Prince of Outcasts (26 page)

B
ARONY
H
ARFANG

C
OUNTY
OF
C
AMPSCAPELL

(F
ORMERLY
EASTERN
W
ASHINGTON
S
TATE
)

H
IGH
K
INGDOM
OF
M
ONTIVAL

(F
ORMERLY
WESTERN
N
ORTH
A
MERICA
)

S
EPTEMBER
20
TH

C
HANGE
Y
EAR
46/2044 AD

“O
h, stop
smiling
like that,” Órlaith said, half-serious in her irritation.

Heuradys extended her face forward, slitted her eyes and smiled again, this time in self-caricature as if she were a cat basking in the mellow golden afternoon sunlight of a long autumn day.

The Harris's hawk on her gauntlet bated slightly, extending its wings and turning its hooded head with an air of
what-are-you-doing?
The courser she was riding shifted slightly too.

Órlaith felt the talons of her own hawk tighten through the thick supple leather of the gauntlet.

“Looks aren't everything,” she replied. “And pay attention to your hawk. Macmac,
stay
.”

The weather had broken; it was fall now, days in the seventies, nights crisp. The first rains had fallen, harbinger of the wet months of winter, and a ghost of green went over the yellow-brown hills around them. It was perfectly comfortable, even warm with a coat, but you could
smell
the
cold coming somehow. An odor like damp leaves and the taste of springwater. Macmacon sat obediently, his eyes on the brush and his nose wrinkling. The breeze was from their backs, which wouldn't matter much since the quarry they were after were birds and didn't have a sense of scent to speak of.

“Looks
aren't
everything,” Heuradys said. “But combined with charm and wit and being a good dancer and having a nice sense of humor . . . then good cheekbones and shoulders and a nice tight butt don't hurt at all. Help quite a bit, in fact.”

“Oh, that's right, rub it in,” Órlaith said gloomily.

Dust smoked off the fields southward, tiny plumes in the distance. Teams of big draught horses were drawing the three-furrow riding plows and disk-harrows and seed-drills along the curving contour-strips, turning under the previous year's close-mown alfalfa or sweet clover to plant the winter wheat and barley; the massive and costly equipment was owned jointly with the demesne and used on each peasant's strips in turns drawn by lot. Birds followed the plowmen, attracted by the insects thrown up—or the seed grain in other spots, but children with slingshots and noisemakers deterred them there, as well as scarecrows. It was hard work, but not quite the round-the-clock scramble of harvest, since the planting would go on for a month yet.

Heuradys sent her an apologetic glance. “Sorry, Orrey. I tease too much sometimes.”

“That you do, and I your liege, the black shame and disgrace of the world it is.”

The hunting-party were well outside the fenced and hedged inner core of the manor, though this area was part of the stinted commons and regularly grazed. A long snaking swale ran between the hills, and a generation ago horse-drawn scrapers had shaped the light soil to turn it into a series of earth dams and ponds; ponds for about two thirds of the year, and thicker patches of green grass and reeds the rest, and some water was showing through the vegetation now from last night's rain, like little glints of silver in moving green. Willow-trees and cottonwoods lined it,
dense with bushy undergrowth of black hawthorn, wild rose, wax currant and bright-crimson smooth sumac and more, with purple-flowered thistle tight beneath. It was designed to provide food and shelter for game, among other things.

“It helps not being Crown Princess, too,” Órlaith said a bit sourly.

She was trying not to let it spoil a lovely day.

“Even a roll in the hay is political for me, much less anything serious. Oh, Anwyn take it.”

Ironically, it would have been easier if Alan Thurston
wasn't
born to a family of high estate, except that then she'd have been unlikely to find him as attractive. It wouldn't matter and she wouldn't care in many places, but here in the Association territories she'd never liked dalliance with people far down the pole of rank; it gave her an odd and disagreeable feeling, no matter how enthusiastic they were.

That had never bothered Heuradys, but then she was an Associate. And Sir Droyn had begged off the hunt today. Officially he was indisposed; unofficially it was a girl, she thought. The tall, handsome, dashing and well-spoken young son of a Count back from a fabulous adventure of magic and battle at the side of the Crown Princess (who had knighted him personally with the Sword of the Lady) wasn't likely to lack for company.

“That does suck, Orrey,” Heuradys said sympathetically. “Not fair at all.”

“I can't ask you to be like a Christian nun just because of that,” Órlaith sighed. “It wouldn't help me, now would it?”

Heuradys winced. “Look, he's going to be gone in a day or two anyway—”

Then Órlaith cut in sharply: “There!”

The Mackenzies and their greathounds were working the brush towards them, and not making much noise about it save now and then a happy
yuuurrp
from a greathound making close acquaintance with a rabbit. Songbirds rose, yellow-breasted meadowlarks and goldfinches complaining liquidly, bluebirds and many more. Those weren't proper prey;
unless they were a threat to people or crops most Montivallans didn't kill animals that weren't eaten, or at least found useful for fur and hides. The reasons given for that differed from place to place—Órlaith thought of it as not angering Lady Flidais and the Horned Lord—but the attitude was fairly general.

Then something flickered along the edge of the scrub, amid a patch of yellow tansy.

“There!” Órlaith said softly, feeling that hot focus that was the hunter's mind take over, and feeling much better for it. “Fine fat gobblers, to be sure!”

The wild turkeys broke cover and came scuttling out, ready to take to the air—they weren't great fliers, but they could get off the ground. These were the yellow-legged variety, young males plump with rich autumn feeding on stubble and among the berry-bushes.

“No need to take turns! All at once, then!” Órlaith called to her companions, and raised her right fist in its gauntlet.

The hawk gave its harsh, prolonged, almost whistling
irrrrr-irrrrr
call in earnest this time, hungrily certain that she was about to be flown at quarry. That was answered by the others, on Heuradys' wrist and the gauntlets of Morfind and Faramir. They were all female Harris's hawks, and hers was a big one of about three and a half pounds, two feet long and well over forty inches of wingspan. They were handsome birds with golden legs, dark-brown plumage that shaded to chestnut-red on the shoulders and with white at the tip and base of their tails.

Susan Clever Raccoon had her bow out instead, and besides his recurve Alan had a hunting spear in a tube scabbard on his saddle just in case something bigger than a turkey showed up. Everybody except a few townsmen or clerics hunted, for the pot and sport and to keep the animals off the farms, but Boisean ranchers rarely practiced falconry. Probably that was because it had been so linked to the Protectorate gentry in the old days, but the habit stuck. And it was one of the Mongol customs that Ulagan Chinua
hadn't
been able to get his adopted people to take up.

More of the turkeys flushed, and their attention was all behind them,
which ought to overcome their impulse to head into cover for a few crucial instants at least. Órlaith reached across and gently removed the hawk's hood. Its head whipped around to follow the turkeys in a moment of utter focus, and the wind of its first strong wingbeat buffeted her face as she pushed up sharply—
letting slip
, in the jargon of falconry. It felt more like throwing a living thunderbolt.

Órlaith's bird overflew the turkeys and came in behind them with a loud raucous cry, and they swayed away from her like tall grass before a wind. The other three hawks spread out smoothly, their wings beating to give them extra speed as they swooped down the slope in curves as graceful as an arrow's flight, if an arrow had had a mind of its own. Most raptors hunted as individuals; Harris's hawks were more like wolves of the air, intelligent social beasts who cooperated by instinct. Working with humans came easily for them, and they were even affectionate to their handlers.

A mews-bred group like this reared and trained together acted with the killing unison of a pod of orcas closing in on tunny.

The turkeys panicked, churned about on the ground and in the air, then exploded outward in a starburst with a chorus of frantic
cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk
sounds. The hawks closed in, flared up and then folded their wings and plunged downward in near unison. There were a series of heavy thumps as they struck their prey in flight with stunning force, bound and tumbled to the ground below.

The turkeys were twenty pounds or better, at the upper limit of size for a Harris to take. One managed to break free in a shower of tailfeathers and the hawk twisted in a complete loop to dive and drive its talons into another, quick and deadly and remorseless as a wasp.

“Now that was beautiful,” Órlaith said as she clucked and tightened her legs to put her horse moving.

“And Mom Two says Harris's hawks aren't really falconry!” Heuradys agreed. “I call that Puritanical Peregrine Purism.”

The hunt servant walked from bird to bird snapping necks to put the creatures out of pain, then opened them to drain and removed hearts and
other morsels for the estate falconer. That highly-regarded expert swung his lure to bring the hawks in, hooded them and put them on the perches—crossbars on sticks driven into the ground—and went from one to the other feeding them from his hand while he smiled fondly at his charges and crooned soft words.

Órlaith swung down, pulled off her gauntlet, put a finger to the blood and marked her forehead, then took a clod of earth and touched it to her lips. To live was to kill, for human-kind as much as the wolves. But to kill was to acknowledge your own mortality, the Mystery which all who breathed on the ridge of the world were ultimately initiates, whether human-kind or the other Kindreds. Then she murmured the prayer that started by thanking the prey for their gift of life and ended:

“Lord Cernunnos, Horned Master of the Beasts, witness that we take of Your bounty from need, not wantonness, knowing that to us also the Hour of the Hunter comes at last. For Earth must be fed, and we but borrow our bodies from Her for a little while.”

Morfind and her cousin put hand to heart and faced the west to thank Oromë the Huntsman, and Heuradys spilled a libation from her canteen and softly invoked Artemis:

“. . . fleet archer, deer-shooting Goddess, O You of the Golden Bow . . .”

“When Mathun and the others join up, let's camp,” Órlaith suggested. “Looks like it'll be a clear night, and there's nothing better than turkey roasted over a campfire.”

The call of the horn sounded just as she was putting her foot into the stirrup. She looked up sharply; it was a Mackenzie horn, which meant it must be Mathun's, and it was using the simple three-note pattern.

Alarm, alarm, danger. Alarm, alarm, danger . . .

She continued the motion of swinging into the saddle, on the theory that whatever the danger was it would probably be easier to deal with on horseback.

Her right foot was just reaching for that stirrup when the tigers broke cover. Behind them came the frantic voices of the Mackenzies and the
snarling brabble of the greathounds. There were two of the beasts, both young but adult males—unusual among the generally solitary predators, but not entirely unknown. Then the wind shifted, just as one of the animals gave a racking snarl. Her courser was a good-natured beast, but it wasn't one she'd worked with for years and there were limits to what you could expect of horse-kind. It
knew
that was the sound and smell of something that wanted to eat it, and it reared, came down with a jarring thump that slammed her teeth together hard, bucked, twisted, kicked its heels high in the air in squealing panic, and bolted as she came loose.

Órlaith felt a moment's gratitude as her left foot came free of the stirrup rather than twisting in it and dragging her behind the horse, and then the ground came up and hit her like a war-hammer. She'd been curling in the air automatically, with a lifetime's training in how to fall, but it still knocked the wind out of her, and the pommel of the Sword thumped her under the left armpit with savage force and her head rang as the metallic-salt taste of blood flooded her mouth. The Lady's gift wouldn't cut a member of House Artos—she could run her hand down the preternaturally sharp blade as if it were a wooden ruler—but it remained a physical object. More or less.

“Streak!”
someone shouted, the hunter's call for more than one of the big cats. “'Ware streak!”

Wheezing on the ground, Órlaith had an excellent view of the two animals as they slunk into the open.

Objectively considered they were beautiful, pale red-brown shapes covered in narrow black stripes, shading to cream on their necks and bellies, moving with a grace like water from a fountain. She'd read somewhere in her studies—probably at the university in Corvallis, the course called
Post-Change Ecological Transitions
—that most of the tigers in the world on the day of the Change had been on this continent, essentially kept as pets or trophies by people with more resources than sense. Thousands had escaped or been released, and enough had survived and adapted and bred very rapidly that they were ubiquitous everywhere except the treeless parts of the Great Plains and the deserts of the south,
where lions were doing likewise a bit more slowly. Their ancestors had been a mélange of every sub-breed, but the genes of the Siberians among them had prevailed a little more each year, being better adapted to a climate with cold winters.