Page 84 of The Hawk Laird
Out on the moor, Gawain bated off the glove, lifting his wings and squawking. Isobel stopped to calm him, and the priest stepped back. But he reached for her arm and tried to urge her along. The bird continued its fit.
James ducked under a low oak bough and whistled softly. One by one, he heard them thump to the ground one by one behind him—Quentin, Patrick, the others. And before he could call out a warning, men on horseback pounded out of the forest and crossed the moor at a thundering pace. James snatched an arrow and nocked it in the bow even as he began to run.
Three men rode toward Isobel. The rest cut across the grove. The priest stepped back as they came near, as if he expected them. One rider leaned down to grab at Isobel, hauling her onto his saddle as he rode past, his horse’s hoofbeats digging up heathery clods.
The hawk fluttered his wings wildly, and as Isobel was yanked roughly upward, she lost her grasp. The tiercel separated from the glove, soaring above the moor, slanting high, and vanishing.
Isobel and the goshawk, both swept away in one swift and awful moment.
James roared out and ran forward. He only let himself think about how many arrows, how long the bowshot, how many men. The white horse carrying Isobel disappeared into the forest, and the other riders neared the grove.
Behind James, his friends arranged themselves, bows and weapons drawn. Henry Rose lifted his longbow and released a shaft that sailed between the trees and struck one of the soldiers in the armpit, where the mail was vulnerable.
James shot too, nocked, pulled again. The horses came at him so fast that arrows were soon of little use. He drew his sword from the scabbard at his back and swung it brutally, his teeth bared, legs planted apart as the first rider came toward him.
Horses circled him, and he fought ferociously, strength stoked by rage. Isobel had trusted the priest and had been betrayed. She was gone. The hawk was gone too. James had no time to think past a gut-deep need to get past the men who confronted him, who prevented him from going after what had been torn from him. Fury burned like a yellow-red glaze and his vision took on a slow and terrible grace, as if he looked through the golden irises of a hawk.
Horses and soldiers surrounded him. He swung the two-handed sword savagely, driving the horses back, slicing at the thighs of riders, his blade striking steel, arcing back and down again. His sight filled with heaving flanks and faceless men, glinting steel and blood-red English surcoats. He ducked and swung and turned, cut the blade upward, turned again. He knew his men were there somewhere, fighting with him.
Then the spiked steel ball of a mace came down from nowhere in a terrible arc. He felt the shock of the blow to the side of his head. As he slammed to hard earth, he heard the cry of a hawk.
Isobel looked franticallyover her shoulder again and again, past the shoulder of the knight who carried her across the front of his saddle. They rode fast and steady through the forest, while she sat trapped in his beefy, steel-covered arm. She had never seen him before; his face was bearded and his dark eyes somber, and he seemed young. He scarcely spoke.
Far behind them, she saw Father Hugh riding with other guards along the forest path. She looked away, ill with anger to realize that the priest had broken her trust. He had known that Leslie’s patrol waited in the forest ready to steal her away and attack the outlaws who might come with her.
She had caught sight of James just once, when she looked back wildly to see him running through the trees, bow drawn,face fierce. Then a phalanx of horses had surrounded him and the trees had obscured her view.
She knew James had gone down, fallen in a circle of horsemen. She had seen something similar days ago. She gasped, feeling as if her breath might stop. Yet she had to think, had to find a way out of this. She still wore the hawking glove, and the awful realization that the hawk had escaped hit her with awful force. Squeezing her eyes shut, she fought tears as her captor rode on.
Kee-kee-kee-kee-eerr.
Hearing that, she looked up at the vast, swaying canopy of leaves overhead. A hawk swooped there, slanting his wings as he cut through the treetops. He glided like a sylph, the sun touching the fingers of his wingtips. His jesses trailed behind him like ribbons.
Excitement and hope stirred in her, and she held up her gloved hand. “Gawain!” she called. “Sir Gawain, to me!” She began to sing the kyrie.
The guard, cantering along, looked at her as if she had gone mad. “Gawain?”
“My hawk. Up there.”
He looked around. “The goshawk?”
“My bird. I must have him back.”
“Gosses are trouble to train, but they are worth much.” He shook his head. “He will not come back now he’s free. Soon he will be as wild as the day he was born.”
“He will come back! He will. Stop. Let me call to him. Please, I beg you!”
The guard glanced over his shoulder at the others riding a fair distance behind them. “A hawk named Gawain ought to be saved,” he muttered. He drew rein and paused the horse. “But you must stay with me. Sir Ralph charged me with your safe arrival.”
“What of the outlaws?”
“We understood they held you hostage, my lady. Our orders were to rescue you and deal with the brigands.”
“I was not a hostage. What happened to the men back there?”
“I did not see. But Sir Ralph demanded the leader be brought to him. Lady, look there. Your hawk is up in that tree, I think.”
She felt a surge of relief, thinking James might yet be alive, and then seeing the goshawk. He was perched on a high, dead branch, looking like silver in the morning light. She lifted her gloved fist and sang out again. The tiercel did not move.
