Master of Hawks Page 4

  Hawk nodded. He had wanted to talk to Derek about Roslyn’s actions and possible telepathic powers; however, he had never seen Derek react to anyone like this before.

  While one part of his mind wondered if Derek could be right, another suspected that perhaps Derek’s irrational response had been triggered because he’d found himself strongly attracted to Roslyn. If she wouldn’t play his game, perhaps Derek would try to remove her from the game entirely.

  “I’m going up to bathe now,” Derek said. “Afterward we’ll discuss the fortifications at Buchanan.”

  “Fine,” Hawk replied, following him. “This afternoon I’d better ride over to my place and get some replacement birds; tomorrow I can scout up the trail for Ramsey’s main party.”

  “What about the enemy bird-telepath?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Hawk replied. “I wasn’t expecting to run into another telepath. Nothing we’d seen or heard indicated his presence, so I wasn’t shielding my mind as I scouted. If I’m careful, I think I can scout without being detected.”

  “I hope so,” said Derek, pressing his fingertips together. “Well, get your birds. We’ll need to know if Ramsey will arrive on schedule. Then you’d better get back by eight o’clock tonight, when we’ll be meeting to finalize plans for the ambush.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be there.”

  The two men stood together silently for a moment, each thoughtful. They were complementary figures, like sides of the same coin: different in stature and appearance, yet of the same mettle; alike in many ways, and yet not alike; thinking about the same subject, but differently, and that subject was the woman not the ambush.

  Together they entered the inn.

  5

  Later in the afternoon, as Hawk saddled his horse, he heard soft footsteps behind him. It was Roslyn. She walked down the stable’s shadowed aisle into a nearby stall.

  He hesitated, self-consciously rubbing his hand over his unkempt beard, and then he called out “Hello.”

  “Hello,” she replied as she turned to saddle her chestnut gelding.

  Hawk had not had much contact with women in the small farming community where he’d grown up. He’ always been the “strange” one, different because o his telepathic abilities. As a result he had become loner, preferring the company of his birds to people. Now, as he looked at Roslyn, he wished he knew how to communicate with her as well as he could with birds.

  He tried to think of a way to restart the conversation, but he felt foolishly tongue-tied.

  Then Ro smiled at him. “We’ve been cooped up here for days, so I thought I’d better give my horse some exercise. Where are you off to?”

  Hawk wet his lips and abruptly found the words tumbling out. “I’m going over to my place to get a couple of my trained birds. It’s easier to use them rather than wild ones for scouting, and it’s simpler to pick up several than to try to telepathically control a group of them to fly here. Besides, I want to get some fresh clothes and check my home.”

  “Your tree house,” Ro said, gently rubbing her horse’s forehead while the animal nuzzled contentedly against her arm. “I’ve heard something about it. It really sounds interesting. I’d love to see it sometime.”

  Hawk stared at the dark brown eyes of his bay. Then without thinking he heard himself say, “Would you like to ride out with me?”

  He instantly regretted his impulsive words, but when she did not reply immediately, he felt a wave of conflicting emotions: He feared she would agree, yet was afraid she would not. For a moment Hawk was acutely aware of the creaking of the old boards in the walls, the sighing and breathing of the horses, and the stench of horse sweat and dung that saturated the air.

  Then he heard her clear voice reply: “Fine.”

  So they rode together through the cool spring afternoon—the short, wiry man on his bay and the tall, beautiful girl on her chestnut.

  They traveled about a quarter of a mile north on the Buchanan Road and then turned eastward along a narrow path that wound through a thick forest of oaks, beeches, and pines. Soon small skytrees began to appear.

  The path ran downhill and reached an old riverbed. The once wide stream was now a fast-flowing brook that carved its way down the middle of the dried bed. At the bottom of the hill, the ruins of an ancient bridge spanned the breadth of the old stream.

  “This way,” said Hawk, waving downstream as he rode toward the riverbed.

  Ro followed and looked back at the crumbling bridge. She was surprised to see a dark gargoyle head jutting out from its center. The long-necked sculpture craned out over the water, its huge eyes staring at the river. The face was vaguely simian, but with a protruding jaw, two tusks, and a large mouth filled with sharklike teeth.

  She recognized the face as a caricature of an osmur and shivered. She had helped kill an osmur once, long ago, and fervently hoped they weren’t heading into osmur territory. Osmurs were one of the few animals she could not mind-control. However, as they rode alongside the creek, the skytrees became taller and more dominant, until Ro grew certain they were entering a skytree forest. A tingling sensation of danger began to force its way into her consciousness. Osmurs and the Sylvan lived in the gigantic skytrees.

  Although there was no obvious landmark, Hawk abruptly crossed the stream and headed into the forest of skytrees. As she followed him, Ro felt her precognitive warning ebb.

  The enormous branches and leaves from the skytrees cut off almost all sunlight, causing the afternoon to darken into twilight. Hawk led the horses on a winding path around the house-wide trunks that seemed like massive pillars holding up a thick green.

  There were no bushes or smaller trees growing beneath the impenetrable canopy, just a deep layer of fallen leaves and branches, and moss. They rode as through a vast, darkened hall.

  Gradually the trees thinned and grew smaller, until they reached the top of a hill at the edge of the immense forest. A tree house lay half-concealed among the branches of a skytree dominating its summit. Rising one hundred and fifty feet, the tree had a trunk about fourteen feet in diameter. Trees in the center of the skytree forest could be more than three times as large.

  “It’s an old Sylvan watchtower,” said Hawk. “I added on to it—everything outside there. The watchtower itself just had one room and an observation tower. Come, I’ll show you.”

  Ro looked over the seemingly normal trunk for the entrance. She vividly remembered her one visit to a skytree forest and the Sylvan village perched near the top of its tremendous branches. She had been a child then, accompanying her father on a diplomatic mission. Then she pushed the memories away—the past was too dangerous. Instead she concentrated on the tree.

  Hawk had dropped his reins and walked to the trunk. Running his fingers over the rough bark, he pressed and twisted a knotty hump. Suddenly a door swung out.

  “This watchtower is abandoned?” asked Roslyn. She had dismounted and now peered over his shoulder into the hollow trunk.

  “Yes. A fire destroyed the Sylvan village in these woods a long time ago. In the center of the forest there’s a clearing where the great trees once stood. The remaining stumps are blackened and gutted by whatever fire destroyed the trees.”

  Ro felt a tense knot in the pit of her stomach. She could imagine the enormous trees aflame, the airy bridges and houses crumpling, falling slowly to the earth like charred leaves spit out by a campfire.

  She forced herself to straighten her clenched hands and said slowly and with a trace of bitterness, “Only a sorcerer’s fire could have destroyed the Sylvan.”

  Hawk noticed Ro’s pale, taut face. “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s just that when I think of fires, I remember …” Ro paused and rubbed her palms against her trousers. “I remember a fire I was in. I almost didn’t get out. I’ve been terrified of fire ever since then.” She laughed nervously. “I have to force myself to sit by a fire or even to light a match.”

  “That could make things diffic
ult at times.” Hawk pointed to the interior of the tree. “You go first. There’s a ladder to the left. Just keep climbing until you reach the landing, then step off.”

  Roslyn entered the tree. The hollow area was big enough for a rather large person. As in all Sylvan trees the interior walls were covered with a dark brown moss that produced phosphorescent light. The soft white glow provided minimal but sufficient lighting to see the narrow ladder carved directly in the living wood. Permeating the air was the faint, pleasant smell of the skytree, somewhat like ground walnuts mixed with hot oil.

  When she had climbed about twenty-five feet, she reached the entrance to a small room, although the ladder continued to rise. Roslyn stepped off, and a moment later Hawk joined her.

  The walls of the oval room curved upward, giving it the appearance of a giant knothole, which, in effect, it was. The Sylvan, using their paranormal powers over plants, shaped the skytrees to their use.

  Roslyn touched the strange dark walls, almost smooth, but with a slight texture caused by the grain. A rough bookshelf, table, and chair of pine seemed incongruous furnishings against the room’s natural shape.

  Then she followed Hawk through a round doorway leading outside to the tree house. It had been built onto two huge branches angling out from the trunk like normal trees from a hillside. Constructed of fitted oak logs, the house consisted of two rooms sharing a common wall and two-sided fireplace.

  Hawk stalked the rooms and opened so many shuttered, glassless windows that when he finished the skeleton structure looked more like a roofed platform than a house. Numerous large bird cages hung from the beams and sat abandoned in the corners of the large living room. Most were empty, but a few contained small, injured birds.

  “Who took care of these while you were gone?” asked Ro, peering at a sparrow with a splint on its leg.

  “A friend of mine who lives on a farm about a mile from here. He comes and feeds them every few days if I’m away.” Hawk went over to the ceramic sink and began pumping water; then he filled a pitcher and replenished the birds’ dishes. “I’m sorry about the mess in here. I’m not used to visitors; in fact, I guess not more than four other people have ever been here.”

  “Thank you for inviting me. It’s really lovely here. But it’s so isolated—don’t you get lonely?”

  Suddenly all too aware of her presence and their seclusion, Hawk avoided her gaze. “I have my birds.”

  Roslyn finished surveying the living room and then glanced into the bedroom. “Do you have a bathroom here too?”

  “I fixed up one in the bedroom, complete with a crude shower.”

  “You’ve really got a nice place,” said Roslyn as she turned and sat on the faded brown sofa in the middle of the room. Its thick wool cover showed the marks of talons and beaks. “But where do you keep the rest of your birds?”

  “They are free—outside there.” Hawk pointed into the masses of dark green leaves that blocked the sky and ground in an impenetrable curtain seemingly too thick for any birds to pass through. “I plant the suggestion in their minds that they stay near here, and they do. Then when I need one of them I can contact it readily. I’ll show you.”

  Hawk concentrated, and suddenly a number of birds dived and hopped through the open windows, surrounding him in a frenzy of beating wings. Some settled on his outstretched arms, clinging to the dark leather sleeves of his jacket and to the thick gloves he’d put on; others circled in a bright chaos and then landed on various perches around the room.

  Ro laughed in surprised delight as a sparrow settled on the arm of the sofa about a half an inch away from her hand. Hawk’s deep laugh joined hers, and their shared laughter dissolved the tension between two strangers. In that moment, their relationship shifted without either being aware of it, and they became friends.

  Finally Hawk mentally scooted most of the birds out the windows, keeping only those he wanted for scouting, two mueagles and two bluejays.

  At Hawk’s mental command the male eagle landed on his glove and gazed at him with amber eyes. Far larger than the normal golden eagle, it stood over two feet high with an enlarged head the size of a grapefruit.

  As Hawk stroked its tawny feathers, he sensed the bird’s thoughts. Unlike other birds, the mueagles were intelligent, sentient creatures, so that Hawk’s telepathic linkage was more a simple conversation than the total submersion of a primitive mind.

  The bird demanded some food for itself and its mate, the equally large female who perched on a nearby stand. While Hawk filled the feeding stand with meat he’d brought for the eagles, the male mueagle reported recent movement in the forest—sightings of osmur, deer, elk, and men.

  When he finished with the bird, Hawk turned to Roslyn. “I call the male Stormrider and the female Windrifter. They are mueagles—see the enlarged craniums? They’re more intelligent than other animals I know, about on the level of a five-year-old child, I guess. I found them out in the badlands southwest of York.”

  Then he pulled off his gloves and tucked them into his belt. “I wish I’d had them with me a few days ago when I scouted Ramsey’s troops.”

  Ro nodded sympathetically. “I heard about that. They had a bird-telepath who killed your hawk.” “His falcons will be no match for these eagles, if they should meet—but I’m hoping to avoid any confrontation this time. If that telepath should realize I’m still around, he might wonder why, and I don’t want to take any chance that he might learn of our ambush. Besides, I’d prefer not to kill any birds unless I have to, not even his.”

  Noticing Hawk’s worried expression, Ro changed the subject. “May I see the rest of the tree? I’d like to get a good look at the forest, but from here all I can see are leaves and more leaves.”

  “It’s a long climb up that ladder … “

  “I don’t mind heights.”

  So Hawk followed her up the steps, past several small storage rooms and a few man-sized knotholes leading onto branches, until they reached a limb about one hundred and thirty feet from the ground. Several of the branches formed a natural crow’s nest, reinforced with oak planks. Only a few sparse branches jutted above them into the sunlight.

  The skytree had been chosen with care, for its site on the hilltop gave an unsurpassed view of the Sylvan forest curving eastward through the valley. Part of the dark brown ribbon streaked with the silver of the bordering riverbed could be seen, as well as the farms and normal forest to the west and the dark band of the Buchanan Road encircling the hillside almost directly below.

  “Why didn’t we just ride up the hill from the road?” asked Ro, surprised to see that they were so close to it.

  “A direct path from the road to this tree would be convenient, but I prefer to use the same trail the Sylvan did to enter the forest—it’s less obvious and inviting.”

  Ro sighed as she studied the lovely panorama.

  “Imagine having the power the Sylvan possess over plants to shape these giant skytrees as they wish. If only they would form an alliance with York—Coleman S’Wessex has been trying to arrange one for years. The Sylvan forests within the kingdoms the Empire has conquered would be perfect places for us to launch a counteroffensive. But the Sylvan are too mistrustful of humans to help us.”

  “I suppose so.” Hawk noticed the elongated shadows of the trees like fingers pointing out the end of day. Reluctantly he turned away from the view. “I’d better change my clothes and get the things I need.”

  “Go ahead, I’ll be down in a few minutes,” Ro replied.

  When he had gone, she leaned back against the trunk and stretched her arms over her head toward the darkening blue above, letting the backs of her fingertips brush the rough bark. There was power there. She could sense the living, growing tree, and when she closed her eyes she extended her awareness to the birds and small animals that lived in its branches.

  She turned, placed her hands against the bark, and pressed her forehead to the trunk, wishing suddenly that she could draw from the tree the same s
trength and security that the Sylvan did. However, her psychic powers were different from those the tree people possessed. She could not shape the skytree, nurture it with her power, or draw energy from it.

  She had only her own strength to depend on.

  Although she’d spent months with Coleman S’Wessex and his men and had made some friends, she still felt isolated from them.

  She missed Greton, but it was not the center of her loneliness. Rather it was Garth, who lay dead and buried two thousand miles across the ocean. Garth, who had been her friend and companion while they grew from teenagers into adults; Garth, who had become her lover and her husband; Garth.

  She wondered for the thousandth time if she would ever be able to think of him without an awful emptiness and sadness welling up inside to gnaw at her; and worse than the sadness was the bitterness, anger, and hatred.

  She wondered again if she’d done the right thing in leaving Greton. It had seemed simple then to get away; to return to the Eastern Kingdoms; to turn her bitterness and anger at Garth’s loss toward something she could do something about, toward those that had destroyed her family and her kingdom; to settle the wrongs of the past in order to forget the pain of the present.

  But death and destruction were a poor substitute for what she had lost. Although her decision to fight for the freedom of the Eastern Kingdoms was irrevocable, her reasons for doing so had gradually altered. She no longer sought vengeance for herself; now it was for her people. She fought for the victory that would restore all that had been lost, including the most precious thing—peace. And in doing so she hoped she would find some measure of peace for herself.

  Her thoughts suddenly shifted away from Garth and the past as Derek S’Mayler’s handsome face came unbidden into her mind. Why does he hate me so? she wondered. No. I can’t let myself think about him. Determinedly she pushed the memory away.

  Then she hugged the trunk, although it was too large to embrace fully. She pressed herself against its comforting bulk. After a time her thoughts returned to the calm and resolute state she tried to maintain. She looked over the beautiful view once more and descended into the tree.