“On the other hand,” Snowfire continued, in that same, reasonable tone of voice, “if we wait long enough, the enemy will relax and drop some of their defenses. Even if help from your land does not come at once, we may well have an opportunity to do them a great deal of harm - perhaps even enough to drive them away. That sort of fighting does tend to make the best use of our abilities.”
“With magic?” Darian asked hopefully. Surely if even Snowfire, who said that he was inferior as a mage, could do things even Justyn couldn’t - what could Starfall do?
“Well, you told us that there was a mage with these people,” Snowfire began.
“I did?” Darian blurted.
Snowfire nodded. “When you told us of the creature riding the lizard - and the men with the aspects of bears. Only a mage can work such changes, which meant that there must be one among them. Well, you know what has befallen magic and you know that our task is to reestablish order in the patterns of magic. This means that Starfall must, before all else, seize control of the magic here.”
“So that the other mage can’t get it!” Darian exclaimed.
“Exactly so. Then, once we have control of the magic energy, he will be weaker. That is the good aspect.” Snowfire frowned. “The bad aspect is that this means Starfall will be busy holding the power, and unable to do other things he would otherwise - such as watching the enemy from afar or protecting us from the enemy’s magic. And in the meantime, the enemy mage is not having to hold the power-matrix, and he is free to act. None of the rest of us are his equal, and I do not know that we could be, even acting together. So - we will ensure that some message comes to your people, calling for help, and meanwhile we will wait to see what happens.”
Wait and see. Wasn’t that what Justyn was always harping about? Patience.
But this time, rushing into things is going to get people hurt and killed. He sighed, and nodded his head.
“I guess that’s what you’ll have to do,” he said reluctantly. “But - “
Whatever he had intended to say was interrupted by an enormous yawn, and he found himself blinking hard, trying to keep his eyes open.
“Hold the thought, little brother,” Snowfire said, and got up. “Whatever it is can wait until morning. For now, sleep is waiting.”
Darian stumbled along in Snowfire’s wake, trying to keep his thoughts in order. There was something about Starfall holding the magic - something important -
But whatever it was, it didn’t last past putting his head down on the pillow.
When he woke up, his memories of last night and the nightmare that had awakened him were waiting for him. Snowfire, however, wasn’t.
He went through most of the day, doing whatever chores the hertasi or Hawkbrothers asked him to, without once seeing his new mentor. He guessed that Snowfire must be out doing his job, scouting, and that made him feel a little better. Something was being done; it might not be obvious to him just what it was, but clearly the Hawkbrothers were not lounging about looking decorative.
He helped Nightwind groom Kelvren after the latter returned from his own scouting foray, making certain that the enemy wasn’t getting too near their encampment. Kelvren told him more of the night-sortie, especially the combat with the two smaller monsters; it was exciting, but scary, too, when he thought how Kelvren could have been hurt. Now all those old stories about battles and fighting took on an entirely different complexion when he thought about these people he knew being in the middle of all the hewing and smiting and all.
The notion of seeing Kel sick with poison - of Wintersky with some terrible wound, bleeding into the dirt - it was horrible. Not that he hadn’t seen nasty injuries, because obviously he had, but to think of such things being inflicted by other people on his friends, and on purpose, to hurt or kill them - well, it was just entirely different from seeing the results of an accident, and it was hard to wrap his mind around the idea. Not just hard - ugly. It made him feel horrible inside to realize that people could actually want to hurt other people. Oh, there were plenty of times when he’d wanted something nasty to happen to other people, but the wish was always vague and ill-defined, and what he’d wanted was for something to happen to them, not that he wanted to inflict a hurt.
But - I think I could have hurt those men who were chasing me. He considered it a little more. I know I could have hurt them. I was ready to shoot them. He recalled quite clearly how he had felt at the time - coldly calculating an eye-shot, as if the men were nothing more than tree-hares he was hunting for the pot.
But they were going to kill me and Snowfire. And they attacked the village. And for no reason! Or, not for no reason, but not for any good reason.
When he finished with Kel - who had really enjoyed being able to tell someone about his fight - Wintersky caught him before anyone else did.
“We need to get the hawk furniture in order,” Wintersky told him, “and you’re the only one free,” without any explanations of what “hawk furniture” was, or how to get it in order. Instead, the youngest of the Hawkbrothers left him in the charge of a painfully shy hertasi in someone else’s hut, the entire left side of which was full of - hawk furniture.
Which was not little chairs and tables for birds of prey, as his imagination had devised, but the bits and pieces of hawk equipment needed for the bondbirds.
For all their intelligence, bondbirds were still hawks, and a hood slipped over their heads would let them sleep in a noisy and brightly-lit room. “Darkness - makes them sleep,” the little hertasi whispered, cupping her hands over her eyes by way of illustration. “If the bondmate needs to be awake, the bird must still sleep - to feel well, they must sleep from dawn to dusk.”
She showed him how to clean the hoods, made of hard, but extremely thin leather, odd bulges over the areas of the eyes to keep from touching the lids. Then, when he had cleaned them, she showed him how to repair those that were damaged. Most often, it was the braces, the leather thongs that held the hoods shut at the back, that were damaged, broken, or worn out. That was easy to fix, once he saw the odd way in which they were laced, so that a Hawkbrother could tighten or loosen the hood with one hand and his teeth. But sometimes what was damaged was the welt of leather protecting the raw edge of the bottom of the hood, or the ornamental knot on top, which was supposed to be used to take the hood off and put it on. The hertasi let him repair the simplest of these, but for the really complicated repairs, such as restitching the eye-covers, she insisted on doing the work while he watched. It was fascinating, for he would not have thought that such stubby little fingers could take such delicate stitches.
Most of the bondbirds didn’t need restraints, such as jesses, but all of them wore the bracelets on their ankles that the jesses fitted through. The bracelets were good for other things, for tying a light string onto, for instance, that a bird could carry up and over a high branch, so that a rope could be pulled up afterward. So the hertasi taught him how to cut and oil such bracelets - then how to make leather- or rope-wrapped and padded perches as well. Hawks took wall- or floor-perches of tree limbs wrapped in leather, while falcons, it seemed, required perches made of upthrust sections of stump, like upthrusting rocks, but padded so that the talons of a sleeping bird had something to grip. Care of the feet, it seemed, was all-important, and sharp talons were hard on wrapped perches. Perches had to be made to withstand hard use, but not made of things that would bruise or abrade the feet; bruised or cut feet could infect, leading to a state called “bumblefoot,” which in turn could cripple a bird if not adequately treated.