Sigarni looked up into the hooded eyes. Her mouth tasted of blood. ‘Call him yourself,’ she said, then spat full in his face. Blood and saliva dripped to his cheek. Taking a black handkerchief from the pocket of his tunic, he slowly wiped the offending drops from his face. ‘You see,’ he said to the gathered men, ‘with what we are dealing? A people who have no understanding of law, or good manners. They are barbarians, without culture, without breeding.’ His hand lashed out in a backward strike that cannoned his knuckles against Sigarni’s right cheek. ‘Call the bird!’ he ordered. ‘And if you spit at me again I will have your tongue cut out!’
Sigarni remained silent. The Baron turned to his falconer, a short, wide-shouldered Lowlander. ‘Can you call it in?’ he asked.
Ill do my best, my lord,’ he answered, moving out on to the open ground with hawking glove aloft. He gave a long, thin whistle. High above, Abby banked and folded her wings into a stoop to dive like an arrow. Some sixty feet from the ground her wings spread again and she levelled out. ‘She’s coming in, sir!’ shouted the falconer.
The Baron turned back to Sigarni. ‘Ten lashes for you, I think, and a night in the cells. Perhaps you will learn from the experience, though I doubt it. You Highlanders never were given to learning from your mistakes. It is what makes you what you are.” Casually he struck her again, left and right, his arm rising and falling with a sickening lack of speed. Sigarni tried to roll her head with the blows, but the soldiers were holding hard to her arms.
And then it happened. No one watching quite understood why. Some blamed confusion in the mind of the hawk, others maintained the woman was a witch, the hawk her familiar. But Abby swept down, past the falconer’s outstretched glove and straight towards Sigarni, talons extended for the landing. At that moment the Baron’s fist came up to strike the woman again.
‘The hawk, my lord!’ shouted the falconer.
The Baron turned, arm still raised. Abby’s razor-sharp talons tore into his face, hooking into the left eyebrow, raking down through the socket and tearing out his eye. He screamed as he fell back, the hawk still clinging to his face, her talons embedded in his left cheek. Abby’s wings thrashed madly as she tried to free herself. The Baron’s hands came up, grabbing the wings and ripping the bird clear. Blood gushed from the face wound. Staggering now he threw the bird to the ground, and Sigarni watched in horror as one of the riders drew a sword and hacked it through Abby’s neck. The wings fluttered against the clay. Men gathered round the Baron, who had fallen to his knees, pressing the palm of his black glove against the now empty eye-socket.
The three riders who had arrived with him half carried him from the field.
The Captain of the Tourney moved in front of Sigarni. ‘You’ll suffer for that, bitch!’ he told her. ‘The Baron will have your eyes put out with hot coals, your hands and feet hacked off, and then you’ll be hung outside the walls in an open cage for the crows to feast on you! But first you’ll answer to me!’
Sigarni said nothing as she was dragged away by the soldiers. A crowd had gathered on the edge of the field, but she did not look at them. Holding her head high she stared impassively at the keep ahead, and the double doors of the outer wall. Abby was dead. Had she given her to the Baron, she would still be alive. She saw again the fluttering wings, and the iron sword cleaving down. Tears fell to her cheeks, the salt burning the cut under her eye.
The men marched her through the Citadel entrance and then turned left, cutting across the courtyard to a narrow door and a staircase leading down into the dark. Sigarni pulled back as the men tried to force her through. The soldier whose advances she had spurned struck her over the ear with his elbow. ‘Git down there!” he hissed. She was propelled forward. The stairwell was dark, the stairs slippery. The soldier twisted her arm behind her back, the other man releasing his hold on her and moving ahead. For a short while they descended in total darkness, then the faint glow of a burning torch lit the bottom of the stairs and they emerged into a dungeon corridor. Two men were sitting at a table, playing dice. Both stood as the Captain strode into sight.