She cocked her tail and excreted a copious and foully discoloured mute. He unhooded her and moaned in panic. She’d been poisoned. He carried her up and down the mews until his arm drooped with exhaustion, then he placed her back on the block and sat watching in a stupor of despair. Her mouth leaked a greasy drool. Sinister clicking sounds came from her innards. His head sagged into his hands. The lamp burned out and his eyes closed.
Faint bars of sunlight criss-crossed the interior. Wayland blinked and saw Ibrahim’s assistants opening the mews’ ventilation flaps. The gyrfalcon’s perch was empty.
He lurched to his feet as Ibrahim emerged from the chamber where newly caught hawks were kept isolated. ‘Where is she? Is she dead?’
Ibrahim crooked a finger and Wayland followed him into the chamber. The falcon sat bareheaded on a block and the moment he entered she bated at him, bright-eyed and ravenous. The hawkmaster held out a small square of cloth. On it lay a slimy leaf of grease and fat that the falcon had disgorged while Wayland slept.
Now she was ready for her first session of exercise, said Ibrahim.
The chamber was furnished with a stool placed about ten feet from the block. Ibrahim handed Wayland a strip of meat and made him stand on the stool. Then he unhooded the falcon. ‘Call her.’ The Seljuk and the Englishman had no more than a dozen words between them, but their common interest was a shared language.
Wayland held out his fist. The falcon winnowed furiously and rowed up in strenuous flight to claim the titbit.
‘Set her down again,’ said Ibrahim. He gave Wayland another mouthful.
‘Call her.’
After three steep flights to the fist, the falcon was panting. Three more and Wayland could see that she was wondering if the reward was worth the effort. When he held out his hand for the eighth time, she refused to come.
‘Enough,’ said Ibrahim. He counted off on his fingers to show how the sessions would proceed. Tomorrow the falcon would make ten jumps, the day after fifteen. When she could jump twenty-five times without distress she would be fit enough to fly free.
Wayland had worked out his own plan, and making the falcon flog up to his fist wasn’t part of it. It was demeaning. He’d always fed the haggard her daily ration in one go. She was a wild hawk after all, used to satisfying her hunger unstintingly. Food was the only thing that bound her to him. Break that bond and she’d come to hate him.
‘Your method will take too long. I’ll fly her free tomorrow.’
‘No!’
‘Yes. Only flying will make her properly fit. I have to get her used to being carried on a horse. She has to grow accustomed to crowds. She needs to learn the terrain.’
The hawkmaster asked him if he’d flown the falcon loose.
‘Yes, and she killed a bustard at her first flight.’
He wouldn’t back down and eventually the hawkmaster agreed that he could fly the falcon free if she proved her obedience by coming immediately to the lure while tied to a creance.
They waited until late afternoon. On leaving the mews, Wayland was taken aback to find a squad of mounted Seljuks waiting to accompany them. To chase after the falcon if she flew off, Ibrahim said.
They rode out of the encampment and headed west until they came to a bald stretch of plain. The escorts sat their horses at a distance while Wayland dismounted and removed the falcon’s leash and swivel. The hawkmaster tied a line to the slits in her jesses and carried her away about thirty yards. Wayland produced a leather lure garnished with pigeon. The hawkmaster unhooded the falcon. She bobbed her head and launched off, flexing her sails half a dozen times before gliding in to the lure. Wayland knelt beside her while she ate, picked her up as she swallowed the last mouthful, and replaced her hood. He untied the line and held her out to Ibrahim.
‘Now we’ll let her take the air.’
The hawkmaster was reluctant. He’d noticed how the falcon had tried to fly off with the lure. Putting her on the wing would be too risky. He fluttered his finger in the direction of the horizon. He pulled a doleful face, pointed towards the camp and drew a finger across his throat.
‘You’re saying the Emir will have me killed if I lose the falcon.’
There was nothing in the hawkmaster’s response to suggest otherwise.
Wayland looked across the bleak plain, the sparse and withered grass. His features set. He held out his fist. ‘Take her, before it grows too dark to fly.’
This time the hawkmaster retreated a hundred yards before unhooding her. Wayland could see that her behaviour was different. After registering his presence, she began scanning around. The sky was empty, the plain lifeless, yet her gaze settled on something only she could see and she took off and beat away.
At a shout from the hawkmaster the Seljuks spurred their horses and galloped in pursuit.
It was all but dark when Wayland caught up with them. A horse warrior cantered out of the gloom and pointed behind him at a ridge. Wayland handed him the reins of his horse and made in on foot, speaking so that his approach wouldn’t alarm the falcon. She’d taken stand on a rock no more than waist high and was staring off to the north. When she turned towards him, it was as if she’d never seen him before.
Foot by foot he moved closer. She seemed lost in a dream, only noticing the food when he placed it against her feet. She looked down, looked away again. Her shoulders bunched up and Wayland grabbed her jesses an instant before she took flight. His hands shook as he fitted her leash. He knew he’d been lucky. Without the Seljuks he wouldn’t have found her before nightfall. Roosting on the rock, she would have made easy prey for wolves or jackals. Even if she’d survived until dawn, she would have woken a lot wilder than when she’d gone to rest.
He returned chastened to face the hawkmaster’s censure. But Ibrahim only told him to reduce the falcon’s rations, pointing out that when a wild bird feels the wind under its sails again, it forgets its hunger. Don’t feed or fly the falcon tomorrow, he ordered.
‘I can’t afford to miss a day,’ Wayland said. ‘The riders unsettled her. Tomorrow I’ll take her out on my own.’
Next morning he went to find Syth. She and Caitlin were accommodated in a harem tent linked to the Emir’s pavilion. A stout woman covered from head to toe came to the entrance and studied him through the slit in her veil. He asked if he could see Syth. She went away and then another woman appeared dressed in a flowing silk gown that clung to her breasts and hips, emphasising her slim and shapely figure. A scarf covered her hair and she held one end of the scarf over the lower half of her face so that all Wayland could see were her eyes outlined with black.
He felt awkward in the presence of this exotic maiden. ‘I wanted to see Syth,’ he muttered.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten what I look like so soon.’
‘Syth! I didn’t recognise you. What’s that black stuff around your eyes?’
‘It’s called kohl. Don’t you like it? Where have you been?’
‘Preparing the falcon for the contest. That’s why I’m here. I need your help.’
‘Is that the only reason you came?’
‘Of course not. I’ve missed you.’
‘I’ve missed
‘I’m sorry. The first two nights I hardly slept, and the days have been taken up with the falcon.’
She glanced behind her. ‘I’ll have to ask.’
During her absence the stout, veiled matron guarded the entrance and watched him with a dark stare. A commotion behind her made her turn. Syth came flying out, face and hair still covered, dressed in leggings and a quilted wrapover coat. The woman shrieked and tried to grab her, but Syth dodged. Wayland tried to take her hand. She slapped it away.
‘No touching in the camp.’
They rode out with the falcon, making for the empty stretch of plain where he’d flown the day before. Wayland kept glancing at Syth. Three days’ absence had made her a stranger. She seemed more grown up. More grown up than him.
‘Can I touch you yet?’
She laughed and uncovered her face. She’d washed the kohl off and her skin had regained its bloom. She
