Snow had fallen toward morning, and the streets of Caer Bonn were piled high with trackless white. All the same, there was a softness in the air which told the country-bred Romilly that the spring thaw was nearing and this was the last blow of the winter.
Father always said that only the mad or the desperate travel in the winter; now I have crossed the worst of the Hellers after Midwinter-night. Why am I thinking of that now?
Orain patted her shoulder with the same clumsy deference he had shown since last night. It made her want to weep for the old, lost, easy companionship. She should have known he would not have liked her half so well as a woman; it was, when she really took thought, written clear all over him and must have been evident to everyone in the company except herself.
"Here we are, damisela,n he said, and Romilly snapped, raw-edged, "My name is Romilly, Orain, and I have not changed so much as all that."
His eyes, she thought, looked like a dog's that had been kicked. He said, "Here is the hostel of the Sisterhood," and went up the steps, leaving her to follow.
Once he knew - certainly he could not allow her to face the dangers of life in camp and trail. He would always be aware, now, of her unwelcome womanhood. This was, after all, the best answer.
A hard-faced woman, with heavy hands which would have seemed more appropriate holding a hayfork, welcomed them to the front hall - or, Romilly thought, welcome was not quite the right word, but she did let them in. Orain said, "Kindly inform Mistress Jandria that her cousin has come to visit her." His voice was again the impeccably courteous, well-bred voice of the courtier, with the last trace of the soft country accent carefully hidden. The woman stared suspiciously, and said, "Sit there," pointing to a bench as if they were a pair of street urchins come a-begging. She went away down the hall and Romilly heard women's voices at the far end of the building. Somewhere there was the noise of a hammer on an anvil - at least that was what it sounded like - and the small, familiar, friendly, chink-chink-chinking sound made Romilly a little less rigid with apprehension. All the doors along the hallway were closed, but as they sat there, two young women, wearing crimson tunics, their hair all tucked under red caps, went through the hallway arm in arm. They were obviously not what Romilly's stepmother would have called ladies; one of them had great red hands like a milkmaid's, and were wearing loose long trousers and boots.
At the back of the hall another woman appeared. She was slender and pretty, and, Romilly thought, about Orain's own age, forty or more, though her dark, close-cropped hair had faded, with streaks of grey at the temples.
"Well, kinsman," she said, "What's that ye've got wi' ye'?" She had the country accent Orain had learned to conceal "And what brings ye' into this country in winter? King's business, I hear - and how's himself?" She came and gave him a quick, breezy embrace and a haphazard kiss somewhere on the side of his face.
"The king is well, Aldones be praised," said Orain quietly, "and with the Aldarans at the moment. But I have two charges for you, Janni."
'Two?" Her salt-and-pepper eyebrows went up in a comical grimace. "First of all, what's this, boy or girl or hasn't he or she made up its mind?"
Romilly, with a scalding blush, bent her eyes on the floor; the woman's good-natured mockery seemed to take her in and sort her out and discard her as useless.
"Her name is Romilly MacAran," said Orain quietly, "Don't mock her, Janni, she travelled with us through the worst climate and country in the Hellers and not one of us, not even myself, knew her for a girl. She did her full share and cared for our sentry-birds, which I'd never known a woman could do. She brought them through alive and in good condition, and the horses too. I thought she was a capable lad, but it's even more extraordinary than I thought. So I brought her to you."
"Having no use for her, once ye' found she wasna' one of your lads," said Jandria, with an ironical grin. Then she looked straight at Romilly.
"Can't you speak for yourself, girl? What led you into the mountains in men's clothes? If it was the better to seek a man, take yerself off again, for we want no girls among us to give us the name of harlots in disguise! We travel with the armies, but we are not camp-followers, be that understood! Why did ye' leave home?"
Her sharp tone put Romilly on the defensive. She said, "I left my home because my father took the hawk I trained myself, with my own hands, and gave it to my brother; and I thought that not fair. Also, I had no will to marry the Heir to Scathfell, who would have wanted me to sit indoors and embroider cushions and bear his ugly children!"
Jandria's eyes were sharp on her. "Afraid of the marriage-bed and childbirth, hey?"
"No, that's not it," Romilly said sharply, "but I like horses and hounds and hawks and if I should ever marry-" she did not know she was going to say this until she said it, "I would want to marry a man who wants me as I am, not a pretty painted doll he can call wife without ever thinking what or who she is! And I would rather marry a man who does not think his manhood threatened if his wife can sit in a saddle and carry a hawk! But I would rather not marry at all, or not now. I want to travel, and to see the world, and to do things-" she broke off. She was saying this very badly. She sounded like a discontented and disobedient daughter, no more. Well, so she was and no otherwise, and if Mistress Jandria did not like her, well, she had lived as a man before in secret and could do so again if she must! "I am not asking charity of you, Mistress Jandria, and Orain knows me better than that!"
Jandria laughed. "My name is Janni, Romilly. And Orain does not know anything about women."
"He liked me well enough till he found out I was a woman," Romilly said, prickled again by that thought, and Janni laughed again and said, "That is what I mean. Now that he knows, he will never see anything about you except that you should be wearing skirts and sending out signs, so that he will not be led unwitting into trusting you. He let down his guard before you, I doubt not, thinking it safe, and now he will never forgive you for it - isn't that it?"
"You are too hard on me, Janni," said Orain uneasily, "But sure you must see that Mistress MacAran cannot travel with men and live rough in a camp with hard men such as I command!"
"In spite of the fact that she has done so for a span of ten-days," said Jandria, with that flicker of a wry grin. "Well, you are right, this is the place for her, and if she is good with horses and birds, we can always make use of her, if she is willing to live by our rule."
"How do I know until I know what that is?" demanded Romilly, and Jandria laughed. "I like her, cousin. You can go and leave her to me, I won't bite her. But wait, you said you had another charge for me."
"Yes," Orain said, "Lyondri Hastur's son; Carolin. He was a student in Nevarsin monastery, and he came into our hands as a hostage - never mind how, it's better if you don't know. But I have given my word I will have the boy sent back to Thendara under truce-flag when the passes are open, and unharmed. I cannot go myself."
"No," Jandria said, "You certainly cannot; for all your head's stuffed with old rubbish and ugly as sin, it adorns your shoulders better than it would adorn a pike outside Lyondri's den! Yes, we'll take the lad to Thendara for you; I may even go myself. Lyondri has certainly not seen my face since we danced together at children's parties and would not remember it without long curls and bows in my hair." She chuckled as at a secret joke. "How old is young Carolin now? He must be eight or nine."
'Twelve, I think," Orain said, "and a nice child; it's pity he got himself mixed up in this, but he saved my neck and my men's and Carolin has cause to be grateful to his godson, so guard him well, Janni."
She nodded. "I'll take him south as soon as the passes are open, then; you can send him to me here." She chuckled and gave Orain another of her quick, offhand hugs. "And now you must go, kinsman - what of my reputation, if it is known I entertain a man here? Worse, what of yours, if it is found out you can speak civilly to a woman?"
"Oh, come, Janni-" protested Orain, but he rose to take his leave. He looked, embarrassed, at Romilly, and stuck out his hand. "I wish you well, damisela."
This time she did not bother to correct him. If he could not see that she was the same whether in boy's clothes or the name of a Great House, well, so much the worse for him; he did not sound like her friend Orain at all, and she could have cried again, but she did not, for Janni was staring appraisingly at her.
After the door closed behind Orain, she said, "Well, and what happened? Did he try and lure ye' to bed, and recoil in unholy horror when he found out you were a woman?"
"That's not quite how it happened," said Romilly, moved to defend Orain without knowing why, "It was - he had been kind to me, and I thought he knew I was a woman, and wanted me so - I am not a wanton," she defended herself, "Once I came near to killing a man who would have had me against my will." She shivered and shut her eyes; she had thought she was free of the nagging horror of Rory's attempted rape, but she was not. "But Orain was good, and I-I liked him well, and I only thought to be kind to him, if it was what he wanted so much."
Janni smiled, and Romilly wondered, defensively, what was funny. But the older woman only said, quite kindly, "And you are a maiden still, I doubt not."
"I am not ashamed of it," Romilly flared.
"How prickly you are! Well, will you live by our rule?"
"If you will tell me what it is, I will answer you," she said, and Janni smiled again.
"Well then; will you be sister to all of us, whatever rank we may bear? For we leave rank behind us when we come into the Sisterhood; you will not be My Lady or damisela here, and no one will know or care that you were born in a Great House. You must do your share of whatever work falls to us, and never ask quarter or special consideration because you are a woman. And if you have love affairs with men, you must conduct them in decent privacy, so that no man can ever call the Sisterhood a company of camp-followers. Most of us are sworn to live celibate while we follow the armies and the sword, though we do not force it upon anyone."
It sounded exactly like what Romilly would have wished for. She said so.
"But will you swear it?"
"Gladly," Romilly said.
"You must swear, as well, that your sword will always be ready to defend any of your sisters, in peace or war, should any man lay a hand on one who does not wish for it," said Jandria.
"I would be glad to swear to that," Romilly said, "but I do not think my sword would be any good to them; I know nothing about swordplay."
Now Janni smiled and hugged her. She said, "We will teach you that. Come, bring your things into the inner room. Did that dolt Orain remember to give you breakfast, or was he in so much of a hurry to hustle you away from the camp that he forgot that women get hungry too?"
Romilly, still sore with rejection and pain, did not want to join Janni in making fun of Orain, but it sounded so much like what had actually happened, that she could not help but laugh. "I am hungry, yes," she confessed, and Janni hoisted one of her bundles.
"I have a horse in the stable of the inn," Romilly said, and Janni nodded. "I will send one of the sisters for it, in your name. Come into the kitchen - breakfast is long over, but we can always find some bread and honey - and then we will pierce your ears so that you can wear our sign and other women will know that you are one of us. Tonight you may take the oath. Only for a year at first," she warned, "and then, if you like the life, for three; and when you have lived among us for four years, you may decide if you wish to pledge for a lifetime, or if you wish to go on your own, or to return to your family and marry."
"Never!" Romilly said fervently.
"Well, we will fly that hawk when her pinions are grown," said Janni, "but for now you may take the sword with us, and if you have some skill with hawks and horses, we will welcome you all the more; our old horse-trainer, Mhari, died of the lung-fever this winter, and the women who worked with her are all away with the armies to the south. None of the girls in the hostel now are even much good at riding, let alone for breaking them to the saddle - can you do that? We have four colts ready to be saddle-broken, and more at our big hostel near Thendara."
"I was raised to it at Falconsward," Romilly said, but Janni raised a hand in caution.
"None of us have any family or past beyond our names; I warned you, you are not my lady or Mistress MacAran among us," she said, and, rebuked, Romilly was silent.
Yet, whatever I call myself, I am Romilly MacAran of Falconsward. I was not boasting of my lineage, only telling her how I came to be so trained - I would hardly have learned it at some croft in the hills! But if she chooses to think I was boasting, nothing I would say can change it, and she must think what she likes. Romilly felt as if she were old and cynical and worldly-wise, having arrived at this much wisdom. She followed Janni silently along the corridor, and through the large double doors at the end of the hall.
Her lineage too must be good, for all her refusal to speak of it, since she spoke of dancing with Lyondri Hastur at children's parties. Maybe she too has been warned against speaking of her past.
It was a long and busy day. She ate bread and cheese and honey in the kitchen, was sent to practice some form of unarmed combat among a group of young girls, all of whom were more adept than she - she did not understand a single movement of the ones they were trying to teach her, and felt clumsy and foolish - and later in the day, a hard-faced woman in her sixties gave her a wooden sword like the ones she and Ruyven had played with when they were children, and tried to teach her the basic defensive moves, but she felt completely hopeless at that too. There were so many women - or it seemed like many, though she found out at dinner - time that there were only nineteen women in the hostel-that she could not even remember their names. Later she was allowed to make friends with the horses in the stable, where her own was brought - she found it easier to remember their names - and there were a few chervines too. Then Janni pierced her ears and put small gold rings into them. "Only while they are healing," she said, "Later you shall have the ensign of the Sisterhood, but for now you must keep twisting the rings so that the holes will heal cleanly, and bathe them three times a day in hot water and thornleaf." Then, in front of the assembled women, only a blur of faces to Romilly's tired eyes, she prompted her through the oath to the Sisterhood, and it was done. Until spring-thaw of the next year, Romilly was oath-bound to the Sisterhood of the Sword. That finished, they crowded around and asked her questions, which she was hesitant to answer in the face of Janni's prohibition that she must not speak of her past life, and then they found her a much-patched, much-worn nightgown, and sent her to sleep in a long room lined with half-a-dozen beds, tenanted by girls her own age or younger. It seemed that she had hardly fallen asleep before she was wakened by the sound of a bell, and she was washing her face and dressing in a room full of half a dozen young women, all running around half-dressed and squabbling over the washbasins.
For the first few days it seemed to Romilly that she was always gasping behind a group of girls who were running somewhere just ahead of her and she must somehow keep up. The lessons in unarmed combat frightened and confused her - and the woman who taught them was so harsh and angry of voice. Although, one afternoon, when she had been sent to help in the kitchens, where she felt more at home, the woman, whose name was Merinna, came in and asked her for some tea, and when Romilly brought it, chatted with her so amiably that Romilly began to suspect that her harshness in class was assumed to force them all to pay strict attention to what they were doing. The lessons in swordplay were easier, for she had sometimes been allowed to watch Ruyven's lessons, and had sometimes practiced with him - when she had been eight or nine, her father had been amused by her handling of a sword, though later, when she was older, he forbade her even to watch, or to touch even a toy sword. Gradually those early lessons came back to her, and she began to feel fairly confident at least with the wooden batons which served in practice.
Among the horses in the stable, she felt completely at home. This work she had done since she was old enough to rub soapweed on a saddle and polish it with oil.
She was hard at work polishing saddle-tack one day when she heard a noise in the street outside, and one of the youngest girls in the house ran in to call her.
"Oh, Romy, come - the king's army is passing by at the end of the street, and Merinna has given us leave to run out and see! Carolin will march southward as soon as the passes are open-"
Romilly dropped the oily rag and ran out into the street with Lillia and Marga. They crowded into an angle of the doors and watched; the street was filled with horses and men, and people were lining the streets and cheering for Carolin.
"Look, look, there he goes under the fir-tree banner, blue and silver - Carolin, the king," called someone, and Romilly craned her neck to see, but she could catch only a glimpse of a tall man, with a strong ascetic profile not unlike Carlo's, in the instant before his cloak blew up and she could see only his russet hair flying.
"Who is the tall skinny man riding behind him?" someone asked, and Romilly, who would have known him even in darkness with his face hidden, said, "His name is Orain, and I have heard he is one of Carolin's foster-brothers."
"I know him," said one of the girls, "he came to visit Jandria, someone told me that he was one of her kin, though I don't know whether to believe it or not."
Romilly watched the horses, men, banners moving by, with detachment and regret. She might still have been riding with them, had she gone to her own bed in the stable that night, still at Orain's side, still treated as his friend and equal. But it was too late for that. She turned about sharply and said, "Let's go inside and finish our work - I have seen horses enough before this and a king is a man like other men, Hastur or no."
The armies, she heard, were being moved to a great plain outside Caer Donn. A few days later, she was summoned to Janni, and when she went out into the main room where she had met Janni first, she saw Orain again, with Caryl at his side.
Orain greeted her with some constraint, but Caryl rushed at once into her arms.
"Oh, Romilly, I have missed you! Why, you are dressed like a woman, that is good, now I will not have to remember to speak to you as if you were a boy," he said.
"Dom Carolin," Janni said formally, and he turned his attention respectfully to her.
"I listen, mestra," he said, using the politest of terms for a female inferior in rank.
"The Lord Orain has commissioned me to escort you to Hali and return you, under safe-conduct, to your father," she said, "and there are two choices before you; I am prepared to treat you as a man of honor, and to ask your preference, instead of making the decision for you. Are you old enough to listen to me seriously, and to answer sensibly and keep your word?"
His small face was as serious as when he had sung in the chapel at Nevarsin. "I am, mestra Jandria."
"Well, then, it is simple. Shall I treat you as a prisoner and have you guarded - and, make no mistake, we are women, but we shall not be careless with you and allow you to escape."
"I know that mestra," he said politely, "I had a governess once who was much harsher with me than any of the masters and brothers in the monastery."
"Well, then," said Janni, "Will you be our prisoner, or will you give us your parole, not to attempt to escape our hands, so that you may ride beside us and take such pleasure in the trip as you can? It will not be an easy journey, and it will be simpler if we can allow you to ride without watching you every moment of the night and day, nor have you tied up at night. I will have no hesitation in taking the word of a Hastur, if you give me your parole of honor."
He did not answer at once. He asked, "Are you my father's enemies?"
"Not particularly," said Janni, "Of your father, my lad, I know only what I have been told; but I am Rakhal's enemy, and your father is his friend, so I trust him not. But then, I have not asked for his word of honor, either. I am dealing with you, Dom Carolin, not with him."
He said, "Is Romilly coming with us?"
"I thought to put you in her charge, since she has travelled with you before, if that is agreeable to you, young sir."
He smiled then, and said, "I would like to travel with Romilly. And I will gladly give you my word of honor not to try and escape. I could not travel through the Hellers alone, whatever happened. I promise you, then, mestra, to be at your orders until I am returned to my father's hands."
"Very well," Janni said, "I accept your word, as you may accept mine, that I will treat you as I would one of my own sisters, and offer you no indignity. Will you give me your hand on it, Dom Carolin?"
He held out his hand and took hers. Then he said, "You need not call me Dom Carolin, mestra. That is the name of the former king, who is my father's enemy, though he is not really mine. I am called Caryl."
"Then you shall call me Janni, Caryl," she said, smiling at last, "and you shall be our guest, not our prisoner. Romy, take him to the guest-room and make him comfortable. Orain-" she raised her eyes to her cousin, "we shall set out tomorrow, if the weather allows."
"I thank you, cousin. And you," he added, turning to Romilly, bending ceremoniously - like a courtier, she thought - over her hand. She thought, heart-sore, that a few days before, he would have taken leave of her with a rough hug. She hoped, suddenly and passionately, that she and Orain would never meet again.
They rode out of Caer Donn very early in the morning, and had been more than an hour on the road before the red sun rose, huge and dripping with mist. Caryl rode on the pony Jandria had found for him, side by side with Romilly's horse; behind them were six women of the Sisterhood, leading, on long pack-reins, a dozen good horses which, they said, were for the armies in the South. They did not say which armies, and Romilly carefully did not ask.
It was good to be riding free again in the sunlight, without the cold and storms of her earlier journey through the Hellers. They stopped at noon to feed the horses and rest them for a little, then rode on. In late afternoon they made camp, and at Jandria's command, one of the pack-horses was offloaded, and as two women sat about making fire, Janni called to Romilly.
"Come here and help me, Romy, with this tent."
Romilly had no notion of how to set up a tent, but she obediently hauled ropes and drove in pegs where Janni ordered, and within a minute or two a large and roomy shelter of waterproof canvas was ready for them. Blanket-rolls were spread out within it, and under its hanging flap the evening drizzle could not dampen their fire or their supper. Very soon porridge was cooked, hot and savory with sliced onions frizzled in the fat of a roast fowl, and the women sat cross-legged on their bed-rolls, eating their food out of wooden bowls which had come out of the same pack.
"This is nice," said Caryl admiringly, "Men never make a camp as comfortable as this."
Janni chuckled. "There is no reason they should not," she said, "They are as good at cookery and hunting as we women are, and they would tell you so if you asked them; but maybe they think it unmanly to seek for comfort in the fields, and enjoy hard living because it makes them feel tough and strong. As for me, I have no love for sleeping in the rain, and I am not ashamed to admit I like to be comfortable."
"So do I," said Caryl, gnawing on the ends of his bone, This is good, Janni. Thank you."
One of the women, not one that Romilly knew well, whose name was Lauria, took a small hand-harp from her pack and began to play a tune. They sat around the fire, singing mountain ballards, for half an hour or so. Caryl listened, bright-eyed, but after a time he fell back, drowsily, half asleep.
Janni signed to Romilly, and said, 'Take off his boots, will you, and get him into his sleeping-roll?"
"Of course," Romilly said, and began to pull off Caryl's boots. He sat up and protested sleepily. Lauria said, grumbling, "Let the boy wait on himself, Romy! Janni, why should one of our sisters wait on this young man, who is our prisoner? We're no subjects or servants to the Hastur-kind!"
"He's only a boy," Janni said, placatingly, "and we're being well-paid to care for him."
"Still, the Sisterhood are no slaves to one of these men," grumbled Lauria, "I wonder at you, Janni, that for money you'd take a commission to escort some boy-child through the mountains."
"Boy child or girl, the boy cannot travel alone," said Janni, "and needs not be drawn into the quarrels of his elders! And Romilly is willing to care for him."
"I doubt not," said one of the strange women with a sneer, "One of those women who still think her duty in life is to wait on some man, hand and foot -she would disgrace her earring-"
"I look after him because he is sleepy, too sleepy to wait on himself," Romilly flared, "and because he is about the age of my own little brothers! Didn't you look after your own little brother if you had one, or did you think yourself too good to look after anyone but yourself? If the Holy Bearer of Burdens could carry the World-child on his shoulders across the River of Life, shall I not care for any child who comes into my hands?"
"Oh, a cristoforo" sneered one of the younger women, "Do you recite the Creed of Chastity before you sleep, then, Romy?"
Romilly started to fling back an angry retort - she made no rude remarks about the Gods of others, they could keep their mouths off her own religion - but then she saw Janni's frown and said, mildly, "I can think of worse things I might be saying." She turned her back on the angry girl, and went to spread out Caryl's blanket beside her own.
"Are we to have a male in our tent to sleep with us?" the girl who had protested asked angrily, "This is a tent for women."
"Oh, hush, Mhari, the boy can hardly sleep out in the rain with the horses," Janni said crossly. "The rule of the Sisterhood is intended for common sense, and the boy's no more than a baby! Are you fool enough to think he'll come into our blankets and ravish one of us?"
"It is a matter of principle," said Mhari sullenly, "Because the brat is a Hastur, are we to let him intrude into a place of the Sisterhood? I would feel the same if he were no more than two years old!"
"Then I hope you will never have the bad taste to bear a son instead of a daughter," said Janni lightly, "or will you, out of principle, refuse to feed a male at your breast? Go to
sleep, Mhari; the child can sleep between me and Romilly, and we'll guard your virtue."
Caryl opened his mouth; Romilly poked him in the ribs, and he subsided without speaking. She saw that he was trying not to giggle aloud. It seemed a little silly to her, but she supposed they had their rules and principles, just as the brothers of Nevarsin did. She lay down beside Caryl, and slept.
She found herself dreaming, clear vivid dreams, as if she flew, linked in mind with Preciosa, over the green, rolling hills of her own country. She woke with a lump in her throat, remembering the view of the long valley from the cliffs of Falconsward. Would she ever see her home again, or her sister or brothers? What had they to do with a wandering swordswoman? Her ears ached where they had been pierced. She missed Orain and Carlo and even the rough-tongued Alaric. As yet she had made no friends among these strange women. But she was pledged to them for a year, at least, and there was no help for it. She listened to Caryl, sleeping quietly at her side; to the breathing of the strange women in the tent. She had never felt so alone in her life, not even when she fled from Rory's mountain cabin.
Five days they rode southward, and came to the Kadarin river, traditional barrier between the lowland Domains and the foothills of the Hellers. It seemed to Romilly that they should make more of it, going into strange country, but to Janni it was just another river to be forded, and they crossed with dispatch, at a low-water ford where they hardly wetted their horses' knees. The hills here were not so high, and soon they came to a broad rolling plateau. Caryl was beaming; all the trip he had been in good spirits, and now he was ebullient. She supposed he was glad to be coming home, and glad of the long holiday that had interrupted his studies.
Yet Romilly felt uneasy without mountains surrounding her; it seemed as if she rode on the flat land, under the high skies, like some small, exposed thing, fearfully surveying the skies here as if some bird of prey would swoop down on them and carry her away with strong talons. She knew it was ridiculous, but she kept uneasily surveying the high pale skies, filled with rolling violet cloud, as if something there was watching her. At last Caryl, riding at her side, picked it up with his sensitive laran.
"What's the matter, Romy? Why do you keep looking at the sky that way?"
She really had no answer for him and tried to pass it off.
"I am uneasy without mountains around me - I have always lived in the hills and I feel bare and exposed here. . . ." she tried hard to laugh, looking up into the unfamiliar skies.
High, high, a speck hovered, at the edge of her vision. Trying to ignore it, she bent her eyes on the rough-coated grass, only lightly frosted, at her feet.
"What sort of hawking is there on these plains, do you know?"
"My father and his friends keep verrin hawks," he said, "Do you know anything of them? Do they have them across the river, or only those great ugly sentry-birds?"
"I fly a verrin hawk," Romilly said, "Once I trained one-" and she looked uneasily around again, her skin prickling.
"Did you? A girl?"
The innocent question nibbed an old wound; she snapped at him, "Why should I not? You sound like my father, as if because I was born to wear skirts about my knees I had neither sense nor spirit!"
"I did not mean to offend you, Romy," said Caryl, with a gentleness which made him seem much older than his years. "It is only that I have not known many girls, except my own sister, and she would be terrified to touch a hawk. But if you can handle a sentry-bird, and calm a banshee as we did together, then surely it would take no more trouble to train a hawk." He turned his face to her, watching with his head tilted a little to one side, something like a bird himself with his bright inquisitive eyes. "What are you afraid of, Romy?"
"Not afraid," she said, uneasy under his gaze, then, "Only - as if someone was watching me," she blurted out, not knowing she was going to say it until she heard her own words. Realizing how foolish they were, she said defensively, "Perhaps that is only because -the land is so flat - I feel - all exposed-" and again her eyes sought the sky, dazzled by the sun, where, wavering at the very edge between seen and unseen, a speck still hovered ... I am being watched!
"It is not uncommon, that," said Janni, coming up beside them, "When first I rode into the mountains, I felt as if they were closing in, as if, while I slept, they might move in and jostle my very skirts. Now I am used to them, but still, when I ride down into the plains, I feel as if a great weight has been lifted and I can breathe more easily. I think that, more than all kings or customs, divides hillman from lowlander; and I have heard Orain say as much, that whenever he was away from his mountains, he felt naked and afraid under the open sky...."
She could almost hear him say it, in that gentle, half-teasing tone. She still missed Orain, his easy companionship, it seemed she was like a fish in a tree among all these woman! Their very voices grated on her, and it seemed to her sometimes that in spite of their skill with sword and horsemanship, they were far too much like her sister Mallina, silly and narrow-minded. Only Janni seemed free of the pettiness she had always found in women. But was that only because Janni was like Orain, and so less like a woman? She did not know and felt too sore to think much about it. .
Yet, she thought with annoyance at herself, forty days ago I was thinking that I liked the company of men even less than that of women. Am I content nowhere? Why can't I be satisfied with what I have? If I am going to be always discontented, I might as well have stayed home and married Dom Garris and been discontented in comfort among familiar things!
She felt the gentle, inquiring touch of the boy's laran on her mind; as if he asked her what was the matter. She sighed and smiled at him, and asked, "Shall we race across this meadow? Our horses are well-matched, so it win only be a matter of which is the better horseman," and they set off side by side, so rapidly that it took all her attention not to tumble off headlong, and she had to stop thinking about what troubled her. She reached the appointed goal a full length ahead of him, but Janni, coming up more slowly, scolded them both impartially - they did not know the terrain, they might have lamed their horses on some unseen rock or small animal's burrow in the grass!
But that night, as they were making camp - the days were lengthening now perceptibly, it was still light when they had eaten supper - she had again the sharp sense that she was being watched, as if she were some small animal, prey huddling before the sharp eyes of a hovering hawk - she scanned the darkening sky, but could see nothing. Then, incredulous, a familiar sense of wildness, flight, contact, rapport - hardly knowing what she did, Romilly thrust up her hand, felt the familiar rush of wings, the grip of talons.
"Preciosa!" she sobbed aloud, feeling the claws close on her bare wrist. She opened her eyes to look at the bluish-black sheen of wings, the sharp eyes, and the old sense of closeness enveloped her. Against all hope, beyond belief, Preciosa had somehow marked her when she came out of the glacier country, had trailed her even through these unfamiliar hills and plains.
She was in good condition, sleek and trim and well-fed. Of course. There was better hunting on these plains than even in the Kilghard Hills where she was fledged. Wordless satisfaction flowed between them for a long space as she sat motionless, the hawk on her hand.
"Well, will you look at that!" the voice of one of the girls broke through the mutual absorption, "Where did the hawk come from? She is bewitched!"
Romilly drew a long breath. She said to Caryl, who was watching silently, rapt, "It is my hawk. Somehow she has followed me here, so far from home, so far-" and broke off because she was crying too hard to speak. Troubled by the emotion, Preciosa bated, trying to balance on Romilly's fist; flapped her wings and flew to the branches of a nearby tree, where she sat looking down at them without any sign of fear.
Mhari demanded, "Is it your own hawk - the one you trained?" and Janni said in a quiet voice, "You told me your father took her from you, and gave her to your brother."
With an effort, Romilly controlled her voice. She said, "I think Darren found out that Preciosa was not my father's to give." She looked up through her tears to the tree branch where Preciosa sat, motionless as a painted hawk on a painted tree, and again the thread of rapport touched her mind. Here, among strange women in a strange country, with all she had ever known behind her and past the border of a strange river, as she looked at the hawk and felt the familiar touch on her mind, she knew that she was no longer alone.