Hawkmistress! A DARKOVER NOVEL by Marion Zimmer Bradley

It sounded exactly like what Romilly would have wished for. She said so.

“But will you swear it?”

“Gladly,” Romilly said.

“You must swear, as well, that your sword will always be ready to defend any of your sisters, in peace or war, should any man lay a hand on one who does not wish for it,” said Jandria.

“I would be glad to swear to that,” Romilly said, “but I do not think my sword would be any good to them; I know nothing about swordplay.”

Now Janni smiled and hugged her. She said, “We will teach you that. Come, bring your things into the inner room. Did that dolt Orain remember to give you breakfast, or was he in so much of a hurry to hustle you away from the camp that he forgot that women get hungry too?”

Romilly, still sore with rejection and pain, did not want to join Janni in making fun of Orain, but it sounded so much like what had actually happened, that she could not help but laugh. “I am hungry, yes,” she confessed, and Janni hoisted one of her bundles.

“I have a horse in the stable of the inn,” Romilly said, and Janni nodded. “I will send one of the sisters for it, in your name. Come into the kitchen – breakfast is long over, but we can always find some bread and honey – and then we will pierce your ears so that you can wear our sign and other women will know that you are one of us. Tonight you may take the oath. Only for a year at first,” she warned, “and then, if you like the life, for three; and when you have lived among us for four years, you may decide if you wish to pledge for a lifetime, or if you wish to go on your own, or to return to your family and marry.”

“Never!” Romilly said fervently.

“Well, we will fly that hawk when her pinions are grown,” said Janni, “but for now you may take the sword with us, and if you have some skill with hawks and horses, we will welcome you all the more; our old horse-trainer, Mhari, died of the lung-fever this winter, and the women who worked with her are all away with the armies to the south. None of the girls in the hostel now are even much good at riding, let alone for breaking them to the saddle – can you do that? We have four colts ready to be saddle-broken, and more at our big hostel near Thendara.”

“I was raised to it at Falconsward,” Romilly said, but Janni raised a hand in caution.

“None of us have any family or past beyond our names; I warned you, you are not my lady or Mistress MacAran among us,” she said, and, rebuked, Romilly was silent.

Yet, whatever I call myself, I am Romilly MacAran of Falconsward. I was not boasting of my lineage, only telling her how I came to be so trained – I would hardly have learned it at some croft in the hills! But if she chooses to think I was boasting, nothing I would say can change it, and she must think what she likes. Romilly felt as if she were old and cynical and worldly-wise, having arrived at this much wisdom. She followed Janni silently along the corridor, and through the large double doors at the end of the hall.

Her lineage too must be good, for all her refusal to speak of it, since she spoke of dancing with Lyondri Hastur at children’s parties. Maybe she too has been warned against speaking of her past.

It was a long and busy day. She ate bread and cheese and honey in the kitchen, was sent to practice some form of unarmed combat among a group of young girls, all of whom were more adept than she – she did not understand a single movement of the ones they were trying to teach her, and felt clumsy and foolish – and later in the day, a hard-faced woman in her sixties gave her a wooden sword like the ones she and Ruyven had played with when they were children, and tried to teach her the basic defensive moves, but she felt completely hopeless at that too. There were so many women – or it seemed like many, though she found out at dinner – time that there were only nineteen women in the hostel-that she could not even remember their names. Later she was allowed to make friends with the horses in the stable, where her own was brought – she found it easier to remember their names – and there were a few chervines too. Then Janni pierced her ears and put small gold rings into them. “Only while they are healing,” she said, “Later you shall have the ensign of the Sisterhood, but for now you must keep twisting the rings so that the holes will heal cleanly, and bathe them three times a day in hot water and thornleaf.” Then, in front of the assembled women, only a blur of faces to Romilly’s tired eyes, she prompted her through the oath to the Sisterhood, and it was done. Until spring-thaw of the next year, Romilly was oath-bound to the Sisterhood of the Sword. That finished, they crowded around and asked her questions, which she was hesitant to answer in the face of Janni’s prohibition that she must not speak of her past life, and then they found her a much-patched, much-worn nightgown, and sent her to sleep in a long room lined with half-a-dozen beds, tenanted by girls her own age or younger. It seemed that she had hardly fallen asleep before she was wakened by the sound of a bell, and she was washing her face and dressing in a room full of half a dozen young women, all running around half-dressed and squabbling over the washbasins.

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