Travellers #1 by Jack Lasenby

and I remembered not to look at it directly. In the late afternoon it gulped a bit of rabbit’s liver, blinked unsteady on its big feet, gulped a bit more.
    “Don’t stuff it,” said Hagar. “The trick is to give it enough but keep it peckish, and it will look to you.”
    “What about water?”
    “They eat so much meat, they don’t drink a lot. Chop open the rabbit’s head and give it the brains. It’ll like that.”
    I was afraid it would starve. It took a while to learn to feed it a little, every now and again, as Hagar had said. Then I remembered how the mother fed the chicks.
    Sometimes it snatched at a morsel, but it often drew close its plumage and shrugged low. Its head reminded me of the lizards that live among rocks. When Hagar asked what I was going to call my hawk, I thought of the giant winged lizards that destroyed Orklun. “Dragon!” I told her.
    His feathers grew. The down disappeared. His head was all eye and scrolled beak. He accepted me, took food from my hand. I kept an eye on the animals and worked on a big loom beside Hagar’s, trying to make a rug as good as the ones she wove so fast. As Dragon got used to me I moved my loom closer to his perch. I drove a few sheep and goats past, getting him used to them. It was Hagar who suggested gentling him that way.
    I stitched a heavy glove and walked with Dragon on my fist. Once or twice he gripped bare skin, and I yelped. He dived off my hand, flapping, complaining, and I drew him back by the cords. His rages were appalling. I told him I never lost my temper like that.
    I talked and stroked him, not with my hand because Hagar said that would take the oil off his feathers. What he liked was a hawk’s feather. I stroked him down his legs and over his talons, and he closed the glare of his eye.
    We walked around the animals, Dragon watching everything that moved. He was still uneasy with Nip who looked straight into his eyes and barked. Occasionally Dragon stared upwards, his claws closing on the glove as he watched a skylark hovering, dropping, dropping, dropping, spilling song down the sky. I knew hawks took larks and pipits.
    Dark feathers covered his back and wings. Above his eyeswas a line of light-coloured feathers; below his beak, a thicker band. Under his body were softer feathers, russet, almost the reddish-brown we dyed our wool. His legs were light-grey, talons black.
    Hagar said to whistle always before giving him food. He soon learned what it meant, shuffling and hopping to the glove. I increased the distance with longer cords, whistling further off. He took a flap or two to reach me. I kept accustoming him to my whistle, its three notes. And he was learning.
    He flew further and further to my glove. He would take his reward and straddle it, tense with appetite, beak clotted with meat. I hoped he might come just to the whistle, but he always looked for food. The glutton would stuff himself with a whole rabbit’s leg if I let him. Twice I let him feed on, and he nearly choked and was bad-tempered afterwards.
    “In a way you’re keeping him immature,” Hagar said. I was helping her on the big loom. “That’s what we do with animals we tame. They lose something when they rely on us. In the wild he’d know how much to eat.”
    “How do you know all this?”
    “I’ve lived longer than you, that’s all.”
    “You know more than anyone except my father.”
    “Hawk knew a lot,” said Hagar. “And he was a just man.”
    “What’s just?”
    “Before your father we had an unjust leader. His animals got the best grass. He took the young women for his wives, threw them out when he tired of them. He was cruel, unfair.”
    “What happened?”
    “One morning he did not wake.”
    “Why not?”
    “People said it was a punishment from the Gods of the Cave. They said the Stag Man and the Dog Man punished dishonest leaders.”
    “And did they?”
    “No.”
    “Who killed him then?”
    “His old wife was jealous of the younger women he