Hawkmistress! Read Online Free PDF

live like that, prisoner, she too would let herself die….
    No; there must be a way, if only I can find it.
    She would not surrender, never admit that the hawk had beaten her. She was Romilly MacAran, born with the MacAran Gift, and she was stronger than any hawk. She would not let the hawk die … no, it was not “the hawk” any more, it was Preciosa, whom she loved, and she would fight for her life even if she must stand here till they dropped together and died. One more time she reached out, moving fearlessly into the bird-mind, this time aware fully of herself as a shadowy and now familiar torture in Preciosa’s mind, and the sickening, rank smell of the meat on the gauntlet … for a moment she thought Preciosa would go into another frenzy of bating, but this time the bird bent its head toward the meat on the glove.
    Romilly held her breath. Yes, yes, eat and grow stronger … and then Romilly was overcome by sickness, feeling that she would vomit where she stood from the sickening rotten smell of the meat.
    Now she wants to eat, she would trust me, but she cannot eat this now; perhaps if she had taken it before she was so weak, but not now … she is no carrion feeder….
    Romilly was overcome by despair. She had brought the freshest food she could find in the kitchens, but now it was not fresh enough; the hawk was beginning to trust her, might perhaps have taken food from her gauntlet, if she had brought something she should actually have managed to swallow without sickness … a rat scurried in the straw, and she discovered that she was looking out from the bird’s eyes with real hunger at the little animal….
    Dawn was near. In the garden outside she heard the chirp of a sleepy wraithbird, and from the cotes the half-wakened chirp of the caged pigeons who were sometimes roasted for special guests or for the sick. Even before the thought was clear in her mind she was moving, and at the back of her thoughts she heard herself say, the fowl-keeper will be very angry with me, I am not allowed to touch the pigeons without leave, but the hunger flooding through her mind, the bird-mind, would not be denied. Romilly flung away the piece of dead rabbithorn meat, flinging it on the midden; it would rot there, or some scavenger would find it, or one of the dogs who was less fastidious in feeding. There was a fluttering, flapping stir as she thrust her hand into the pigeon-cote and brought out one, flapping its wings and squawking; its fear filled her with something that was half pain and half excitement, adrenalin running through her body and cramping her legs and buttocks with familiar dread; but Romilly had been farm-bred and was not squeamish; fowl were for the pot in return for safe cotes and lifelong grain. She held the struggling bird for an instant of brief regret between her hands, then fought one-handed to hold it while she got the gauntlet on again. She thrust into the hawk-mind, without words, a swift sharp awareness of hunger and fresh food … then, with one decisive movement, wrung the pigeon’s neck and thrust the still-warm corpse toward Preciosa.
    For an instant, one more time, it seemed that the bird was about to explode into a last frenzy of bating, and Romilly felt the sickness of failure … but this time the hawk bent her head and with a thrust so swift that Romilly could not follow it with her eyes, stabbed with the strong beak, so hard that Romilly staggered under the killing thrust. Blood spurted; the hawk pecked one more time and began to eat.
    Romilly sobbed aloud through the flooding ecstasy of strength filling her as she felt the bird tear, swallow, tear again at the fresh meat. “Oh, you beauty,” she whispered, “You beauty, you precious, you wonder!”
    When the hawk had fed … she could feel the dulling of hunger, and even her own thirst receded… she set it on the block again, and slipped a hood over Preciosa’s head. Now it would sleep, and wake remembering where its food came from.