Read Online Icefalcon's Quest (Darwath) by Barbara Hambly - Free Book Online Page A

and it fascinated him. He would go down to the camp by the black walls every evening, after the work of planting and clearing had been done and after the stupid patrols had been called in, and he would watch them for hours. In his own camp he whittled a sword of the length they were using, with a two-handed hilt, balanced differently from the short stabbing-swords used on the plain and made for a different sort of warfare. He practiced everything he had seen the previous night, timing himself against the calls of the night-birds or striking against a tree trunk.
    Then he would go back and listen, and heard for the first time the music these people made, with harps and pipes, different from the simple reed flutes of his people, intricate and beautiful if completely useless.
    They would also tell tales, of valor and violence and love, and it was some time before he realized that these were made up and had never really happened to anyone. It was an art with them, he learned later—and also among Gil’s people, evidently—to make such fictions sound as if they were true. The tales of civilized people were beautiful and fascinated the Icefalcon in spite of himself, but he told himself they were useless.
    Then one night the Icefalcon had returned to his camp to find Wind and Little Dancer gone.
    That Eldor hadn’t taken all three animals, as one would do to an enemy, outraged him.
I think you’ll need a horse
, it implied. That he had left Brown Girl, the worst of the three, was a slap, given teasingly, as a man might slap a boy in jest. And he knew it was Eldor who had taken them. While he was watching the sparring in the evening, he thought, annoyed, as he searched the place the next morning for tracks.
    He found them, but it was difficult. The man had covered his traces well. Eldor had distracted him with the large search parties while making solitary reconnaissance of his own.
    The Icefalcon guessed they were expecting him to try to steal back Little Dancer, at least, from the cavvy. They always tethered her and Wind in the middle. He noticed the Guards were now more numerous. So he waited and watched, until one evening Eldor rode forth from the Keep alone on Wind, a tall black stallion that the Icefalcon had seen was a favorite of his. He followed him up the meadows to the rising ground above the Keep and shot him in the back with an arrow.
    The Icefalcon smiled again, thinking about it now as he made a cold camp in the ditch beside the west-leading road.
    Of course Eldor had been wearing armor, steel plate sandwiching a core of cane and overlaid with spells of durability and deflection. If it hadn’t been twilight, blue shade filling the long trough of Renweth Vale like a lake of clear dark water, he’d have seen the awkward fit of the man’s surcoat or wondered why in summer he’d worn a cloak. Eldor had carried a pig’s bladder of blood, too, and smashed it as he fell from Wind’s back, so the Icefalcon smelled blood from where he hid in the trees. He’d thought it sheer bad luck that his victim had fallen on the reins, holding the horse near. The “corpse” had hooked hisfeet out from under him and put a knife to his throat. The Icefalcon never believed in bad luck again.
    “Alwir thinks you’re a scout from a bandit gang,” Eldor said, without relaxing his grip. “But you’re alone, aren’t you?”
    The Icefalcon said nothing. He supposed if he had to die at least this was better than the fate he left among the Talking Stars People, but his own stupidity filled him with anger.
    “I’ve heard you people don’t ride with bandits.”
    Still nothing. It was true that none of the people of the Real World had much use for bandits, not wanting the possessions that lawless folk so stupidly craved, but it was not the way of his people to speak with enemies.
    “I don’t want to kill you,” said Eldor, though he didn’t relax his grip or move the knife. “It would be a waste of a good warrior, and I need