Hawkmistress! A DARKOVER NOVEL by Marion Zimmer Bradley

And she shivered at the thought that this might be, not a road to freedom, but only the first of the main trials on her quest.

CHAPTER TWO

Romilly did not slacken her speed till the moon had set; riding in the dark, letting her horse have his head, she finally eased off the reins and let him slow to a walk. She was not sure herself quite where she was; she knew she had not taken the left-hand fork she should have taken at the bottom of the hill, to set her on the way to Nevarsin – it would have been all too easy for Rory to trace her that way. And now she knew that she was lost; she would not even be sure what direction she was riding until the sun should rise and she could get her bearings.

She found an overhanging clump of trees, unsaddled her horse and tied him at the foot of one tree, then wrapped herself in the cloak and the rough blanket she had caught up in her flight, digging into a little hollow at the foot of the tree. She was cold and cramped, but she slept, even though she kept starting out of sleep with nightmares in which a faceless man who was both Rory and Dom Garris – no, but he had a look of her father too – came down at her with inexorable slowness, while she could not move hand or foot. It was certain that if Rory ever set eyes on her again, she had better have her dagger ready. But someone had thrown her dagger down into the privy pit, and she could not look for it because her only clothing was one of her blood-stained rags, and somehow or other they were holding the Festival dance in the meadow where her father had his horse-fair. . . . She was wakened by the horse, restlessly snorting and nuzzling; the sun was up and the ice melting from the trees.

She had been lucky, in her breakneck flight last night, in the dark, that her horse had not broken a leg on the frosty road. Now, soberly, she took stock.

Among the things she had snatched up last night were a frozen quarter of rabbithorn meat, which she could cook and smoke – she had no salt for it, but in this weather it was not likely to spoil. At worst she could slice thin slivers away from the frozen haunch and eat them raw, though she had little liking for raw meat. She had lost flint and steel for firemaking . . . no, what a fool she was, she had her dagger and could search for a flint when the ice was thawed off the road. She had Rory’s coarse cloak instead of her own fur-lined one, but that was all to the good; it would keep her warm without exciting the same greed as her finely woven and embroidered one, lined with rich fur. She had boots and heavy leather breeches, her dagger, a few small hoarded coins in their hiding-place between her breasts – she had abandoned the pocket with its few bits; perhaps that and the good cloak would satisfy Rory’s greed and he would not pursue her. But she would take no chances, and press on. In her saddle-pack she had still a few pieces of the dog-bread on which she could feed her horse; she got out one of them, and gave it to the horse, letting him chew on the coarse grain while she arranged her clothing properly – she had fled the cottage half-dressed and all put together anyhow – and combed her short, ragged hair with her fingers. Certainly she must look disreputable enough to be a runaway hawkmaster’s apprentice! Now the sun was high; it would be a fine day, for already the trees were casting off their snow-pods and beginning to bud again. She shaved a few thin slices of frozen rabbithorn and chewed on them; the meat was tough and unsavory, but she had been taught that anything a bird could eat, a human could digest, and since the hawks were fed on such fare it would certainly not harm her, even if she really preferred cooked food.

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