Hawk the Slayer Read online

  Discomfited a little by his silence, the fat merchant pressed on nevertheless.

  “Permit me to introduce ourselves. This is Ralf of Coggeshall, Master Bowman, and I am his humble companion and confidant, Master Fitzwalter,” said he.

  The elf continued his industry.

  “To whom do I have the pleasure of addressing myself?” Fitzwalter had no intention of giving up.

  Lifting his narrow cat-like eyes, the elf scanned Fitzwalter and his unblinking gaze made the merchant look away disconcerted.

  “Crow!”

  The word was spoken with a singing lilt to it.

  Ralf, who wanted to speed up the proceedings, adopted a swaggering pose and calculatingly notched an arrow into his bowstring. Crow, without changing position or moving a muscle, was, nevertheless, immediately on the alert.

  From his doublet, Ralf pulled out an apple, bit off a chunk and tossed it up and down a few times while chewing the fruit. Cheekily, he threw it high into the air and loosed the couched arrow at it. The shaft soared after the fruit, pierced it and drove it higher into the sky before dropping back down. Dexterously he caught the falling arrow and removed it from the apple, promptly taking another bite out of it.

  “Our friend can only clean a bow it seems,” he said disparagingly, showing a mouthful of chewed apple.

  Fitzwalter fluttered his hands in mock apology.

  “Oh dear! I do believe that my impetuous friend is challenging you, Master Crow.”

  Crow’s eyes darted searching looks at both men. “He wastes his time and mine.”

  Thunk!

  The arrow punched into the ground at the elf’s feet. In a blur, Crow leapt to his feet, an arrow already strung, the action so speedy it took both men by surprise.

  “Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” placated Fitzwalter. “Calm yourselves, I beg of you.” With a wink to his confederate. “Our friend here is not going to play children’s games. He needs more serious inducement.”

  He extracted a bag of coins from his travelling cloak and clinked them in his palm.

  “Now—for a small wager, we could make it worth his while.” He smiled expansively at the elf. “Is that not right, sir?”

  The question hung in the air for a moment then Crow released a leather pouch from around his neck.

  “Name the target,” he said, clipping the words brusquely.

  Ralf spat out some apple.

  “One hundred paces. The first to cut his marker cleanly,” he rejoined with no prompting.

  Fitzwalter paced out the distance to a dead elm and attached a red and yellow cord to the bark.

  “Our friend will take the red mark, Ralf,” he called. “The bow to be couched and the arrow to stay in its quiver until I give the signal—one, two, three—shoot! Is that understood?”

  Crow nodded curtly while Ralf smiled inwardly at some secret knowledge.

  Fitzwalter walked back to station himself behind Crow.

  “One!” he said. His hand moved stealthily to pull down a dagger from the folds of his sleeve. “Two!” He withdrew the steel. “Three!” He poised himself to strike at Crow’s back.

  There was that strange whistling sound and the point of a sword came to rest behind his ear.

  “Leave the odds as they are,” said the voice of Hawk.

  The wicked knife fell from Fitzwalter’s nerveless fingers.

  Crow turned to see Hawk and a sign of recognition passed quickly between them.

  “Now continue where you left off,” said Hawk, giving the sword the slightest tweak.

  A very shaky Fitzwalter started his countdown again.

  “One! Two! Three!” A sickly smile at Hawk. “Shoot!”

  There was a flurry of hands from the two opponents. But one arrow streaked out faster to cut the red cord.

  Without a word Crow took the bag of coins from the hand of a pasty-faced Fitzwalter.

  “Wait!” Ralf bellowed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “My arrow hit first,” answered Crow matter-of-factly.

  “The devil you say,” snarled Ralf. “My arrow was out of the bow first.”

  Crow, who had moved to join Hawk, stopped momentarily.

  “No!” He admonished his furious opponent and turned away.

  “Pointed ear jackal of the night,” bawled Ralf, stringing his bow, and the sound made Crow’s hands clench. He walked on. Twang!

  Hawk pushed out a hand and saved Crow. Ralf’s arrow whistled past. Crow turned slowly to face the red necked bowman.

  “There’s only one way to prove it or do you need your friend’s help?” Ralf sneered.

  Fitzwalter tried to dissuade his friend.

  “I forbid this!” he entreated ineffectually.

  “Keep out of this, Fitzwalter,” said Ralf. And then viciously. “Well, little man? Has the quake in your belly stopped your mouth?”

  Crow blinked twice.

  “I am ready.”

  “Then count us down. Master Fitzwalter,” hissed Ralf taking up a clear shooting position at the elf.

  “One!” The countdown had a timeless quality. Ralf’s face gleamed from the oiliness of his sweat. “Two!” Hawk remained like a carving in stone. Immobile. “Three!”

  The face of Crow was a death mask, his eyes slitted.

  “Shoot!” said Fitzwalter mournfully.

  The elf’s hands moved too fast and suddenly Ralf, mouth popping, his arrow hardly notched, peered down to see a white feathered shaft jut from his breast.

  “I didn’t even see …” Ralf began but he didn’t finish. His breath and life ran out and he crumpled to the ground.

  Fitzwalter did not watch Crow vanish with Hawk into the strange smoke. He tottered over to Ralf’s body and fell to his knees beside it.

  “I knew it! I knew it!” he shrieked at the stone-deaf archer. “I knew your long tongue and loose mouth would be the death of you! God’s blood! I’d like to tear out your gizzard and throttle you!”

  11

  THE DWARF AND THE SACRED LAKE

  “Look in the flames for the last time, Lord Hawk,” breathed Meena. “One more and we are complete. The Table of Five.”

  She fed the last gnarled sprig into the fire and the spiky shadows leapt and played across the faces of Ranulf, Gort and the taciturn Crow. The flames billowed an aromatic smoke shape which reached out to embrace Hawk.

  “Damn you, priest! I’m bored with this childish game. Set me free. Do you hear, spindle legs?”

  The angry words echoed loudly across the still waters of the lake to meet a deaf response from the white-robed figures silhouetted on the grassy bank. They intoned a monotonous litany.

  “Ma-ta-pa! Ma-ta-pa! Show us the way! Show us the way!”

  On and on it droned until their leader, a white haired man with a circlet of gold around his head, held up both hands to silence the chant.

  “Spirit of the Sacred Lake—accept our sacrifice.”

  The High Priest of the Sacred Lake touched the ritual three marks on his face reverently. Each of his accompanying priests had the same blue painted circles on their foreheads and cheeks and they repeated the sign.

  “Ma-ta-pa!” They chorused in a quiet undertone.

  All of them carried a small bow of bronze and in front of them was a gold chalice in which deep blue flames rippled. With a practised move, they notched wadded arrows and set them alight from the fire and leaning back, in unison, loosed them into the air to arch high and plummet into the lake in a perfect line, but short of a wooden raft which floated in the centre of the lake. The man who was on it, tied by his feet and hands to the four corners like a trussed fowl, had struggled to a sitting position and did not like this new development.

  He was tiny but his body was tough like whipcord. A small man with a mass of curly hair and beard; his clothes were made of durable leather and he was spitting angry. He was Baldin, a dwarf from the Iron Hills.

  “Cut me loose, dogs,” he roared with a voice which belied his size. “The
n I, Baldin of the Iron Hills, will show you what to do with your puny bows.”

  On the bank, the High Priest bit back his anger. Why couldn’t these people understand the holy significance of all this? Why did some of them always bawl and shout? Thankfully, most of them lay there accepting their fate.

  “Be still, ugly one.” The High Priest felt compelled to answer. “It is a great honour for you to die this way!”

  He signalled to his acolytes to prepare their bows again. “When the raft burns, your ashes shall mingle with the holy waters of the lake and you will become a part of its sacred oneness.”

  “Ma-ta-pa!” amended the lesser priests, firing another sheaf of arrows at the target.

  Two burning shafts hit the raft and the specially-prepared wood of which it was built began to smoulder and burn.

  “Here I am about to roast,” groaned Baldin to himself. “And I sit on enough water to put out the fires of Hell. Damn their holy eyes!”

  Something beyond the priests on shore caught his attention and his heart rose in delight.

  “By all the Gods,” he whistled. “Hawk!”

  Baldin shouted the name and the priests wheeled round to face this interloper. No unordained mortal could view this holy rite.

  “Lay your bows down,” said Hawk gently. “This warrior is needed.”

  Baldin could feel the heat of the burning wood on one of his arms and he tried to lean away from the devouring flames.

  “You don’t understand,” said the High Priest coldly. “By dying this way he will be purified and his soul forever cleansed.”

  “Priest!” replied Hawk sourly. “I prefer him exactly as he is—unwashed but alive.”

  The heat was sizzling the black hairs on the back of the dwarf’s wrist and the sweat that rolled off his face would turn to steam soon. He had manoeuvred his body to get the restraining cords into the flames and with a heart-leaping snap one of his bonds burned through. Reaching down with his free arm, a fervent prayer pleading through his brain, his fingers found the hilt of a dagger in the top of his boots. Praise be the Gods, these idiot priests hadn’t relieved him of it! With a whirlwind activity he cut himself loose and tumbled into the water just as the whole raft crackled into a mighty conflagration.

  He swam in the manner of a dog but moved powerfully nevertheless. His head rode high out of the water since it was not, by inclination, his favourite drink.

  Never before had a human sacrifice made it back to shore so the priests cowered back from the small, dripping figure who stomped out of the lake on to dry land. Baldin searched for something and, giving an “ah!” of discovery, recovered his belongings from beside the chalice. There was a long, leather whip which he cracked for good measure making the white robed acolytes jump back more, and a knobbly knobkerrie.

  “Greetings, Hawk!”

  Hawk gazed at the sopping wet dwarf and a tiny smile lifted the corner of his mouth.

  “How did the mighty Baldin come to be in this sorry mess?”

  “Too much wine—a friendly fight or two.” Baldin shrugged shame-faced. “You know how it goes. A crack on the skull from a sulky wench and I awake to find myself at the mercy of these chanting fools.”

  His stomach rumbled and he patted it affectionately. “There’s a hole here as large as the Pit of Gimri in the Iron Hills.”

  He whipped out the tip of his lash into the waters of the lake and jerked out a wriggling silver fish. With great gusto he leaned back his head, opened wide his mouth and popped the whole fish in.

  “Your diet has improved little since last we met,” said Hawk.

  “Ah!” Baldin crunched the fish down, relishing every morsel. “But the eye is still as quick.”

  “Ma-ta-pa!”

  The acolytes began their drone once more and had plucked up enough courage to advance on the two men.

  “Think again, ugly one,” proposed the High Priest pompously. “Great glory would have been thine.”

  “I’ll give you great glory,” howled Baldin. He flicked the whip out with lightning speed and, like a sharp knife, it neatly cut away the bottom half of the High Priest’s robe. He was left clothed only to the waist and trying to hide his nudity he fled with an embarrassed cry into the bushes, his pale backside bobbling whitely.

  “There is great glory indeed,” crowed Baldin.

  The Table of Five—Gort the Giant, Crow the Elf, Baldin the Dwarf, Ranulf of the One-Hand and the bearer of the mindsword, Hawk—ringed the dying embers of the hearth within Meena’s cave. They had eaten well and relaxed in the soft glow of the fire listening to Hawk’s explanation of why he had summoned them.

  Gort sometimes let his attention wander back to the meal they had just consumed. The woman, whatever or whoever she was, was as subtle a cook as any he had encountered. The thick bouillon had been delicious and the cheese, tart and creamy, had been veined with a cunning taste of fortified wine. And the loaves, nutty and chewy with a crunchy crust just the way he liked it. The pleasant thoughts made him feel the awakening pangs of fresh hunger. He dispelled the dream and concentrated on Hawk’s words.

  “Now you know the fate that awaits the Abbess of Caddonbury if we fail,” said Hawk, looking at each man in turn. “Remember—Voltan has many men and we are few. If it comes to a battle, it will go hard on us.”

  He paused to let them speak their minds.

  “Since I last fought at your side,” said Gort breaking the silence, “time has hung heavily.” He laughed and patted his large paunch. “And not only time by the look of it eh?”

  The dwarf chuckled and poked the giant’s stomach with the stem of his briar pipe.

  “I yearn for the old days,” said Gort sadly, then smacked his knees decisively. “I am with you.”

  Hawk stretched out a comradely hand to the big man then turned to Crow who spoke not a word, only nodded in his quirky, bird-like manner.

  Baldin sucked in a lungful of tobacco smoke and blew it out slowly.

  “The Iron Hills are no more. If I am to die,” he decided, “why not with friends?”

  “Well said,” rumbled Gort as delighted as Hawk.

  Ranulf, who had sat quietly tinkering with his crossbow, felt a need to join the conversation. “But Voltan will expect his gold soon,” he pointed out. “We haven’t enough riches to fill a chamber pot.”

  “That is true,” nodded Gort, sniffing. “Hawk? How are we going to make Voltan’s mouth water if there’s no wine in the cup?”

  Meena cleared her throat and approached them from the depths of the cave.

  “A day’s march from Caddonbury is the River Shale,” she told them. “It flows into the Great Lake. Once a month traders come with gold to buy slaves from Sped the Hunchback—a brute as evil in his ways as the Dark One, Voltan. Few would weep the passing of a slaver such as he. And it would be fitting justice for his ill-gotten gold to be used for the ways of good.”

  “The end truly justifies the means if the Lady Abbess is returned to her flock,” said Ranulf keenly.

  Hawk pursed his lips. “Hmm!” he demurred. “I have reason to doubt the word of Voltan.”

  Again Ranulf saw Hawk descend into one of his brown moods, wishing he could ask the young lord what he brooded upon and why. He watched Hawk’s eyes narrow and stare into the far distance while his fingers toyed with a small crucifix about his neck. Ranulf had the curiosity of the ordinary soldier. Poking one’s nose into a neighbour’s business was a normal part of living in the field. After all, there was little to do between skirmishes but find out why the next man had decided on this way of life. All the warts and bumps of a man’s hidden thoughts were easily laid bare in a damp bivouac tent in nowhere land with the rain teeming down outside. Ambitions, aspirations, desires, despairs poured out after a shared pipkin of mulled ale. And the ironic thing was that someone else’s private weaknesses struck responsive chords among the other listeners and the knowledge that one’s own aberrations were not unique somehow gave one a fleeting glimpse of the po
ssible secret of life. However, one was never able to capitalise on this enlightenment as the mind-shattering insight seemed to disappear with a good night’s sleep and the new day dawned leaving one to come to terms with self all over again.

  Ranulf pulled his thoughts up short. By all the sleet in Norgard, what was a simple warrior like himself doing having these deep philosophical thoughts. He patted his travelling roll into a more comfortable shape to pillow his head. The movement aroused Hawk.

  “Tomorrow at first light we start out for the Church at Caddonbury. Rest well.”

  Gort had already fallen asleep and Baldin had cosied himself against the giant’s soft bulk. Crow sat cross-legged, eyes still open but unmoving. Ranulf yawned. After tomorrow would they find time for sleep or would they all fall prey to the longest sleep of all?

  12

  THE MONASTERY

  The track from Meena’s cave to the monastery was a road filled with danger, watched by unseen eyes, and Hawk decided to take a circuitous route to alert no one to their passing. It undulated through thick brushwood and heavy forest. Utter silence brooded everywhere except for sudden rustlings in the dense thickets. At times, the trees rose to an incredible height and arched a green roof over their heads, in places shafted with sharded light and elsewhere close-woven into a solid ceiling of boughs and leaves. Each time the track descended into one of these gloomy hollows, they spurred their horses and rode a little faster towards the lightening nimbus at the end of the natural tunnel of trees.

  The five riders presented a picture of odd variety. Hawk rode with a straight back and apparently casual ease on his black stallion, the mighty mindsword strapped to its saddle; Gort loomed large on his unfortunate animal, his legs dangling so low in the stirrups that his horse appeared unhappily small to bear the weight. And the increased burden of his massive hammer made the animal lower its head in greater misery than would have been the case. The sprightly donkey which frisked alongside his superior cousins to show it felt itself to be quite their equal, bore the dwarf, Baldin. He sat half cross-legged in the saddle with his loved, long-stemmed pipe ever in attendance. Crow, by contrast, rode with no saddle, in a semi-crouched position which made him appear weightless on the horse’s back—whereas Ranulf presented the stolid style of the mounted soldier, bobbing to the rhythm of his steed’s sway.