protection.

Romilly only knew that someone … Carolin? Lady Maura? … touched her forehead lightly, and she was back in the tent of the Swordswomen again, and the great desolate grey plain of death was gone. She clung to Jandria, shuddering and weeping.

“Clea’s dead. And my horses, all my horses … and the birds …” she wept.

Jandria held and rocked her. “I know, dear. I know,” she whispered, “It’s all right, cry for them if you must, cry, we are all here with you.” and Romilly thought, in dull amazement, She is crying too.

And she did not know why that should seem strange to her.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Romilly woke, on the morning after the battle, to a grey and dismal day of heavy rain. On the field nothing stirred except the omnipresent carrion-birds, undaunted by the downpour, feeding on the bodies of men and horses.

It makes no difference to her now, Romilly thought, but even so she was grateful that Clea lay in the earth, her body guarded from the fierce beaks of the quarreling kyorebni. Yet one way or another, her body would return to its native elements, food for the small crawling things in the earth, to feed grasses and trees. She had become part of the great and endless cycle of life, where those who fed on the earth became in turn food for the earth. Why, then, should I grieve? Romilly asked herself, but the answer came without thought.

Her death did not come in the full course of time, when she had lived out her days. She died in a quarrel between kings which was none of her making. And yet, troubled, she remembered how she had met with Lyondri Hastur. Lyondri’s cruelties were many, while Carolin at least seemed to feel that it was his duty to serve and protect those who lived in the lands he had been born to reign over.

Carolin is like a horse … with her love of Sunstar and of the other horses, it never occurred to Romilly that she was being offensive to the king… . While Rakhal and Lyondri are like banshees who prey on living. Suddenly, for the first time in the year she had been among the Swordswomen, Romilly was glad that Preciosa had abandoned her.

She too preys on the living. It is her nature and I love her but I could not, now, endure to see it, to be a part of it!

She dressed herself, drew the hood of her thickest cloak over her head, and went to tend Temperance. Her first impulse was to leave her to Ruyven: she felt that the sight of the empty perches of Prudence and Diligence would rewaken all the horror and dread of their deaths. But she was sworn to care for them, she was the king’s hawkmistress, and Ruyven, though he cared dutifully for the birds, did not love them, as she did.

Temperance sat solitary on her perch, huddled against the chilly dampness; the perches were sheltered but there was no protection against the wind, and Romilly decided to move the bird inside the tent in which neither she nor Maura had slept now for several nights; Temperance was the only remaining sentry-bird with Carolin’s armies, and if she took cold in this damp and drizzly weather, she could not fly. Romilly shrank from the memory of her last flight, but she knew that she would, as her duty commanded, fly the bird again, even into danger. Not gladly; that gladness had been a part of innocence and it was gone forever. But she would do it, as duty demanded, because she had seen warfare and known a hint of what would befall the folk of these hills under Lyondri Hastur’s harsh rule.

Lyondri did not wish - she knew this from her brief contact with him - to be only Rakhal’s executioner. Tell Jandria, he had said, that I am not the monster she thinks me. Yet he believed that this was his only road to power, and therefore he was as guilty as Rakhal.

He is Carolin’s kinsman. How can they be so unlike?

As she was caring for Temperance, there was a step outside the tent, and she turned to see a familiar face.

“Dom Alderic,” she cried, but before he had more than a moment to stare at her in surprise, Ruyven hurried to greet Alderic with an enthusiastic kinsman’s embrace.

“Bredu! I should have known you would hurry to find us here - does your father know?”

Alderic Castamir shook his head and smiled at his friend. He said, “I am recently come from Falconsward; your father gave me leave to go, though not willingly; you should know that Darren has returned to the monastery.”

Ruyven sighed and shook his head. “I would so willingly have yielded my place as Father’s heir to Darren, and hoped, when he was not in my light, that Father would come to see his true worth… .”

“His own worth,” Alderic said quietly. “Darren has small love for horses or hawks, and no trace of the MacAran Gift. He cannot be blamed for what he is not, any more than you for what you are, bredu. And I think The MacAran has had to grant that you cannot forge a hammer from featherpod fluff, nor spin spider-silk even from precious copper. Darren’s skills are otherwise, and The MacAran has sent him to Nevarsin, to complete his schooling; one day he shall be Rael’s steward, while Rael - I have already begun to teach him to work with horses and hawks.”

“Little Rael!” marvelled Ruyven, “When I left Falconsward he was still at Luciella’s knee, it seemed! Yet I knew he would have the MacAran Gift; I think I was blinded about Darren because I love him and I wanted so much for him to have the Gift, that I might be free. Well, Darren has found his place, as I mine.”

Alderic came and bent over Romilly’s hand. “Mistress Romilly,” he said gently, and Romilly corrected him:

“Swordswoman Romilly - and I know what my father would say to that; he shall have no chance.”

“Under favor, Romy,” said Alderic, looking directly into her eyes, “Your father loves you and mourns you as dead; and so does your stepmother. May I beg you as your friend - and theirs, for your father has been more than kind to me - to send them word that you live.”

She smiled wryly. “Better not. I am sure my father would rather think of me dead than earning my bread by the sword, or wearing the earring of the Sisterhood.”

“I would not be quick to be too sure of that. I think, when you left Falconsward, he changed; it was not long after that, that he bowed his head to the truth and gave Darren leave to return where he was happy. You must have been blind, deaf and dumb, Romilly, if you did not know that you were the favorite of all his children, though he loves you all.”

“I know that,” Ruyven said, lowering his eyes, and his voice was strangled and harsh, “I never thought he would bend so far. I too have been harsh and stiff-necked. If we come alive from this war - Bearer of Burdens, grant that! -” he interjected in that stifled voice, “I shall go to Falconsward and be reconciled to him, and beg him to make his peace with the Towers, so that Rael may have proper training for his laran before it is too late. And if I must abase myself to him, so be it. I have been too proud.”

“And you, Romilly?” asked Alderic. “He has grieved for you so terribly that he has grown old in this single year.”

She blinked tears from her eyes. It tore at her heart to think of her father grown old. But she insisted, “Better he should think me dead, than that a daughter of his should disgrace him by wearing the earring-“

Alderic shook his head. “I cannot persuade you, but would it ease your heart to know that Mallina was married to Dom Garris at Midwinter?”

“Mallina? My little sister? To that - that disgusting lecher?’ Romilly cried, “and you say my father has changed?”

“Be not too quick to judge,” Alderic cautioned, “Garris dotes on her, and she, to all appearances, on him - even before they were wedded, she confided to me that Garris was not so bad at all, when she came to understand him; she said, the poor fellow has been so lonely and unhappy that his wretchedness drove him to all kinds of things, and now he has someone to love him and care about him, he is completely changed! You should see them together!”