The Ages of Chaos

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  "The frozen waste," her governess told her, "No man knows. . . ." The thought had intrigued Romilly, then. Now she had had enough of wandering in unknown country, and felt that some human company would be welcome.

  Although what she had seen already did not make her feel very hopeful about what she would meet with from men on the roads..

  Well, she had been unlucky, that was all. She sighed, and pulled her belt tighter. It would not hurt her to go on fasting another day, though tonight she must find some food, whatever happened. She looked around again, carefully taking the bearings of the great peak - it seemed to her that there was something near the top, a white building, some kind of manmade structure; she wondered if it was castle, Great House or, perhaps, one of the Towers. Northwest; she must be careful to keep track of the angle of the sun and the passage of time so that she would not begin walking in circles. But if she followed where the road led, she would be unlikely to do that.

  She should get back to her horse. She glanced up again. Strange. The hawk still hovered. She wondered, on wild surmise, if it could be the same hawk ... no. It was just that hawks were plentiful in these hills and wherever you cast your eyes on the sky, there was sure to be some kind of bird of prey within sight. For an instant it seemed as if she hovered, seeing the white pinnacle of the Tower and a faint blue lightning that struck from within ... she felt faint and dizzy, not knowing whether it was the hawk or herself that saw ... she shook herself and pulled out of the rapport. It would be all too easy to lose herself in that communion with sky and wind and cloud....

  She went back to her horse and painstakingly saddled him again. At least the animal was fed. She said aloud, "I almost wish I could eat grass as you do, old fellow," and was startled at the sound of her own voice.

  It was answered by another sound; the high, shrill crying of a striking hawk - yes, the hawk had found some prey, for she could feel, somewhere in her mind, the flow of warm blood, a sensation that made her mouth tickle and flood with saliva, reawakening fierce hunger. The horse startled nervously away, and she pulled on the reins, speaking softly - and then dark pinions swooped across her vision. Without thought she thrust out her arm, felt the cruel grip of talons, and fell blindly into the familiar rapport.

  "Preciosa!" She was sobbing as she spoke the name. How, why the hawk had followed her through her wandering, she would never know. The shrill cry and the flapping wings roused her from her tears and she was aware that there was a good-sized bird, still warm, gripped in the bird's claws. With one hand she gripped the bird's legs, lifting the claw away from her wrist - it was bleeding a little where the claws had cut, it was her own fault, for she had no proper glove. She set the bird on the saddle, her heart pounding, and pulled out her dagger; gave head and wings to Preciosa, and while the hawk fed - praise to the Bearer of Burdens, the horse knew enough to stand quietly when his saddle was made into an impromptu perch - she plucked what was left of the carcass, struck flint and steel and made a small fire where she roasted the carcass.

  She came to me when I was hungry. She knew. She brought me food, giving up her own freedom. The jesses were still clinging to Preciosa's legs. Romilly cut them free with her dagger.

  If she wants to stay with me now it shall be of her free will. Never again will I bind her with any mark of ownership. She belongs to herself. But her eyes were still flooding with tears. She met the hawk's eyes, and suddenly awareness leaped between hawk and girl, a strange, fierce emotion flooding her - not love as she knew it, but pure emotion, almost jealousy. She is not my hawk. I am her girl, Romilly thought, she has adopted me, not the other way round!

  The hawk did not stir when she moved toward it; balancing a little by shifting her weight from foot to foot, she stared motionless into Romilly's eyes; then gave a little upward hop and alighted on her shoulder. Romilly caught her breath with the pain as the talons tightened on her flesh, even through tunic and cloak, and immediately the grip slackened, so that Preciosa was holding her just tightly enough to keep her balance.

  "You beauty, you wonder, you marvel," Romilly whispered, while the hawk craned her neck and preened the set of her feathers.

  Never have I known of such a thing as this, that a hawk once set free should return. . . . and Romilly supposed it was the mark of her laran which had brought her close to the hawk.

  She stayed quiet, in that wordless communion, for what seemed a long time, while Romilly finished the roasted meat, covered the fire and resaddled the horse; her hands moved automatically about her tasks, but her eyes kept coming back and her mind dropping into silent closeness to the bird.

  Will she stay with me now? Or fly away again? It no longer matters. We are together.

  At last she cut a branch and trimmed it, fastening it to her saddle behind, as a perch for Preciosa if she chose to stay there, and mounted, setting Preciosa on the improvised perch. Preciosa stayed quiet for a moment, then flapped her wings and rose high, wheeling just at the height of the treetop, hovering near. Romilly drew a long breath. Preciosa would not leave her entirely.

  Then she drew on the horse's reins, for she heard voices; a rough man's voice proclaiming, "I tell you, it was smoke I saw," and another one protesting something. There were horse's hooves, too, and somewhere a sharp barking.

  Romilly was off her horse, sliding down, leading him into the thickest part of the trees at the edge of the road. She had no wish to meet with any travellers before she could get a look at them and see what they were up to and what they looked like.

  Another voice spoke, rough and male, but this time in the cultivated accents of an educated man - a lowlander, Romilly thought; he spoke like Alderic. "If anyone else travels on this road, Orain, he is no doubt in our own case, and will be as glad as we are to see another human face." The riders came into sight now, a tall man with flame-red hair, wearing ragged clothing but with a certain look of elegance - this one was no yokel like Rory. Somehow he reminded her of Lord Storn, or the elderly Lord Scathfell, though his dress was as rough as her own, his beard and hair untrimmed. The man at his side was tall too, almost gaunt, wearing a shirtcloak of antique fashion and boots that looked hand-botched together from untanned leather. On a block before him, on his saddle, a huge hooded bird, which did not look like any hawk Romilly had ever seen before, moved uneasily from foot to foot, and Romilly, still partly in rapport with Preciosa at treetop-height, felt a little shudder of anger and something like fear. She did not know what sort of bird it was, but she knew instinctively that she did not like to be around it.

  Behind the two men in the lead, five or six others rode. Only the two in the vanguard had horses; the others rode an assortment of chervines, none of them very large or very good, their coats ill-cared-for and their horns ragged and rough; one or two of the stag-beasts had been crudely dehorned with a lack of skill that made Romilly wince. Her father would have turned away any hired man who kept his riding-animals in any such condition, and as for the dehorning, she could almost have done better herself! She liked the look of the two men who rode ahead, but she thought she had never seen such ruffians as the men behind them!

  The gaunt, bearded man in the lead, riding at the side of the red-haired aristocrat (so she immediately styled him in her mind) got off his horse and said, "Here's trace of fire; and horse-droppings, too; there's been a rider here."

  "And with a horse, in the wild?" the red-haired man inquired with a lift of his eyebrows. He glanced around, but it was the gaunt, crudely dressed man whose eyes lighted on Romilly where she stood by the horse in the thickest part of the trees.

  "Come out, boy. We mean ye' no harm," he said, beckoning, and the red-haired man slid from his horse and stood by the remains of her fire. He poked about the carefully covered coals-like everyone brought up in the Hellers, Romilly was over-cautious about fire in the woods-and finally extracted a few live sparks; threw in a twig or two.

  "You have saved us the trouble of making fire," he said in his quiet, educated voice, "Come and shar
e it with us, no one will hurt you."

  And indeed Romilly felt no sense of menace from any of them. She led the horse from the concealed thicket and stood with her hand on the bridle.

  "Well, lad, who are ye' and whereaway bound?" asked the gaunt man, and his voice was kind. He was, she thought, not quite as old as her father, but older than any of her brothers. She repeated the tale she had thought of.

  "I am a hawkmaster's apprentice - I was brought up in a Great House, but my mother was too proud to claim me a nobleman's son, and I thought I could better myself in Nevarsin; so I took the road there, but I am lost."

  "But you have horse and cloak, dagger and - if I make no mistake - a hawk too," said the redhead, his grey eyes lighting on the improvised perch, to which Romilly had tied the cut-away jesses- her whole training had taught her never to throw away a scrap of leather, it could always be used for something. "Did you steal the hawk? Or what is an apprentice doing with a bird - and where is she?"

  Romilly raised her arm; Preciosa swooped down and caught her lifted forearm. She said fiercely, "She is mine; no other can claim her, for I trained her with my own hand."

  "I doubt you not," said the aristocrat, "for in this wild, without even jesses, she could fly away if she would, and in that sense at least, you own her as much as anything human can own a wild thing."

  He understands that! Romilly felt a sudden extreme sense of kinship with this man, as if he were a brother, a kinsman. She smiled up at him, and he returned the smile. Then he looked around at the men ringing the grove, and said, "We too are on our way to Nevarsin, though the route we travel is somewhat circuitous - for reasons of caution. Ride with us, if you will."

  "What Dom Carlo means," said the gaunt man at his side, "is that if we rode the main roads, there are those who'd have the hangman on us, quick!"

  Were they outlaws, bandits? Romilly wondered whether she had not, in escaping Rory and taking up with these rough-looking men, walked from the trap to the cookpot! But the redhead smiled, a look of pure affection and love, at the other man and said, "You make us sound like a crew of murderers, Orain. We are landless men who lost the estates of our fathers, and some of us lost our kin, too, because we supported the rightful king instead of yonder rascal who thinks to claim the throne of the Hasturs. He assured he would have supporters enough by poison, rope or knife for all those who would not support him, and had enough lands to reward his followers, by murdering, or sending into exile, anyone who looked at him cross-eyed and did not bend the knee fast enough. So we are bound for Nevarsin, to raise an army there - Rakhal shall not have the Crystal Palace unchallenged! Him a Hastur?" The man laughed shortly. "I'll shall his head rest in that crown while any of us are alive! I am Carlo of Blue Lake; and this is my paxman and friend Orain."

  The word he had used for "friend" was one which could also mean cousin or foster-brother; and Romilly saw that the gaunt Orain looked on Dom Carlo with a devotion like that of a good hound for his master.

  "But if the lad is a hawk-trainer," Orain said, "I doubt not he could tell ye what ails our sentry-birds, Dom Carlo."

  Carlo looked sharply at Romilly. "What's your name, boy?"

  "Rumal."

  "And from your accent I can tell you were reared north of the Kadarin," said he. "Well, Rumal, have you knowledge of hawks?"

  Romilly nodded. "I have, sir."

  "Show him the birds, Orain."

  Orain went to his horse, and took the great bird from the saddle. He beckoned to two of the other men, who were carrying similar birds on their saddles; warily, Orain drew the hood from the head of the bird, being careful to stay out of reach; it jerked its head around, making pecking movements, but was too listless to peck. There was a long feathered crest over the eye-sockets, but the head was naked and ugly, the feathers unkempt and unpreened, even the creature's talons scaly and dirty-looking. She thought she had never seen such ugly fierce-looking birds; but if in good health they might have had the beauty of any wild creature. Now they just looked hunched and miserable. One of them cocked its neck and let out a long scream, then drooped its head between its wings and looked disreputable again.

  Romilly said, "I have never seen birds of this kind." Though she thought they looked more like kyorebni, the savage scavenger-birds of the high hills, than any proper hunting-bird of prey.

  "Still, a bird is a bird," said Carlo, "We got these from a well-wisher and we would take them as a gift to Carolin's armies, in Nevarsin, but they are failing fast and may not live till we get there - we cannot make out what ails them, though some of us have trained and flown hawks - but none of us know how to treat them when they ail. Have you knowledge of their ills, Master Rumal?"

  "A little," Romilly said, trying desperately to muster her small knowledge of curing sick animals. These were sick indeed; any bird, from cagebird to verrin hawk, who will not preen its feathers and keep its feet in trim is a sick bird. She had been taught to mend a broken flight feather, but she knew little of medicining sick birds, and if they had molt-rot or something of the sort, she had not the faintest idea what to do about it.

  Nevertheless she went up to the strange, fierce-looking birds, and held out her hand to the one Orain held, looking it into the eye and reaching out with that instinctive rapport. A dullness spread through her, a sickness and pain that made her want to retch. She pulled out of the rapport, feeling nauseated, and said, "What have you been feeding them?"

  That was a good guess; she remembered Preciosa, sickened by insufficiently fresh food.

  "Only the best and freshest food," said one of the men behind Orain, defensively, "I lived in a Great House where there were hawks kept, and knew them meat-eaters; when our hunting was poor, all of us went short to give the damned birds fresh meat, for all the good it did us," he added, looking distressedly at the drooping bird on his saddleblock.

  "Only fresh meat?" said Romilly, "There is your trouble, sir. Look at their beak and claws, and then look at my hawk's. That's a scavenger-bird, sir; she should be freed to hunt food for herself. She can't tear apart fresh meat, her beak's not strong enough, and if you've been carrying her on your saddle and not let her free, she's not been able to peck gravel and stones for her crop. She feeds on half-rotted meat, and she must have fur or feathers too - the muscle meat alone, and skinned as well - wasn't it?"

  "We thought that was the way to do it," said Orain, and Romilly shook her head. "If you must feed them on killed meat, leave feather and fur on it, and make sure she gets a chance to peck up stones and twigs and even a bit of green stuff now and then. These birds, though I am sure you've tried to feed them on the best, are starving because they can't digest what you've given them. They should be allowed to hunt for themselves, even if you have to fly them on a lure-line."

  "Zandru's hells, it makes good sense, Orain," said Dom Carlo, blinking, "I should have seen it ... well, now we know. What can we do?"

  Romilly thought about it, quickly. Preciosa had wheeled up into the sky, and hovered there; Romilly went quickly into rapport with the bird, seeing for a moment through her eyes; then said, "There is something dead in the thicket over there. I'm not familiar with your - what do you call them - sentry-birds; are they territorial, or will they feed together?"

  "We daren't let them too near each other," said Orain, "for they fight; this one I carry near pecked out the eyes of that one on Gawin's saddle there."

  Romilly said, "Then there's no help for it; you'll have to feed them separately. There-" she pointed, "is something dead for at least a couple of days - you'll have to fetch it and cut it up for them."

  The men hesitated.

  "Well," said Dom Carlo sharply, "What are you waiting for? Carolin needs these birds, and no doubt at Tramontana they'll have a leronis who can fly them, but we've got to get them there alive!"

  "Ye squeamish, lily-gutted, cack-handed incompetents," Orain swore, "Afraid to get yer hands dirty, are ye? I'll set an example, then! Where's this dead thing ye spied, lad?"

/>   Romilly began to walk toward the thicket; Orain followed and Dom Carlo said with asperity, "Go and help him, you men, as many as he needs! Will you let one man and a child drag carrion for three birds?"

  Reluctantly, a couple of the men followed. Whatever animal lay dead in the thicket - she suspected it was one of the small multicolored woods chervines - it announced its presence very soon by the smell, and Romilly wrinkled her nose.

  Orain said incredulously, "We're to feed that to those fine birds?" He bent down and hauled gingerly at the smelly carcass; a stream of small insects were parading in and out of the empty eye-holes, but it was not yet disintegrated enough to come apart in their hands, and Romilly took one end of the carcass and hoisted, trying to breathe through her mouth so she would not have to breathe in much of the foul smell.

  "A kyarebni would think it fine fare," Romilly said, "I have never kept a scavenger-bird, but their bellies are not like those of hawks, and how would you like to be fed on grass?"

  "I doubt not that y're right," said Orain glumly, "But I never thought to be handling stinking carrion even for the king's men!" The other men came and lent a hand in the hauling; Romilly was glad when it was over, but some of the men gagged and retched as they handled the stuff. Orain, however, drew a formidable knife and began hacking it into three parts; even before he was finished the hooded bird on his saddle set up a screaming. Romilly drew a long breath of relief. She did not like to think what would have happened if she had been wrong, but evidently she had been right. She took up a small handful of fine pebbly dirt and strewed it over the cut hunk of the carcass, then, hesitating - but remembering the moment of rapport with the sick bird - went and unfastened the hood.