Free Sharra's Exile by Marion Zimmer Bradley

mind, sharp and swift, brutally shutting her out.
    “Are you homesick, Lew?” she asked.
    He tightened his mouth. “Yes. Sometimes,” he said, but he had warned her off again, and Dio turned her attention to the hawk on her saddle.
    “These birds are very well trained.”
    He made some noncommittal remark, but she managed to catch the thought that birds which were well enough trained to be used by all comers were like whores, not at all interesting. All he said aloud was,
    “I would rather train my own.”
    “I like to hunt,” she said, “but I am not sure I could train a bird from the beginning. It must be very difficult.”
    “Not difficult for anyone with the Ridenow gift, I should think,” Lew said. “Most of your clan have sensitivity to all animals and birds, as well as the gift you were bred for, to sense and make contact with alien intelligences—”
    She smiled and shrugged. “In these days there is little of that. The Ridenow gift, in its original form—
    well, I think it must be extinct. Though Lerrys says it would be very useful in the Terran Empire, to make communication possible with non-humans. Is it very difficult to train hawks?”
    “It is certainly not easy,” said Lew. “It takes time and patience. And somehow you must put your mind into touch with the bird’s mind, and that is frightening; they are wild, and savage. But I have done it, at Arilinn; so did some of the women. Janna Lindir is a fine hawk trainer, and I have heard it is easier for women… though my foster-sister Linnell would never learn it, she was frightened of the birds. I suppose it is like breaking horses, which my father used to do… before he was so lame. He tried to teach me that, a little, a long time ago.” Talking easily of these things, Dio thought, Lew was transformed.
    The preserve was stocked with a variety of game, large and small. After a time they let their hawks loose, and Dio watched in delight as hers soared high, wheeled in midair and set off on long, strong wings after a flight of small white birds, directly overhead. Lew’s hawk came after, swiftly stooping, seizing one of the small birds in midair. The white bird struggled pitiably, with a long, eerie scream.
    Dio had hunted with hawks all her life; she watched with interest, but as drops of blood fell from the dying bird, spattering them, she realized that Lew was staring upward, his face white and drawn with horror. He looked paralyzed.
    “Lew, what is the matter?”
    He said, his voice strained and hoarse, “That sound—I cannot bear it—” and flung up his two arms over his eyes. The black-gloved artificial hand struck his face awkwardly; swearing, he wrenched it off his wrist and flung it to the ground under the horse’s hoofs.
    “No, it’s not pretty,” he mocked, in a rage, “like blood, and death, and the screams of dying things. If you take pleasure in them, so much the worse for you, my lady! Take pleasure, then, in this!” He held up the hideously scarred bare stump, shaking it at her in fury; then wheeled his horse, jerking at the reins with his good hand, and riding off as if all the devils in all the hells were chasing him.
    Dio stared in dismay; then, forgetting the hawks, set after him at a breakneck gallop. After a time they came abreast; he was fighting the reins one-handed, struggling to rein in the mount; but, as she watched in horror, he lost control and was tossed out of the saddle, falling heavily to the ground, where he lay without moving.
    Dio slid from her horse and knelt at his side. He had been knocked unconscious, but even as she was trying to decide whether she should go to bring help, he opened his eyes and looked at her without recognition.
    “It’s all right,” she said. “The horse threw you. Can you sit up?”
    He did so, awkwardly, as if the stump pained him; he saw her looking, flinched and tried to thrust it into a fold of his riding cloak, out of sight. He turned his face away from her, and the