Definition
1 of a hawk : not tamed
2 a : wild in appearance
Haggard comes from falconry, the sport of hunting with a trained bird of prey. The birds used in falconry were not bred in captivity until very recently. Traditionally, falconers trained wild birds that were either taken from the nest when quite young or trapped as adults. A bird trapped as an adult is termed a haggard, from the Middle French hagard. Such a bird is notoriously wild and difficult to train, and it wasn't long before the falconry sense of haggard was being applied in an extended way to a "wild" and intractable person. Next, the word came to express the way the human face looks when a person is exhausted, anxious, or terrified. Today, the most common meaning of haggard is "gaunt" or "worn."
As I glanced blearily at the clock besides me as I was awoken for the umpteenth time by yet another round of spine chilling god forsaken squawking, it showed me the brutal and unforgiving hour of 3.00am - the hour of the suicides.
If I was completely honest with myself, if I happened to run into a potential suicide victim whilst out and about at this hour, rather than kindly and compassionately listening to their tales of woe and trying to talk them out of such a drastic course of action, I was more likely to kidnap them on the spot and demand that, if they had the time to contemplate throwing away their future, then they could bloody well just give it to me instead and help me out with my duties.
It was getting to the point that, rather than just pointlessly praying for more assistance, I was getting ready to storm the gates of heaven myself and demand God get off his arse and come help me himself!
If I currently sounded somewhat deranged, you would have to excuse me - I hadn't had more than two hours of sleep at at time for over three weeks now and it was really beginning to show.
I staggered to my feet as the squawking began to reach a threatening crescendo.
"All right, all right." I muttered to myself, swaying on my feet. A strand of my now lank, greasy hair smacked me in the face.
I sniffed at it as I lurched up the short hallway to the mews. When was the last time i washed it? Tuesday? Or Thursday. It was definitely a day that began with a T. Or maybe I'd started the day with a cup of tea. Or maybe I'd used the tea to wash it. It did smell a bit like T. Tea even.
What day was it again?
I pushed open the door to the mews and the source of all my suffering and sleeplessness appeared before me.
Hraktors were used by the demon army to carry messages and reports. They were incredibly intelligent animals and, unlike the carrier pigeons humans used, they were more than capable of defending themselves.
So when the Crown Prince had found an abandoned nest of baby ones, he'd had the brilliant idea of training them ourselves, so they could be used as messengers for our army and maybe go undercover and intercept messages from the demon army.
That f**ker. Did I say that out loud? I don't know. It's an executionable offence to speak ill of royalty. There's no one here anyway, why does it matter.
At least if they chop my head off I'll finally get some peace and quiet.
f**kerf**kerf**kerf**kerf**ker
Hraktors are not normal birds. They're demon birds for heaven's sake. Normal bird rearing methods won't work on them. Every single falconer tried every method they knew of and nothing worked.
Most of them were too terrified to even try. They were used to dealing with Hawks and other birds of prey, which were dangerous if not properly handled, but Hraktors made them look like dainty little church mice in comparison. An adult Hraktor could take out a small troop of men by themselves. The baby ones might not have been that dangerous, but they could easily cripple or kill a man if they felt like it.
How the bird tamers in the demon army did it, i have no idea, but they have my utmost respect.
The falconers kept trying but one by one, they had to concede defeat. The demon birds were just too wild and untamable. To utilise them for our own army, to, heck, ensure they didn't eat our own army, was outright impossible.
The Crown Prince did not enjoy listening to this. In fact, he made sure his displeasure was well known. Many falconers lost their livelihoods until the King himself stepped in and said the Hraktors should be kept in a separate building, away from people and a minimal amount of staff assigned to them until they came to a decision on what to do with them.
The 'minimal staff' was yours truly.
Being as I was a previously mere kitchen skivvy (why waste valuable resources and staff on something doomed to fail) I had no idea how to look after or train the damn things. All I knew was they started screeching every couple of hours or so, wanting to be fed. Their caterwauling was so awful, some people's ears had even started to bleed because of it, so I had to shove food in their gob right sharpish if I didn't want complaints to come flooding in. People were dead handy with the whip if their precious sleep was interrupted. Hence why I hadn't had more than a few snatches of sleep here and there for a while - there was no one to take turns in caring and sleeping and if I didn't feed them, they made a racket, I got the whip and then I had even less sleep because the pain kept me awake.
Yep, dream promotion this was.
I staggered into the main row of the mews and the lines of hooded Hraktors turned their heads to look at me. How that managed that when they were blind, i had no idea and at first it had freaked me the heck out but by now I was both used to it and too tired to care.
I dug my hand into the meat barrel (yes, just as disgusting as it sounded and since the birds were persona non grata, the suppliers weren't that fussed about the freshness of the product - I had learnt early on not to look in the barrel if I wanted to keep the food in my stomach where it was).
I started throwing it to the birds, their beaks tearing it neatly out the air.
Even in my sleep deprived, befuddled state, I couldn't help but admire them. Yes, they were terrifying and not as sleek and elegant as the birds in the main mews, but the were beautiful in their own way. All black and steel grey, with feathers that were sharp enough to cut a human's skin the way scissors could cut through silk. Their talons were twice as long as a normal birds and ten times as sharp. They had to have specially designed perches - normal ones were too small and their talons reached round too far and cut their own feet, as well as simply slicing through the perch itself.
I walked up and down the mews, inspecting the birds carefully. A shitty job indeed it was, but the shitty job was mine and I had too much pride, even if I didn't exactly know what I was doing, not to do it to the best of my abilities.
Their feathers all seemed glossy and, unlike myself, none of them seemed groggy or listless. I had worried about them being fed rotten meat, but it hadn't seemed to upset their stomachs or make them sick. It was said that the wild ones were carrion birds. Just to be sure, I had foraged in the surrounding woods for different nuts and fruit to see if they liked those too. They had gobbled them up so maybe they were more omnivorous. It was frustrated that I had no one to ask - no one talked about them for fear of being accused of calling attention to the Crown Prince's failure.
Personally, I thought the reason why the whole endeavor was doomed to failure from the start was the simple fact that the birds themselves were just too smart. They knew they were viewed with revulsion and disgust - and also that they were just being reared to be used as tools against their own kind. Could I really blame them for acting up?
It was 3.00am. Yes, yes I could.
As I scraped the last of the dung from the floor of the final roost (I was awake and it wasn't like the shit cleaning task was going to magically get better the longer I left it) I could feel the walls wavering around me.
Could walls waver? I thought to myself blearily. Shouldn't it be more like, my head is wavering. Right? Could you see things with your head. No. Wait, that doesn't sound right either.
As my knees buckled under me, I felt something cool and sharp grab the back of my collar and lower me to the ground gently.
I woke up, stiff and cramped on the cold mews floor after what felt like a long, cool drink of sleep. Blinking, I realised the sky was high in the sky, light filtering through the cracks in the shabby wooden walls. I must have been asleep for hours. It was quiet around me, the birds shuffling quietly on their perches.
But not as quiet as it should have been. I heard the stamping of hooves outside the mews door.
I clambered up and pushed open the door. The Crown Prince was outside, laughing with a bunch of his cronies, all on horseback. They were armed to the teeth.
"Your Highness?" I said uncertainly.
"Ah, you must be the little....care taker!" The Prince exclaimed, all teeth and sparkle and sneer.
I tugged at my disheveled and admittedly filthy clothes. I'm not sure how long i'd been wearing these particular ones, but they were basically rags at this point and the Prince and his fellows, with their pointed stares, made sure I knew that.
"How can I help you my lord?" I asked.
"Well, we've come to help you." The Crown Prince. "I'm sure you're sick of these birds by now - and they're such a drain on the tax payers money, that we've come to resolve the situation."
His smile was foul.
A drain on the country's resources. You feed them rotten meat, you keep them in a run down shed not even pigs would deign to live in and to attend them, you provide only an indentured kitchen skivvy - someone you don't even pay since you took their body in lieu of unpaid taxes.
By the uncertain blinking on some of the nobles faces, I wondered if I had said some of that out loud. A few hours sleep was not enough to clear the backlog of insomnia and resultant delusional behaviour it seemed.
The Prince's grin remained fixed. "If you would stand aside slave. We will take care of the matter at hand."
Slave huh.
I held up my hands. "A moment my Lord, let me ensure that they are properly secured first. After all," I felt my lip curled involuntarily, "we wouldn't want you to get hurt."
A few looked like they wanted to take umbrage at my insolent tone, but the Hraktors reputation was such that, even then, they didn't want to take the chance that the birds might be able to defend themselves from the coming slaughter.
The Prince nodded briskly.
I slipped back inside. The Hraktors were all staring at the door. The damn birds had been torturing me day and night - I'd had no sleep, been forced to clear up endless amounts of bird shit, been whipped for them, become ostracised from my fellow workers when I'd had to move out to the back of beyond with them. I hadn't bathed properly in days and now nobles were mocking me with their eyes. Really, they'd caused me no end of trouble.
And now the Prince was here to save me from all my troubles. He was going to do what all heroes did and save the people from the monsters.
By killing them.
While they were blinded, tied down and helpless.
After he had been the one to bring them here, away from their home, to use them as he pleased. And now he was going to slaughter them because they didn't do what he wanted. Because they didn't want to be tools.
They were monsters.
So why was I crying?
It had to be the sleep deprivation I told myself, as if in a dream, I watched myself remove the hoods and unchain the shackles from around their ankles. The metal had left heavy cuts in their legs and I cried even more when I saw that. The mews were filled with the rustling of feathers and a soft crooning noise that even in my far away state I found relaxing.
I stood back and I was done. Every Hraktor in the mews was unbound.
I heard the horses stamp impatiently outside.
I was going to die for this.
At least I'd get some sleep.
I marched to the doors and threw them wide, letting the sunlight pour over me into the room beyond.
"Catch them if you can." I said with a smile.
The mews exploded around me, chunks of wooden planking were thrown about as the Hraktors flew through the walls, their sharp feathers cutting them to pieces.
All about me was a tumult of splinters, sunlight, chaos and the sound of wind.
The Princes furious expression as he raised his sword at me was the last thing I saw - before sharp yet careful talons grabbed me by the shoulders and lifted me into the vast blue sky beyond.
No comments:
Post a Comment