Fantasy fiction; Imaginary wars and battles -- Fiction
Now came Gorice the King among them with his austringers and falconers
and his huntsmen with setters and spaniels and great fierce boar-hounds
drawn in a string. He rode upon a black mare with eyes fire-red, so
tall a tall man’s head scarce topped her withers. He wore a leather
gauntlet on his right hand, on the wrist whereof an eagle sat, hooded
and motionless, gripping with her claws. He said, “It is met. Corsus
goeth not with us: I fly him at higher game. His sons attend him,
losing not an hour in preparation for this journey. The rest, take
pleasure in the chase.”
So they praised the King, and rode forth with him eastaway. The Lady
Sriva whispered Corinius in the ear, “Enchantery, my lord, ruleth in
Carcë, and this it must be bringeth it about that none may see nor
touch me ’twixt midnight hour and cock-crow save he that must be King
in Demonland.”
But Corinius made as not to hear her, turning toward the Lady Prezmyra,
that turned thence toward Gro. Sriva laughed. Merry of heart she seemed
that day, eager as the small merlin sitting on her fist, and willing at
every turn to have speech with King Gorice. But the King heeded her not
at all, and gave her not a look nor a word.
So rode they awhile, jesting and discoursing, toward the Pixyland
border, rousing herons by the way whereat none made better sport than
Prezmyra’s falcons, flown from her fist at many hundred paces as the
quarry rose, and mounting with it to the clouds in corkscrew flights,
ring upon ring, up and up till the fowl was but a speck in the upper
sky, and her falcons two lesser specks beside it.
But when they were come to the higher ground and the scrub and
underwood, then the King whistled his eagle off his fist. She flew from
him as if she would never have turned head again, yet presently upon
his shout came in; then soaring aloft waited on above his head, till
the hounds started a wolf out of the brake. Thereon she swooped sudden
as a thunderbolt; and the King lighted down and helped her with his
hunting-knife; and so again, thrice and four times till four wolves
were slain. And that was the greatest sport.
The King made much of his eagle, giving her the last wolf’s lights and
liver to gorge herself withal. And he gave her over to his falconer,
and said, “Ride we now into the flats of Armany, for I will fly my
haggard: my haggard eagle caught this March in the hills of Largos.
Many a good night’s rest hath she cost me, to wake her and man her and
teach her to know my call and be obedient. I will fly her now at the
big black boar of Largos that afflicteth the farmers hereabout these
two years past and bringeth them death and loss. So shall we see good
sport, if she be not too coy and wild.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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