The Blue Hawk by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page A

sent his retinue away by another route and walked off alone with Tron. He chose for himself a sulky-looking black-headed kite, almost twice the size of the Blue Hawk, but they couldn’t fly both birds together for fear of a fight in midair. It is far harder for two people to stalk game than one, but after one missed chance they were lucky. Tron put up, almost at his own feet, a covey that curled away toward the flank where the King was coming carefully up, so the hawk made its kill barely ten paces in front of the King and he saw at close quarters that astonishing dive and impact, the deed the hawk was shaped for.
    â€œLord Sinu!” he said. “She strikes home like a lancer, full tilt. I’m glad to have seen that. That’s how I’ve always imagined a cavalry charge … oh, we train and train for warfare, but no war comes. You priests wouldn’t care for one, would you?”
    â€œI think priests are as brave as anyone else.”
    â€œBraver, in some ways. That wasn’t what I meant. Suppose I blew the Horn of War and gathered my army and fought and won. The Gods love a conqueror, and I’d have my nobles about me, armed and eager. They fret as much against the priests as I do.”
    â€œThe Horn of War?”
    â€œYes? They don’t teach you about that? Why should they? It’s a vast thing—takes four priests to carry it and a fifth to blow it with a sort of bellows … I don’t know what kind of noise it makes. My father never heard it either.”
    â€œBut if it’s the priests who blow it …”
    â€œAh, Tron, you see the priests as a single mind, because that’s how they teach you. One mind doing the will of the Gods. But in fact there are as many minds as there are men. Do you know the One of Sinu?”
    â€œI have seen him. He’s blind, isn’t he?”
    The King nodded but said nothing for a moment. Tron thought about the One of Sinu, a tall gaunt man, yellow-skinned with age and quite bald, leading his red-robed followers through the processions and rituals of his angry God, sightless but knowing every step and every position because the rituals never changed and he had performed them since he was Tron’s age.
    â€œYes, he’s blind,” said the King suddenly. “That helps to cut him off from the others. I see quite a bit of him, at initiations of cadets into military orders and things like that. He’s a proud man, and angry—angry that the other Major Priests are slowly making less and less of his order as part of the process of whittling away at my power. If my Obligations called me to fight, he’d blow the Horn of War, and once that was done the others couldn’t stop me from mustering my army.”
    â€œBut who is there to fight?”
    The King snorted.
    â€œYou don’t imagine we’re the only nation in the world?” he said. “Why, I could reel you off a dozen High Obligations I have to other Kings, beyond the deserts and mountains and marshes. It’s the priests who’ve closed the Kingdom, though they say it’s the will of the Gods—but the Obligations are still there … supposing the other Kings remember them.… You’d better pick up your bird before she’s gorged herself too stupid to fly.”
    The King’s voice was harsh with frustrated energies; even if he had kept it quiet and steady his mere presence would have fretted the Blue Hawk. As it was it took Tron some time to coax the bird onto his gauntlet and slip its hood into place; and then it didn’t settle into its normal stillness but fidgeted with its talons and made half-movements with its wings as though longing, blind though it was, to soar away from his wrist.
    â€œMy hawk will never fly in the Temple,” he said slowly. “Not in front of all the people. Even one stranger …”
    â€œYes,” said the King. “I thought of that some time ago. I was