The man's strength or, she amended, his courage, was astonishingly resilient, however, and he dove again an incredibly few minutes later.
There were no further mishaps, and he quickly reached and clambered up the side of the dead ship—only to find another danger confronting him.
Fear mounted in her as each succeeding wave swept over the prow. Distance prevented her from observing the extent of the captain's injuries, but Una had witnessed his failure to scale the wreck unaided, and she could see that one of the survivors was helping to hold him in his place, as if the fastening of the rope had taken the last of his strength.
She shuddered. Would he be able to cross when the time came, or would he have to remain where he was, himself a sacrifice to the storm from which he had saved the others?
The first of the mariners was crossing now, moving slowly, painfully, up the rope.
It was a hard, agonizing task, but the work of a seafarer is of a kind that builds solid muscle, and at last she came to the ledge below Una and dropped off into the arms of those waiting there to receive her.
A cheer went up from the Dalesfolk which Una imagined was echoed by the survivors waiting their turn on the wreck out in the bay, although, of course, no such sound could reach her.
The second sailor had begun his crossing, but she felt sure of his safety, and her attention stayed more with Tarlach than with him. was it but her hope, or did the mercenary appear to be taking more of his own weight?
By the time the third man had reached the ledge, she saw that this was indeed so and relaxed little for the first time since he had parted from her.
Seakeep's lady stiffened suddenly. The fourth main was about a quarter of the way across. He appeared to be haying no more difficulty than any of the others, and yet something seemed amiss to her. More than amiss. Something was dreadfully wrong.
She frowned and forced herself to concentrate on the scene before her, trying to discover what was giving rise to this sense of alarm.
The rope! There was a strangeness in its motion, an added violence in each jerk that it gave.
Desperately, her eyes ran its length from the wrecked merchantman to the place where it was bound to the ledge.
Una grew pale as death. The line had slipped, not far, but enough that it was now in contact with the axe-sharp ridge of stone. With every motion made by that unsuspecting seaman out there, another few strands parted. Only moments remained befote his support was entirely severed.
She called out to those below her but knew she had not made herself heard.
What could she do? She doubted she could so much as reach the lower ledge before the rope went.
It was snapping!
With the speed of desperation, she leaped and caught hold of it. The break was in the coil, and enough length remained that a man might have refastened it or at least have drawn it about the pillar so that the stone would have taken the most of the mariner's weight.
Una's strength was not sufficient for that. She twisted the line about each of her hands, then cast her arms around the rock, thus completing the loop with her own body, in the very moment that the rope finally parted.
She screamed as it jerked tight on her hands. The pain was incredible, unbearable, yet she must endure it or see the rest of those people die, see Tarlach die and make his death a nearly useless gesture.
The Daleswoman gave fervent thanks that she had been given both the foresight to seek the support of the rock and the time in which to claim it. She could not have held this weight unaided and would only have been drawn off the cliff herself had she attempted to do so.
She pressed her forehead against the pillar, sobbing in her agony, but she only wound the punishing rope the more tightly around her crushed hands.
She was to have no respite. Una had hoped to secure the line properly when the man crossing it reached safety, but the next had begun to move before he dropped from it. She must remain as she was until the last was over.
She had to stay conscious as well, and so she battled furiously against the blackness, which would have brought her the ease of oblivion.
It went on and on, a seeming eternity of crushing, wrenching torment, then, abruptly, the pressure left her. She looking up, half dazed, to see the tall figure of a Falconer keeping tight hold upon the rope. Another worked feverishly to secure it to the stone once more.
The very release from pain was a torture in itself, as was the sudden rush of returning circulation, and the woman wept bitterly although it shamed her to do so. Because she keenly felt that shame, she fought herself until she once more had herself in full command.
The mercenaries finished their work and came to her. The nearest she recognized as their lieutenant and the other as the one second to him.
Brennan knelt beside her and cradled her bruised hands, in his own with a gentleness which seemed foreign to a man of this stern race.
“Rest, Lady,” he told her. “Rest easy. You have given them their lives, the Horned Lord and their own strength willing.”
“How did you know?” she managed to gasp through the haze of her pain.
“The captain's falcon. He had to wait until there was enough of a lull in the wind to permit him to come to us, but fortunately, he was not delayed too long.—He waits our commander's return below,” he added, forestalling her next question. “He took no hurt in his flight, although he had scarcely reached us before the wind rose again.”
As if to, emphasize his words, a gust harsher than most lashed at them, momentarily taking their breaths and setting all three shivering.
The second warrior placed a cloak around her. She recognized it as Tarlach's and protested, but the man only laughed.
“We will not leave him wanting, Lady. Never fear for that.”
He lifted her then and, because her injured hands prevented her from making the descent herself, bore her to the ledge below. ‘
There, she suffered the rope cuts to be bound but refused to leave. Her mind was clear again, free of the cloud left by pain and effort and alive to all that was happening around her. She would not seek shelter and comfort herself until the Falconer captain was once more safe upon this shore.
14
With the securing of the rope, the mercenary fulfilled his purpose in coming to the wreck, and in that moment, the strength which had been sustaining him vanished. He slumped wearily against the prow, knowing the next wave or the one following it would sweep him.
An arm closed over him with the grip of braided steel. He looked up to find that the mariner nearest him, a tall, powerfully built man, had seen his trouble and had moved to aid him.
Tarlach flushed because this one who had already borne so much must thus spend what remained of his strength. He offered no protest, however, and only nodded his thanks. The alternative was death, and he was not prepared to go down to that while hope of life remained.
The other had little difficulty in reading his thoughts and grinned broadly.
“Think of it as some small return for the use of your rope, Landsman,” he said, then braced himself to receive the onslaught of the next wave.
The first of the castaways was inching her way along the swaying rope. The Falconer watched her progress as breathlessly as any of the others, and if he was still too spent to cheer with them when she reached the ledge, the joy and the triumph in his heart more than equalled theirs.
The crossings went smoothly, with the survivors moving rather more quickly than the mercenary had anticipated.
He studied each one carefully, noting his movements and trying to discover the major difficulties of the ascent and how best to counter them. His own turn would come all too soon, and he would have to know then exactly what to do and how to accomplish it as rapidly as possible. His strength was too uncertain to brook much delay—if it would be sufficient to take him across at all.
At least it was returning to him. The big mariner had given him the respite his body had heeded to restore itself after the
multiple shocks and strain he had suffered in reaching the wreck, and he had taken the most of his weight upon himself again before the fourth survivor had gained the shore.
He was all too well aware, though, that his recovery might be a false one, or, if genuine, short-lived, as the last had been. He had taken injuries, some of them of unknown severity, and any one of them could affect his ability to cross that slender rope. The torn shoulder concerned him particularly; it could very easily prove bad enough to cripple him.
Tarlach closed his eyes. All the open lacerations were troubling him now. He did not have pain in the sense that he had known it in the past, but the salt water was acting on them, and they burned wretchedly. He was cold, too, and shivered violently, as did the others still on the wreck. Exposure weakened a man, he thought as he cringed beneath the lash of a fresh squall, and, if prolonged enough or severe enough, it could kill him.
He felt the seaman beside him stiffen and look up.
The last of the castaways save for this one was now almost across.
The Sulcar glanced speculatively from the rope to the Falconer.
“Let us go together,” he suggested.
Tarlach shook his head.
“No. That cord is thin. I would not trust it to take our combined weight.—Go. I shall use these last minutes to rest and then follow you.”
The other nodded once and took hold of the rope.
The warrior watched him closely. He made good progress and seemed to have less difficulty than any of his comrades although he had remained longest on the wreck and had borne the newcomer's weight as well as his own for part of that time. The man's strength and powers of endurance must be prodigious.
Tarlach sighed. He would wish heartily for a share of both before very many more minutes had passed.
There was no help for it. His turn was come.
He worked his way along the slippery wood until he was in position to take up the rope. He paused while a sea, the largest in some time, passed over him, then he grasped the line.
For a short while, the lower portion of his body was submerged, but gradually, he rose beyond even the most eager of the waves.
His imagination had not played him false in anticipating the difficulty of this ascent, and Tarlach could only, wonder that all of the others had been successful in reaching the shore.
They could not have done It had they not been relatively sound, but, then, neither could anyone significantly injured have held his place on that wave-washed prow for so long. Those who had suffered physical damage of any importance in the sinking of their vessel had either gone down with her or had been among those taken earlier.
Even unhurt, he wondered how every one of those mariners had borne this. He had thought himself hard, his body trained to endure and to conquer pain and difficulty, yet he did not know if his arms could hold. The shore was far, so infinitely far, and there was no relief, no moment's ease, along the whole of the way to it, just endless, wrenching agony which intensified each time the rope rebounded under the pressure of his movements.
Had he been able to establish a smoother rhythm, he wbuld have spared himself much of the jolting now ripping his muscles every few seconds, but his injured shoulder made that impossible. It would not accept his full weight for more than the barest fraction of a second, and so he had to depend on the left to support him save in that instant when he must release his hold to grasp another place a little farther along the line.
Soon all thought left his mind, everything except his concentration upon this awful, creeping climb and the will which lashed nerve and muscle to accomplish what sane consideration would have declared to be impossible.
Thus it was that he started somewhat when he found himself suddenly very near to the cliff, as if he had just wakened to reality out of the mists of ensorcellment.
The sight of the corrugated, all-but-perpendicular wall cheered him, fired his courage. With hope to spur his waning strength, he crossed the remaining distance more rapidly and even more smoothly than he had the great length now behind him, although this final stretch was far steeper and more difficult to negotiate.
The moment at last came when he was over the ledge where the Seakeep people and his Falconers waited. So powerful had been his will's control that it was another instant before he was able to force his fingers to relax their hold; then he was down, standing once more on the firm heartstone of the mountain.
For several seconds, he was aware only of the reality of his escape, that and Brennan's supporting arm.
Tarlach leaned heavily on the lieutenant. With the press of danger at last gone, the forces which he had marshalled to meet it were also ebbing, and both mind and body were demanding payment for all he had inflicted upon them.
The mist cleared suddenly from his mind. One he expected, wanted, was missing.
“Una?”
She was with him then, forcing her way through the blur of faces around him.
“I am here, Captain.”
Her voice was brisk, that of a healer with her patient before her, and he did not think it an accident that she had addressed him by his rank rather than the name he had confided to her. That one's mind retained its grasp… .
He dimly heard her telling those with her to bring him down to one of the cottages rather than wasting time making for the more distant tower, but he was content now and glad to give over the command of his affairs to these others. A veil of darkness had enveloped him in its soft, impenetrable embrace even before she had finished speaking.
15
The mercenary commander woke slowly. He was in a strange room with whitewashed stone walls and heavy, simple furniture. The angle of the light streaming in through the small window opposite him showed it to be very late morning.
That surprised him, and, without thinking, he sat up. The sudden movement brought with it such a surge of pain through the whole of his body that he fell back again with a gasp he was not quick enough to smother.
Storm Challenger swooped down from his perch in the rafters and alighted on the bed, alternately crooning softly in concern and scolding his comrade for his carelessness.
Una was beside him in the same instant.
“Easy,” she told him. “Even a Falconer must expect to pay for the abuse you meted out to yourself.”
Tarlach made no answer. His eyes were fixed upon the heavy bandages binding both her hands from the wrists to the knuckles.
“What happened to you?” he demanded.
She shrugged, wincing a little as she did so, as if her own muscles were sore.
“A few cuts. I shall have a more appropriate covering put on them as soon as I leave you. There was no time yesterday.”
“You lie! Your eyes show red. Has pain set you weeping?”
“No. I am merely weary.” Her head lowered. “I have wronged you. For that, I crave pardon.”
He sat up again, oblivious this time of his protesting muscles.
“What ill have you ever done to me?”
“I have tempted you. with Seakeep.”
The Holdlady made herself face him.
“I knew your people loved highlands and played upon that liking to cement your agreement to aid us.”
“The Dale is fair, my Lady, and my commission demanded that I observe it closely, as your duty demanded that you display it to me.”
“Display it, aye, but I opened to you the Seakeep of my heart, endeavored to share that love with you. I succeeded overmuch.”
“There is no disgrace to me if you did. Seakeepdale is a holding fit to win the respect and heart of any man worthy of the name.”
His breath caught in a sudden rush of horror. What else had he told her? or the others?”
“Was I so ill last night?” he asked carefully, almost afraid to trust his voice to speak.
“Ill? No, but you were restless, and I thought it best that I be the one to remain with you.” As a healer, she had that right, and not even Tarlach's comrades could gainsay he
r.
“Lest I reveal the existence of your spirit sister?”
“In part.”
There was also her own need. She had come to feel for this man what no other, certainly not the lord to whom her father had given her, had ever before roused in her, mind and heart and body. His proposing that deadly plan and taking the execution of it upon himself had wakened to her awareness what must have long been living within her, the knowledge that Tarlach of the Falconers, this strange, stern warrior whose face she had never fully seen before they had stood together oil that ledge, was her chosen lord, so named by her heart and her will alike.
Of that she dared not speak and would probably never dare to speak.
The woman made herself smile.
“I heed not have worried on that account. You said very little, save of your feeling for Seakeep, and you claim that is not damaging to you among your own.” “It is not,” he averred again.
He shifted uneasily. Her concern warmed him, but he felt uncomfortable because of it as well. Una had troubles enough of her own without his adding to them.
Tarlach frowned slightly as another question rose in his mind.
“My injuries are light, or I would not feel as well as I do,” he said slowly. “Why was it necessary for someone to stay with me?” Even now, he realized suddenly, she was watching him very closely, as if seeking for something amiss.
Una touched the bandage crossing his temple.
“We had reason to fear a hair thin break and dared not leave you.”
Her manner changed.
“Do you have any dizziness now, any blurring of vision?”
“None.”
“Pain?”
“No more than is to be expected.”
The cool fingers brushed his forehead.
“There is no fever, either.”
She smiled.
“I think it is quite safe for you. to return to the tower now and let its owners reclaim this cottage.”