Master of Hawks (28 page)

Then without any warning or any of the sensations normally accompanying a spell, the four wooden rune-posts wavered and seemed to shift slightly, as though they were glass melted by a sudden wave of heat. The partial destruction of the runes was enough to destroy the spells warding the circle. The stored energy escaped with an intense flash of light and sound, leaving the sorcerers standing stunned and unprotected.

They automatically formed personal protective shields, but that meant channeling part of their power from offense to defense. As Jessica communicated with the other sorcerers along the line, the pattern of the new attack became clear. Rune posts were failing everywhere, horses were bolting out of control, weapons of wood were becoming useless.

Jaxton cupped his hands around the Pendant of Thantos and concentrated on its amber depths, searching out the source of the attack. A mental picture formed—giant men with painted faces inside a protective circle—Sylvan! Derek S'Mayler stood nearby, evidently using all of his sorcery for defense.

Then
Jaxton
sensed the link between Hawk and his mueagles. At that touch he pulled away, breaking his contact with the enemy. He had come too close to losing his last telepathic battle with Hawk to risk another one.

So his brother was here now; but he was a threat that could be dealt with later. The immediate danger was the presence of the Sylvan.

"Sylvan!" The word slid from his lips like a curse. "Evidently York has managed to gain them as an ally." He described what he had seen.

"That explains what's happened to our runes, the siege towers, and everything else," said Douglas

S'Stratford grimly. "Given enough time they can ruin every piece of wood we've got—arrows, wagons, catapults . . . "

"Our army would be destroyed!" finished Jaxton. "And their powers are so different from ours that we can't counteract their actions with our spells."

S'Stratford nodded. "However, they wouldn't be able to resist a direct sorcery attack against their persons; that's why they are being shielded by Derek S'Mayler's circle and his powers. As long as he uses his powers only for defense, he should be able to withstand our attacks and protect the Sylvan, especially since we must use part of our powers for defense against the other York sorcerers' assaults."

"Our only chance is to divert some of our troops from the attack on the castle and hope that S'Mayler won't be able to withstand both our sorcery and our army," Jaxton suggested.

Reluctantly, S'Stratford turned to Jessica Slogan. "Contact Taral and the rest and tell them to concentrate on the sorcerers at Castle York; that will leave us free to handle S'Mayler and the Sylvan."

"Jaxton, order our men to break off their attack. Turn every usable catapult and ballista on Derek S'Mayler's position. Taral's men can close the gap in the line when we pull out. While the cavalry and foot soldiers nearest the river turn and head up S'Mayler's hill, we'll take the reserves and come up from behind. The three of us will have to hit S'Mayler's defensive circle at close range to break it."

Windrifter and Stormrider crisscrossed above the hills north of the Lounsbury River, and through their eyes Hawk watched S'Stratford's troops slowly advance toward his position. Although the Sylvan had turned most of their attention to this attack, their powers were not great enough to stop it completely.

However, by the time S'Stratford's troops reached S'Mayler's headquarters, the Sylvan had wiped out
the enemy's advantage of numbers by reducing expert
archers and cavalry to frightened foot soldiers with only swords, knives, and fists to use as weapons
against S'Mayler's unaffected troops and against trees that strangled, bushes that clawed, and grasses that clutched.

Still, as the eagles dived closer to Derek's defensive circle, Hawk saw a wave of Empire soldiers break
through S'Mayler's men and head up the promontory. He called a warning, and a handful of Derek's men in the rocks immediately adjacent to the ring of blood ran forward to engage them.

Then three figures emerged from the melee—two men and a woman with the faint, glowing auras of
sorcery shields. Automatically Hawk drew his sword as he recognized Jaxton Sinclair, at the same time expectantly shielding his mind, but the enemy bird-path made no move to contact the eagles and thus engage Hawk in another duel.

Instead the three linked hands and minds and attacked the warded circle with their strongest spells.

At the same time Taral and the other members of the Council of Seven bombarded the area with their magic.

For a moment the protective field flared red, then orange, then yellow. It held. The Sylvan, having no
means to combat this type of sorcery, simply ignored it and continued their own offensive, though perhaps a trifle more aggressively than before.

Hawk saw Ro run through the protective curtain as though it did not exist and head toward the enemy sorcerers.

Then the domed field flared again, turned brilliant white, and exploded in sheets of flame. A blast of
burning air knocked Hawk to the ground, searing his
skin and blinding him for a few seconds. When his sight returned, he found himself lying across part of
the scorched and now powerless perimeter of the circle. A screen of yellowish-brown fog obliterated everything, and when he contacted the mueagles, he saw that the cloud stretched across the whole top of the hill.

Hawk pulled himself up, picked up the sword he'd dropped, and headed in the direction he thought Ro
had gone. Suddenly an Empire soldier lurched out of the fog in front of Hawk and engaged him in a duel. Although his opponent was much taller and heavier, as Hawk danced in and out with a series of swift thrusts and parries, he realized that his smaller size
gave him advantages in speed and maneuverability. Giving ground to the soldier's blows, he fought with
calculated ease, buoyed with unexpected confidence in his own ability to defeat the man. Then Hawk spotted the opening he'd waited for, sprang forward, and thrust beneath the other's guard.

As the soldier fell, Hawk noticed that the fog was lifting. He again contacted his eagles and, through
rising streamers of smoke, saw a group of tall figures—the Sylvan. They appeared to be unharmed, still linked in their efforts against the Imperial Army, and seemed totally oblivious to the action around them.

The birds flew over their heads toward the top of the promontory where the fog had cleared. There
stood Derek S'Mayler and, about twenty feet in front of him, Douglas S'Stratford and the Red Witch. The slightly shimmering halo extending from Derek back to the forest people was evidence that he still shielded
them.

While S'Stratford blasted Derek with a spear of blue light from the tip of his staff, Jessica S'Logan's outstretched hand aimed bursts of energy at him through the spellstone in her ring. Almost at her feet lay Vadim Strelkov's half-charred body.

Still viewing the scene through his eagles, Hawk turned and headed in that direction.

"Derek, give it up," called the Red Witch. As she began to speak, Derek's shield faded for an instant. "You are weak, your shield is failing . . . " His face was strained with tension and fatigue, but her voice acted like a stimulant to the hatred he felt toward her, and from that hatred sprang a reserve of strength. His shield grew brighter and stabilized.

Seeing the anger in his face, she frowned and then stepped forward with a smile to try a new ploy. Beneath her sun-flamed hair, her face was as cold, beautiful, and perfect as a diamond.

"You can join us, become one of the Council of Seven. You are a great sorcerer, and we can use you. You loved me once, I can be yours again. You can have it all—wealth, power, land, and a return of the love that we once shared. Join us . . . "

Derek laughed with contempt, "I'll see you in N'Omb's fires first."

Jessica only smiled. "Join us . . . "

Suddenly figures darted through the smoke behind her—Ro and Coleman S'Wessex. Coleman veered left and slashed at S'Stratford with his sword, while Ro ran toward Jessica. Although Coleman's sword bounced off S'Stratford's protective field with a dull
clang, Ro's immunity to magic enabled her blade to pass through Jessica's shield. It plunged into her side.

With a look of surprise the Red Witch twisted toward Ro, casting a spell that should have killed Ro instantly but had no effect.

Meanwhile, Jaxton Sinclair had appeared through the dissipating smoke. Seeing Ro and Coleman he quickly cast a paralyzing spell against them, but only Coleman fell. As Ro raised her sword to strike at Jessica again, Jaxton realized that she was somehow immune to his sorcery, so he drew his own sword and ran toward her.

Hawk had just reached the clustered Sylvan, so he shouted a warning, but Ro was still too far away to hear. Her sword slammed into Jessica, and the Red Witch died.

As if in slow motion, Hawk saw Jaxton Sinclair's blade slice toward Ro, knew he could not reach her in time, and automatically called his eagles down toward the falcon-telepath, even though he realized that they would not be able to penetrate the man's sorcery.

The sound of wings caused Ro to pull upright and begin to turn, altering the path of Jaxton's sword as it cut into her back.

The eagles shrieked as they dived at Jaxton with talons extended like knives, and instinctively he reached for their minds as he reacted from his lifetime of bird-telepathy instead of from his few weeks as a sorcerer.

Feeling Hawk's mind smash into him like a fist, Jaxton realized his mistake, but it was too late—he was not strong enough to break from the telepathic
duel to use the powers of the Thantos Pendant. So he slashed back with mental daggers that cut into Hawk's shields. Suddenly he sensed that this time there would be no interruption to their battle—it would be a duel to the death.

As each man attacked, parried, and counterattacked, their minds became entwined in a struggle that threatened to destroy them both.

At first Hawk pounded at Jaxton's mind wildly in the heat of rage, for he'd seen Ro fall at the other's hand and had been unable to prevent it. But as Jaxton countered each blow with ease and struck back with telling intensity, Hawk quickly realized that his anger and frustration were hindering his attack.

He struggled to relax, and gradually his anger cooled and sharpened into the bright, focused flame of a glassblower's torch instead of the uncontrolled raging of a fire. The flame became a weapon, the blazing intensity behind his assault. Cautiously he cut through Jaxton's shields, slowly burning his way through the other's mind.

As Hawk's torch touched Jaxton's nerve centers, Jaxton felt as though his body were being slowly incinerated. He thrust back repeatedly, but his growing realization of Hawk's power ate away at his strength. Intellectually he knew that fear could do as much to defeat him as his brother could, but he could not rid himself of it. As Jaxton's fear grew, he weakened, until he found himself using all of his power to shield himself, and he was unable to return Hawk's blows.

Feeling Hawk's mind close around his in a vise grip that could crush his last shields, Jaxton gathered together his remaining reserves of strength for one final blow. There was only one thing left he could use against Hawk that might free him from the death grip—the knowledge of Hawk's true identity.

He opened a small gate in his shield and released a flood of memories and thoughts that held that knowledge.

Images flashed through Hawk's mind. He probed them for deception, but they were real, and he was too deep within Jaxton's mind to be fooled by lies. Sifting through Jaxton Sinclair's memories, he learned of his mother, his family, his heritage; he relived his capture in Kellerton through Jaxton's eyes, feeling Jaxton's pain and surprise at the revelation of their relationship.

With the instantaneous and undeniable transfer of knowledge came Jaxton's thought:
Spare me, for we are brothers.

Brothers!
The word echoed through Hawk's mind like thunder from lightning that strikes too close. Stunned, he jerked away from the memories, loosening his hold on Jaxton.

The image of his mother's jade pin whirled through his mind—a wheel of seven leaves; but now be knew it for what it was—the sign of the S'Akron family; and he knew himself for what he was—the son of a S'Akron and a Sinclair.

In that moment Jaxton struck with the last of his strength.

The unexpected blow snapped Hawk's main shields. His mind reeled under the force of Jaxton's assault and the shock of his new knowledge. As Hawk struggled to regain his equilibrium, Jaxton took advantage of every opening and hesitation, stabbing down into Hawk's consciousness.

Fleeing through dark corridors of his mind, Hawk
searched for a weapon, a shield, an escape from the wheel of knives that seemed to pursue him. He was being driven toward a void he'd touched once before, but from which he could not hope to escape again.

He dodged and reached for something that glittered with strength. He clung to it and thrust it before him.

It was a shield. It was a weapon. It was the image of Ro falling beneath Jaxton's blade. It was the image of his hawk being torn apart by Jaxton's falcons. It was hatred and vengeance. It was strength.