Fire Hawk (20 page)

“You told me he is a man capable of seeing what others cannot, patterns where others see only chaos. That he knew Hawk Glade was supposed to be here. When he arrived and it was not, he merely discounted the evidence of his eyes and kept coming.”

“I never meant . . . ’twas only to try and explain how this place keeps us safe,” Jenna said in embarrassed consternation.

“Never explain what advantage you may have to anyone not on your side,” Kane said flatly. “If they do not turn it against you themselves, they will most likely sell it to someone who will.”

She drew herself up then; she was the Hawk, and it was past time she started acting like it.

“And which will you do, Kane?”

For an instant he looked startled. “What?”

“I ask again. Why are you here?”

Jenna got the distinct feeling he was uncomfortable, although she thought it so unlikely she was reluctant to trust her senses.

Kane glanced around at the others in the room. “I would speak with your Hawk alone.”

“No,” Arlen said protectively.

“You shall not,” Evelin said simultaneously, in much the same tone.

“I mean her no harm,” Kane said, clearly restraining his anger with an effort; Jenna doubted he was often gainsaid in such a manner.

“It is all right,” she told them.

“No!” they chimed together.

“Be easy,” the storyteller, slipping off the table to walk over to the two. “He will not hurt her.”

“You cannot be sure of that,” Evelin protested.

“Had he wanted to harm her,” the storyteller said mildly, “he had ample chance. Do you forget she spent the moon’s cycle in his company? Come.”

Reluctantly casting concerned glances back at Jenna, they let the old man usher them out. At the door, the storyteller glanced back over his shoulder at them, giving them both one of those intense, disconcerting looks of his, and then he walked out without another word.

Jenna watched as Kane stared after the old man.

“He looks like Tal, does he not? Or as Tal will look, many years from now.”

Kane’s gaze snapped back to her face. “So you see it as well?”

“I saw it in Tal from the beginning. So much that I asked him if his father still lived.”

Kane blinked. “Does he?”

Jenna blinked in turn. “He is your friend. Do you not know?”

“I . . . no.” He had the grace to look embarrassed. “I don’t . . . I never asked. I’ve never . . . had such a friend.”

As easily as that she was back to where she’d been on the mountain, aching for the man so many saw only as myth, the man who had never had a chance to become anything but what he had become, a man who walked alone, whose very name made others walk the other way.

“He said his father was long dead,” she said quickly, fighting the unwanted emotion he seemed always to spark in her. “And the storyteller has no kin in the mountains. ’Tis only a fluke, it would seem.”

“An uncanny one,” Kane muttered.

“Yes. But no more uncanny to me than you walking out of the night. Why?” she asked for a third time.

“I thought that obvious.”

“Is it? You told me you would never again take up arms. That you had buried your sword deep, never again to see light.”

“I never meant to.”

“And now I know you were once at the right hand of the warlord who wishes us all dead and out of his way.”

“I do not deny that.”

“But I am to believe you came here to . . . help us?”

He made as if to speak, then stopped. When he went on, she was somehow certain it was not what he’d been about to say. “You will believe what you wish.”

“You told me you would die if you left your mountain.”

His mouth twisted wryly. “That may yet be true.”

She stared at him. “You still believe you might die, yet you came? Why?”

He looked at her for a long, silent moment, so long that she felt her heart take a quivering little leap. Not for her? Surely not for her? She didn’t dare to hope for such a thing.

“I grew bored,” he said at last, the cool dismissal in his voice at odds with the intensity of his eyes. “Perhaps teaching you reawakened my interest in contests of this kind.”

“No!”

Her cry startled her even as it broke from her. Kane looked at her, brows lifted as if in faint surprise at her reaction. She mistrusted the reality of the emotion; somehow it seemed Kane had utterly withdrawn, except for that moment when he had learned the name of the warlord they fought.

“I . . . did not wish that,” she stammered.

“You came to me asking for just that, did you not?”

“Yes, but . . . I do not wish it now.”

“Why?”

“I . . . understand now, why you abandoned that life. What it took from you. What it cost you. I do not wish to see you return to it. Bury your sword again, Kane. Go back to your mountain, where you are safe.”

For an instant, no longer, she thought she saw a surprise in his face that was genuine, not a mockery of the emotion. Then the mask was back in place, that cool, uncaring expression that belied what she thought she had seen.

“Safe from what?” he asked, as if it were only an idle inquiry, not a matter of his own death. “Tal’s prophecy, or Druas?”

“Both,” she said. “Have you not thought that if Tal’s prophecy is right, Druas may be the means?”

“I had not,” he admitted. “But I was unaware it was Druas you faced until now.”

“Then you must see,” she said urgently. “If your intent was truly to help us, you must see that if Druas finds out that you have turned against him—”

“I turned against him long ago.”

“You merely left him,” Jenna pointed out.

“ ’Tis the same to Druas. You are either his man, or you are against him.”

Jenna did not question his words; she’d seen enough of Druas’s brutality to believe them. “Then he will be truly angry should he discover you are helping us.”

“He will be,” Kane said with a negligent shrug of one shoulder, “incensed.”

“Then you cannot risk it. You must go. We are holding them. We will continue, until they give up and choose another path to the north.”

“They will not.”

“But you said—”

“That was before I knew you dealt with Druas.” Kane closed the slight distance between them with one long stride. “He will never give up. Nor will he turn away. He has set his course, and he will follow it. He will have his path to the north, if he has to cut down every tree of your forest. And he will not care if he cuts all of you down as well. In fact, he would take great satisfaction in it.”

Jenna stared at him, unable to doubt the certainty of his words. “He is . . . even more evil than we had thought.”

“He is.”

“Yet you fought for him.”

“I did. For years. I trained for it since I was twelve, fought for him since I was sixteen.”

Her breath caught; so young?

“Do not foster any benevolent thoughts of me, Jenna,” he said, speaking her name for the first time; he said it so coldly she could have wished he had not. “I was the perfect right hand for Druas’s evil. I cared only for the goal, nothing for the method. Nor did I care for those who were left trampled in our wake. Druas gave me orders, I carried them out. I never questioned him. It was my place to see his wishes enacted. I did so.”

His voice had taken on the quality of a lash, snapping, cracking as though impacting on flesh. And although his expression betrayed nothing but cold composure, Jenna knew instinctively that the lash was directed at himself. And she knew in that moment that no one could ever punish Kane the Warrior for what he’d done any more harshly than the man himself.

“Kane,” she said, then stopped, afraid to go on when she had heard the tremor in her voice, echoing with the pain she was feeling for him.

“Stop,” he hissed. “Do not squander your soft feelings on me. I do not deserve them.”

She couldn’t hold it back; the words tumbled out. “But you need them. More than any man I’ve ever known.”

Kane recoiled as if she’d slapped him. “I have no need of anything from you, or anyone.”

That was as clear an answer as she would ever get, Jenna thought. Whatever they had had, it had ended, completely and permanently, when their bargain had ended.

Jenna studied him for a moment, gathering her nerve; this meeting was truly testing her mettle. “If you need nothing from anyone, then why are you here?” she finally asked again. “Why did you not simply stay in your cave, apart from the world?”

His aloofness was quickly back in place. “I told you. I grew bored.”

“I do not wish you to . . . amuse yourself here. Go back to your mountain, Kane the Warrior.”

He lifted a brow at her tone. His glance flicked to the carved mantel above the fireplace, where the golden Hawk gleamed dully in the firelight; she should have realized he would have noticed it.

“Is this the Hawk, giving an order?” he asked.

“If you wish. ’Tis bad enough I have the blood of my people on my hands and my heart. I do not care to add the blood of an outsider, with no need to be here.”

He shook his head. “It is my choice, Jenna.”

“To risk your life? For people you say yourself you neither need nor want anything from? For a lost cause? You called it a fool’s errand, did you not? ’Tis not like you to play the fool.”

Kane looked at her, and again she made herself hold his gaze.

“You wear it well,” he said after a moment, his voice quiet. “Command suits you.”

“I have no wish to command. I wish only to save my people.”

“Then you must retract your order, Hawk. With me, you might just have some small chance of surviving. Without me, Druas will crush you to the last, and not leave any trace that you were ever here in the process.”

Jenna knew she could not tell him that the thought of him taking up arms, of him becoming again that which he had fought so hard to leave behind, hurt her nearly as much as the thought of her people being slaughtered by their vicious enemy. She could not tell him that she wanted him to stay simply because she was hungry for the sight of him, and hungrier still for the feel of him. She could not tell him that she wished more than anything that she could abandon the task before her, could shirk the responsibilities of the Hawk and run with him back to his mountain.

She could tell him none of that. He would not welcome it, nor could she humiliate herself so and still expect to function as she must. And the truth of his words were undeniable; with him, a man trained by, and well versed in the tactics of their enemy they might have a chance. And it might well be their only chance. What right had she to refuse, simply because Kane’s presence would wreak havoc with what tiny bit she had left of peace of mind?

She glanced at the golden hawk, the generations-old symbol of her office. She did not have the right. She should have welcomed him without question, without thought of the cost to him. Yet she had thought of it, second only to her dread for the clan. And if she were honest, in the first moments, she had thought of it foremost.

With an apology directed as much at the golden statue as anything, she made herself speak.

“I will consider revoking it,” she said, “if you will honestly tell me why you are here.”

He was silent for a moment. She wondered if he was debating what to say, or simply whether to answer at all. At last he spoke.

“I have many reasons. They are my own. But now that I am here, now that I know who you face, there is yet another reason I will give you. I have . . . reason to wish greatly for the defeat of Druas. And reason to want to be the one to bring him down.”

It was his other reasons Jenna wished to know, but she knew he would not tell her. And it mattered not, not in the end.

She had no right to think about her own concerns. She had no right to place her own or anyone else’s welfare above that of her people. She had no right to turn down his offer. Kane was their best, perhaps their only hope of survival. She had to accept what help he could give.

Even if it cost him his life. And what was left of her heart.

Chapter 17

IT FELT VERY ODD to be among people again, Kane thought. Especially people like these, generally quiet, peaceful, and more than a little bewildered by what was happening to them. He’d never dealt with this kind before; he’d grown up among fighters, not villagers, and he’d been taught that the latter were most often stupid fools who generally deserved whatever fate befell them.

He soon became aware that the legend of his warrior prowess was well known to the entire clan, and his physical presence did nothing to dispel the whispers of superhuman strength and utter ruthlessness in battle. He’d not heard some of the more exaggerated claims before now, and didn’t know quite how to feel that some actually seemed to believe he was immortal, except to wryly observe that it was quite likely he’d disprove that part of the legend fairly soon.

That he was helping them was apparently the crowning achievement of Jenna’s short reign as the Hawk, and when she had announced to them that he would be acting as their general, the people had looked at her with almost as much reverence as they did Kane.

That they loved her over and above the reverence was something he could not help but see, nor could he miss the reasons why; she knew each of them well, and despite the heavy burden she carried, she never failed to greet each of them daily, and ask if there was anything she could do to help them. They responded with a familiar yet respectful devotion that was tinged with the same sense of awe they exhibited toward him. What was missing was the fear, and while it had always suited his purposes before to have people fear him, he found it oddly bothersome now to have them all watching him so warily.

All except the storyteller, who seemed only mildly amused by the entire situation. That alone intrigued Kane, and he planned to investigate that soon.

He had spent the past few mornings with Arlen, learning the boundaries of the glade, although Arlen explained with no evidence of doubt or self-consciousness that they did not know exactly where the protection ended. Kane had been a bit taken aback when, at his request to see where the enemy was, the man had strode to within sight of Druas’s main encampment without making the slightest effort to conceal himself. Arlen had explained patiently that they would not be seen, as long as they stopped in the place he indicated.

He’d not been able to make out much at this distance, other than that, as he himself had instructed long ago, Druas’s men had set his tents in a random pattern, so as to give no cover to any approaching enemy. He saw only a few men—Druas had indeed left a minimal force here—and they were too distant for Kane to tell if he knew them. He doubted he would; not many men lasted with Druas very long, and he was sure most of those he’d commanded would be long dead, either in battle or by Druas’s own hand for some offense real or imagined.

When he’d told Arlen to carry on as they had been before his arrival, Arlen had nodded without hesitation; Jenna’s declaration that his orders were to be considered hers clearly was being taken seriously.

Jenna.

His stomach knotted, and he tried to shove aside the tension merely the thought of her wrought in him; it was as useless a task as fighting the need to come here had been. And the nights since he’d been here had been a torture unlike any he’d ever experienced, even when he’d been captured by Druas’s main rival and had discovered Druas was not the only one with unique approaches to convincing prisoners to talk. Fortunately he had managed to escape—killing only a single guard in the process, not the dozen the legend seemed to have progressed to—before experiencing more than a taste of it.

But he would have welcomed it over the hell of lying in his makeshift bed beneath the trees, aching beyond belief for the woman who lay in the small cottage mere yards away. The woman who had once warmed his nights with an ardor he’d never thought possible for him, and was certain he would never find again, in this life or any other. The woman who had taken his breath away when he’d seen her standing there, lit by fire, in a dress that clung to her body, turned her eyes an even more vivid blue, and her hair to pure flame.

He had thought of naming a price for his help, the same price he had demanded of her on the mountain. He had thought about it long and hard, and the temptation of sharing that sweet, hot passion once more had been a lure he had been hard put to resist. He wasn’t even sure why he had resisted it, why he had decided against it, except that the seductive memories of that time on the mountain seemed marred somehow by how they had come about.

And, he thought wryly, the very real chance she would refuse him this time.

Now, as he walked through her village, he glanced around at the people who hushed at his passage. Would it destroy the homage they paid her if she were to take the infamous warrior she had brought here to her bed? Or would it somehow, in some strange quirk of man’s mind and the power of myth, enhance it, as if they saw the joining of their precious Hawk and the one they saw as more myth than man as somehow fitting?

By the heavens, he was getting feebleminded if this was all he could think about when there was an army bigger than any he’d ever seen in all his years in armor somewhere out there, waiting. He picked up his pace, aware of the eyes fixed upon him in the same way he was aware of the movements of any around him when he was preparing for battle.

He didn’t really know where he was going; he just wanted to get away from the staring. He purposefully avoided Jenna’s cottage; she of them all he did not want to deal with right now. A smaller, even more modest hut caught his eye, the hut he’d seen the storyteller go into after Jenna had made her announcement that he was in charge. The door stood open, and he changed direction and headed that way.

He wasn’t sure what the protocol was here, but he’d never paid it much mind before and felt no need to now. He called out a hail, and then stepped inside.

The old man sat at a small table, bent over a piece of parchment, a quill in his right hand. It looked like the feather of a hawk, and Kane caught himself wondering fancifully if it was from the original hawk that had led these people here.

“A moment, Kane the Warrior,” he said without looking up, and without the slightest trace of surprise or curiosity in his voice.

“You expected me?”

The old man finished the line he was writing, then lifted the quill from the page. For an instant he still touched it, running a finger over the soft feather as if the texture pleased him. Or as if in memory of something. Then he sat it down and looked up at Kane.

“I expected you sooner,” he said.

“Did you?” Kane asked.

“I knew you would not long be able to resist your curiosity. Sit,” he added, gesturing toward a stool like the one he sat on. Kane took it gingerly; it did not look particularly strong, but it held him despite his size.

“You know too much,” he said abruptly.

“You underestimate your own fame. It spreads across the land, until there is not a man, woman, or child who has not heard of Kane the Warrior. You are legend.”

Kane’s mouth twisted. “I never sought it.”

“I know. But you have it, all the same. ’Tis why these people accept you so readily. They know you are a man who knows what they do not, who can do what they cannot.”

“They will learn to do it, or they will die.”

“Yes.”

He said it calmly, so calmly Kane’s brow furrowed. “Who are you?” he asked again, then added pointedly, “I mean your name, not some clever dodging of my question.”

“This from the man who goes by only Kane? I would have thought you would not require names from all you met.”

Kane winced inwardly; the old man had stabbed true; what right had he to demand another’s name?

“I am the storyteller here, nothing more,” the old man said again, leaning back against the table.

Kane’s gaze narrowed. “And what are you elsewhere?”

Something flashed briefly in the old man’s eyes, and Kane was reminded of the resemblance he’d forgotten until now. But today, in the light of day, he looked like nothing more than an old man, gray and weather-beaten. The resemblance to Tal was only in the eyes, and he supposed the sheer intensity there could make that so.

“I am but a traveler, a . . . scholar of sorts, I suppose you could call me.”

Kane was not satisfied, but he had no time to dwell upon it, not with Druas camped on their toes. And the man’s words brought something else to mind.

“You were not born here,” he began.

“No. I came here . . . when Druas began his bloody rampage to the south.”

Kane thought of asking where exactly he had come from, but guessed he would get yet another vague, parrying answer. Instead he asked, “Then you are not one of them. The Hawk clan, I mean.”

“By birth, no. By philosophy? Yes.”

“Philosophy.” Kane snorted. “Perhaps you should use that as your defense. If you cannot fight them, bore them to death with impractical visionary notions.”

To his surprise, the old man laughed heartily. “I know some old stories that would quite likely do just that. There’s a tale of voyages in search of scholarly learning that goes on for days on end, and I promise you, ’twould at the least put you to sleep.”

To his further surprise, Kane found himself laughing in turn. And when he voiced his next question, the challenging tone was gone.

“You are not one of them, so perhaps you can explain. Why do they stay? Why did they not pack up and leave when they heard Druas was on the march? They had to know they had no hope to defeat him.”

“They know. They have always known. But they have known as well that this is their place of destiny. It is sacred to them.”

Kane’s lips tightened. “Their destiny is extinction if they persist.”

The storyteller lifted a heavy brow, surprisingly dark beneath the silver of his hair. “You are saying you cannot help them?”

“I am saying one man cannot defeat Druas.”

“They do not wish to defeat him, merely to . . . turn him.”

“If it were anyone else, I would say it might work. But Druas has dug in now. You have made him angry. He will not be moved.”

“You have seen this before?”

“Countless times. He is inexorable once his mind is set.”

“Does he never encounter others who think they are also immovable?”

“Of course.”

“You have seen this firsthand? When you were with him?”

Kane nodded, the old memories flitting around his head with the persistence of the flies that clustered on the bodies of the dead. He fought them off; he could not afford to fall prey to them now. He got to his feet and walked to the doorway, looking out at the village that was so unexpectedly peaceful.

“I saw those who fought him,” he said at last. “Men fiercely determined to resist him. But they soon learned.”

“And who taught them, Kane? Who carried out the lessons Druas ordered?”

He spun around on his heel. He stared at the old man, who met his gaze with the same courage Jenna did. There had been nothing of accusation in his tone, nor was there any in his weathered face.

“Who, Kane?” the storyteller asked quietly.

“I did,” he spat out. “As well you know.”

“I do,” the storyteller agreed. “But I was afraid you had forgotten.”

“What I did in that time,” Kane said, his voice hoarse, “is not something I will ever forget.”

The old man looked at him steadily, with that same compassion in his changeable eyes that he’d seen so often in Tal’s. “Perhaps you should not forget. Perhaps even evil memories have some use, if they keep you on the new path you’ve chosen.”

Kane sucked in a breath at the uncanny accuracy of the old man’s guess.

“And perhaps you can turn them to some good use,” the storyteller added. “If you are the force that made Druas immovable, then perhaps you will be the force to move him.”

ARLEN LOOKED away guiltily, and Kane knew he’d been staring at the scar on his face. Imagining it the result of some huge battle or fight, he supposed. And he probably wouldn’t believe the much uglier truth if told it, Kane thought. Arlen was a good man, but he showed the signs of having been raised in a place like Hawk Glade; he trusted too easily and could not quite accept the utter evil of the man they were fighting.

“The stronghold, how far is it from here?”

“ ’Tis just outside the forest, to the west,” Arlen said.

He watched from his seat on the fallen log as Kane paced before him. The shadows were long now, the growing darkness heightened by the thickness of the trees surrounding them.

“It was already there when our clan first arrived here, according to the story,” Arlen went on when Kane did not speak. “Claren of Springwater, the old man who lived there, was the descendant of the man who built it, generations ago. He was a gentle soul. He and his wife and daughter often traded with us, game for grain.” A shadow crossed Arlen’s face. “They are dead now. Murdered, Mary and Regine raped and tortured. And Druas now lives in their home.”

Perhaps, Kane thought as he looked at the sudden hardness of Arlen’s expression, he was not so trusting any longer. He sat on the log beside the man who was as close to help as Jenna seemed to have.

“Describe it to me again.”

It took a moment for the man to gather himself and go on, but when he did, it was in brisk, unemotional tones. He knew when there was no room for emotion, Kane thought approvingly. Or he had learned, in the harshest of ways.

The diagram Arlen drew in the soft dirt was much as Kane had expected; square, corner towers, flanking towers, battle parapets around the top of the walls, and an inner courtyard with the various structures necessary for the maintenance of such a household. It was not large, but the stone walls gave it strength, and gave Druas a great advantage.