Fire Hawk (3 page)

“If you like hair that color.”
A
color that made you think you could warm your hands at its fire.

“The color of a sunset? Some do, I hear.” Tal looked thoughtful. “Her eyes?” he asked.

Kane blinked. “I didn’t . . .” His words trailed off. He’d been about to say he hadn’t noticed, but it was a lie; he had. How could you not? “Blue,” he said abruptly. And it seemed a poor word for the intensity of the color; even in the shadowy light of the cave, they’d been bright, vividly blue.

He wondered how long he’d been standing there like a fool, contemplating the color of a strange woman’s eyes, when he came out of his reverie and saw Tal watching him with obvious amusement.

“What difference does it make?” he snapped.

“None,” Tal said. “None at all.”

“Stop agreeing with me. It makes me nervous.”

Tal laughed. “I’ll be off then, to round up that unruly bird.”

“You mean you can’t just whistle?”

“I can. But Maud is like any woman; she’ll respond only if she’s already of a mind to.”

“I didn’t realize you were so well versed.”

“A wise man should always know as much as is possible of those around him. ’Tis merely a matter of seeing patterns others miss.”

“I thought you said it was impossible to truly know a woman.”

Tal raised a dark brow. “I was speaking of birds.”

Kane flushed. Tal grinned, lifted a hand to his forehead in a mock salute, and disappeared into the forest.

THERE WAS NO questioning that he was angry. And little doubt that it was directed at her. Yet he tended her with gentle care, a care much at odds with his fierce looks. And even more at odds with his widespread, lethal reputation. A reputation so vast he had become thought of as a mythical being, because it seemed impossible anything less could have amassed it.

Jenna had barely felt the pain as he rebound her ankle. It had been slightly less swollen, but she wouldn’t have noticed anyway; she was, she admitted ruefully, far too fascinated by the man bent over her foot.

For two days she had seen little of him, except when he brought her food, tended to her injuries, and assisted her with more personal needs with a brusqueness that made the embarrassing process remarkably less so. He never spoke more than two or three words, and if she tried to begin a conversation he merely walked away. She spent her time testing her recovering body with occasional efforts to move, and contemplating her surroundings.

For a cave, it was almost comfortable. She lay in a small alcove off what appeared to be a larger chamber, a room large enough for even a man of Kane’s size to stand upright with room to spare. There were niches hollowed out of the walls that contained what apparently was a winter’s worth of foodstuffs. She lay on a bed of soft fur, and the cave walls were hung with various pelts for warmth from the cold stone. And there was a place across from her that showed signs of being used as a hearth.

She had been curious when she’d spotted that, wondering what kept the cavern from filling with smoke, then noticed the shape of the roof of the cave above the spot streaked with soot. There was a chute grooved into the stone, a perfect, natural channel for the escape of smoke. She would bet, with a fire going to heat the stones around it, the cave would be comfortable even on the notoriously cold nights of winter in these mountains. Kane had chosen well; if you had to live in a cave, this was probably one of the best to be had.

Why he had chosen to live in a cave at all was another question. And she doubted if she would ever get an answer to it. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered, except getting him to help her. If she couldn’t do that, there was nothing left. Her people would die. And if it came to that, she would die with them. Not just because it was her place as the Hawk, but because the clan was her entire life; she was connected to them in ways she’d never realized until the attacks had begun and she was faced with losing it all.

She shivered, although it wasn’t cold. She had to get Kane’s help. She simply had to. The alternative was unthinkable. And she couldn’t wait any longer. They had rarely gone a week without another attack from the warlord, and only the magical protection of the glade had kept them from being wiped out already. People were dying while she lay here coddling herself.

Today she had progressed to sitting upright for a long period, and while she was happy at that amount of success, she was anxious to go further. Anxious to get back on her feet. Anxious to get on with her mission.

She had to talk to Kane, and he refused to stay with her long enough for her to do it. So she must, it would seem, go to him.

She managed to get to her knees, then braced her uninjured foot beneath her. She stood, carefully, uncertain of her own stability. And even less certain about venturing forth clad only in this shirt; although it covered her from neck to well below her knees, she was very conscious that she wore nothing beneath it.

Her eyes told her she was no more revealed than in her own soft leather leggings and the rough-woven cloth tunic she had worn on her journey. And logic told her that Kane must have seen all there was to see of her already; someone had undressed her and put this shirt on her while she lay senseless, and Kane was the only one here.

This realization sent blood rushing to her cheeks, and she wobbled slightly on her feet.

It’s over and done,
she chided herself.
You cannot change what happened, that you were so weak you tumbled in a senseless, useless heap just as you reached your goal. Let it go. He obviously will not speak of it if you do not.

“If he will speak of anything at all,” she muttered to herself. He would, she thought fiercely. He must. She would make him listen, make him help. Somehow. There were no other options. She would do whatever she had to. Starting right now.

She steadied herself, testing her ankle with a slight bit of her weight. It protested, but she thought she could walk. She turned her head and listened, hoping to hear a sound from outside that would tell her he was there. She heard nothing. But she did spy a small pile of clothing at the foot of the pallet she’d been lying on; her own clothing. Looking tidy and freshly cleaned.

Kane, the mythical warrior, acting as a washer? For a woman he did not even know? It hardly seemed possible. Yet there her clothes were. And welcome, she thought as she reached for them.

It took her much longer than she would have liked, yet less than she had feared, to get dressed. And only partly because of the lingering stiffness of her body; she spent far too long trying to envision the fierce warrior washing her delicate shift with his big, scarred hands. It was an image that made her shiver in the oddest way as she pulled the garment on; she wore it beneath the rough cloth tunic to prevent her skin from being rubbed raw. It was her one costly piece of clothing, and her only indulgence.

After considering the still swollen condition of her ankle, she decided against her boots; they looked so sadly battered by her trek she wouldn’t be surprised if they fell to pieces should she pick them up. And she would not be walking far anyway; it would be enough test of her injury simply to make it outside.

She hadn’t thought the cave truly so dark; the cloth hanging at the entrance was pushed back to allow daylight inside, but still she found herself blinking as she hobbled into full light. She stopped, not daring to risk a misstep until her eyes had adjusted. She didn’t want to—

“What are you doing?”

It was short, sharp, and angry. That alone would have told her the source, even if the rough, low timbre of the voice had not already done so. She turned toward him, squinting against the bright sun as he towered over her.

“Trying to become less of a burden,” she said in the sweet, meek voice her brother had always called wheedling.

“If that was truly your concern, you wouldn’t have come here.”

So much for wheedling, Jenna thought. Just as well; she couldn’t sustain it for long anyway; meek, Justus had always said, she was not.

Justus.

She suppressed a shiver as grief rippled through her once more. She had no time for such luxuries as grieving, she reminded herself yet again. She had time for nothing except making this fearsome man agree to help her people. Now, with him towering over her, it seemed a much more hopeless task than it had as she’d lain contemplating it.

“You should not be up. Your ankle—”

“Aches, but it is bearable. And it seems a small cost, compared to being wrapped in the coils of a serpent as long as you are tall.”

Her eyes adjusted now; she could see the bemused expression that flitted across his face. She doubted it was at her tale of woe, and suspected it was because he was not used to being interrupted.

“I doubt it would take a serpent that length to wrap around such a tiny morsel.”

Stung, she drew herself up to her full height. “Among my clan I am near the tallest of women, and taller than some of the men, as well!”

“I thought this wondrous Hawk Glade supplied all the needs of its holders. Does it not supply enough food to grow full-size men?”

Anger shot through her as she remembered the bravery of those men Kane was belittling, men who knew nothing of warfare or even self-defense, but tried to defend their home and loved ones anyway, even knowing they would die by the score.

“We are more concerned with brains than muscle, with heart and courage than blind force,” she exclaimed. “And you will not find better men for those qualities in any place in any land than you will find among my people.”

For an instant she saw satisfaction glint in his eyes, although she could not guess at the cause. What had he to feel satisfied about? That he had provoked her to anger, when she meant to supplicate? That he had prodded a wound still so raw that it managed to deflect even her consuming grief?

She had the flickering thought that that might have been his intent, but she could deduce no reason for him to care if she grieved, so she discarded it swiftly. And chastised herself fiercely for having spoken so sharply to the man from whom she had come to beg help.

“Sit down,” he said abruptly. “Before you fall.”

“I won’t fall,” she said, although she wasn’t at all certain of that. It just didn’t seem wise to let this man know just how weak she was feeling.

“And I won’t catch you if you do,” he warned.

“I did not ask you to,” she retorted, wondering if it was her weakened state that made her so irascible this day. She smoothed her hands over the rough cloth of her travel tunic. It hung loose without her belt—

Her belt. And the dagger that was sheathed in it. Neither had been in the neatly folded pile of her clothing.

“I thank you for cleaning my clothing,” she began.

“They would have been unwearable had they waited for you to do it.”

“I thought perhaps . . . is there someone else here who . . . does for you?”

He gave an inelegant snort. “The only person who frequents these heights is a rapscallion who disappears whenever the spirit moves him. Which means whenever there’s something he’d rather I deal with.”

Despite the words, there was a rueful affection in his tone; although legend held him a man who walked alone, Kane the Warrior had at least one friend, it seemed.

“Then you will be the one who knows the whereabouts of my dagger?”

He gave her a long, silent look. “An interesting weapon,” he said, answering yet not answering her question.

“It is . . . important to my people.”

“You were to use it, I presume?”

Jenna blinked. “Use it? For what?”

Kane shrugged. “To kill me, of course.”

Chapter 3

“KILL YOU?”

Her startled exclamation seemed genuine.

Or perhaps, Kane thought, she was simply very good at playing her part. She certainly wouldn’t be the first woman to be very good at such things. Nor the last. He’d met a few, in his other life. And he doubted that much had changed since he’d last dealt with women.

“That is why you’re here, is it not?”

She sat down at last, on the log beside the stones ringing the outer fire. He saw her tremble, whether from fear or weakness from her injuries, he didn’t know. She stared up at him.

“By the heavens, why would you think that?”

He shrugged negligently. “ ’Tis the usual reason people look for me.”

“I’m surprised anyone would have the courage to even try to kill Kane the Warrior.”

“No one has, since I’ve been here.” He eyed her coldly. “No one has made it this far.”

Her effort to divert him from that subject was immediate. “Have you made so very many enemies, then?”

He felt the old weariness begin to steal over him, the lassitude that had so often tempted him to offer himself up for the killing, just to be done with it. A simple walk out of these mountains, a calling in of the promise that should he leave them, he would cease to be, had never seemed more tempting than at this moment. He resisted the urge to do it right now, to turn and walk away, and never come back to this place that had become his only haven.

“ ’Tis all I have made in my life,” he murmured.

He shook his head, trying to fend off the ugly feeling. He found the woman called Jenna watching him, her eyes so wide and vividly blue it put him in mind of the mountain sky in summer just before dusk, when it darkened to a blue never seen in any other place. Until now.

There was something in those eyes that made him uneasy, some trace of something soft and warm, something that was somehow threatening to him. More threatening perhaps, than even the razor-sharp blade she had carried.

“I have no wish to kill you,” she said quietly. “Quite the opposite.”

He went still, every warning instinct he possessed clamoring to life. He’d learned long ago that people who approached him voluntarily, if they did not have his death in mind, had only one other reason.

They wanted him to bring death to someone else.

As swiftly as a hawk’s strike, he felt the coldness sweep through him. The icy calm, the assessing aloofness that he’d thought himself done with forever. It was so very strange, he thought, this being able to look at himself as if from a distance, to analyze, to poke at what should be painful and feel nothing.

He’d been here in this place for years, trying to rid himself of this, of this coldness that separated him from others, that enabled him to look at them with such dispassionate calculation. Were they to be asset or hindrance? Would they help him achieve his goal, and thus deserve to live, or would they be in his way, to be killed and tossed aside without a second thought? For a lifetime that had been his credo, the principle by which he’d lived, driven into his very soul by the man who had perfected it.

For years now he’d hidden out here in these mountains, searching for a healing. And now this red-haired, wide-eyed woman had, in the space of a moment, shown him there was no healing for the likes of him. With a single utterance she had reduced his hopes, his conviction that he had, indeed, come a long way from that vicious, brutal man, into dust.

He was Kane, and so would he ever be.

He turned his back on her and walked into the woods, knowing even the warmth of the morning sun was not enough to save him from this chill.

JENNA SAT ON the log, shivering. It wasn’t cold, here in the sunlight, yet she shook as if she sat atop Snowcap.

There was a coarse blanket on the ground beside the fire; she reached for it and pulled it around her. She caught a scent, faintly wild and male. And only then realized this must be where Kane had been sleeping; she had literally put him out of his bed.

There were men who would not have allowed that, she thought. And of late she had learned there were men who would not have cared that she was unconscious; she was female and of only one use, and her participation was not necessary. Kane apparently fell into neither of those categories. But she was no closer to knowing what one he did fall into. No closer to understanding him at all. In fact, she was farther from it than ever.

What had she said that had put that look in his eyes, that cold, vacant, dead look? She’d seen too much of death of late to use the term lightly, yet there seemed to be no other; Kane’s clear gray eyes had gone flat and empty, as if she’d somehow killed the soul inside the man.

And she didn’t know what she’d done. She’d not even begun her entreaty, had not yet said a word about why she had truly come here.

Panic gripped her; what if he didn’t come back? He had looked, in that moment before he had turned and walked away, like a man who could easily do just that. He looked like a man who had lost all of value to him. Or like a man who had never valued anything, including himself. Who could walk away from everything without even a glance back over his shoulder.

The storyteller had warned her it would be difficult to deal with Kane. More difficult, in fact, than if he had been the myth some thought him. Myths were immune to human failings. Kane, he’d said, was not. “Some wounds never heal,” he’d said in that sometimes infuriatingly vague manner. “And he carries many.”

She knew that to be true, now. There had been pain in Kane’s face, in his voice, in his posture when he’d spoken of enemies. But when he’d left her just now, there had been nothing. No pain, no anger, no emotion at all. It was, she thought, coming back to it again, a dead man who had walked away.

She would have preferred his anger. She had disrupted his life; she knew that. If nothing else, she had noticed that about this place; except for the occasional call of the wild things and the whisper of the breeze, it was the quietest place she’d ever been. She imagined days could pass, one after the other, with a mind-numbing sameness that could, to an uneasy mind, pass for peace. Perhaps it was that which she had taken away simply by coming here; perhaps it was that loss that had provoked him to anger.

But what had caused that total extinguishing of the light from within?

She thought of going after him, but she doubted she could manage much distance. And if she found him, she had no idea what she would do. How could she, when she had no idea what she’d said that had sent him into the shadowy forest?

He would come back, she told herself, trying to think logically. Where else would he go? He didn’t seem to have many possessions, surely not enough that he would take their loss lightly. She herself had few things that were of value to her—and her idea of value no doubt differed from many—but those she had, she treasured. From what she’d seen, Kane had even less, so little that what he did have must be important to him, she thought.

Or did the sparseness of his possessions only mean it would be easier for him not to come back? The storyteller had come to them with little, a few belongings in a sack, no more. He had said he preferred to travel lightly; possessions tied you to a place, kept you there when it might be better if you moved on.

She’d been afraid then that her people would lose the one small joy remaining to them, the joy of listening to the storyteller around a fire, spinning his tales in that mesmerizing voice, been afraid he would move on when he realized how little safety they could promise him. As if he’d read her fears, he had smiled gently and assured her he would be there as long as he was needed.

She wished he was here now. He could be so maddening, yet she always felt better when she talked with him. He always seemed to ease her fears, and often in his seemingly innocent tales and allegorical stories, she found an answer she hadn’t even been aware of seeking.

But she could find no answer now. Nor could she physically go after Kane. Nor did she know what she would do or say to a man who looked like the walking dead.

She had to assume he would return. Whatever she’d said or done, she simply could not believe that a single woman had, with no effort at all, driven away a warrior with Kane’s reputation. He would come back.

He had to come back.

“I’VE SEEN MORE cheerful faces at burials.”

Kane stopped walking. It was his only reaction to the voice that came from above him; he seemed beyond anything else. He was almost sorry it was Tal. Had it been one of the men from the warlord who hunted him, he could have brought this miserable existence to an end once and for all.

He heard a rush of sound, and Tal dropped down beside him, from whatever tree limb he’d been perched on, no doubt looking at the world with that faintly amused smile.

“Forgive me, my friend, but you do seem a bit grim this fine morning.”

“If you want to beg forgiveness, it should be for disappearing like the wizard I’m half convinced you are.”

Kane had tried for the bantering tone they usually adopted, but it fell short. He avoided looking at his friend, but sensed Tal’s eyes narrowing, knew they were taking on that piercing intensity that made Kane think he was seeing through to his soul. It usually made him uncomfortable; his soul wasn’t one that could stand up to the kind of scrutiny Tal seemed able to perform. But today he felt nothing.

“What has she done?” Tal asked softly.

Once Kane would have parried the question with a denial, or a question in turn, asking the man what made him think the only “she” he could be referring to had anything to do with it. But he’d learned in short order that when fixed on something, Tal would not be gainsaid, and dissembling was useless; he saw everything with those fierce, changeable eyes. And often saw patterns where Kane saw only chaos.

“Nothing. Yet,” he said, his voice a dead-sounding thing even to himself.

“Yet?”

He looked at Tal then, knowing the man would see, knowing it would save him much in the way of explanation.

“She’s come to ask me to kill for her.”

Tal’s dark brows lowered. Kane withstood his gaze like a man on a rack, his jaw set, his eyes never wavering as the other man’s searched, probed.

“Are you certain?” Tal asked, his voice low.

“You know as well as I there are only two reasons people search me out. I do not believe she is a murderess.”

“She is not,” Tal agreed, with that certainty that Kane usually found irritating; this time it was strangely comforting. “But are you assured that is her aim?” he asked again. “Perhaps she wishes something else from you.”

Kane smiled, a smile he knew was humorless and cold. “What else have I to offer anyone?”

Tal’s eyes shifted, from the fierce gold of a predator to the misty green of the forest around them. “More than you know or would ever believe,” he said in an oddly distant, quiet voice. Then, before Kane could react, he added in normal tones, “What will you do with her? Send her away without listening to her?”

Kane took in a breath. The coldness was, to his surprise, receding. Or perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised; Tal often had a most unsettling effect. It was difficult to describe, but he’d encountered it often enough to have given up trying to deny that it happened.

“It’s what I would like to do,” he admitted.

“But?”

Kane sighed. “She’s come a long way from her home. Further than anyone ever has. She’s endured much, she who looks too fragile to have ever withstood such harshness.”

“And it hardly seems fair to turn her away so coldly, does it?”

“What does Kane care of fairness?”

Tal smiled suddenly. “When you begin to speak of yourself as if you were someone else, I know you have reached the end of your arguments.”

Kane’s mouth twisted. “What would you have me do?”

“Whatever you can live with, my friend.”

IT WAS LUCKY, Jenna thought, that roasting a pheasant over a fire was a simple task; preparing food had never been a talent of hers. She knew the rudiments of the task and had managed to find some herbs with which to rub the bird’s skin, and some edible tubers to bake in the coals, but even that had taxed her skills. Justus had been the adventurous one when it came to that, always trying new foodstuffs, delighting when they met with accolades, and laughing good-naturedly at the rare failures that made his guests discreetly fill up on large chunks of bread.

It swept over her like the wind rushing down from Snowcap. She would never hear that laugh again, just as she would never feel the warm comfort of her mother’s embrace. Nor would she see the antics of Jack the miller, whose silly faces had made the children laugh, nor would she hear Kayla’s beautiful voice raised in song.

She resisted the urge to call their names, the seemingly endless list of the dead. But it took all her fragile strength, and she had none left to stop the shudders that gripped her. She refused to weep, but she could not stop the shaking. She told herself it did not matter, there was no one here to see, no fierce warrior who would no doubt glare in disgust at her weakness. And perhaps there would not be; he had been gone a very long time. Perhaps her long, harsh journey had been for naught, and she was truly defeated before she began.