Read Online Icefalcon's Quest (Darwath) by Barbara Hambly - Free Book Online
Authors: Barbara Hambly
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to see how the slunch and the cold had altered the land. Many of the groves that dotted the western foothills were now dead, buried under the whitish masses. As he followed the westward road that first day, the stuff stretched on both sides, in patches or in sheets miles broad, and neither rabbits, nor lemmings, nor antelope moved over the dying grass that lay between.
By the debris left where Bektis and his party stopped to rest, the Icefalcon learned that in addition to what Bektis and Hethya had carried on their two donkeys they’d helped themselves to the Keep’s stores of dried meat, cheese, and potatoes. With his sling he killed two kites that came down after the cheese rinds and potato parings and added their meat to his satchel, and the rinds and parings as well. With slunch growing abroad in the lands food would be even more difficult to find, and he knew he could waste none. Only in the camps did he see Tir’s tracks and guessed by the marks in the thin dust that they were keeping the boy’s hands tied.
In a way it was just as well, he thought. Whatever Gil might say, the boy might have tried to escape while themountains still loomed in the east, and his chances of survival would be nil in these desolate lands.
After black-cloaked Alwir with his blue jewels had declared him to be a bandit, hunting parties went out to search the Vale of Renweth for the Icefalcon for three days running. The Icefalcon had been more amused than anything else, patiently moving his camp every few hours—the invisible camp of the peoples of the North, which left no sign on the land—and watching them. He watched, too, the trains of mules that came up the gorge of the Arrow River through the smaller range of peaks west of the Vale, food and seed and saplings; watched the training of the black-clothed Guards under the tutelage of a little bald-headed man with a hoarse voice; watched Alwir and Eldor walk around the walls of the Keep and the edges of the woods that surrounded its knoll, talking and making notes on tablets wrought of wood and wax.
Alwir continued to complain of the size of the Keep and its uselessness as a garrison against the Gettlesand bandits. “In times of siege it’s a jail!” he declared, striding up and down the shallow steps that led to its single pair of dark metal Doors. “To be sure, no one can get in, but the defenders are trapped! Unless there’s a secret way out? A tunnel for sorties, perhaps, or a hidden door?”
His blue eyes glinted eagerly. He was a man who loved secrets, thought the Icefalcon, lying in the long grass beside the stream. Himself, he would never have entrusted any secret to this Alwir, who seemed to consider himself above the laws of common men by virtue of his descent from the lordly House of Bes.
“None that I know of,” replied Eldor calmly and went on with his surveying, knee-deep in the long meadow grass.
This Eldor was a man of thirty-five, as tall as Alwir and just slightly taller than the Icefalcon himself, who at seventeen was an inch or so short of his final growth. Eldor wore his brown hair cut off about his shoulders, aswas the fashion of civilized people, and had an air of lean strength. Sometimes he would fight practice bouts with his warriors, either the black-clothed or the red.
Observing them in the light of the fires and torches—which illuminated the whole western face of the Keep and would have made them an easy target for the arrows of any foe on earth—or in the twilight before full dark, the Icefalcon saw with approval the hard stringency of the teaching. The lithe bald man in charge corrected and explained and shouted criticism as if the combatants were stupid children barely able to bat one another with clubs, or put them through endless drills with weighted weapons that the Icefalcon quickly saw were designed to most quickly and efficiently increase their strength and speed. It was a method of teaching he had never encountered among his own people,
By the debris left where Bektis and his party stopped to rest, the Icefalcon learned that in addition to what Bektis and Hethya had carried on their two donkeys they’d helped themselves to the Keep’s stores of dried meat, cheese, and potatoes. With his sling he killed two kites that came down after the cheese rinds and potato parings and added their meat to his satchel, and the rinds and parings as well. With slunch growing abroad in the lands food would be even more difficult to find, and he knew he could waste none. Only in the camps did he see Tir’s tracks and guessed by the marks in the thin dust that they were keeping the boy’s hands tied.
In a way it was just as well, he thought. Whatever Gil might say, the boy might have tried to escape while themountains still loomed in the east, and his chances of survival would be nil in these desolate lands.
After black-cloaked Alwir with his blue jewels had declared him to be a bandit, hunting parties went out to search the Vale of Renweth for the Icefalcon for three days running. The Icefalcon had been more amused than anything else, patiently moving his camp every few hours—the invisible camp of the peoples of the North, which left no sign on the land—and watching them. He watched, too, the trains of mules that came up the gorge of the Arrow River through the smaller range of peaks west of the Vale, food and seed and saplings; watched the training of the black-clothed Guards under the tutelage of a little bald-headed man with a hoarse voice; watched Alwir and Eldor walk around the walls of the Keep and the edges of the woods that surrounded its knoll, talking and making notes on tablets wrought of wood and wax.
Alwir continued to complain of the size of the Keep and its uselessness as a garrison against the Gettlesand bandits. “In times of siege it’s a jail!” he declared, striding up and down the shallow steps that led to its single pair of dark metal Doors. “To be sure, no one can get in, but the defenders are trapped! Unless there’s a secret way out? A tunnel for sorties, perhaps, or a hidden door?”
His blue eyes glinted eagerly. He was a man who loved secrets, thought the Icefalcon, lying in the long grass beside the stream. Himself, he would never have entrusted any secret to this Alwir, who seemed to consider himself above the laws of common men by virtue of his descent from the lordly House of Bes.
“None that I know of,” replied Eldor calmly and went on with his surveying, knee-deep in the long meadow grass.
This Eldor was a man of thirty-five, as tall as Alwir and just slightly taller than the Icefalcon himself, who at seventeen was an inch or so short of his final growth. Eldor wore his brown hair cut off about his shoulders, aswas the fashion of civilized people, and had an air of lean strength. Sometimes he would fight practice bouts with his warriors, either the black-clothed or the red.
Observing them in the light of the fires and torches—which illuminated the whole western face of the Keep and would have made them an easy target for the arrows of any foe on earth—or in the twilight before full dark, the Icefalcon saw with approval the hard stringency of the teaching. The lithe bald man in charge corrected and explained and shouted criticism as if the combatants were stupid children barely able to bat one another with clubs, or put them through endless drills with weighted weapons that the Icefalcon quickly saw were designed to most quickly and efficiently increase their strength and speed. It was a method of teaching he had never encountered among his own people,
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