The Hawk Eternal (18 page)

Taliesen sealed shut the door to his private chambers and opened a small, hidden recess in the wall. Reaching in he touched a sensor and light bathed the small room, radiating from panels set in the four walls. With another touch he activated the viewer. The oak veneer of his crudely carved desk-top slid back and revealed a dark screen, which rose into a vertical position. Taliesen moved to the rear wall. Scores of paper sheets were pinned to the panelling here, each covered in lines and scrawled with symbols. To the unskilled eye the drawings would appear to be of winter trees, with hundreds of tiny, leafless branches. Taliesen stared at them, remembering the perilous journeys through the Gateways that each represented. Here and there, on every sheet a branch would end with a single stroke drawn through it. By each was a hastily drawn star. Taliesen counted them. Forty-eight. On the desk-top, beside the dark screen, was a newly drawn tree which showed no stars. Taliesen pinned it to the wall.

This was the tree of the Hawk Eternal.

The tree where Sigarni regained her sword that was stolen. Where she did not die in some last despairing battle, but survived to reach the Farlain and save the children. Taliesen gazed at the drawing. 'Simple to see,' he said, 'but where are you? Which of the Time Lines will bring me to you?'

Seating himself before the screen, he opened the right-hand desk drawer and removed a round earring with a spring clip. It was in the shape of a star. Clipping it to his ear, he closed his eyes. The screen flickered, then brightened. Taliesen took a deep, calming breath and opened his eyes.

'Be careful," he warned himself. 'Do not seek to see too much. Concentrate on the minutiae.' The screen darkened, and with a soft curse Taliesen reached up and touched the star upon his ear, pressing it firmly. The screen leapt to life, and the old druid stared hard at the scene which appeared there.

For more than an hour he watched, occasionally scribbling short notes to aid his memory. Then he removed the earring, touched a button below the desk-top and stood. The screen folded down, the oak veneer covered it once more.

Taliesen studied the notes, adding a line here and there. Rising, he moved to the wall, pinning the notes alongside the tree of the Hawk Eternal. He shook his head. 'Somewhere there is a rogue element,' he said, 'and it has not yet shown its face. What, where and when?' A thought struck him and his mouth tightened. 'Or perhaps I should be asking: Who?' he mused.

'Pah! Do not be so foolish,' he told himself. 'There is no one. You are the Master of the Gates, and the rogue element is a figment of your paranoia. If there was someone you would have found him by now. Or seen greater evidence to point towards him. You are an old fool! The secret lies with the Hawk Eternal - and you will teach him.'

His eyes were drawn to the stars scrawled on the sheets. Focusing on each, he dragged the painful memories from die depths of his mind. The most galling of them was the last. Having defeated Earl

Jastey, Sigarni contracted a fever and died in the night. By Heaven, that was hard to take. Taliesen had all but given up then.

For several months he had made no attempt to scan the Lines, in order to find a new Sigarni. The quest felt hopeless. Yet as he gazed down on the valleys of the Farlain, and at the butchery taking place in the lowlands, he knew he had to struggle on.

Intending to make more notes now, Taliesen returned to his desk. Weariness swamped him as he sat, and his laid his head on his arms. Sleep took him instantly.

What had once been the gleaming marble hall of the Ateris Council was now strewn with straw and misty with the smoke from the blazing log-fire set in a crudely built hearth by the western wall. A massive pine table was set across the hall, around which sat the new Aenir nobility. At their feet, rolling in the straw and scratching at fleas, were the war hounds of Asbidag - seven sleek black fierce-eyed dogs, trained in the hunt.

Asbidag himself sat at the centre of the table facing the double doors of bronze-studded oak. Around him were his seven sons, their wives, and a score of war councillors. Beside the huge Aenir lord sat a woman dressed in black. Slim she was, and the gown of velvet seemed more of a pelt than a garment. Her jet-black hair hung to her pale shoulders and gleamed as if oiled; her eyes were slanted and, against the sombre garb, seemed to glitter like blue jewels, bright and cold; her mouth was full-lipped and wide, and only the mocking half-smile robbed it of beauty.

Asbidag casually laid his hand on her thigh, watching her closely, a gap-toothed grin showing above .his blood-red beard.

'Are you anxious for the entertainment to begin?' he asked her.

'When it pleases you, my lord,' she said, her voice husky and deep.

Asbidag heaved himself to his feet. 'Bring in the prisoner,' he bellowed.

'By Vatan, I've waited a long rime for this,' whispered Ongist, swinging round on his stool to face the door.

Drada said nothing. He had never cared much for torture, though it would have been sheer stupidity to mention it. The way of the Grey God was the way of the Aenir, and no one questioned either.

Drada's eyes flickered to his other brothers as they waited for the prisoner to be dragged forth. Tostig, large and cruel, a man well-known for his bestial appetites. Ongist, the second youngest, a clever lad with the morals of a timber-wolf. Aeslang, Barsa and Jostig, sons of Asbidag's long-rime mistress Swangild. They remained in favour despite Asbidag's murder of their mother - in fact they seemed unmoved by the tragedy - but then Swangild had been a ruthless woman as devoid of emotion as the black-garbed bitch who had replaced her. Lastly there was Orsa the Baresark, dim-witted and dull, but in battle a terrible opponent who screeched with laughter as he slew.

The sons of Asbidag...

The great doors swung open, admitting two warriors who half-dragged, half-carried a shambling ruin of a man. His clothes were in rags, his body covered in weeping sores and fresh switch-scars which oozed blood. His hands were misshapen and swollen, the fingers broken and useless, but even so, his wrists were tied together. The guards released the man and he sank to the floor, groaning as his weight fell on his injured hands.

Drada stole a glance at his father's mistress. Morgase was watching the crippled man closely. Her eyes shone, her white cheeks were flushed and her tongue darted out over her stained red lips. He shuddered and returned his gaze to the man who had commanded the lowland army. He had met him once at court; a strong, proud warrior who had risen through the ranks to command the northern legions. Now he lay weeping like a babe at the feet of his conquerors.

'Now that is how an enemy should look,' said Asbidag. Dutiful laughter rose around him as he left the table to stand over the prisoner. 'I have good news for you, Martellus,' he said, turning the man over with his foot. 'I'm going to kill you at last.'

The man's swollen eyes fought to focus and his mouth sagged open, showing the remains of his teeth, black and broken.

'Are you not going to thank me, man?'

Just for that one moment Drada saw a glint of anger in the man's eyes. For a fleeting second manhood returned to the ruined warrior. Then it passed and tears reformed.

'How should we kill him, Morgase?' asked Asbidag, swinging his body to face the table.

'Let the dogs have him,' she whispered.

'Poison my dogs? No. Another way.'

'Hang him in a cage outside the city walls until he rots,' shouted Tostig.

'Impale him,' said Ongist.

Drada shifted in his seat, forcing his mind from the spectacle. For more than a year one task had filled his waking hours: planning the defeat of the clans.

The problems were many. The clans had the advantage of terrain but, on the other hand, they lacked any form of military discipline and their villages were widely spaced and built without walls. Each clan mistrusted the others and that was an advantage for the Aenir. They could pick them off one by one.

But it would be a massive operation, needing colossal planning.

Drada had worked for months to be allowed to enter the Farlain with a small company of men. Always his requests had been politely refused. Now, at last, Cambil had agreed they should be guests at the Games. It was a gift from the Grey God.

All the clans gathered in one place, a chance to meet every chieftain and Hunt Lord. An opportunity for the Aenir to scout valleys, passes and future battlegrounds.

Drada was hauled back to the present, even as the hapless prisoner was dragged from the hall. Asbidag's shadow fell across him. 'Well, Drada, what do you think?'

'Of what, Father?'

'Of my decision with Martellus?'

'Very fitting.'

'How would you know that?' snapped Asbidag. 'You were not listening.'

'True, father, but then you have planned his death for so long that I knew you would have something special for him.'

'But it doesn't interest you?'

'It does, sire, but I was thinking about that problem you set me today, and I have a plan that may please you.'

'We will talk later,' said Asbidag, returning to his place beside Morgase.

'They're going to skin him,' whispered Ongist to Drada.

'Thank you.'

'Why must you take such risks?'

'I don't know. I was thinking about something else.'

'It is good you are a thinker, brother. For you know Father cannot stand you.'

'I know - but then I think he likes none of us.'

Ongist laughed aloud. 'You could be right,' he whispered, 'but he raised us to be like him, and we are. If I thought I'd get away with it I'd gut the bloated old toad. But you and my other dear brothers would turn on me. Wouldn't you?'

'Of course. We are a family built on hatred.'

'And yet we thrive,' said Ongist, pouring mead into his cup and raising it to toast his brother.

'Indeed, we do, brother.'

'This plan of yours, it concerns the clans?'

'Yes.'

'I hope you suggest invasion. Boredom sits ill with me.'

'Wait and see, Ongist.'

'We've waited a year already. How much longer?'

'Not long. Have patience.'

The following afternoon Drada made his way to the ruins of the Garden of the Senses, a half-acre of blooms, trees and shrubs that had once been a place of meditation for the Ateris intellectuals. Many of the winding paths had disappeared now, along with a hundred or so delicate flowers choked by weeds and man's indifference.

And yet, so far, the roses thrived. Of all things Drada had yet encountered on this cruel world, the rose alone found a place in his feelings. He could sit and gaze at them for hours, their beauty calming his mind and allowing him to focus on his problems and plans.

As he had on so many such afternoons, Drada pushed his way through the trailing undergrowth to a rock-pool fringed with wooden benches. Unclipping the brooch which fastened his red cloak, he chose the west-facing bench and sat in the sunshine.

Unwilling to incur Asbidag's displeasure, he had spent the morning watching the flaying of Martellus. The scene had been an unpleasant distraction to the young Aenir warrior; he had seen men flayed before, indeed had witnessed more barbarous acts. And they bored him. But then most of what life had to offer ultimately left

Drada bored. It seemed to the young warrior that the journey from birth screech to death rattle was no more than a meaningless series of transient pleasures and pain, culminating at last in the frustration of missed moments and lost opportunities.

He thought of his father and grinned wolfishly. Asbidag, the destroyer of nations, the bringer of blood. The most brutish warrior of a generation of warriors. He had nothing to offer the world, save ceaseless agony and destruction. He had no genuine thoughts of empire, for it was alien to him to consider building anything of worth. He lived to fight and kill, dreaming only of the day when at last he would be summoned to the hall of the Grey God to recite the litany of his conquests.

Drada shivered, though the sun was warm.

Asbidag had sired eleven sons. Three had died in other wars, one had been strangled by Asbidag soon after birth during a row with the mother. She had died less easily.

Now seven sons remained. And what a brood, cast as they were in the image of their father.

Of them all Drada hated Tostig the most. A vile man of immense power, Tostig possessed all the innate cruelty of the natural coward. A pederast who could only gratify himself by killing the victims of his lust. One day I will kill you, thought Drada. When Father is dead. I will kill you all. No, he thought. Not all. I will spare Orsa the Baresark, for he has no ambition, and despite his frenzy in battle, carries no hate.

Drada leaned his head back, closing his eyes against the bright sunlight.

'So this is where you plan your campaigns.'

Drada opened his eyes. 'Welcome, lady. Please join me.' He didn't like to be disturbed here, but with Morgase he was careful to mask his feelings.

As always she was dressed in black, this time a shimmering gown of silk and satin. Her dark hair was braided, hanging over one marble-white shoulder. She sat beside him, draping her arm along the back of the bench, her fingers hovering near his neck. 'Always so courteous, Drada. A rare thing among the Aenir.'