One of the beasts facing him yelped and fell, an arrow through its neck.
More shafts rained upon the attackers. He looked up to see Pyra and Jerro each loose another bolt. Others were with them, some of whom he had seen at Lormt, the rest very probably countrymen from the region around.
He had the leisure to study them. This unexpected assault proved too much for the already decimated creatures, and they broke at last, fleeing for their lives.
The mercenary felt Una sway behind him and turned to support her, but he still held his sword at ready. He would not sheathe that, not yet.
Neither did the Daleswoman. She clung to him a moment, then came erect. “I am unhurt, praise the Amber Lady. Did they tear you?”
“No. I escaped injury as well.”
That was not true of their comrades. Una scooped Bravery up from the head of the arrow-slain hunter to which she still clung. Her right forepaw was dripping blood.
Storm Challenger … he was not dead—that Tarlach would have known—but he had been felled, and he had not yet recovered sufficiently to answer his human's call.
Lady Gay whinnied. She was standing well back from the scene of the battle, her feet firmly planted in an attitude of guard.
The Holdruler looked up. “Go,” she told her companion. “She has him there. Bravery is in no peril, and the others will be back soon. I can hold the guard for us in the meantime.”
As if to confirm her words, Pyra returned at that moment from the hunt. She came upslope at a lope that quickened into a run as she neared the pair.
“Come, my Lady. Sit over here where the brush has not been torn. I want to make sure. …”
Una of Seakeep's head raised. “I am a healer as well, and I have wounded comrades. Would you have water brought to me so that I can see how much damage Bravery has taken?”
The other woman studied her sharply, then nodded and went to fetch several waterskins which had been left with her party's horses while Tarlach hastened to his winged brother's aid.
The cleaning and examination hurt the little cat, but she bore it patiently, trusting in her human's mental assurance that this treatment was needful and for her benefit. She meowed, however, as Una started to wind the bandage about the paw, and the woman glanced up to see Tarlach walking toward them. Her stomach knotted. He was cradling his falcon against him, and his mouth was a grim, tight line.
“How bad?” she asked as he drew up beside them.
“The wing may be broken, though he himself believes that it is not.” The words were calmly spoken, but she who knew the man heard the fear in them.
She carefully finished covering Bravery's wound, then gave the cat to Pyra and took the war bird from Tarlach. As she did, her fingers closed for a moment over his Hand in a reassurance she did not entirely feel. Avian bones were fragile, and it did not take much of a blow to shatter one.
Una spent a long time bent over Storm Challenger while her gentle, knowing fingers probed his battered wing and side.
In the end, she looked up and smiled. “Fortune is with us, Bird Warrior. He is badly bruised, but I can detect no break. If no abscess forms within, your comrade should recover soon, though he will not be able to take to the air for a few days to come.”
“Praise the Horned Lord,” he whispered.
He glanced swiftly at Pyra and hastily bent to rub Bravery's head.
The cat raised it to meet his hand and purred happily at his caress. He smiled despite himself. “You seem well enough at any rate, little friend.”
“She, too, was lucky. My worst worry will be keeping her from tearing at the bandage until I am ready to remove it.—You checked the horses?”
He nodded. “I did. Both are as sound as ourselves.”
Tarlach turned to Pyra, who was still the only one of the Lormt people to return to them. The distant sounds of battle, the shouts of men and howls of the dire killer hounds, explained the others’ continued absence right well. None of the strange creatures, apparently, would be allowed to make its escape.
“To say thanks given is scarcely adequate, but how did you know of our need in time to meet it?”
“We did not know of your danger, but we were indeed out seeking those monsters.” Her rather sharp face hardened. “That poor man there had ridden out after his cattle with his young son before him in the saddle. When the hunters surprised them, he cast himself to the ground to delay them and swatted the pony on the rump, knowing the child could ride and that terror and habit would carry the animal home.
“The little boy was naturally hysterical, but he was able to relate his story coherently enough to make his mother understand what had happened, and she raised the alarm. Dark things have invaded these highlands before and are appearing in ever-increasing number, and the local people hold themselves ready to meet their challenge lest the whole area might be rendered unfit for human existence.
“A healer might have been needed, and since I am good with a bow, which Aden is not, I came in her stead.”
The warrior nodded. “A brave man,” he said, glancing at the corpse and shuddering in his heart at the memory of the creatures to which the herdsman had sacrificed himself for the sake of his son. “It is a hard memory for the child to have to bear even if he was spared seeing the full of it.”
“It is that,” the Falconer woman agreed. She liked this man almost despite herself for what she had seen of his behavior toward his companions and for his instinctive compassion, he who knew nothing of family feeling or kin care.
“The sounds of the hunt are dying,” she observed. “We should .be able to return to Lormt soon and try to put the events of this day behind us.”
“It will be good to have it over,” he agreed, but there was a heaviness in his response. It would take more than a good meal and a night's sleep to lift the weight pressing him down from his heart.
5
The Falconer Captain had drawn his chair close to the roaring fire. The heat of it was reaching him at last, although he still would not part with the heavy cloak in which he was wrapped.
This intolerance of cold was the legacy of the fever that had followed a poorly dressed wound taken early in his career when the Hounds still had the forces of High Hallack on the run. It was a mere annoyance, not a debility, and he normally did not dignify it even by acknowledging it, much less give in to it like this, but his spirits were so low that he had yielded thus far to his body's longing for a little greater comfort.
It had worked, at least. He felt drowsy now physically at ease, and it was chiefly languor that was preventing him from seeking his bed, not the chill which had wracked him when he had first come into the room, and which” had drawn him here to the fire that one of the Lormt folk had thoughtfully laid and set alight to greet him upon his return.
His expression tightened suddenly. In truth, he was not eager to court sleep, not yet. He knew himself too well to imagine that his night would be a pleasant one once his body had recovered somewhat from the exertions of the day, not with the sense of failure and the even more violent goad of guilt so lashing him.
His eyes were bleak, leaden as a sky heavy with snow. Once again Una of Seakeep had entrusted herself to him, and once again he had failed to keep danger from her. How many more times would they be able to avert disaster? How much longer? …
There was a knock, and he turned away from the fire, reluctantly reaching for his helm and giving permission for his visitor to enter. The door was not barred, but he had no heart for company this night, nor had he anticipated anyone coming to him. Was something amiss with Lormt or the lands around or with the Holdruler herself?
The intruder was Duratan. He opened the door as soon as he received leave to do so but paused there. “I hope I am not disturbing you, Bird Warrior, but I did see the light of your candles beneath your door and knew you were at least not abed.”
“No. Enter and be welcome. How may I serve you?”
“I merely Wanted to check upon each of you
before retiring myself. That was no light threat you fought today.”
The scholar’s eyes narrowed. Despite the relative mildness of the winter, the nights were still cold, and the fire had been laid early. It warmed the small room well, and there should be no need for that cloak, not for a sound man.
“Are you .wounded, Captain?” he asked with real concern. “We have men’ here with knowledge of heal-craft, though none are nearly as skilled—”
“I am whole,” the Falconer replied curtly as he loosed the garment from his shoulders. He felt shamed to have been discovered so studying himself. “If I trusted the Lady Una with my comrade, I would also have allowed her to attend to me. Healers are so frequently female that we are often compelled to submit to their care, though Wise Women we do try to avoid, there being more of witchery in their work.”
Duratan nodded. That had been true even before the fall of the Eyrie When the mercenaries hired their swords afar and could not readily return to their own stronghold for aid.
“And the winged one, how does he?” asked Duratan.
“Well, even as the Holdruler said. He will be flying again in a couple of days.—Bravery?”
“Resting comfortably and enjoying the attention she is receiving.” He shook his head in an amazement he did not try to conceal. “She is well named. I would expect no less from your falcon, but I have never before heard of the like from a cat.”
“Most creatures will fight if they see one they love threatened.” He steadied himself to hold his voice even although he realized the other would have spoken of it by now if he bore ill news. “The Lady herself?” It would not be taken as too strange that he should ask that in view of her role in his effort to preserve his people, which he had described for Duratan before riding for the coast to meet her.
“No ill effects, and you may believe her two guardians sought for them.”
Tarlach smiled. “I am surprised they allowed you access to her.”
“She is no longer ill, and I do not imagine that Una of Seakeepdale allows others to will for her very often.”
“Not at all that I have observed.”
“She has some rare skills to accompany her determination. Jerro reported that she was fighting like a pard when our people arrived and put that pack to flight.”
“It is well for her that she can do so, is it not?” the Falconer said bitterly. “Her prospects for a long life would be poor if she were depending entirely upon the guarding she has been receiving from me.”
The scholar stared at him. “I do not see how any warrior could have done more for her sake.”
“My kind give and regard our oaths seriously, in spirit and word. It is mine to shield Seakeepdale and its ruler from peril, not merely to fight well once we have walked into it, yet since my taking service with her, we have moved from one near disaster to another.”
Duratan frowned. He thought he had detected concern on the Holdlady earlier and saw that it was well founded. Her comrade's spirit was badly darkened, blacker by far than it had been on the night he had revealed his reason for coming to Lormt, even if this was only a reaction to the unexpected assault on top of the tension of the past weeks and the near total failure of their search.
“The Lady Una is not a fool,” he said quietly, “nor is she timid. If she were dissatisfied with the quality of your service, she would have dismissed you by now.”
The falcon came erect in the nest Tarlach had made for him and spread his wings with an angry hiss. The Captain's hand quickly reached out to soothe him.
Duratan studied him somberly, recalling vividly the story he had told of how his company had come to bind themselves to Una of Seakeep's cause and all that had befallen them since.
A fever had ravaged the Dales of High Hallack several seasons back, hitting men, young active men, the hardest, although none could predict the severity with which it would strike any given place.
It had been at its worst when it swept through most of the Dales in Seakeep's area, stripping them of many of the men time had restored after the war with Alizon. Only one, Ravenfielddale, had escaped with light damage, and its lord had proved the deadly foe of all the rest.
Una of Seakeep had found herself bereft of both lord and sire and threatened by a man many times stronger than her or any of her other neighbors, one determined to secure control of her Dale and its harbor, the only one of any size along all the vast stretch of coast north of Linna. Believing she had no other choice short of capitulation, she had set out in search of blank shields, a goodly number of them.
It was the Captain's company that she found. Falconers who had fought Alizon in High Hallack owed a debt of honor to Lord Harvard, her father. They had no other way of repaying it, and so they swallowed their dislike of females and accepted service with his daughter. Besides, the Lord Ogin, her enemy, was suspected of being a black wrecker.
Those renegades who lured ships to their doom in order to then claim their cargoes were foes to all and were particularly abhorred by his race, which frequently took on marine commissions.
The mercenary had passed over the weeks spent in quiet guarding but had described in detail the great gale they had weathered and the wreck of the merchantman he had witnessed at its height. He told how he had dived from the cliff into the furious sea with the rope to be the survivors’ road to safety bound to him and how the line had severed as the exhausted sailors were climbing up along it. Una of Seakeep had seen it snap and had caught it, twisting it about her hands while she braced herself against the stone to which it had been tied.
Tarlach's thoughts, too, returned to, that night and to the events he had so vividly described, and a chill filled him at the memory of Una's courage. She had held on there, supporting the weight of each mariner, until his comrades discovered and relieved her. Those scars circling her hands were tokens of that night's service, and the Horned Lord alone knew how she had escaped, becoming permanently crippled because of it.
He had gone on to relate how the survivors had confirmed the existence of the black wrecker and described the disastrous voyage which had left their vessel and, three men dead but which had given them the proof they needed against Ogin, proof that had been delivered only after Una and he and two others had been forced to weather a second, smaller gale and the most of the day following it in an open dory. Lastly, he told of the attack that had defeated Ravenfield's Holdlord and his hirelings.
He had hesitated then, but had continued in. the end. The work being done here had demanded that he do so despite the fact that there might be danger in speaking out, for himself as well as for his hope, should Duratan prove careless of tongue. Ouen and Aden and the former Borderer, aided by several other of the more able scholars, were striving to learn and record all they could of the struggle between the forces of Light and Dark, both in the past and now. The old balances had been disturbed through all the known lands of this world, and it was becoming ever more apparent that the ancient, near dormant war could all too soon burst forth in its full fury once more. Any weapons that could be discovered to aid life's cause would be welcome, aye, and could be essential to preventing the Dark from drawing them all into its ever ravenous maw. Tarlach had told of the strange spirit woman who had been Una's friend, of the warning she had brought: that the very site of their approaching battle was a Dark gate nigh to open, and needing only a little more blood to give the thing ravening inside the strength it required to tear away the last bonds holding it back. He described the opening of that gate and of the duel waged by the spirit in their defense, which had ended in the defeat of the horror seeking entrance into their realm and the sealing of its passage, a victory she had secured at the cost of her own existence.
Of other things he had not been able to speak. He could not tell this man of the way regard had grown between Una of Seakeep and himself, of how they had drawn ever closer during their weeks together, first in peace and then in shared peril, a closeness culminating in the declaration they had made to o
ne another on that Ravenfield beach while the gate they believed would be their doom slowly opened before them. Even were such revelation possible, he could not have brought himself to disclose the details of their later meeting in the safety of Seakeep's high round tower when they had affirmed that they were lord and lady in heart, although both accepted the stark reality of the fact that they could probably never be so joined in body or before the world. He might or might not have had the courage to fly in the face of his people's custom had he been free to act for himself, but that liberty of action was not his, and both of them were bound by the same chain of purpose.
That heavy cause itself, the reason why he had come to this continent, why he had journeyed to Lormt, was another matter. That need not be hidden, though it was Falconer business. Duratan and his associates had been good to him, receiving him kindly and giving every assistance without ever raising the questions pricking their ever active, eager minds. They deserved this much return, and courtesy had demanded that it be given.
Tarlach had told how Una of Seakeep and he had each come to recognize the specter of extinction looming over his people and of the incredible thing she had done to prevent their destruction.
The scholar had stared at him in stunned silence for several seconds.
“She … gave you a Dale?” he had whispered at the end of that time, stunned by the magnitude of that gifting.
His head had raised in pride as he had given his answer. “She had no will to keep Ravenfield after having gained it through blood, but chiefly she could not stand back unacting and allow a race to fade out of the universe when the means to prevent it were hers. For the same reason, she has entered into treaty with me for the joint use of Seakeep's wild country, since only thus would we have sufficient land to establish a new Eyrie and its villages.”
Tarlach had stopped there, gathering his thoughts. There were stipulations in that agreement with respect to the treatment of the women he would bring to High Hallack, for Una would not perpetuate old evil, and changes in their association, male with female, would have to come. These, too, he had described as far as he was able, but much of the actual detail was still in the stage of thought only.