“North along the trade roads,” the witch leaned from her seat behind Briant to urge.”If we can alert the Falconers they should see fugitives safely through the mountains. Tell your people to leave their gear and bring with them only their weapons and food, what may be carried on pack animals. And may the Power ride with you, Vortgin, for those you can urge into Estcarp will be blood for our veins!”
Koris pulled the horn strap from his shoulder and passed it over.”This may be your passport if you flush any of Yvian’s forces before you get into the back country. Luck be yours, brother, and seek out the Guards in the North. There is a shield in their armory to fit your shoulder!”
Vortgin saluted and kicked his horse into a flurry of speed eastward.
“And now?” the witch asked Koris.
“The Falconers.”
She cackled. “You forget. Captain, old and shriveled as I seem, with all the juices age-sucked from me, still am I female and the hold of the hawk men is barred to me. Set Briant and me across the border and then seek out your women-hating bird men. Rouse them up as best you may. For a border abristle with sword points will give Yvian something else to think about. And if they can afford our cousins safe passage, they will put us deep in their debt. Only,” she plucked at the surcoat on Briant’s shoulders, “I would say to you throw these name signs of a lord you do not serve away, or you may find yourself pinned to some mountain tree before you have time to make your true nature known.”
Simon was not surprised this time to find they were being observed by a hawk, nor did he think it odd to hear Koris address the bird clearly, giving their true identies and explaining their business in the foothills. He covered the back trail while the Captain took the lead, the witch and Briant riding between them. They had parted with Vortgin in midafternoon and it was now close to sunset, their only food during the day the rations found in the saddlebags of the captured horses.
Now Koris pulled up until the others joined him. While the Captain spoke he still faced into the rising mountains and it seemed to Simon as if he had lost a little of his robust confidence.
“This I do not like. That message must have been relayed by the bird’s communicator, and the frontier guards could not have been too far away. They should have met us before now. When we were in the Eyrie they were eager enough to promote a common cause with Estcarp.”
Simon eyed the slopes ahead uneasily. “I do not take a trail such as this in the dark without a guide. If you say, Captain, that they are not following custom, then that is all the more reason for staying clear of their territory. I would say camp at the first likely spot.”
It was Briant who broke in then, his head up, his attention for the bird wheeling overhead.
“That one does not fly right!” The youngster, dropping the reins of his horse, held his hands together to mimic the wings of a bird. “A true bird goes so—and a falcon so—many times have I watched them. But this one, see—flap, flap, flap—it is not right!”
They were all watching the circling bird now. To Simon’s eyes it was the same sort of black and white feathered sentry as had found them outside the Hole of Volt, as he had seen on the saddle perches of the Falconers. However he would be the first to admit that he knew nothing of birds.
“Can you whistle it down?” he asked Koris.
The Captain’s lips pursed and clear notes rang on the air.
At that same moment Simon’s dart gun went up. Koris turned with a cry and struck at Simon’s arm, but the shot had already been fired. They saw the dart strike, piercing just the point of the white vee upon the bird’s breast. But there was no faltering in its flight, no sign that it had taken any hurt from the bolt.
“I told you it is no bird!” cried Briant. “Magic!”
They all looked to the witch for an explanation, but her attention was riveted on that bird, the dart still protruding from its body, as it made low lazy circles overhead.
“No magic of the Powers.” That answer seemed forced out of her against her will. “What this is, I cannot tell you. But it does not live as we know life.”
“Kolder!” Koris spat.
She shook her head slowly. “If it is Kolder, it is not nature-tampering as it was with the men of Gorm. What it is I cannot tell.”
“We’ll have to get it down. It is lower since that dart struck it; perhaps the weight pulls it.” Simon said, “Let me have your cloak,” he added to the witch, dismounting.
She handed him that ragged garment and looping it over his arm Simon began to climb the wall beside the narrow track they had followed to this place. He hoped that the bird would remain where it was, content to fly above them. And he was sure it drew nearer earth with every circle.
Simon waited, flipping the cloak out a little. He flung it, and the bird flew unwarily into the improvised net. When Simon tried to draw it back the captive fell free, to fly blindly on and smash head first against the rock wall.
Tregarth leaped down to scoop up what lay on the ground. Real feathers right enough—but under them! He gave a whistle almost as clear and carrying as Koris’ bird summons, for entangled in the folds of torn skin and broken feathers was a mass of delicate metal filings, tiny wheels and wires, and what could only be a motor of strange design. Holding it in his two hands he went back to the horses.
“Are you sure the Falconers use only real hawks?” he asked of the Captain.
“Those hawks are sacred to them.” Koris poked a finger into the mess Simon held, his face blank with amazement. “I do not think that this thing is any of their fashioning, for to them the birds are their power and they would not counterfeit that lest it either turn upon them or depart utterly.”
“Yet someone or something has tossed into the air of these mountains hawks which are made, not hatched,” Simon pointed out.
The witch leaned closer, reaching out a finger to touch as Koris had done. Then her eyes raised to Simon’s and there was a question in them, a shadow of concern.
“Outworld—” she spoke hardly above a whisper. “This is not bred of our magic, or of the magic of our time and space. Alien, Simon, alien . . .”
Briant interrupted her with a cry and pointing a finger. A second black and white shape was over their heads, swooping lower. Simon’s free hand went to the gun, but the boy reached down from his saddle to strike at Tregarth’s wrist and spoil his aim. “That is a real bird!”
Koris whistled and the hawk obeyed that summons in the clean strike of its breed, settling on a rock crown, the tip of the same pinnacle against which the counterfeit had dashed itself to wreckage.
“Koris of Estcarp,” the Captain spoke to it, “but let him who flies you come swiftly, winged brother, for there is ill here and perhaps worse to come!” He waved his hand and the falcon took once more to the air, to head straight for the peaks.
Simon put the other thing into one of his saddle bags. In the Eyrie he had been intrigued by the communication devices which the true falcons bore. A machine so delicate and so advanced in technical ability was out of place in the feudal fortress of its users. And what of the artificial lighting and heating systems of Estcarp, or the buildings of the Sulcarkeep, of that energy source Osberic had blown up to finish the port? Were all these vestiges of an earlier civilization which had vanished leaving only traces of its inventions behind? Or—were they grafts upon this world from some other source? Simon’s eyes may have been on the trail they rode but his wits were tumbling the problem elsewhere.
Koris had spoken of Volt’s non-human race preceding mankind here. Were these remnants of theirs? Or had the Falconers, the mariners of Sulcarkeep, learned what they wished, what served their purposes best from someone, or something else, perhaps overseas? He wanted a chance to examine the wreckage of the false hawk, to try and assess from it if he could the type of mind, or training, which could create such an object.
The Falconers emerged from the mountain slopes as if they had stepped from the folds of the ground. And they waited for the party from Kars to approach, neither denying them passage, nor welcoming them.