Hawkspar

by Holly Lisle

  So I used them as little as I could, knowing they would consume me eventually, but that I had to survive to carry out my mission before they did.

  We took lodgings come evening, fell into our roles as silent bride-to-be and guardian, and got a good night’s sleep.

  The sixth day, our final day, I told Broogin I’d appreciated him riding with me, and asked him how much he would receive for making the trip. He shrugged. “The same thing I’d have made working at the stables. I’m just pretending I’m a courier, I’m not the real thing.”

  “You’ve been the real thing for me.” I reined in, and rode off the Courier Road. I dismounted, reached into my left saddlebag, and took hold of the reward I’d received for killing the ten bandits. “Here,” I told him when he rode up to me. “I have no use for this, and I suspect it would benefit you a great deal.”

  He sat astride his mount, not moving. Saying nothing.

  “Take it. I don’t need it,” I insisted.

  “That’s … the reward money you received for killing those bandits, isn’t it?”

  “It is.”

  “Is it true that you saved Beckgert’s daughter’s life?”

  “It is. But how did you hear about it?”

  “If I tell you, I’ll die.” And then I heard him swear under his breath. “Get farther off the road. Well off. Trouble will be along shortly, and we don’t want it to see us.”

  I’d never got the feeling that something was wrong with Broogin, but I did at that moment.

  Still, I had faith in my ability to defend myself. So he led, and I followed.

  When we and the horses were completely out of sight of the road, he said, “You remember Weggnrad? You know who he was?”

  “Beckgert’s son-in-law.”

  “No. I mean, do you know who he really was?”

  “No,” I said. “No idea.”

  “He was one of the main Greton agents working for the Feegash. His wife saw some sort of mark on your hand that made her think you might have had something to do with those Tonk barbarians who made such trouble in Gerstaggen. Weggnrad volunteered to escort you so that he might find out what you knew about what had happened, or at least find out why you were in such a hurry to get where you were going.”

  I suddenly felt like I might be sick. “And you know this how?”

  “I read the note he carried with his seal. The couriers carry mission papers, so that if something happens to one of them, the courier who picks up the mission will know what he’d been doing. In Weggnrad’s mission paper …” He stopped, and I began to think he would have nothing more to say. Then he sighed and shook his head. “Well, I cannot not tell you now. You’ve been most kind, and this sort of betrayal … no matter who you are, it isn’t right. The note you carry says that you are a Tonk traitor, and that Weggnrad thinks, because of special weapons you carry, that you are the killer sought by the Feegash for the deaths of many good men in Gerstaggen, and that you were supposed to be permitted to reach your destination, and then you were to be immediately killed once you had made contact with your contact. And the mixed army of Gretons and Feegash that is following you one station behind—but that is now only a long league or two behind us, since you are so close to Brurd—was to fall upon and utterly destroy whomever it is you’ve ridden so hard to meet.”

  “Oh, Ethebet, preserve us all.”

  “You can see after a fashion, but you can’t read, can you? Of if you can, you can’t read words written on a page.”

  “I can read knots tied into silk string,” I said. “I can read with my fingers, but not with the Eyes.”

  I leaned against my horse. I might have betrayed the whole of our secret war. Weggnrad was dead, but the army he’d summoned was almost upon me. “Am I still carrying the same note?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh … my sweet gods,” I said, falling back on the oaths of the Order.

  “I’m sorry. I was told by my stationmaster that if I got you safely to the last station to turn in the horses, I could return home and be given the commission to ride the Courier Road that I’ve been waiting for so long. That Weggnrad’s seal would be mine, and I would become rich in my turn.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No. I read the mission paper. I don’t think you’re a Tonk barbarian—you haven’t once acted like you might want to skin me and eat me.” He hung his head. “I think you’re a good woman, and you have been kind to me. But now I don’t see much future beyond that they’ll kill me when I go in to face my stationmaster. I didn’t just fail to get you to the last station in one piece. I told you what they planned to do once you got there.”

  “What will happen if you don’t show up?”

  “It depends on how I don’t show up. If I’m already dead, what could they do? If it looks like I turned traitor, the important Gretons are likely to hunt down my family. Torture them. See if anyone else might be thinking about not following our Feegash allies into ever deeper treachery.”

  I stood considering that. “So you couldn’t come with me, or your family would suffer?”

  “You’d take me with you?”

  “I would.”

  “But you’re right. The Feegash would convince the Gretons to let them torture and kill my brothers and sisters, my parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles and cousins.”

  “So for you, being dead would be the best thing?”

  “I’m having a hard time seeing it that way. For my family, though, me being dead would be better.” He stood there, face turned away from mine. “I guess if you could do it so it wouldn’t … hurt … .”

  “Killing you would be a terrible way to repay your kindness,” I told him. “I was thinking more along the lines of tying you up and hitting you on the head and leaving you and your horse by the road.”

  “Really?” He considered that for a moment, and brightened. “You would do that for me?”

  “I would. And I’ll bury the gold by the road, where you can come back later and dig it up. You deserve repayment for helping me.”

  “Are you a Tonk barbarian?” he asked.

  “I’m a living goddess,” I told him, pushing him to the ground and using rope he’d tied to his saddle to bind his wrists and ankles. “I can see the past and the future, and I’m trying to save the whole world.”

  He giggled. It was a nervous-sounding giggle.

  I sighed. “No,” I said. “I’m not a Tonk barbarian. I’ve never skinned and eaten anyone. I’m just a woman in a hurry to meet a man. I know a few good fighting tricks, and I caught wind of the army coming up behind us, and blamed you for it. So I hit you over the head and tied you up. They can’t blame you for that.”

  “They could fault me for living, I suppose,” he said.

  They could. But the only way I could help him out of that dilemma was to kill him. “Tell them you reminded me of my brother.”

  “Do I?” He sounded surprised.

  “You do. But most young men remind me of my brother. He was tall and handsome and kind, and he was murdered when I was a small child.”

  With him tied, I dug a quick hole at one corner of a large, oddly-shaped rock, and dropped the reward money I’d been given into it. To make sure Broogin would be able to find his reward, I then made three fresh chips into the face of the rock, evenly spaced, with the treasure hidden on the right side of the third one.

  “You’ll be able to find this again?” I asked him.

  “Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  I returned to his side and knelt by him. “Good should be rewarded by good. Remember where your treasure is, young Broogin. And remember that not everything you hear by those in power is true.”

  I brushed his hair back from his face, wondering if Broogin was handsome. If he did look anything like the big brother I so vaguely remembered.

  And then, before he knew what I was about, I hit him on the back of the head with the pommel of his dagger, the sort of injury someone taking a boy by surpri
se would inflict.

  His body went limp. I checked to make sure I hadn’t killed him. I hadn’t.

  I left his horse standing beside him, ground-tied, and rode away on mine, back to the road, back to heading toward Brurd.

  Around the next corner, I got off the road again, backtracked, and rode north. A slow lope this time, because my horse had been ridden hard, and there weren’t going to be any handy stable boys to replace him with a fresh one. I had a ways to go, and this horse needed to last.

  When I was well away from Broogin and with a clear shot to the Pirates’ Dance, I would take enough time to find a hiding place and slide back into time’s waters to see if I might catch the way the future flowed. I had little hope of finding anything useful, though. The last time I’d checked, I was still in whitewater. I was back to digging my own channel, not knowing where it might take me when I arrived.

  I hoped it would take me, eventually, home.

  43

  Aaran

  “Pindas and Cartajarma have allied with the Feegash, Captain,” Holyn said. Aaran, Tuua, and the second Communicator sat in the station just beneath the steersman’s castle. He looked grim. “Word is they’ve built up forces to cross over the Brittlebreak Strait into Hyre; they were going to try to cross on the Republic side, but that Hva Hwa king of theirs put out his army and deployed his magics, and they realized the Republic is no longer sympathetic to enemies of the Tonk. So now they’re trying to find a weak spot to cross over on the Confederate side.”

  “So now we have enemies across the strait. That’s not good. Better than on the other side of the Kraata Mountains, but not good,” Tuua said.

  “Before, all we had against us were the Eastils. Now … we have the Eastils on our side but the rest of the world against us.” Aaran rubbed his temples. “It’s not going to go away if we wipe out the Feegash. Not now.”

  Holyn leaned his back to the wall and looked at Aaran, eyebrow raised. “You think not?”

  “No. Because the Feegash have convinced the rest of the world we’re barbarians. If we wipe the pogging Feegash out, we’ll look exactly like what they say we are.”

  Tuua shook his head. “But if we don’t wipe them out, they’ll destroy us—with their policies, with their allies, and with their lies.”

  “I know that. I have no good answer. I don’t even have a bad answer.”

  Holyn shrugged. “They’re killing us now. Our only option as I see it is to kill them, then clean up the mess that ensues as best we can.”

  “If we can get Hawkspar back, maybe she’ll have a third alternative that she can see.” Aaran stared at the rough table where the Communicators worked, but he wasn’t seeing it. He was seeing her; dark-haired and slender and deadly. He ached for her.

  “Don’t count on it.” Holyn took a sip of ale and said, “I’m going back into the Hagedwar. There’s more happening, and I want to be sure I don’t miss the main points.”

  “Who are you reading?”

  “There’s a message station set up full time in Beyltaak now. They have Communicators in there reporting events as they happen, and then repeating briefs from elsewhere, relaying everything important so that anyone who had to shut down would still be able to find out what was happening later. The Hagedwar Magics units are up and running, but they’re also bringing back all the Sender and Shielder units. They and the Republic are actually working together on this—the Republic has all its units activated, too, and they’re working in council with the Confederacy on joint defense.”

  “So all of Hyre is on full war footing.”

  “All of Hyre. All of southern Tandinapalis. Franican Tonk territories, the Velo Tonks … everyone is armed and ready.” Holyn nodded. “And we’re still traveling dark. Almost none of the defensive units and none of the public knows about us, so there are calls from all over the country to attack Ba’afee-gash, attack Cartajarma and Pindas, attack Sinali. Everything looks scattered, and it’s well known by the Feegash that we have not sent any of our navy beyond our own seas—that Tonks, or in the case of Hyre, Tonk and Eastil navies, patrol the Tonk lands exclusively, defending against all comers.”

  “How does it sound like it’s going?”

  “The Tand clans are already seeing action. The Tonks in Tandinapalis are in a worse position than we are. They have the whole of the Great Plains where enemies can attack by land, and immense shorelines to patrol. Publicly, they’re following the same policy that Hyre is. Maintain a strong defense.”

  Aaran said, “Defense is a game of attrition. They’re going to have to go on the offensive to survive this.”

  Holyn took long swallow of his ale. He closed his eyes for a moment, his brow furrowing. Then he sighed and looked from Aaran to Tuua. “Privately, I’m sure they are. I pray they are. The Feegash have allied with the Hjorma and the Lagakodi, who are now getting paid to do what they would have done for free.”

  “The Feegash have publicly allied themselves with the Hjorma?” Aaran could hardly believe that.

  The Hjorma, the most horrific of the Northmen peoples, worshipped a pantheon of the most bloodthirsty gods Aaran had ever heard of. Their gods demanded human sacrifices in brutal fashion for every aspect of their existence, and their priests kept Hjorma constantly at war, raiding other tribes in the Great Plains and the jungles up by the equator to get the sacrifices they claimed the gods demanded. The Hjorma ripped the beating hearts out of infants; raped men, women, and children to death; skinned people alive; forced prisoners to eat their own body parts. They would turn on the Feegash in an instant if ever they got the opportunity; they knew no more of loyalty than they knew of compassion. But they were willing to fight against the Tonk, so the Feegash would call them civilized.

  In truth, most of what the Hjorma did in worship of their gods was no worse than what the Feegash did for sport.

  “There are reports of border fights,” Holyn said. “But these are not official. Most of what’s going on in the Tand is encoded, I suspect. And we don’t have their current codes.”

  “The Tonk in Franica and Velobrina?”

  “We know of instances where clans have been attacked from all sides and wiped out. One where a Mindan settlement attempted to negotiate a truce, and Franican negotiators agreed to settlement, then slaughtered the lot of them when they stepped out, unarmed.”

  “Glad you’re not a Mindan?” Tuua asked.

  “By Ethebet’s blade, yes.”

  “Me, too.” Aaran stood up straight and gave Holyn a quick bow. “I’ll let you get back to your work. Make sure as much of it goes into the logs as you can.”

  Holyn picked up his pen again, and said, “Good luck to you, Captain.”

  Aaran, who had been turning to leave, stopped and looked back. “Luck to me?”

  “In finding that third solution.”

  Up the ladder and out on the aft deck, Tuua said to Aaran, “I want to make a pact with you, cousin.”

  Aaran stopped and turned. Those were the exact words he had said to Tuua, over the bodies of their mothers and fathers and Tuua’s siblings. They had made their pact, and they had lived the rest of their lives by it, but neither had ever uttered those words again.

  “What would you have of me, cousin?” he asked.

  “I would swear to Jostfar by Ethebet’s sword and braid that we do not rest until we have destroyed the Feegash and their allies.”

  Aaran stood there, biting his lip. “I’m torn,” he said. “My head tells me to swear with you. My gut, my heart, the raising of the hair on the back of my neck, tell me wait. This is not the third way. There is a third way, Tuua. There has to be.”

  Tuua looked at him for a long time, saying nothing. And then, silently, he turned and walked away.

  Redbird was teaching the rest of the Ossalenes, from Moonstones to Ambers to Obsidians, the Hagedwar. She could not reach Hawkspar, either, but she said she was certain it was some failure on her own part to understand the full intricacies of linking the Eyes into the
Hagedwar magic. She believed one of the other disciplines, or perhaps simply another Obsidian might make the connection she could not make.

  She’d gotten happier, he noted, since she started being able to track Hawkspar. He was relieved. She and the rest of the Obsidians were eating again, and most of the ash had worn off their faces. The whole lot of them were still going to the chapel every day, Tuua said, starting right after the morning’s hadudaak aveerzak and going until the gitaada. One Ossalene was in front of Ethebet’s shrine at all times, praying.

  He had to admire their dedication, and their devotion to Hawkspar. He wondered at how hard Redbird drove them. And wondered, too, that not a one of them complained.

  Ever.

  He hoped he might inspire that utter, unquestioning devotion from his own men. He feared that the time was coming when he would need it.

  Hawkspar

  I’d ridden through the sun-warmed chill of daylight and into the miserable damp-soaked cold of darkness, and I’d managed to reach the cove where my latest little peek into time promised Aaran and the Taag would hide.

  I’d never been afraid of land before. But I was afraid of the place I’d come to, and so was the horse.

  The Pirates’ Dance stank. It smelled of rotting vegetation and sour water, sickly sweet flowers and carrion—those last two frequently together, so I avoided brushing against large plants, for fear that one of the carnivorous monstrosities might be large enough to devour me. The chill air didn’t seem any deterrent at all to the buzzing, singing, chirping, hissing things that lived there. I was stung and bitten and scraped by all manner of tiny insects who found their way into my nose and mouth and ears. Probably the Eyes, too, though I couldn’t feel anything there except along my eyelids.

  Once he was cooled down, I took all the tack off the poor horse and chased him away. He seemed happy enough to go.

  I then balanced on the edge of the cliff and tossed saddle and bridle and crupper into the water far below, where it all sank to the bottom. I kept the saddle blanket and the supply kit; those I thought might be useful while I waited. I wanted to find a good hiding place and rest there until the Taag arrived.