Master of Hawks (13 page)

"He wants me to visit the Sylvan again."

"Oh. I might have known that too. You're wasting your time, but damn it, I hope you can accomplish something." Siclari clasped his friend's arm.

Hawk heard no more of their conversation, for around him the men had begun to mount their horses, calling their good-byes to Lord S'Wessex and Ro. Finally they rode out, heading down the Tompkins Road toward Swego.

Hawk watched Ro smile and wave until the company disappeared behind the trees. When she turned toward him, he saw that her eyes were full of tears.

"As they rode off, I could sense it," she said. "They're going to die—most of them are going to die."

Hawk suddenly found himself with his arm around her, patting her shoulder. He felt surprised and embarrassed at his boldness, but stood his ground and said. "They'll make it, you'll see . . . . "

"No. Don't you understand? I
sensed
it with my crazy sixth sense. I
know
they're going to die."

"Can't we stop them, warn them?" asked Hawk in sudden alarm.

"No," she said softly, pulling away from him to stare in the direction that Hank Siclari's party had gone. "I don't know how or when . . . or why. I don't know what to warn them against. I just know the result."

Feeling as powerless to comfort her as she was to help them, Hawk said nothing. In the silence, he grew aware of Derek's and Coleman's voices behind him. When he heard Derek mention his name, he turned and walked back toward them. Ro brushed the tears from her eyes and followed.

"Is Brian S'York crazy?" Derek said. "Ordering my best scout back to York?"

"He sent you another telepath . . . " Coleman replied.

"I've met the man before, his name is Loehr. He is very competent, but he doesn't have the range." Derek tapped Coleman's chest with the dispatches he still held. "The range, Coleman, that's the important thing."

"Hey, what's going on?" interrupted Hawk.

Derek's voice became more exasperated than angry. "S'York wants you to go with Coleman on this harebrained mission to the Sylvan, and he's sent me a human-telepath as your replacement."

"I know the man; I saw him when he arrived. He's quite a good telepath," said Hawk.

"Lord S'York has ordered us to visit the Sylvan to try to gain their help against the Taral Empire," Coleman explained. "We've been invited to meet with Feder, the chief of the Sylvan forest of Alycia."

Derek looked over his letter from Brian S'York again. "You are supposed to leave as soon as possible. I guess you might as well go now—we won't have those wagons finished for the wounded for a couple more hours. They were pretty badly damaged by the fire." He clapped Hawk lightly on the shoulder. "I'm going to miss you, Hawk. Get back as soon as you can."

"What about my birds?" Hawk asked, feeling a bit
bewildered and at the same time pleased at being chosen for such a mission. "I won't be able to get them to Swego now, so we won't know what's happening there."

"I guess you'll have to turn them back and take them with you. When the port is attacked, I'm sure the Swego garrison will send a messenger or a carrier pigeon to York," Derek replied.

"But that will take a lot longer and won't give you the detailed information you'll need about S'Stratford's forces," said Hawk.

"Don't you think I know that?" Derek pounded his fist into his hand. "That's what I've been telling Coleman. No matter how good Loehr is, he doesn't have your range."

"But he is a human-telepath, Derek," said Coleman S'Wessex. "He can interrogate prisoners and get much of the same information, probably some better information as well. Also, he can control the minds of the enemy, which should be quite useful. Really, you've got no choice. It is a direct order."

"I know," said Derek glumly.

"But why does he want me on this mission anyway?" asked Hawk.

Coleman smiled. "Brian S'York feels that we need to make as strong an impression as possible with the Sylvan. He'd probably prefer to send a sorcerer like Derek, but he knows that he can't be spared from here. So he decided to send his most impressive telepath, and that is you, Hawk, not only because you are a bird-path, but because you do have a fantastic range, as do some of the Sylvan. Also, he knows you've been living in a skytree forest, so he thinks you'll be comfortable in Sylvan territory."

Derek shrugged, resigned but still unhappy. "The chances of convincing the Sylvan to help us are remote at best. I don't know why Brian thinks they'd listen to you now; you've been trying to convince them to help us for years."

"Although Taral has deliberately encouraged the Sylvan's position of neutrality, the raid on the Avedon forest last month may have weakened that position," Coleman replied. "This is the first time the Sylvan have requested a meeting with me; in the past I've always been the one to initiate contact. Perhaps the attack on a Sylvan forest by some of Taral's men has made the forest people become aware of their danger."

Hawk remembered what he'd heard about the incident. Evidently contrary to orders not to antagonize the Sylvan or to jeopardize their neutrality, the ambitious governor of the Empire's satellite kingdom of Cumberland had raided the Avedon skytree forest in the province's center. When Taral learned what had happened, he had not only sent apologies and reparations to the Sylvan but had also had the irresponsible governor executed. Despite this and the fact that the forest people had repulsed the invaders easily, there was growing concern among the Sylvan leaders that the raid had been only a prelude to some future concerted effort by the Empire itself.

Derek shook his head. "I still doubt that it will do us much good. The Sylvan will say that the raid proved that they are powerful enough to defend themselves against invaders and that they don't need our help. Well, at least you probably won't be talking to the Sylvan for very long, so you can send Hawk back here soon."

"Maybe the chance to convince the Sylvan to aid us is slim, but we must take it," Coleman replied. "We need their help to stop the Empire's invasion and retake our lands. When I think of what the Empire has done to my own kingdom of Wessex—the death and destruction; looting, rape, and senseless killings to drive the people into submission; then they tax the ones who are left so heavily that they hardly have enough left to feed themselves—when I think of that, I know I must do everything I can to prevent that from happening here in York and to drive the invaders out of Wessex!"

Ro touched Coleman's arm lightly. Knowing how much Wessex's loss hurt him, she changed the subject. "Why do you want me along? I should be with the rest of the company. I can catch up with them."

Coleman glanced warily at Derek S'Mayler, who knew nothing of Ro's true identity or paranormal powers. "We can discuss that on the road. Meanwhile you'd better start loading your gear. Hawk, your horse should be in the corral, and there are some blankets and saddles by the wall." Then he clasped Derek's hand. "I'll try to be back as soon as I can. Good hunting."

"Give my regards to Brian," replied Derek. He gestured toward the gutted stable and town. "Tell him about this, will you? Tell him we'll do our best to slow S'Stratford, but I don't know how much we can delay him."

Hawk strode over to the pile of saddles and studied them absentmindedly. He had mixed feelings about the sudden turn of events. Although the chance to visit the Sylvan excited him, he was dismayed at leaving Derek S'Mayler just when his scouting ability would be greatly needed. He felt as though he were letting his friend down. Yet at the same time he knew S'Wessex was right. If he could help convince the Sylvan to aid York against the Empire, he'd be doing something far more important than anything he could do here. Also, the prospect of working with Ro was a pleasant one, if somewhat unsettling.

He began to rummage through the pile of saddles. Some were thick farmer's saddles, some were slightly charred, and others appeared to be brand new. Suddenly, as he dug through the pile of leather, his fingers touched an odd-shaped horn. He pushed and pulled the saddle into the sun. It
was
his saddle. The delicate design around the edge was scorched and marred, and black streaks of soot covered the back and seat, but the perch-shaped pommel he'd made for his birds seemed undamaged. The saddle was no longer pretty, but it was still functional.

The sight of the perch made him remember his eagles, so he telepathed to the birds. They were flying over the Tompkins Road, heading straight toward Swego. He hesitated, longing to discover if S'Stratford's ships had landed in the port, but he knew that he had to order the birds back now in order to maintain contact.

The eagles wheeled slowly, gliding like kites upon the wind, glad to return to their master and the fine food he provided. While they winged eastward, Hawk's curiosity about Swego faded, and he began to wonder about his new mission to the Sylvan.

He felt as though the hand of destiny had gripped him somewhere along the line, and he was being forced through a chain of events that were changing not only his life, but also his sense of himself. He didn't
feel quite as shy as he used to, or as lonely. And he found himself wondering what the future would bring with far more confidence than he'd ever felt before.

9

The weariness Jaxton felt had reached a point beyond exhaustion. It was an aching numbness that seemed absolute and unendurable, yet somehow managed to increase with each dreary mile they traveled. He could not remember when he'd eaten last, and when he tried to count the days they'd traveled, they ran together in his mind so that he could not sift them into a pattern that would tell him exactly how far they'd come or how soon they'd reach Swego.

Even that goal no longer had any real meaning, for he knew they'd traveled far enough that they should have long since met S'Stratford's invasion force. Yet even if S'Stratford had run into trouble, perhaps been defeated, they still had no real choice except to head for the port. For without S'Stratford they would have to escape from York some way, and they could always buy passage back to the Empire by ship.

He took a small sip of water from his nearly empty canteen and again tried to recall the days. First Ramsey had fallen into a coma, brought on either by the overuse of his sorcery powers, by a spell set by Derek S'Mayler, or by some combination of factors. Then they had traveled hard to escape pursuit. Without adequate rest or food, Jaxton had become quite drained of strength. He had reached the point where he could barely function as a telepath.

At first they had expected to meet S'Stratford at every bend in the road. But gradually despair had come to drive them harder than hope.

"Sir, there's some smoke ahead."

Jaxton looked up into the excited face of
Wagner Prenis, a soldier who'd been scouting ahead.

Rubbing his eyes, Jaxton Sinclair squinted at the reddening western sky, but all he could see was the sun's bloated disk.

"There, sir," said Prenis, pointing insistently toward the crimson sky.

"Well, damn it, go find out what it
is," barked Jaxton.

As the man rode off, the telepath tried to contact birds ahead, but in his present state of fatigue he couldn't sort through the conflicting sensory images he received to find any real meaning. So he prodded his horse into a faster gait and rode after the soldier.

He found Wagner Prenis halted at the forest's edge, looking down on a hillside of fields stretching to the vast Inland Sea below. The road wound down like a ribbon of black silk to the squat, rectangular spool of the town of Swego.

Pulling the binoculars from Prenis's hand, he surveyed the sailing ships anchored in the harbor. Black and silver flags identified them as S'Stratford's fleet. Although part of the town had been burning, now
most of the fires had been extinguished. Through the lenses he could just make out the Empire's banner atop the stone fortress at the base of the town.

"Here, have some more wine and some of this smoked trout. It's delicious," said Lord Douglas S'Stratford as he refilled Jaxton's glass. "There's plenty more where this came from, you know? This town was as stuffed as a guinea hen with goods waiting to be shipped. It was certainly nice of the York to provide so many supplies for us. If these greedy Swego merchants hadn't been so eager to continue to sell to the League and the Empire while York was readying for war, we'd have never gotten such a good haul."

"I think I'll have a bit more of this pheasant," said Jaxton. "I enjoy fowl more than fish."

He lay back into the sofa and crossed his legs, unconcerned that as he moved, his dirt-clogged boots streaked the silken cushions. After a good night's sleep and several fine meals, he felt rejuvenated. He glanced upward and traced the gilded latticework of the ornately painted ceiling, admiring Douglas S'Stratford's ability to find and occupy the best house in town. It had belonged to the commandant of Swego's fortress.

In fact, he felt so good that as he asked about Ramsey's condition, he wasn't sure what motivated the question—concern for his old friend, or his ambitious realization that if Ramsey died there would be an empty seat on the Council of Seven.