The Falconer's Tale Read Online Free Page B

vertical climbs to their summits. Strong climber could shake anybody up there . The landscape was brown andgreen and gray; grass, not heather; bare rock and bracken. You could walk and walk. Or run and run. If the footing is okay .
    He found the road to the right and drove it more slowly;it was ancient tarmac, crumbling along the edges, potholed,hardly wider than the car. He came over a rise and almostran into a goofy-looking runner, some old guy wearing whatlooked like a giant’s T-shirt that flapped around him in thecrisp wind. Hardly noticing him, the runner plodded on. Piatthought, I could give you half a mile and still get there first . Afteranother mile, the road forked and he went right. Almost there .When he had gone half a mile farther, he pulled up justshort of a crest and got the car into a lay-by and stopped.“Please do not park in the lay-bys,” the tourist brochure hadsaid. You bet .
    Piat got out and spread an Ordnance Survey map on thehood, traced his route from Tobermory, found the fork,followed with his finger, and judged from the contour linesthat if he walked over the crest, he’d be looking down onHackbutt’s house. Or farm, or whatever the hell it was. Hisaviary, how would that be?
    He had borrowed a pair of binoculars from good old Dave—Swarovskis, 10x50, nice if you didn’t have to carry themvery far—and walked the hundred feet to the top of the hill.He made his way into the bracken and moved toward a rockoutcrop, keeping himself out of sight of the house he’dglimpsed below, until he reached the outcrop and put hisback against it and turned the binoculars on the house.
    It could have been any house on the island—centraldoorway, two windows on each side, a chimney at one end,second storey with two dormers. The color of rich cream butprobably stone under a coat of paint, possibly an old croftfixed up but more likely built in the last hundred years. Atthe far side of the house, clothes blew in the wind on acircular contraption with a central metal pole. Behind it, asif to tell him it was the right house, were pens and littleshacks like doghouses that he took to be sheds for the birds;beside a half-collapsed metal gate, a dejected-looking blackand white dog lay with its head on outstretched paws, besideit what was apparently supposed to be a doghouse made outof boxes and a tarp. The bird pens seemed to have been setout at random, the hutches put together by somebody whodidn’t know which end of a hammer to hit his thumb with. That’d be Hackbutt, for sure .
    Piat studied the place. He hoped to actually see Hackbuttso he’d go in with that advantage. They hadn’t seen eachother in fifteen years; let the other guy feel the shock ofchange. Hackbutt would have an idea he was coming butwouldn’t know when: Piat had sent him a postcard with apicture of a bear on the front, a nonsense message on theback signed “Freddy.” From “ready for Freddy.” It meant “getready;” the bear was the identifier, an old code betweenthem. Would Hackbutt remember? Of course he would. Infact, Piat thought, he’d piss his pants.
    After fifteen minutes, nobody had appeared near the house.Piat eased himself around the outcrop and walked backthrough the bracken to the car. He leaned on the roof andtrained the binoculars around him, idling, not wanting to godown to the house yet. Apprehensive? Cold feet? He lookeddown the road. The goofy runner was coming back. He wasmaking heavy going of it now, his feet coming down as ifhe were wearing boots, his hands too high on his chest. Thetoo-big T-shirt blew around him. He had a beard and long,gray hair, also blowing, the effect that of some small-timewizard in a ragged white robe. Smiling, Piat put the binocularsto his eyes to enjoy this sorry sight, and when the focussnapped in, he realized with a shock that the runner wasHackbutt.
    The last time he had seen Hackbutt, he’d weighed abouttwo-thirty