Sparrow's Flight

CHAPTER 1

"Bastard poachers," Spar muttered, brushing a stray hair from his face.

Three thin, dirty peasants huddled by the side of the game trail, quivering with fright. The fresh carcass of a young buck lay between them. A ring of green-and-white-clad huntsmen closed around them, spears leveled.

Spar’s small blue eyes narrowed as he raised his hunting bow and drew an arrow. The murdered animal had been young and healthy. Its loss would be a blow to the local herd, and all who depended on it for food.

Spar aimed at a peasant and reached out with his mind. His will tightened, a knot of tension behind his eyes, as he reached across space to the man’s head.

Contact.

The man felt the tangible brush of Spar’s Talent and shrieked. The arrow flew. The scream cut short. The peasant slumped back against a tree, eyes gaping. The shaft brushed through his hair and fixed his hood to the trunk.

"Now," Spar said, dropping his thin voice to its most menacing pitch. "You will tell me who you are, and which village you are from." It was unfortunate to have to deal with peasants this way, but if they would not respect sovereign law, they must learn to fear its enforcers.

"J... Jaco, milord," the man stammered, "f... from Elloan."

"Sparrow!" Baron Blackaker’s barrel-chested bellow rattled the autumn leaves.

Spar winced at the sound of his twice cursed name. "What, Father?"

Baron Blackaker trotted his dun hunter forward. His full black beard bristled as he interposed himself between Spar and the poachers, withering his son with an angry, disappointed glare. "What in the name of the Blessed do you think you’re doing?"

Anticipating another argument, Spar drew himself up to his full height, but even in the saddle his father dwarfed his small frame. In the last week, ever since he had returned from his five year fostering in the neighboring barony, Duskasker, his father and his siblings had found excuses to contest almost everything he said or did. He had arrived expecting celebration in anticipation of his seventeenth birthday, his initiation. With that ceremony came all the rights and responsibilities of adulthood, most importantly the right to hold the noble office he’d been trained for, Warmaster of Blackaker. Instead, he spent the week defending himself and his mentors against baseless accusations of villainy.

"I am questioning these poachers," he replied flatly.

"Terrorizing them, you mean. Is this what a Bowmaster does with his skill?"

"I only frightened them, Father, something that should have been done before they transgressed."

"Fear is no way to keep order."

"Isn’t it? What makes fear a less valid tool for obtaining obedience than any other emotion?"

Blackaker rumbled, "That sounds like Duskasker reasoning. I should never have consented to foster you with those brigands."

Spar’s jaw clenched. Here it was, again. His father despised the Duskaskers, and no amount of parley could dislodge him from that position. "They aren’t brigands, and you didn’t have a choice, remember? You signed the treaty."

Blackaker glared at his son, sapphire eyes gleaming.

Spar met his gaze defiantly. Spar’s fostering had been a bone stuck in his sire’s craw since before Spar was born. It was an arrangement by which Blackaker had released himself from an arranged marriage with a Duskasker daughter to marry his chosen, Lady Taslyn of Tasleague. He had hated the bargain when he made it. He liked it less now.

"Sparrow," Blackaker finally said, "our duty is to serve justice, not--"

"Our duty is to defend the land," Spar snapped. "You maintain the forest, manage the game, and guard the borders. You donate nine-tenths of every kill to these cretins." He waved an arm in the direction of the poachers. "Yet see how they repay you!"

"Sparrow," said Blackaker, enunciating the word as if it were an object totally foreign to his vocabulary, "no one who would be made a man in my house will clench a fist when words will suffice. Am I clear?"

Spar’s face stiffened. His heart raced. Father could not be serious! Without initiation, he would remain a "child," ineligible to perform any useful function. Worse, he would be a laughingstock. He would never be able to show face in any court. "Father, I--"