The snake reached the recumbent willow trunk and moved, belly scales expertly catching the rough fissured surface of the bark until he rested several feet above the water, concealed by the smooth, leafy wands of branches hanging from the fallen tree. Arthur had seen them lying as he was on summer days when he forded rivers and streams. He had never bothered one, and now was glad.
The snake took a dragonfly with blinding speed. Not very good tasting. The minnows had been better. Like the fish’s, his teeth were to the back.
Now! The dragonfly had been an appetizer only.
Arthur was uncomfortable. He couldn’t let himself sink into the serpent the way he had into the fish. He didn’t want to be part of such a being. But he sensed that if he allowed himself to become simply an observer, the creature might perish. And that was the test.
This was borne out when he saw the shadow of the viper swim past below the log through the sunstruck water. It was only an outline in the murky green translucence, but he clearly saw the flat head, broad at the back, a wedge set on a narrow neck that tapered into a thick body, wider across than high.
The venomous have their own profile. It belongs only to them.
The serpent had accepted his judgment and come to hunt here. It remained to be seen if the true proprietor of this puddle would overlook his trespass or not. The viper was twice the size of the vermilion hunter he occupied. His companion would be a good dinner.
Vipers. Now, where there was one, there usually was another. But he didn’t move—even a human eye would lose him along the bark.
Where oh where was the other?
His eyes roved over the winter-killed reeds and sedges, the fading brown stalks of cattails, the faint traces of green on the knot grass growing through the water at the margin of the pond.
Then he knew. If she wasn’t anywhere else, she would be … Behind him.
If there’s one thing snakes can do, it’s move fast. The turn he made was an arc. She was already striking.
His head swung wide, toward her tail, and he hooked the very tip with his recurved teeth. She swung like a flying whip. He was in the air, but it didn’t matter. He tightened every muscle and jerked his head to the left. He felt her neck snap.
There were only stars. He lay in the sea of stars, and there was no up, no down, no earth, no sky. Only the arch of the star road, the Milky Way, over him. He was very tired, but it was good to have arms and legs and be a man. He was unbelievably dirty, his clothing in rags, part of his hair and beard singed away.
She was standing not far from him. He got to his knees. His arms were shaking, and it was difficult to push himself up. “Did the snake live?” he asked.
She laughed. “What does it matter? In the end, you won’t—live, that is. No man can ride the wheel for long.”
“It matters to me,” he said.
“Then, yes, it did. After its struggle with the viper, it took some small fish and a frog. Not a lot, but enough to allow it to survive the next cold spell. Later that year, it mated and bred.”
He looked down at his dirty clothing. Even in the starlight he could see how tattered it was.
“When we walked in the forest …” he began.
“We weren’t really there,” she said. “No more than you were with the fish or the snake.”
“But I’m here now?” he asked.
“I cannot say,” she answered.
“I have only a small need,” he said. “But I hope I am present in such a way as to gratify it. I would like a drink of water.”
Abruptly, he found himself in the forest, just below the plateau where he had first been imprisoned. He was standing in the same jumble of rocks where he had seen the strange bowl that seemed to bring him back for a moment to Tintigal. She was standing there with him.
The bowl was at his feet. He made as if to kneel.
But she said, “No. Reach down and rest your fingers on the inside of the rim. Just touch it, but don’t put your hand in too deep and touch the zone of power at the bottom.”
He reached down with his right hand and touched the inside of the rim. There was a soft click, and the bowl came free of its place in the rocks and stuck to his fingers as he lifted his hand.
“See,” she said. “Already it knows you.”
The bowl was half filled with water and the golden cross. Not quite a cross, a circle with strange symbols for arms, four arms, no two alike. One arm was a crescent and two ovals, another hooks and ovals, a third another oval and a sinuous symbol in the shape of a half S, the bottom half of an S, and on the last, the ovals were joined by curved lines. The curious marks quite clearly glowed from within but not with the cold, blue phosphorescences of the winter surf or rotten wood. They had a warm, dark umber glow, like amber in sunlight.
He transferred the bowl to a more conventional grip, holding it cradled in his two hands.
“Now drink!” she said.
He did, and the water from the bowl flowed into his body, and not only quenched his thirst but warmed him, strengthened him, and filled him with a relaxed confidence he hadn’t felt before.
“Is this fair?” he asked.
“It isn’t a contest,” she said.
He struck out instinctively. The bird was coming directly for his eye.
The raven screeched and exploded in a tangle of black feathers. It fell toward the ground, and he realized he hadn’t killed it, because it took wing and flew.
Something thumped against his shoulder, and he felt the sting of a beak on his skin. This time he moved even more quickly, and the starling died when his giant, hooked beak closed over it.
The small birds mobbing him drew back, quarreling among themselves. That put the fear of God into them.
Then a gust of truly icy wind hit him. He hunched his body and fluffed up his feathers to protect himself from the biting cold. The sun was a band of pale orange on the horizon. Night was coming over a devastated countryside. All around him the forest was blackened and dead, left that way by a fire that had burned out only a few weeks ago.
Far I flew, the bird thought. And everywhere I saw desolation.
It wasn’t in a bird of prey to examine the motives of another species, but this was extreme even for them. And the bird knew with gritty disgust that it would soon die. It hadn’t been able to find food for over a week now, and it was starving.
Not fair, Arthur thought. This one will be the death of me. Then he was brought up short by his companion’s incomprehension.
It is not that we don’t give up. We don’t even think about it. But, yes, the bird, a young eagle, had exhausted all her—that one was a revelation—all her reserves. She had been on her own for a month now. Toward the mountains where she came from, the pickings had been fairly good. But she couldn’t remain in her parents’ territory, and all others had been taken.
So she began her journey, guided by the wheeling stars and the earth’s movement on its axis. Out over the plain, and ran into the destruction caused by war.
At first at least there was carrion. She rested for several days near a battlefield, cleaning the scraps from the bones piled in wild profusion, successfully quarreling with the rest to maintain her position. Until all the available food had been eaten and the scavengers had been reduced to feeding on rodents that lived on what they could gnaw from the joints and bone piles that had once been men and horses. Feeding at last on the scraps of leather armor and horse tack that remained.
As she journeyed on, the desolation grew worse and worse. Farms and villas burned to the ground, livestock that couldn’t be driven away slaughtered in their stalls, stables, corrals, and pastures. Ducks, geese, and chickens cooked and eaten to feed the army on the march.
The forest fires were set when the armies fired the crops standing in the fields. Even the orchards were felled or the trees girdled and killed with the fruit still green on the boughs. The same fate befell the people. Those unfit to be sold as slaves were cut down where they stood. Weeds were beginning
to grow up through their bones.
Her last kill had been a scrawny hare, almost a week and a half ago. Now she stood clutching the highest branch of the blackened pine, looking at the burned-out forest and farm below her, enduring the cold and being buffeted by a wind that carried a hint of snow.
It was more than welcome to him to be a bird. He liked it better, though the sheer ferocity of her mind was frightening. Yet even in that, he felt somehow a connection to her, since he bore in the darkest parts of his spirit the same insatiable and unquenchable fury that waited, held by an iron control, until the moment of combat, when he could release it unchecked by conscience. A savage force, which terrorized and then destroyed his enemy.
Yes, she was like him, taking no quarter and giving none—not even to herself.
We are, he thought, even in this extremity a fine thing.
The growing darkness drove off the birds that were mobbing her, and they found themselves alone. What wonders she possessed. He would have killed for those talons that clenched themselves around the branch. They were armed with two-inch nails and strong enough to snap the neck of a full-grown goat. Even though her body was reduced by semi-starvation, her massive wings were intact and would carry her above the highest peak on the highest mountain in the world.
Her eyes were a miracle, and, indeed, just then they demonstrated how good they were. A shadow moved in what had been some sort of dwelling near the foot of the burned pine. Her eyes accommodated the darkness and focused on a thin wood rat scavenging among charred corn grains near the blackened remnants of a chicken coop.
The man had a second to wonder at the destruction so awesome and absolute that it encompassed even barnyard fowl. His next thought was that high intelligence isn’t always an advantage—sometimes it is only a distraction. But not to her.
He was startled to realize that she had begun her swoop while he was still considering it. She was swift, silent, and deadly. She didn’t bother with even one wing beat. The moment they opened, she dropped into a beautifully controlled glide, which took her only inches above the wood rat.
Arthur saw the wood rat glance up once, when she was nearly upon it. Its look was one of surprise—and that was all it had time for, surprise.
A few seconds later, she sat on her perch in the pine, dining on wood rat. It wasn’t enough, but it was something. A snack for a bird her size. The wind had a bite to it. She hunched down and fluffed her feathers against the growing cold while she finished her meal. When her crop was full, she dozed for a few moments.
He realized she was glad he was present. This surprised him, until he explored her consciousness further and discovered she was capable of both love and loyalty.
Not to her young. A bird of prey is tested from the first moment it pecks open the egg. Most fail.
No, her strongest feelings were reserved for the mate she would one day join in dominating a territory and rearing young. Him, she could love. And Arthur knew they did love. He had seen it when one of the other Bears captured a young goshawk. His mate would in no way desert him, but remained nearby and even tried to feed him through the bars of his cage in the mews. This moved Arthur. Most of the rest of the boys involved themselves in an enthusiastic attempt to capture her, also.
A few days later, Arthur realized that looking at the pair of birds trying to reach past the cage bars to each other made him want to cry. So he gave the goshawk’s owner a gold-hilted knife for the goshawk and released it. The bird spiraled up and up, toward the sky, and was greeted from the clouds with a cry of the purest joy he had ever heard. He had wept then. And was glad no one saw him.
What to do? What to do now … for her?
She was glad he was present. She had felt so … alone.
It was dark now, and the stars were aglow, a mesh of timeless beauty that seemed to catch eternity in its shining nets. She and his kind had lived together for a long time. Humans got respect from the birds. But no more. They couldn’t be tamed but would, with some persuasion, accept a human hunting partner. To the men and women who were devoted to the pursuit of falconry, the birds were held in near godlike awe. That’s what he needed: one of those fanatics right now.
We fly.
She did.
She couldn’t have his knowledge of war and its limitations. For a moment he was simply lost in the joy of the mighty wings that lifted him higher and higher, up beyond the burned-out forest. The abandoned farms, the rolling hills, pastures filling with weeds, the eyeless villas of Roman occupation still standing only because they were walled with stone and would not burn. Their roofs were long, open to the rain. They had fallen first.
The few walled towns were blackening piles of rubble. From time to time he saw lights, and she obligingly dipped down and focused those magnificent eyes on the few furtive survivors of the long war. They offered little hope. Most, like the eagle, were struggling to survive amid what seemed universal catastrophe.
He asked that she turn toward the mountains. There, in the heavily forested foothills, hiding on ground so rocky and broken that it could not be farmed, were a cluster of survivors. In the summer they made a living by driving their stock to pastures in the mountains. In the winter they stole from travelers on their way across what was once the prosperous countryside to the still-functioning market at Paris. The rewards were sufficient to keep trade alive, and those thieves were usually content to let themselves be bought off.
Nothing in the forbidding little valley was in an easily accessible position. They were all fortified in some way. They were round houses, as his people built, and the eagle landed on the roof of the largest one. She took a little persuading, but finally she entered the smoke hole and climbed down to sit among the rafters.
Arthur was delighted. They were the toughest, most terrifying, most disreputable crew he had ever seen. The leader was a horse-size redhead, who wore only breeches, no shirt. But that didn’t matter, since he had a pelt of red hair that would have been the envy of a bear. He wore enough jewelry to make up for his lack of a shirt. At his neck, two torcs and assorted chains hung heavy with jeweled medallions.
But best of all, at least a half-dozen hooded hawks stood on perches against the walls that ringed the room. And it was clear from the guano piles under their perches that their nutrition and comfort were favored above all else.
There was no furniture, and the chief and his men sat in a loose circle on hides around the fire pit. He was speaking to a tall, lean, powerful young man at his side. “I still cannot see why you will not tell me how you learned they were operating hereabouts.”
“The question is father to the lie,” the young man answered.
The rest of the ugly crew laughed at the chief. This seemed to disturb him not at all.
“Someone should teach you respect for your betters,” one of them said.
“I’ll respect my better when I meet him,” the young man said. “He is not here.”
Again gales of laughter.
“It won’t do for you to be so mealymouthed,” the chief said.
There were at least three animals roasting in the smoke over the fire pit. A deer, a pig, and something that looked like a horse. The chief was sampling the first course, a suckling pig cooked in clay. The dogs were scattered near the fire. A beautiful gray hound thrust her nose into his hand, and he gave her a leg from the pig. When a big coursing hound tried to pull it out of her mouth, the chief slapped him across the muzzle. The giant hound whined and covered his muzzle with his forepaws. The chief relented and gave him part of a haunch.
“You should give it up, Cregan,” one of the freebooters said. “Black Leg will never tell you how he finds things out.”
Cregan sighed. “It’s true. But if the lot of you wouldn’t get him started smarting off, I might get some truth out of him.”
“There is no truth in any of you,” the boy said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”
“Still, we have done better since you wandered out of the forest,” C
regan said.
“You told me you wanted to study war and fighting,” he continued. “And I will say, you picked the best possible site to further your education. I cannot remember a peaceful year in my lifetime, nor in my father’s. Nor his father’s before him. Yet I think we should be grateful we survived the Romans and the Franks. Now we are left to deal with the Huns.”
“Tremendous rich men they are, too,” one of the others contributed. “That bunch we ambushed yesterday were dripping with gold. We got a good price for cutting their throats. Ah, well, the masters at the villas pay well, and happens it’s all ours now.”
And, indeed, they looked rich. Every man had at least a gold torc; most had belts, gleaming with silver and precious stones, and gold-hilted gem-encrusted knives, swords, and throwing axes. Some armor, mail shirts dripping with bullion trim, chains, rings, bracelets, and highly burnished helmets rounded out their accoutrements.
The weapons and jewelry were, however, the only clean things in the room; for the rest, most of the men looked as though they dressed their hair with lime or butter and replaced their clothing only when it grew too rotten to wear. But as far as an eagle was concerned, this was a minor affair. All she cared about were the three carcasses ready to be eaten. She was wretchedly hungry.
She dropped from the rafters onto the remains of the deer and began to fill her crop at the best speed possible. There was a loud shout from the men. A few scrambled to their feet, reaching for weapons. The ornate throwing axes troubled Arthur. But Cregan was sitting, gazing up at her with stunned delight.
“Hold!” he roared. “If any lays a hand on her or even splits a feather, I’ll unman him with a hoof knife. Oh, my beauty. My fair, my lady of the peaks. How come you here?”
“Let her be,” Black Leg said. “What do you trouble a highborn guest before she has eaten and drunk her fill?”
The Dragon Queen Page 51
