Free The Blue Hawk by Peter Dickinson Page A

Tron. I must get back to the Temple and try to find out what they’re planning.”

VI
    The priest-litter swayed to the trudging step of the slaves. Tron had never ridden in one before, and sat awkwardly in it with the Blue Hawk on the pole beside him hooded and still. He was near the end of the procession. First came a detachment of Temple guards, each with his own slave marching beside him to carry the spindling parasol that kept the sun off the soldier, then the three litters—Tron’s last—and finally a smaller party of guards. They moved in a rigidly straight line across the desert, constrained by the causeway that the Wise had built. Already the Great Temple rose lumpish on the horizon, looking like a natural outcrop of sandstone. Even the Tower might have been a pillar of wind-carved rock.
    As the distance slowly closed, fear came and went in waves, and Tron was glad when a guard came to draw the litter curtains so that nobody should see him, leaving him alone with his hawk in a stifling, swaying, cloth-walled box. He closed his eyes and tried to drive the fear away by remembering the details of the morning’s strange hawking.
    Five days after the King’s visit to the Temple of Tan a young priest of O had brought him a message to be ready. Late next morning the three litters had been carried into the Great Courtyard, one empty, the others containing the Mouth of Silence and the One of Gdu. Guards and slaves had been sent out of sight, and then the One of Gdu had put his hand into the closed basket he carried.
    â€œNow let us see what your hawk can do,” he had snapped, tossing the dove into the air. Tron had hooded the hawk so that it shouldn’t be flustered by the strangers; his fingers were awkward with nervousness; it was several seconds before he was ready, and by then the dove was spiraling upward, so white that it glinted like metal against the even blueness of the sky. The hawk had missed its morning’s hunting and rose eagerly, apparently without yet seeing the dove. But the dove’s wingbeat quickened as though it were trying to escape by climbing into the sky itself. The hawk rose slowly up the tower of air to seek its natural height to hover and search. The three watchers in the courtyard craned upward, their necks aching with the angle. The Mouth of Silence shaded his face with a black-gloved hand.
    Suddenly it was almost as though the dove’s nerve had cracked. It broke from its spiral and headed east, diving for extra speed. Now there was no hope of the hawk catching it. A wild dove can outfly any hawk, and even a Temple dove with that advantage of height had nothing to fear. The hawk for another full circle took no notice, simply continuing to climb, while the dove fled toward the desert. Tron began to pull the lure out of his pouch.
    But the dove was a Temple dove. Its home was among pillars and crannied statues, not the featureless wild. When it was almost out of sight it turned, seeking the familiar safety of buildings. It was halfway back when the hawk flung itself out of its circle, arrowing down. The dove twisted aside, but was now too low to gain speed by a dive of its own. The hawk hurled down, fast as a flung stone. The lines of flight converged, vanishing behind the Temple wall, but before the watchers could stir or comment they saw, framed under the brilliant arch of the main gateway, the terrible moment of impact signaled by a puff of white down.
    â€œYou gave the boy no time, brother,” began the Mouth of Silence. “I have heard of hawks lost.”
    Tron was already running for the gateway and didn’t hear the answer. Beyond the gate he slowed, so as to move calmly up to the kill. He found the hawk perched on its prey, and, as usual, delicately plucking away the thigh-feathers. When it gave its customary silent hiss of warning at his approach, Tron paused in his stride.
    For an instant he saw the two birds, living and dead, with