Flight of Vengeance by Andre Norton

Author:Andre Norton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-01-10T00:24:55+00:00

3

Both Falconers slept through most of the following twenty-four hours, and for the three days following that, Tarlach was busy with his escort, settling them in for their brief stay and replenishing their supplies for the last stage of their journey to the column to which they owed ultimate allegiance, that of Commandant Varnel, Warlord of the Falconer race.

Although there were only nine men, ten including himself, the demands on his time and energy were great, for they held strictly to custom, and he alone, as their chief officer, had dealings with the people of Lormt.

It was well for him that this was so. There had been no perceptible change in the Lady Una's condition. That she still lived was taken as an encouraging sign by those attending her, but beyond that, they could give no answers and offered no definite hope, however guarded.

He contrived to see her each day on the claim that it was his responsibility to affirm that his employer was yet alive and well tended, but he derived no comfort from the wrenchingly short visits. The Daleswoman grew ever thinner, ever more frail to the eye. She retained her beauty, but it showed an increasingly ethereal cast, as if her body as well as her spirit were preparing to begin the journey on the final road that would take her to the Halls of the Valiant.

It rent his heart to see her thus, and he ached to press his lips to hers, to merely touch the small, scarred hand, but he was never left alone with her and so had to hold back, keeping to the pose circumstance decreed that he must assume. When he left the chamber where she lay each day, it was with the certainty that it was for the final time.

Despair and the anguish of irreparable loss ate into him like a canker, but the Captain did not allow himself to sink utterly into depression. He had no heart for the search which had set him on the road to Lormt, but he made himself begin it as soon as Brennan and his other comrades departed late on the fourth morning after his coming there. He had taken the fate of his race on himself and must now carry on with the work of securing it. For his own sake, he dared not do otherwise. His grief and impotence would drive him mad if he had nothing else upon which to fix his mind, even if it required the full force of his will to make himself do so.

Una slipped into natural sleep during her fourth day at Lormt, and shortly before dawn on the following morning, her eyes finally opened.

She looked about her, puzzled, then memory returned in full force, and she stiffened.

Pyra, the Falconer woman who was Aden's friend and a healer in her own right, had been sitting beside her and quickly lay a soothing hand on her arm. "Easy, my Lady. You are safe. This is Lormt, and I am Pyra, a guest here as well and a healer.

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