The Hawk And His Boy Read Online Free PDF

have noted it, and even then they would have not recognized the scent, thinking it perhaps the whiff of a dead animal, rotting in the thickets that covered the valley slope.
    In the valley below, a dog barked, calling a warning to the sleeping villagers. There was fear and anger in the sound.
    Wake! Wake! Danger approacheth! Wake from thy sleep, oh my masters!
    But there was no response. No lights flaring in windows, no doors flung open to bloom with firelight and life.
    Wake! Wake!
    The dog fell silent.
    The moon hid behind a cloud. The darkness deepened. It was the third hour after midnight, when the tide of blood is at its lowest ebb, when the soul sinks so low in slumber that the sleeper drifts near to death. The third hour after midnight is the time when dreams and nightmares gain form; the scratching at the door, the tapping at the window, and the stealthy step in the hallway come close to reality.
    In the home of the miller, Fen awoke with a gasp. She was nine years old and the miller’s youngest child. She had slept poorly for the past three days. Nightmares crowded her sleep, but they faded whenever she woke up so that she could remember nothing except fear and the horrible sensation of something watching her just out of the corner of her eye. She was more sensitive to such things than others. Even as a little girl, she had known things, such as where the ducks hid their eggs in the rushes, or whether there would be ice on the river in the morning, or the fact that milk turned to butter faster and sweeter if you said its true name as you churned: butere . No one had ever told her that word. She just knew it, somehow, gazing down at the milk. Her grandmother on her mother’s side was a bit of a hedgewitch in her own small way. She wondered about her youngest granddaughter but never spoke of what she thought.
    Fen sat up in bed, trembling. Beside her, her sister Magwin stirred in her sleep. Magwin was fifteen and would be married next spring. She never had nightmares. Fen tiptoed to the window and looked out. It was dark outside, but the few stars visible in the sky gave enough light for her to make out the vague, looming shape of the barn and the mill beyond on the bank of the stream.
    What had woken her this time? Another nightmare, but something else as well. Something else. A sound. The dog had been barking. That was it. Poor Hafall, cooped up in the barn every night. But he wasn’t barking anymore. Silence. Probably smelled the foxes that lived up in the brambles. The foxes were sniffing around the yard, no doubt, hungry for chickens.
    Except—the barn door was open.
    She did not see it at first, for the building was only a big blot of shadow. But for one instant, the moon peered out from behind her cloud and illumined the open door and the well of shadow within the door. The moon vanished again, and the barnyard plunged back into darkness.
    Hafall will be out, she thought. The foxes will be in. Killing the chickens. Blood on white feathers. Someone forgot to shut the door.
    Fear swept over her until it was all she could do to just stand there, shivering. She thought of her bed and Magwin breathing gently there, but then she turned and trudged out of the room, feeling her way through the darkness of the house. She was her father’s daughter, and while he was a kind man, he stood for no weakness from his children.
    It was cold outside. Her breath steamed in the air. The night was hushed with a silence, unbroken by anything except the murmur of the stream. The barn loomed up before her.
    “Hafall?” she said. “Here, boy.” Fen whistled softly, like her father had taught her—two fingers angled together between her lips. But there was no response. No sheepdog running up to lick her face and push his damp nose into her palm. Only silence. The girl stepped through the doorway of the barn and immediately stopped. Her toes felt a warm stickiness. She looked down. The dog lay at her feet. Trembling, Fen