The hawk’s feet were astonishingly hot. Farrell had braced himself for the skeletal clench on his fist, for the great black eyes considering him as if he had answered some strange want ad—look away a little, Frederik said not to stare—and even for the improbably soft breast feathers, smelling first like nutmeg and fresh straw, and then like old, clean bones in the sun. But he had only imagined the power and sharpness of the talons; never the heat shocking through the borrowed buckskin gauntlet, pulsating so immediately against him that he might have been balancing the redtail’s snaredrum heart on his skin. He let his breath out at last, and the Lady Criseyde placed her arm behind the hawk’s ankles, nudging very gently until the bird stepped back onto her glove. Farrell said, “How beautiful.”
“Actually, you’re not seeing her at her best,” the Lady Criseyde said. “She started molting early this year, just to be contrary, and she’s so old and out of shape she probably couldn’t get off the ground on a bet. Could you, Strega?” The redtail said kack in a thoughtful way, still debating whether to hire Farrell.
Behind him, Duke Frederik answered for her, “Good madame, five bucks says she takes a rabbit ere Micaela comes anywhere near a grouse.” He was adjusting the leather traces on the hood of a huge dark bird, taller and much wider-shouldered than the redtail Strega, with a hulking, ominous dignity that made Farrell think of Julie’s motorcycles. The dark hawk was irritable under Frederik’s hands, stamping and suddenly rousing every feather with the clatter of a Venetian blind. Frederik whispered and crooned her quiet; then he announced, “Okay, I think we ought to move out. Lord Garth and the Lady Aiffe don’t seem to be coming, and the dogs are getting crazy. In the name of King Bohemond and St. Whale, let’s roll.”
There were nine of them, all in full costume, at the rendezvous point, along with two dogs and six birds—only Farrell, Julie, and Hamid ibn Shanfara had none. To the left, hidden by a windbreak of eucalyptus, the Coast Highway buzzed and muttered; directly ahead, summer-stubbly grassland, parched gray-green and gray-blue, stretched away toward an uncertain horizon. The members of the Falconer’s Guild moved in brisk solitude, each one sharing a windowless silence with the hooded creature hunched on his fist. Frederik alone remained cheerfully conversational, paying no obvious attention at all to Micaela, except to stroke her legs slowly now and then. “She’s a Canadian gyrfalcon,” he told Farrell and Julie. “They’re the biggest of the falcons and the fastest. She can’t dive like a peregrine, but on the flat, nothing comes near her.”
“Weren’t they reserved for emperors?” Julie asked.
Frederik shook his head. “Kings. Emperors and popes got to fly eagles. I had a golden eagle once, but I lost him.” For a moment his dark, asymmetrical face turned as private as the other faces. “His name was Saladin. I had no business with him. Hamid remembers.”
“You going to tell me what I remember now?” Hamid asked mildly. He was dressed entirely in flowing white, turban to sandals, except for the red-hilted dagger thrust into his white sash. He went on, “What I do remember is, you didn’t lose that eagle. You let him go.”
Frederik did not answer. The Lady Criseyde said quietly, “It’s the same thing, really. You’re always saying good-bye to hawks; every time you flip them off the fist, you have to say good-bye. It doesn’t matter how well you know them—they’re never yours to lose or to let go. They’ll come back if they feel like it. It’s always their choice.”
The two pointers trotted along with a sedateness that surprised Farrell, who had never seen a professional bird dog at work. Dry grass pricked through the lacings of his soft shoes as he walked. Looking around at his companions in their cloaks and doublets and trunk-hose, cradling their hawks on one arm and their spike-tipped block perches with the other, he felt as if he were part of a religious procession on its way to reenact some vaguely sinister passion, whose lost significance only Hamid knew now. The impression was heightened by the fact that Hamid was telling him the story of St. Whale, the League’s patron, who came up out of the sea and walked like a man.
“And St. Whale went up and down, doing great wonders in the land,” Hamid half sang in the rough, carrying murmur that he used for reciting League legends. “For he healed the sick, and he raised the dead, and he spoke to volcanos and made them be still. And he comforted the wronged and the helpless and was their protector. Hail St. Whale, walking on his tail.” The last phrase recurred constantly, like a refrain.
Julie said, “I don’t remember the bit about the volcanos.” She was barely in costume, wearing tights, a loose smocklike blouse far too big for her, and an absurd purple beret, the size of a medium pizza, that had been Farrell’s once. The Lady Criseyde was letting her carry Strega, and she held the redtail close to her face, which worried Farrell.
“Just now put it in,” Hamid said in his normal voice. “Got real tired of him planting apple trees and inventing tofu.” He fell back into the ritual cadences of the legend. “Yet behold, the mighty came together, and they said, one to the other, ‘Shall it continue so? Shall a sea beast with no understanding have the name of a miracle worker and draw away our subjects’ love unto himself? Nay, nay, not hardly, Jack.’ But the people said, Hail St. Whale, walking on his tail.”
A rabbit bolted out of a greasewood thicket under the noses of the dogs, ran frantically parallel to the company for a moment, then vanished unmolested down a hole at the base of a live oak. It was the first sign of life that Farrell had seen in those crackling fields, and he had begun to wonder what the hawks would do for prey. Duke Frederik pointed, saying, “Overrun with them. All kinds of quail, too, and partridges. The guy stocked the place with chukars and pheasants years ago, trying to get the hunters to come out. It never really took—I think we’re about the only people who hunt here anymore—but it’s a candy store, if you happen to be a hawk.” He put his ungloved free fist gently against Micaela’s beak. She bit it briefly, but then rubbed her beak on his knuckles in an odd, twisting caress.
Hamid chanted, “Now therefore the great gave their orders, that every knight in the land should ride against St. Whale, and every one rode accordingly, save for three knights who would not do so, for very shame, and these were slain. And they called on every weapon in the land, every sword and spear, dagger and axe and pike, every farmyard cudgel and sickle, that each of them should deal St. Whale a deadly blow. And this was done, except for seven swords that would not be used thus, and those of their own wills bent their blades and indeed became the only swords in human history ever transformed into ploughshares. Let us hail St. Whale, walking on his tail.” He smiled at Farrell, showing just the tips of his teeth.
Duke Frederik halted on a slight rise, spiking the block perch into the earth as if he were claiming a continent for a king. He placed Micaela on it, but did not remove her hood. The dogs were showing excitement for the first time, leaning hard into their leashes and moaning softly. Farrell turned to see the other falconers swiftly setting up their own birds on their perches; the effect was still uneasily devotional on that tawny hillside. The bells on the hawks’ legs shivered in the little hot breeze, sounding like those of a distant caravan.
At this shoulder, Hamid went on, indifferent to anything but story. “Now where St. Whale fell, his martyr’s blood soaked into the ground, and strange flowers sprang up instantly, such as had never been seen before. And they blossomed scarlet, with double petals like the flukes of a sounding whale, and they blossom still on that holy spot, every year on the day of the Whalemas Tourney. And each knight who takes part will wear one of those flowers at his crest, for this is how we remember St. Whale and honor him.” Several of the falconers joined him in the muttered refrain. “All hail St. Whale, walking on his tail.”
The hawks were flown in an order set by Duke Frederik, each turn lasting until the bird had killed. Two of the six—the amiable Strega and a jittery young goshawk—were hawks of the fist, launched directly after fleeing rabbits and quail. The others were true falcons, with longer wings and disarmingly round faces, trained to “wait on,” circling almost out of sight of their attendants below. When the dogs, working in turn themselves, flushed prey into the air—“We call it serving,” Frederik said—they came down.
Farrell had read often that a peregrine may be diving at two hundred miles an hour when it strikes its quarry. The number had no meaning for him until he first heard the impossible chattering howl of little bells ripping across space at that speed, and first saw a ruffed grouse apparently explode on impact, like a snowball. The peregrine settled daintily down through the swirling feathers, and a grinning, big-footed boy hiked up his monk’s habit and galloped forward to claim her. She went with him docilely, which seemed as fearful a miracle to Farrell as the sight of her burning out of pale heaven. One of the dogs was already casting greedily for fresh scent, while a Spanish wizard’s prairie falcon had begun its staggering climb into the wind, like a sailor going up ratlines hand over hand. Farrell lost track of her in the clouds, but the wizard unslung a pair of binoculars and followed slowly, taking off his glove and swinging it high to call her closer. Duke Frederik had unhooded Micaela. The gyrfalcon kept her eyes closed for a moment, then opened them so explosively that Farrell stepped back from the dark, living emptiness of her gaze.
Frederik said, “Look at her. She balances between habit and what we’d call madness, and for her there’s no such thing as the future. I don’t think there’s really any present, either—there’s just the endless past going around and around her, over her and through her. When I hold her on the glove—” He indicated the leather jesses that leashed the falcon’s ankles. “—she’s more or less tied to my present, but the moment I let her go, she circles up into her real time. Her real time, where I never existed and where nothing’s extinct.”
“And where fried pork rinds haven’t been invented yet,” the Lady Criseyde added. “That bird is not going anywhere they don’t have fried pork rinds.” Julie was sitting on the ground, sketching Micaela in the act of mantling, right wing and leg extended as far as possible. Farrell stood by her, sneaking side glances as she brought up the shadow of the great wing bones, the precise brown barring of the underfeathers, and the taut splay of the black primaries. Without looking at him, she said, “They ought to be here. It makes me very nervous that they aren’t here.”
“Aiffe,” Farrell said.
Julie nodded. “And her father. He started the Falconers’ Guild, he never misses anything to do with hawks. It just bothers me.” Her two pencils, alternating rapidly, managed to suggest the curious dusty moth bloom on Micaela’s plumage.
“Probably hatching up something nasty for the war. Isn’t he supposed to be one of the captains this year?”
“In theory. Something else that makes me nervous is people watching me work.”
Farrell moved pointedly aside, further than he needed to. She had been increasingly short with him since their night encounter with Micah Willows, and he had responded with injured huffiness. He said, “If you mean Aiffe’s going to be the real captain, she can’t come to the war. Even I know that.”
Julie did not answer. Hamid flowed gracefully into the silence, saying, “Yeah, well. That’s kind of what the war’s about this year.” The Spanish wizard, still gesticulating into a seemingly empty sky, stepped in a rabbit hole and broke his binoculars. Hamid said, “The war will be fought to determine whether or not Garth de Montfaucon’s daughter can go to the war. Lord Garth issued the challenge last week, and Bohemond gave Simon Widefarer leave to accept. The kings don’t fight in the wars, but they have to approve time, place, ground rules, and cause. Bohemond settled on Cazador Island, first week in August.”
The wizard’s falcon eventually stooped to take a partridge, and the Lady Criseyde went forward with Strega crouching on her wrist. Farrell said hesitantly, “But not this war. If her side wins, she gets to come to the next one. If she wins.”
Hamid lifted one shoulder. “Considering she’s shown up at the last two, it’s kind of a fine point.” Julie turned to him quickly, startling Micaela, who promptly bated off Frederik’s fist, but scrambled back up unaided, hissing and flapping her wings. Hamid continued, “See, if she’d just be a good girl and keep on going in disguise, they’d be so happy to let it go. Like all the other times.” He smiled his narrow, alarming smile. “But Aiffe’s got something a little else in mind. She may not be anybody’s Helen of Troy, but she is damn sure the only adolescent I know who’s getting to have her very own war fought over her. You think she’ll miss that? I wouldn’t miss it.”
Strega was justifying the Lady Criseyde’s earlier cynicism, completely ignoring the rabbits that were flushed for her and showing no inclination to do anything as foolishly wearying as flying, let alone taking prey. She had to be literally shaken off the fist and each time she grumbled along for no more than thirty yards before plumping down abruptly to huff out her feathers and talk to herself. The Lady Criseyde finally picked her up, telling Frederik, “I’ll try her again last, after Micaela. Some of us are just spoiled beyond belief.” Over her shoulder Farrell saw three figures coming across the field.
Nicholas Bonner was carrying a bird, brandishing it like a torch on a block perch almost as long as himself. Farrell took it at first for a hawk, damn big hawk too, even this far away. Then Julie made a sound, and Farrell let himself register the round, concave face, round eyes as big and hard and shadowless as military brass buttons, and the twin tufts that resembled wild, theatrically slanted eyebrows more than horns or ears. It sat motionless, never once hooting or spreading its wings; but on Duke Frederik’s glove, Micaela the gyrfalcon suddenly screamed like a bent nail tearing out of a board.
Looking left and right, Farrell saw that every hawk was being hastily hooded by its owner to keep it calm in the presence of the owl. Micaela herself was the only exception. Duke Frederik held her gently against his chest, murmuring her silent, watching Aiffe, Nicholas, and Garth de Montfaucon approach. Somebody complained, “You can’t fly one of those things. I never heard of anybody flying one of those.” Julie closed her sketch pad and came to stand beside Farrell. The back of her hand brushed his, as shockingly cold as the hawks’ feet were hot.
Aiffe almost danced the last dozen yards, skipping ahead of her companions to pounce into a deep curtsy before Duke Frederik and the Lady Criseyde. “Pardon, pardon, pardon,” she cried in her sweet, twangling whine. “The tardiness was most shameful, yet truly no fault of ours. The great wood-devils are none so easy to come by, search as a poor witch will.” She was dressed heavily for the summer day in burgundy velvet that hung like a sandwich sign on her thin frame. Yet she moved with graceful assurance in it, standing up swiftly to fling one arm wide, gesturing toward the horned owl sitting so still on Nicholas Bonner’s perch. She said, “My lord, gentles all, will you not now welcome me into your most noble fellowship? I mean, do I have a bird here or do I have a bird?” Behind her, Nicholas Bonner smiled at Farrell like an old friend.
Micaela screamed at the owl again, and Frederik drew his cloak partly around her. “Lady Aiffe, this is more than a marvel.” The only change that Farrell could hear in his even voice was a lowering in pitch and an early-morning roughness in the tone. “To hold such a creature as this—”
“Without jesses,” Aiffe interrupted loudly. “Take note, everyone, nothing commands my wood-devil, nothing keeps him out in fullest daylight among his enemies, nothing but our agreement.” The genuine dignity informing her own voice kept being sabotaged by spiteful delight, shredding into laughter like a torn sail in a storm. Yet when she said, “Now we will go hunting with you,” there was the slightest questioning tilt to the words, the smallest temblor of vulnerability, touching Farrell by surprise. She wants in so terribly.
Duke Frederik said, “We are the Falconers’ Guild. Even if your bird might by arts magical be trained to fly from the fist, for there’s no owl born could ever learn to wait on—”
“Either one,” she challenged him joyously. “Either way. If I bid him circle over my head all the day, at a mile’s height or a handbreadth, then circle he shall until I cry stoop and take. What would you have him do, my masters? We are at your orders, he and I.”
In the silence that followed, the horned owl hooted for the first time, still not moving except to close its eyes. The breeze shifted in the same moment, bringing Farrell the owl’s cold indoor smell, rooms where you put things you don’t want to think about. The Lady Criseyde began to say, “By every form and law of our fraternity—”
But Garth de Montfaucon’s voice raked across hers like a slash of brambles. “The law? I founded this wretched guild, and you would read me its regulations? There is nothing in the law forbidding my daughter’s bird to hunt with your own, and right well you know it, my lord Duke.” He had stepped in front of Aiffe and was glaring at Frederik, his gaunt, tight face twisting like a drill bit. He said, “All that is required, all, is that the bird be of age and condition to take prey. There is not a single word concerning species. She could fly a duck if she so chose, and if its disposition were suitable, and none to bar her. You know this.”
Nicholas Bonner touched Aiffe’s shoulder, and she turned to him. Farrell could not hear what they were saying, but Nicholas was nodding at the owl, grinning his branding-iron grin, while Aiffe kept edging irritably away from him. Duke Frederik repeated, his voice increasingly hoarse and slow, “We are the Falconers’ Guild. The rule is implicit in the name, as it always was.”
Someone bumped Farrell from behind, and he turned to realize that the entire company were gradually drawing together, none looking at the next, cradling their hawks against themselves like maimed limbs. Even Hamid had moved close enough that Farrell could see the sharp brown cord jumping in his throat. Nicholas Bonner raised the horned owl’s perch slightly higher, and the bird hooted again, spreading wings as black and gray as Sia’s hair, wings so wide that the round body between seemed smaller than it was, almost fragile next to Micaela’s burliness. Garth de Montfaucon said wonderingly, “Implicit? Nay, what is implicit among such creatures as these, save what they do? What further aristocracy within a fellowship of killers and the lackeys of killers?” Duke Frederik began to answer him, but Garth wheeled away, snapping his fingers at Nicholas Bonner. “My lady daughter’s wood-devil will hunt now!”
No member of the Falconer’s Guild ever gave the same account of the following ten seconds. The Lady Criseyde swore bitterly that Nicholas Bonner had shaken the owl violently into the air, deliberately frightening and enraging it, while Julie remained forever certain that she had seen Aiffe herself calmly ordering the bird like any falconer with a glance and a single curt gesture. The Spanish wizard and the boy with the peregrine both claimed that the owl had flown up of its own volition before Garth finished speaking, though the boy insisted on its having actually hovered for an improbable instant until Nicholas Bonner’s cold cry sent it floating to the attack. As for Hamid ibn Shanfara, he said only, “Magic won’t cover up stupidity. You don’t have to be a witch to figure what’s likely to happen if you go shoving a horned owl in a falcon’s face. Magic didn’t have a thing to do with it.”
But what Farrell remembered was Aiffe’s hands. Long after time had taken such details as the undersea silence of the owl’s strike, the bronze eyes that never came fully open in the midday sun, even when Micaela rose shrieking through Duke Frederik’s desperate grasp, and the single dreamy flex of the flowering talons just before they took Micaela by the neck, Farrell remembered the triumph and misery of Aiffe’s hands. They had lunged upward with the owl in a clenched glory of control; but when they fell, they stopped at her mouth, palms out, fingers curling slowly, and remained there until the Lady Criseyde finally stood up with the gyrfalcon’s blood on her cheeks and the front of her gown. Then Aiffe’s hands came all the way down, and she held them flat against her sides, smiling like a queen on view while the Lady Criseyde cursed her. In Farrell’s memory of that moment, there was never any other sound, except later, when the owl began calling from the trees.