7
With the willing help of Seakeep's fisherfolk to speed their work, the strange fishermen had soon completed the repair of their boat and were gone again before the afternoon had moved very far toward evening.
The new feeling of purpose they left behind them in the mercenary warriors would hold firm, and already the Falconers looked upon their routine guarding as a matter of need arid of some importance. Perhaps the still-quiescent Lord of Ravenfield might riot prove to be the source of the peril die three had so casually confirmed, but someone was, and there was no question about the need to keep this harbor secure against that renegade.
Despite fortune's solving that trouble for him, Tarlach's mood remained dark all that day and continued dark into the next so that he was glad enough to keep to his quarters, out of sight of his comrades and the Dalesfolk alike, while he attended to the record keeping that was the bane of every commander responsible for more than a mere handful of warriors.
He was not pleased to hear a soft, almost secretive knock around midmorning but gave the call for admittance.
He scowled when the Holdlady entered, but a high-pitched meow drew his attention to the minute kitten she was holding against her, and he glanced into eyes glowing so brilliantly that they were well-nigh aflame.
The Falconer came to his feet and hastened to meet her.
“You have bonded with your comrade already!”
“I have indeed!” She hesitated. “I am sorry to intrude on your work, but there was no one else to whom I could introduce her.” Once more, excitement overcame her. “I never imagined it could be like this!”
He laughed.
“It was the same with me when I was first so chosen, my Lady.”
Tarlach stroked the tiny animal with his forefinger. She was a tortoiseshell, seemingly all fur and with huge, very round, and quite fearless eyes.
“She is a delight and should be a beauty when she grows.” He glanced at the woman. “She is very young, though. What made you seek out an animal so immature?”
“I did not, not intentionally. I chanced on her this morning. She was defending herself claws and teeth against one of the dogs, who had cornered her. He meant business and would have ended the matter in another few seconds had I not intervened, but there was no cringing or thought of surrender to him or to death on her.”
“You did not haul the brute off her?” he asked quickly.
“Hardly! My skin is still whole.—I should have done that had I been forced to it, but I merely told him in mind to be about his proper work and not to trouble again those who should be his charges. He went off suitably chastened.”
“And your little friend was grateful?” he inquired, masking his relief.
“Much more! I asked where I might find her mother to reunite them, but she refused to tell me or to leave me.” The woman smiled indulgently. “She is very strong-willed.”
“You are well met there,” he said dryly. “What have you named her, or was she kin-named already?”
“I called her Bravery. After, that stand of hers, she merits it.”
“In truth.”
Tarlach took the little creature and examined her carefully.
“A fine animal. She should prosper well. Remember, though,” he added, recalling his own excitement with his first chick, “it will be a while yet before you can take her adventuring with you.”
“I think my maternal instincts are quite intact, Captain,” she told him tartly as she retrieved Bravery from his hold.
Their hands brushed together during the transfer of the kitten, and the Falconer stiffened.
He glared at the Daleswoman.
“You have brought me the queerest commission I have ever had the misfortune to hold,” he told her savagely.
Tarlach stopped himself.
“I am a fool,” he said, “and an arrant boor besides. All this must be twice as difficult for you.”
“I do not find your company unwelcome,” she answered, turning her face from him. “I have come to see you as a true friend rather than merely as an ally.”
The color rose a little in the cheek visible to him.
“If I wrong you by saying this, I pray you pardon me. You know that I—I would not insult or lessen you.”
“Insult? Your regard is not that.”
He took a step nearer her.
“Una of Seakeep, you would be the delight and strength of any lord fortunate enough to win you for all that remained to him of eternity. Too often I have heard you indicate otherwise in your speech. That is an injustice to yourself and to Seakeep; such thought can move you to choose for your lord a man less worthy, than you and your Dale merit arid should gain.”
He turned away.
“It is not my right to speak thus to you.”
The woman smiled.
“You have every right. Have I not called you my friend?”
The jade eyes studied him speculatively.
“Your comrades have been giving you trouble?”
His quickly masked start gave her the Falconer's answer although he himself was unwilling to admit the accuracy of her guess.
“Why do you ask that?” he inquired evasively.
“Because it almost needs must be so. Your people do not appear to enjoy idleness. You have had more to do than the rest of your command since coming here. Now that the others are rested and have gotten some feel for the Dale, they cannot find the guarding of the one overland entrance very challenging. They do not even have responsibility for watching the gorge at the Square Keep since you have set your falcons that task. They would have to be wanting something to properly occupy them, even without the irritant that I must represent.” Her eyes fell momentarily. “Idleness must be aggravating that, too.”
“You are sharp, Lady. Your reading of us is not far off, but have no fear that we shall break faith with Seakeep.” His eyes glinted coldly. “Your fisherman neighbors have thoroughly convinced my .warriors of the need for our presence. We are all one in our hatred for sea wolves and black wreckers, and we regard both as our rightful prey.”
“Thanks given, Bird Warrior,” she said in a voice husky enough to tell him that she had been more than passing concerned on that subject.
“Our oath would have kept us here,” he told her stiffly.
“I know, but it is better, infinitely better, that you hold to it willingly.”
For several moments, neither spoke. The man found the silence oppressive, but a constraint had fallen on them both, and he did not know how to break it.
Bravery cried then in a voice astonishingly loud for her size, as if to express her disapproval of this change in the atmosphere around her.
He smiled again and once more stroked her.
“If you can bear to part for a while from this little one, I should like for you to ride with me. Although I have studied the gorge several times, I have not actually entered the Square Keep. In that, I have been remiss. It doubtless still has potential as a. defensive position usable either for or against our cause.”
“I shall have put on riding garments by the time you have ordered our horses to be made ready.”
The Falconer scowled as he headed for the stables. It was indeed his business to check but the old keep both for its military potential as he had stated and to see if it might show any sign of lise by forces of either the Light or the Shadow, but he knew the way right well without having to call for a guide.
He shook his head angrily. Did he jest with himself? Like it or not, after that meeting in the Bower, he was going to have to keep very close to the Holdruler of Seakeep. He did not know precisely how far his oath to defend her actually extended, but to his mind, it included shielding her to the best of his ability from the effects of possible ensorcellment as well as from plain cold steel. To do that, he would have to make sure that she could not be summoned to another such rendezvous while he was at some distant place and unable to reach her.
It was important to him tha
t he succeed. The strength of that importance surprised and troubled him a little, but there was no point in denying that he cared about Seakeep. He did not want to see disaster strike here, and he did not want to see it strike the Holdlady herself, so much so that he had been moved to speak as he had earlier though it went against both his own training and his position here. If Una set up the wrong man as lord in Seakeepdale, the result could be as bad as an invasion. It could be worse.
In a sense, it was a pity he was what he was. Seakeep's last two male rulers had ridden as blank shields …
Tarlach stopped in mid step, then he began to laugh softly. The men of his race had often been accused of taking themselves too seriously by a mile's march, and if he was not the proving of that now, no one ever would be. Was he another Ogin, then, with an opinion of himself so inflated that he imagined his suit would be welcome beyond any question of its success? The idea of his seeking a Holdlord's place was so ludicrous that it was funny only. He could not bring himself to so far dignify it as to chide himself for having entertained it in the first place.
The course they followed was a rugged one, and they had to cross a good part of it on foot leading their animals, but the Daleswoman moved along it with nigh unto the same ease as she would have shown negotiating an overgrown walk.
The pair made reasonably good time, and since there was no need for haste on them, they stopped to rest after traversing a particularly difficult stretch although they had not scheduled a break at that point.
Una sat on the thick heath and breathed deeply of the sweet air, drinking of it as if it were wine.
The man settled himself beside her, as glad for the chance to stop as she was.
“No wonder you were able to endure so well on our march here after training over such ground.”
“Am I going too quickly?” she asked contritely. “I know this area so well that I am not very troubled by it, but you are new …”
Tarlach only laughed.
“You forget that every land is new to me. This pace will not try me overmuch.”
He looked at her curiously.
“How is it that you have learned to move through a wilderness like this? I have never before seen such ability in a Daleswoman and rarely anything approaching it in one of your men, apart from trained scouts or hunters.”
She smiled, pleased but a little embarrassed.
“I was always one for exploring, and my father instilled in me the belief that one who would rule a Dale must be knowledgeable about it and all its workings.”
“It was Lord Harvard who had you taught the use of a sword?” he asked curiously.
“Aye. It amused him at first, but I think he was less than pleased later when I proved good with the weapon.” She sighed. “To his credit, he let me continue to train with it. He was a firm believer in maintaining a sound body, and he did not consider wielding a needle or strumming a lute an effective substitute for physical exercise.”
“That is why you also ride so well?”
“In part, though all Seakeep people have that ability to some extent. Our horses are such that they demand perfection from us. Anything less than skill with them would be a desecration.” Her eyes sparkled. “He even insisted that I learn how to swim and sail because those were skills useful to a seabound folk.”
Una's brows furrowed.
“He never thought I might have need of battle skills, though, that I might have to rule and lead an imperiled Seakeep.”
“Those can be learned,” the Falconer told her. “You have the basics already to judge by the way you handled yourself that day we met.”
She looked quickly away, biting hard on her lip to keep it from trembling. That was a memory she did not cherish.
The captain's hand just brushed hers.
“Forgive me, Lady,” he said gently. “The first slaying is ever harsh even for those of us trained to such work.”
She smiled, grateful for what he offered.
“Does it ever truly become easier?”
“Aye, but for most of us never a pleasure. We all know to beware the man who takes joy in bringing death.”
Tarlach saw that she was ready to go and, coming to his feet, gave his hand to help raise her. They set out at once and soon fell silent again, devoting their attention to the mountainside rising before them.
They had traveled thus for some two hours longer when the woman came to a halt and silently pointed with her small hand.
The thick forest through which they had been riding ended abruptly at the place in which they were standing. A tall cliff rose up above them, and on its summit stood a most strange ruin, its sturdy walls still strong despite the weight of the years, of the centuries, resting upon them.
It was a keep, square in shape, its stern face broken by a very few narrow slits scarcely large enough to allow a bowman space to aim and discharge his weapon.
Her eyes ran proudly up the forbidding, powerful walls.
“The Square Keep was discovered much as you now see it by the first of my people to reach Seakeep after coming to this land and beginning what we now call our history.
“According to the tale he told later, the spirit of this land came to our lord in a dream in the form of a noble maiden, or came in her own self as some would have, and told him that this place was his and his line's for the taking if he willed to have it, but that if he did so, it would be with the understanding that his blood would be carried through his daughters.
“He did so will, and his heirs—all daughters as foretold since no male child has ever been born to our house—and the heirs of the people who followed him have dwelled here even unto the present day.”
“Ravenfield and the other Dales?”
“They were settled at the same time, quietly as ours was, but they were spared even so much contact with those who had ruled High Hallack in the far past. We were all fortunate in that respect. In many other places, men have been seared and their lines cursed by brushes with the Old Ones and their works.”
“You read that truly,” Tarlach agreed readily after a short silence while he studied the ancient building.
“The keep, can we enter it freely, or is that dangerous? You have said it has been a ruin for a long time.”
“Very long, but, aye, we may explore if we use reasonable caution.”
The old fortress proved most interesting although they were not actually very long in the exploring of if.
The ground level consisted of one great chamber. The floors above, three of them, were linked to one another and with the first by a narrow, ever-twisting staircase running upwards through the incredibly thick walls. The chambers inside, those they could see, since the woman's fear of venturing too far out onto what little remained of the ancient floors kept them to the outer parts of the keep, were all dank with the barren cold born of centuries of disuse, and dim, for the few narrow windows admitted little light to the interior.
The stairs ended in a slender doorway that brought them out onto the ramparted roof.
The view from this high place was spectacular, but more than that, it showed clearly along its entire length the only passage piercing the high wall of mountains forming Seakeepdale's inland boundary in this area. At the opposite end of this gorge lay Ravenfield.
“I want to scout it out again since we sure so near,” the warrior told her. “Our falcons’ reports are good and complete, but it does a commander no harm to observe a position firsthand now and then.
“Very well, Captain. Let us go. The way down to it is easier than the one we followed coming to the keep.”
8
Ravenfield's lands differed very little in appearance from Seakeep's, mountains stretching out on every side wild, forbidding, and beautiful. There was more and richer arable soil in Ogin's domain and much less sea-coast, but neither fact could have been ascertained from this place where the two Dales met.
“An invasion could be mounted through here,” the mercenary told his companion, ?
??but I would not like to be serving under the commander desperate enough to lead it. A dozen men set where we are standing could annihilate an army trying to reach Seakeep from this gate, and it would require precious little warning for us to place the ambush.”
“And if they did pass through here, they would still have to cross all the country between, much of which can be readily defended, and would then be faced with the prospect of taking the road into the valley itself.”
He nodded.
“Not an easy task, but any man capable of black wrecking is not one to be underestimated.”
The Holdlady gasped suddenly.
“Speak of dark dreams, and one's sleep is shattered!—Do you see that vale to the right on our side of the gorge? A stream runs through its center.”
“I see it. There is a rider on the farther bank. One of Ogin's people?”
“Ogin himself unless I am badly mistaken. He has an odd seat although he is a fine horseman.’’
She watched the Lord of Ravenfield for several seconds.
“He cannot see us. Shall we slip away or confront him?”
“Is there wrong in his being here? He is on your land.’’
297
The enforcement of boundary integrity varied greatly from section to section and even from Dale to Dale within a given area.
“None at all,” she replied. “Border jealousy is rare here. There is too little to spy out or damage save around the keeps themselves. He could legitimately be seeking animals strayed over here, hunting, or merely enjoying a ride.”
“Or he could be reconnoitering the territory even as we,” Tarlach said grimly. “He has heard of my company's presence in Seakeep by this time and cannot but have divined the cause of your hiring us. He could be preparing to strike the first blow in the hope of crippling us through surprise.”
“Aye, or that.”
The Falconer's eyes narrowed for a moment.
“I would meet this neighbor of yours. Let him come upon us, though. We shall see if he chooses to hail us or withdraw unseen.”
They slipped away from their vantage point and, mounting their horses, carefully worked their way down so that they would not be observed before they were ready to show themselves.