Tarlach's glare silenced him. The captain's attention returned to Una.
“Who is putting the fear on you?”
“Ogin, Lord of Ravenfield, the Dale adjoining ours. He desires control of Seakeep. Thus far, he has contented himself with trying to win it through marriage with me, but when he finally realizes his suit is hopeless, we fear he may well try sterner means. His garrison, or his father's then, remained out of the fighting and was, thus, almost completely undiminished, and his Dale was touched but lightly by the fever, the only one in our region so preserved.”
“Why should he not move at once, then, without wasting time with wooing?”
The woman colored slightly, but her chin raised.
“I am not considered ill favored, Falconer. Ogin will wait, a bit longer at the least, if for no other reason than it would suit his vanity to have me capitulate willingly. He is an attractive man, certainly, and a strong one. By his light, he has good cause for hope, and it would pay him to gain his will thus. Even weakened as they are, he can do without alarming the neighboring Dales to the point that they might unite against him. Alizon taught us the worth of that tactic, and he is not one to forget such a lesson.”
“Yet you say his efforts to gain you are in vain?” Tarlach questioned.
She nodded.
“That one is a tyrant and would be insuperable if he held any power in Seakeep. I could not deliver my people over to the like of him if there were nothing else against him.”
“There is more, however?”
“Suspicion only, but it is sufficient to firm us in our resolve to fight long and hard before accepting defeat at his hands.”
She pursed her lips.
“All this northern coast is rugged with few harbors and many deadly rocks, and storms rise with little or no warning. Vessels, great and small alike, have always run the risk of disaster when approaching it, and wrecks have never been uncommon for the volume of shipping involved, which, in truth, is not large even now. That holds stronger still with respect to bur waters.”
Her eyes suddenly hardened in a manner that gave him a start. There was both anger and the determination for battle without quarter in them such as he had only seen before in war leaders faced with a righteous cause and a difficult if not well nigh impossible fight in order to sustain it.
Una was not aware of the reaction she had provoked in the mercenary or of the change in her own bearing which had sparked it.
“Of late, there seem to be a great number of craft being lost in our region, literally lost, without a trace and without survivors to carry their tale. In nearly every case, the doomed vessels were merchantmen with full holds.”
“Sea wolves?” he asked, his voice turning deadly cold.
“Worse.”
“A black wrecker!”
The grey-eyed man all but spat out the words. One having served at sea, however briefly, could have no other feeling than the most unremitting hatred for renegades who lured ships to their destruction, usually slaying any the water would have spared, in order to strip them of their cargoes and other valuables. Such were less even than pirates, vermin fitted only for extermination… .
“We are in no way certain of it,” Una cautioned. “There is little basis for our belief at all beyond the fact that the disappearances appear to have begun shortly after Ogin came into his inheritance, and there have been too few of them to give us a firm pattern.
“We add to that timing his strong interest in Seakeep. Mine is not a Dale which will ever bring great wealth, nor would it be of any greater help than Ravenfield itself in the fulfilling of an ambitious man's plans, but it is possessed of a long, rough coast, lonely and very well suited to dark work.”
“It is best that this Lord Ogin be kept from your holding,” the mercenary agreed. “Ravenfield does not border on the sea itself?”
“It does, but on a much narrower front. It is a wild coast even for the region, though, and it affords one good place where a small wrecker craft could be concealed. That cove would serve very well for his present low level of activity, but if Ogin hopes to make wrecking his road to power, he will need a better base.”
“Which Seakeep can provide?”
She nodded.
“We have a harbor, small but very deep and with good shelter under all but the most extreme conditions.”
“Such a one is an enemy to all. You could claim aid, from your neighbors by right.”
“They do not suspect him of this, though they are well-enough aware of the loss of ships in the area. As I said, it has always had a bad reputation: We of Seakeep are closest to Ravenfield and are the most involved with the sea, and so we have deduced more.”
“You might have done well to share those deductions,” he told her sarcastically.
“Suspicions, and coming from a woman?” she replied bitterly, but then quelled her annoyance. “Besides, could we in honor lay that shadow on a man without a shred of real or solid circumstantial evidence to support it, knowing he would be likely to carry the blight of it for years or for life?
“As for help, the other lords know him to be a tyrant with power to back his will and prefer to let him be, at least until they have recovered something of their former strength.”
The man was silent for several minutes, a seeming eternity to the Daleswoman.
“What exactly do you want of your blank shields?'’ he asked slowly at the end of that time.
“Chiefly to act as a deterrent against aggression.” She frowned, marshalling her thoughts to present them as logically and briefly as possible. “With each passing month, our own ability to resist increases, as our youths work to gain skill and our older boys approach or attain manhood. You may well believe that they have been undergoing warrior training since childhood.”
She eyed him.
“The same is true of our girls. I know you will not approve of that, but we had to use what was available to us during the war or leave ourselves completely naked for the future. This was but another uncommon duty they were forced to assume with our men gone, and they have done passing well, at least those young enough at the outset not to have been crippled by the belief that they are inherently not capable of such work.” Her lips tightened momentarily. “Fortunately, our women as a whole took better from the start to the heading and farming and to the fishing, or we should all have had a harder and hungrier time than we did.”
“Despite all, you do not want war?'’ Tarlach questioned sharply. It was bad enough dealing with a woman like this. The idea of having to rub shoulders with a female garrison was less appealing still.
“We do not. Only to guard ourselves if needs be.”
Her face hardened.
“The Dales of bur region have ever fought sea wolves from outside and brigands seeking to establish themselves on our coasts and in our mountains to the peril of all. If such evidence should come to light, then we would fight. Thus has it always been and must be, or we should soon be swallowed up by renegades unfit to bear the name of human.”
“Why Falconers?” he asked bluntly. “It is clear that you do not actually expect to discover such evidence, and even if you did, aye, we are fighters as you claim, but so, too, is every blank shield who came through the war and the times that have followed it. Few survived who were not,”
The Holdlady sighed. She had hoped this question would not be pressed. Her reply was not likely to please him, but she knew she had still more to fear from falsehood or half-truth.
She met his gaze steadily.
“I am not war trained, Bird Warrior, or accustomed to traveling with warlike men. Every blank shield is basically an unknown. If I chose wrongly and loosed a treacherous troop on my virtually helpless Dale …”
The green eyes fell, then raised again.
“There may be renegades among your kind, but as a whole, the word of a Falconer is known to be sound. Once given, it will not be violated in spirit or letter. So, too, is it with your discipline. I will do
all in my power to see that you are not forced to have more to do than absolutely necessary with my people. You are professional fighters. We are not, and we will all be more happy to let go military duties, particularly during the summer months when our farms and animals and fleet will be demanding much of us. However, we do not want to have more trouble from the garrison brought in to defend us than they were hired to prevent. I need not fear that you, your men, will settle in as minor tyrants, treating my Dalesfolk as servants and slaves, wresting the fruits of their labor from them and viewing my wenches as stallionless mares handy to service their pleasure. They have proved themselves worthy of better than that.”
A dark flush crimsoned Una's face, and her eyes did fell. It was not her custom to speak so bluntly on such matters, and it was beyond her power to conceal her shame.
Tarlach recognized her embarrassment, but saw something else as well; the quietness which remained with her despite her present discomfort and her desperate need to secure her will and secure it quickly. It was no absence of motion or feeling but rather a quality arising from within her to envelop her whole being. Were the others as aware of it? he wondered absently, and he wondered how anyone could be blind to this inner dignity and the strength it proclaimed.
He recalled himself sharply to the business at hand.
“There is the matter of payment.” he said curtly.
She spread hands that seemed too small to have wielded a sword as he had seen her do.
“I cannot give what your company is worth in time of open hostility. Seakeep can offer the war price of a lesser unit along, of course, with your keep and that of your winged comrades and your mounts. They are not unjust terms since you are not being called to battle, merely to guard, with the probability of little or no actual fighting, but you could command more from a lord facing actual. combat and needing a force as large as yours, and that I freely acknowledge.”
Several of his men stirred behind him, and the captain's own eyes slitted. There had been no change in her tone to indicate awareness of the shrewdness of her observation, but he believed that she knew full well what she had said. This Una of Seakeep had been managing her holding for a long time now, interacting with other Dales as well as ruling her own. Woman or nay, she knew what she was about.
“The duration of our oath?”
“Twelve months at the least. Longer if it proves mutually agreeable, but it would serve us ill rather than benefit us to take you on for less.”
She waited now, making herself present an image of calm and assurance she was far from feeling. There should be no more questions, just the Falconers’ response to her quest.
Their captain realized that the time of decision was at hand as well. His eyes swept his troops before returning to her.
“Your answer you shall have soon,” he told her, “but not immediately. It is not my practice to bind our swords to any long-term service without first consulting with my officers.”
“Of course, Captain. I shall return whenever you wish.” She knew that they would wish to confer in private and would have been willing to accommodate that reasonable desire even had her own need not been so great.
“It will not take that long.”
“Very well. I can wait outside.”
Tarlach hesitated. If she did that, she might well draw the attention she was striving to avoid with her disguise. He owed her at least protection from betrayal whether they rode with her or nay, and there was also the possibility that the press gang might chance upon her again and attempt to exact vengeance for her earlier escape.
He pointed to a door to his left. It led to a smaller room intended for the use of highborn or otherwise privileged guests or those requiring a more private meeting place than the big common room. It was empty at the moment and was not likely to be wanted before time for the midday meal approached.
“You can wait in there, Lady, if you wish.”
Una nodded and then took her leave of the mercenaries.
No one spoke for several seconds until the keen ears of their falcons reported that the Daleswoman had moved away from the door. Once they had that assurance, however, all eyes turned to Tarlach.
“Where did you meet up with that one?” Rorick demanded.
His commander tersely described the attack Brennan and he had thwarted.
The other snorted.
“A mare swinging a sword!”
“Her skill saved her a cracked head,” Brennan pointed out indifferently, then dismissed the aberration from his mind and turned to Tarlach. “You are not seriously considering giving oath to her?”
“I am that, by the Homed Lord. Her tale is true as she sees it. All our winged comrades are in agreement on that, and they find nothing else amiss with her.”
The war birds did not share their human companions’ distrust of womankind, but they were sensitive as no man could be to falsehood or dark intent of any sort insofar as it affected their own company. They were, of course, instantly aware of any working of the Shadow or the true Dark, but that was not at question here.
“So?” snapped a voice to his right. “Let her take on blank shields of her own kind and her qualms be damned. Why should we concern ourselves with her difficulties, and for less than we could command, as she herself observed?”
“More than half our number served as young warriors in the war against Alizon. How many of us would be here to argue this had Harvard not proposed the change in plan which rendered the charge to which our company had been ordered needless? The end result would have been the same that day, but he alone had care enough of us, mere mercenaries though we were, to pull us from certain massacre. More, he then placed us where we could point the assault that broke the hounds’ final strength.—To my thought, we Falconers are under no small debt to him, in honor if not by oath, and since we can do no better now than repay it to his Dale, so must be our service.”
His eyes swept the company.
“It is also to our benefit to accept this. As the Lady Una so subtly pointed out, there are not many lords in need of our swords at the moment, and perhaps that is to our good. We are tired. Our sick recover more slowly than they should, our wounded more slowly still. Our animals lack staying power, and our gear needs replacement and major repair. A spell at guarding would allow us to rectify all that, without paying out to innkeepers, and we would come away with a few extra coins to add weight to out belts as well, enough to pay our passage back to Estcarp without forcing us to draw on our major gains.”
The answering murmur which rain through those gathered around him was reluctant but not actually condemning, and he felt that he would have his will as he continued speaking.
“I will refuse if service to Seakeep is truly repugnant to you, but for my part, I think we would be fools to cast this offer aside.”
“We will go,” Brennan replied gruffly. “You know that full well. You will be getting the worst of it. It is you who will have to deal with the wench, not the rest of us.”
“What must be endured shall be, Comrade,” he answered with a resignation which did not conceal his distaste for that aspect of their commission.
3
Scarcely two hours later, the Falconer company left Linna. They had settled their account with the innkeeper without having to ask their new employer to stand their debts but had used her silver, as was their right, to supply themselves for the journey ahead.
Una joined them outside the town, well away from prying eyes which might take note of their meeting and pass word of it to unfriendly ears. Ever in her mind was the knowledge that news traveled comparatively fast by sea, and they must perforce journey overland since there was no vessel available of a size capable of carrying her new army.
She herself was well horsed, better than any of the Falconers, on a gelding of Seakeep's own breeding. He had belonged to the Abbey, but her lord's sister had given him freely when Una had asked to purchase him or to have the loan of him for an extended period.
; Warmth filled the woman's heart. There had been no questions, about this need or her strange garb or her hurried, sudden departure, merely a quick kiss, a fervent uttering of the Flame's blessing and Adicia's own, and an opening of the rarely, used rear gate while the other Dames were at their private meditations.
Una raised her head. She was proud that she had been able to get away so readily and smoothly without forcing her escort to wait for her, and she was proud of her ability to handle her fine mount. It was a good beginning, that proof of competence, but one she knew she would have to maintain over the days ahead. The journey before them would be a long one, and she could not afford to weaken or lag during it. These cold men would be anticipating that, and if she fulfilled their expectations, they might well dismiss Seakeep along with its ruler.
The march was not a pleasant one for Una. It could not be completed in less than a good three weeks and could too readily stretch out far longer if they encountered any significant trouble. The Falconers pushed hard during the first stage of it. Ostensibly, they did so to make time while they could, before they reached the more demanding country that the Daleswoman warned lay ahead, but in reality, she knew .they were trying her, or trying to break her down, to force her to plead for a halt or a slowing of pace. This she grimly set herself against doing, determined not to give them any part of their will. Pride and the necessity of remaining strong before them aside, needless delay was unthinkable. She would be away so long as it was. Maybe too long… .
Tarlach watched the Holdlady closely as the days went by, trying to gage what they actually had in her. She was showing some ability, right enough, he admitted grudgingly, but it was apparent that she was feeling the effects of the journey. Sometimes near the end of the day, it seemed more pride than strength that kept her in the saddle.
The fool! Would she really let herself be ridden into the ground?’
A sense of shame touched him. That was unworthy. He would praise rather than condemn a warrior for similar stubbornness, and she had more than an unwillingness to give way before them to push her. It was not difficult to imagine that Una of Seakeep must be laboring under a sharp concern, fear, for her holding and what might be happening there. She was more eager than any of them to shave every possible moment off their journey.