Free Hawkmistress! by Marion Zimmer Bradley Page A

hopped sidewise on Romilly’s arm, her claws contracting painfully in the girl’s thinly-clad forearm above the gauntlet. Blood burst out, staining her dress; Romilly set her mouth and did not cry out, but as the crimson spread across the blue fabric, Darren cried out sharply.
    “Oh, sister!”
    Preciosa, startled by the cry, lost her balance and fell, bated awkwardly, her wings beating into Darren’s face; Romilly reached for her, but Darren cried out in panic and flung up his hands to ward away the beak and talons which were dangerously close to his face. At his scream, Preciosa tottered again and flew upward, checking with a shrill scream of rage at the end of her lines.
    Her jaws set, Romilly hissed in a whisper “Damn you, Darren, she could have broken a flight-feather! Don’t you know better than to move that fast around a hawk? Get back before you frighten her worse than that!”
    Darren stammered “You-you-you’re bleeding-“
    “So what?” Romilly demanded harshly, shoved him back with a rough hand, and whistled softly, coaxingly to Preciosa. “I might better bring Rael into the hawk-house, you lackwit! Get out of here!”
    “And this is what I have for a son and heir,” said The MacAran bitterly. He was standing in the door of the hawk-house, watching the three young people unseen. His voice, even in his anger, was low - he knew better than to raise his voice near a frightened bird. He stood silent, staring with his brows knitted in a scowl, as Romilly coaxed the hawk down to her wrist and untangled the lines. “Are you not ashamed, Darren, to stand by while a little girl bests you at what should come by instinct to any son of mine? But that I knew your mother so well, I would swear you had been fathered by some chance - come beggar of the roads… . Bearer of Burdens, why have you weighted my life with a son so unfit for his place?” He grabbed Darren’s arm and jerked him inside the hawk-house; Romilly heard Darren cry out and her teeth met in her lip as if the blow had landed on her own shoulders.
    “Get out there, now, and try to behave like a man for once! Take this hawk - no, not like that, damnation take you, you have hands like great hams for all your writing and scribbling! Take the hawk out there and exercise her on a lure, and if I see you ducking away from it like that, I swear I’ll have you beaten and sent to bed with bread and water as if you were Rael’s age!”
    Alderic’s face was dead white and his jaw set, but he bent his eyes on the backs of his hands and did not speak. Romilly, fighting for calm- there was no sense in upsetting Preciosa again - threaded meat on the lure again. Without words, Alderic reached for the line and began to swing it high, and Romilly watched Preciosa wing off, both of them frying to ignore Darren, his face red and swollen, clumsily trying to unhood a strange hawk at the far end of the stableyard. It was all they could do for Darren now.
    She thought; at least, he is trying. Perhaps that is braver than what I did, defying Father; I had the Gift, I was only doing what is natural for me, and Darren, obeying, is going against everything which is natural to him… . and her throat swelled as if she would cry, but she fought the tears back. It would not help Darren. Nothing would help him except trying to conquer his own nervousness. And, somewhere inside her, she could not help feeling a tiny sting of contempt … how could he bungle anything which was so easy and simple?
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Romilly did not see the first of the guests arrive for the Midsummer-feast; the day had dawned clear and brilliant, the red sun rising over just a hint of cloud at the horizon. For three days there had been neither snow nor rain, and everywhere in the courtyard flowers were bursting into bloom. She sat up in her bed, drawing a breath of excitement; today she was to fly Preciosa free for the very first time.
    This was the final excruciating test for hawk and