A Pride of Gryphons

by Kristen S. Walker

  After he was scrubbed clean and dressed in fresh clothes, he went to the lounge and leaned up against the bar. “I’ll take a brandy,” he told the barkeep.

  Then he looked around the room for a likely drinking partner, and his gaze landed on Orivan. The young man was laughing with a few others, watching a group playing cards, but he looked up when he sensed Varranor’s gaze and smiled at him.

  That was all the invitation he needed. “Also, a glass of red wine, a decent vintage, please,” he said to the barkeep when he brought the brandy. He took both glasses and wove his way through the crowded room to Orivan.

  Varranor held out the wine glass to the young man with a smile. “You like red wine, right?”

  Orivan took the glass and laughed. “Yes, although to be honest, I don’t really know how to tell if it’s high quality or not.” He raised it in a toast. “Thank you. What’s the occasion, sir?”

  “No occasion,” Varranor said with a wink. “I was just looking for some company, and I was wondering if I might steal you away from your friends.”

  Orivan laughed again, and that light-hearted sound warmed Varranor more than the brandy. He said farewell to the card players and followed Varranor to a small table in the corner of the lounge, away from the busiest crowd.

  Varranor leaned back in his chair and spread his legs wide, easing tired muscles from the flight. “Ahh, this is nice. It feels like I’ve barely had time to sit down all day.” He nodded at Orivan. “And I’m glad that I found you here. I’ve been meaning to get to know you better, but I haven’t really had the chance.”

  Orivan settled comfortably into his own chair and took a sip of wine. “I’ll do almost anything for a drink. What do you want to know, sir?” he asked, looking across at him. His eyes sparkled in the light cast by a candle in the middle of their table.

  Varranor laughed. “I’ll tell the server to bring the bottle, then. But please, no formality. It’s just Varranor.” He swallowed some brandy, considering his first question. “I’d just like to know more about your life. Where did you come from before you were in the Storm Petrels? What made you decide to join?”

  Orivan described the small fishing village on Keldrinos Island where he’d grown up and joined the crew of a fishing boat. He admitted that he’d fallen in love with another boy on the crew, but then decided to leave for the mainland when his lover broke his heart.

  “He was afraid of his father’s disapproval,” Orivan said, looking down at the table. “The islands are… less accepting than here. In a small community, anyone who’s different stands out.” He shrugged. “I guess I hoped that by coming here, I’d be able to fit in better.”

  Varranor nodded sympathetically and picked up the wine bottle to refill Orivan’s glass. “My brother and I had trouble fitting in here, too, because of our family’s origin.”

  He told the story of how they had no place to live after the death of their father, and the lucky rumor that led to them discovering Neusici Valley’s hidden cloudfruit grove. Catching marewings, and knowing where to take other potential riders, had given them the opportunity to start their own mercenary company.

  Varranor smiled. “I suppose you could say that when we couldn’t find a place for us, we made our own.” He gestured with his glass at the riders’ lounge and the rest of the military complex beyond. “I can’t complain with how it has turned out. And if it helps other people find their place, too, I’m happy to share.”

  Orivan smiled back, his cheerful manner returning. The two of them chatted about lighter matters, from their marewings to the latest gossip around the fort, as Orivan drank his way through most of a bottle of wine and Varranor started on his second bottle of brandy.

  Two hours later, Varranor had slowly scooted his chair around the table closer to Orivan’s until they were side by side and his arm was around the other man’s shoulders. Orivan was tall, although still half a head shorter than him, but slender like other islanders. He fit easily in the crook of Varranor’s arm.

  Varranor reached over with his other hand and put it lightly on Orivan’s thigh. “It’s been a wonderful evening, talking with you,” he said, leaning closer. “Would you like to go somewhere private and continue getting to know each other?”

  Orivan’s cheerful smile faded and he pulled away gently. “Actually, ah, I should probably get some sleep. I have an early patrol in the morning.” His eyes widened. “Unless I’m not allowed to say no to the commander?”

  Varranor quickly backed off, raising his hands. “Of course you can say no. I’d never order you to do something like that.” The accusation of coercion stung almost as much as the rejection. “But, if I may ask, why are you saying no? I thought we were having fun.”

  Orivan was still tensed up, looking at Varranor sidelong as if he expected him to try something else. “It was fun, but I’m just… not interested in a casual evening. I’m sorry.”

  Varranor tried to laugh off the uncomfortable situation. “Alright, I won’t keep you. I can easily find someone else to keep me company. Thanks for the conversation.”

  Orivan bobbed his head, mumbling thanks for the drinks, then sprang up out of his chair and hurried out of the lounge.

  Varranor watched him leave and felt crushing disappointment. It wasn’t as if he’d never been rejected before, but usually he was better at reading people. He’d seen Orivan flirt with him suggestively on several occasions, so he was clearly attracted, but then he’d run away as if he were suddenly frightened by the invitation. Was he afraid of having his heart broken again?

  Although he’d said that he could easily find someone, Varranor didn’t bother to speak to anyone else. He paid his tab with the barkeep and took a last glass of brandy with him back to his quarters. The large empty bed seemed to mock him as he undressed alone.

  “Well, at least I’ve protected my reputation as a commander,” he grumbled to himself. He stared into the darkness and saw Orivan shrinking away from him again. Well, he wouldn’t bother the young rider again. Perhaps Navera was wrong that riders were more compatible together than with anyone else.

  Ameyron II

  Ameyron squinted at his own sloppy handwriting. He’d written down the locations of the two latest monster attacks the night before, but he couldn’t tell now what the name of the second village was. Was the first letter an ’H’ or a ‘B’? He couldn’t quite make it out. But the last two letters were unmistakably ‘-ma.’

  He consulted the map on the wall above him for names that looked similar. Ah, there it was—Helyma. He marked it with a pin, a light pink one for trapflowers, according to the color-coding system he’d developed. He was running out of colors to use.

  Then he took a step back and viewed the whole thing together. Pins dotted almost every section of the map in a rainbow of colors and hues. It was not a happy picture.

  So many attacks, some of them representing extensive property damage or loss of lives. But although some part of him was sympathetic to the victims, of course, he was less concerned with the severity of the attacks and more with the problem they represented. Try as he might, he could not come up with a pattern or reliably predict where the next attack would happen. They seemed totally at random.

  He was so absorbed with staring at the map that he didn’t hear the others come in the room until someone cleared their throat loudly at his shoulder.

  Ameyron spun around. Warlord Varranor, Sergeant Navera, and fifteen other officers had entered the War Room. Navera was staring him down, and he remembered with a jolt that he was supposed to show respect. He bent in a hasty bow toward the commander.

  He’d been at Fort Ropytos for a month, but he still wasn’t used to military discipline. There seemed to be an endless list of protocols he was expected to follow, from how to address of all the numerous ranks of soldiers to identifying orders based on bugle calls. They gave him some leniency because he was a mage, on loan from the academy to study the current monster attacks, but they still expected him to try.
He thought it was a waste of his time to worry about memorizing useless rules, but then again, these were trained fighters who were armed even in their own fortress. Perhaps it was better to avoid offending any of them too much.

  Varranor greeted him back with a salute, something the mage hadn’t been able to master. He sat at the head of the table, a signal for the others to take their own seats. “Good morning, Mage Ameyron. Are you ready to begin?”

  Ameyron remained standing in front of the map of Kyratia. “Yes, sir. I was just taking stock of the latest data.” He gestured at the newest pins.

  Navera’s eyes narrowed in another stern look at him. “This isn’t just ‘data.’ Six of our soldiers were injured by the trapflower before it was cut down, and the village lost a third of their crops. These are real people, not numbers in a report.”

  Ameyron hid his face with another bow toward the sergeant. He was terrified of her stern lectures, and he always seemed to be doing something that she disapproved of. “My apologies for my academic terminology. I meant no disrespect.”

  Varranor was skimming last night’s report on the table. He set it down and looked up. “It doesn’t matter what terms you use if you can tell us something useful. Do you know what could be causing these attacks or how we can stop them?”

  Ameyron turned and gestured vaguely at the whole map. “To the best of my knowledge, these attacks appear to be random.” He pointed at a few of the most recent incidents. “Trapflowers here, a chimaera there, spiderwolves in another spot with no relation to anything else nearby. They look like any other attacks that usually happen. Typically, monsters attack where there are fewer humans—villages on the edges of settled land, where wyld magic can push back more easily against our protections, and this is what we’re seeing. There’s no other pattern about which type of monster or any concentration in a particular area. Again, just what we would see in any normal year, but the frequency has gone up.”

  Varranor rolled his eyes. “I didn’t need an academy-trained mage to tell me that.” He looked over at Navera, who sat beside him as his acting second. “You said something yesterday about the drought causing the attacks?”

  Navera nodded. “That was the mage’s theory, yes.”

  Ameyron coughed. “Actually, it’s not a theory yet, it’s only a hypothesis.” He’d tried to explain the difference to them before, but it seemed to go in one ear and out the other, so he pressed on. “In order to test the idea, I need to consult records from previous years and see if there is a correlation between weather patterns and the rates of monster attacks, which will take some time to compile. Of course, correlation won’t prove causation, since they could both stem from some other, as-yet-unknown third factor—”

  “We don’t have time for that,” Varranor interrupted him. The commander seemed to have little patience for long-winded explanations. “You’ve already been here a month. Do you have anything else to offer me? Anything that I can actually use?”

  Ameyron felt sweat collecting on his forehead and wiped it away with the sleeve of his robe. The room was very hot and crowded with so many officers, and they were all looking at him expectantly. “Um, maybe.” He shuffled around his notes, then pointed to the map again. “I-I’ve noticed that no village seems to be attacked twice when soldiers arrived soon enough to drive the monsters away. I can’t say this with certainty, but it may be that they’re discouraged by the hostile response.”

  Varranor arched an eyebrow skeptically. “So you’re saying that we should just keep doing what we’re doing, and they’ll eventually give up?”

  Ameyron bobbed his head. “Yes, at least, I hope so.” He felt a lump rising in his throat and coughed again. “And perhaps you could concentrate your patrols in remote areas that haven’t been attacked yet, or where you failed to respond quickly during previous attacks. To be prepared for when the monsters strike.”

  Varranor frowned. “My patrols are already stretched thin. I’m doing the best I can to protect the entire state of Kyratia, and you have no right to say that the Storm Petrels have failed to do their duty.”

  “S-sorry,” Ameyron stammered out, bowing again. He’d been trying to use simple words that the commander could understand. Omalia had told him to focus on clarity, to explain things like he was speaking to a five-year-old, but that bluntness had backfired on him, too.

  Another thought occurred to him, but he hesitated to speak it aloud for fear of the warlord’s reaction. “I-if the drought worsens…”

  Varranor had already turned and started speaking to another officer, but Navera held up her hand to silence him and turned to the mage. “What was that?” she demanded.

  He shifted uncomfortably. “I only meant to say that if the drought worsens, these monsters may grow desperate with hunger. They could attack again even though they fear the soldiers’ retaliation.”

  Varranor shook his head, but there was no outburst of anger this time. “We’ll take your suggestions into consideration.” He pointed to the door. “You’re dismissed.”

  Ameyron bowed and hastily gathered up his notes from the table. He backed out of the War Room, bowing as he went.

  He let the door swing shut and leaned against the wall outside the War Room with a sigh of relief. The soldiers let him give his reports each day, but then they sent him away before they started discussing their strategies. At first, he’d found it frustrating not to know what they did with the information he gave them, but after a while he realized that it didn’t matter. They would use his ideas, or not, and nothing he could say would change their minds. And he felt more comfortable when they let him go back to the privacy of his borrowed office to continue studying the data. There he didn’t have to worry about Navera’s judgmental looks, Varranor’s temper, or the uncomfortable details of people dying and soldiers calculating which how many more could be lost.

  He didn’t know if anything he was telling them actually helped to make a difference, but he was trying. It was a return to the work he’d escaped when he went to the Academy, offering advice to dukes and warlords who may not like what he had to say, but he knew it was important. Not only was he demonstrating to them why scholars were valuable assets, which had already earned him some funding for the Academy due to Galenos’s gratitude, but there was also a great need. If his ideas could save even one person’s life, it would all be worth it.

  So Ameyron steadied his breathing and made his way down the hall, making sure not to drop any of his notes when he bowed to the military personnel along the way. If there was a pattern or a better strategy for facing the monsters, he would find it.

  Sympaia III

  Xeros rubbed his hands together until they tingled, then reached for his staff. It wasn’t anything elaborate, just a fallen branch they’d found in the forest and wrapped with rawhide; nor did he have expensive robes, only a deerskin draped over his shoulders. But he didn’t need the trappings or pageantry to call the power to him. This would be no show to awe the populace.

  He thought, privately, that the last high priest had put much effort into appearing awesome. He’d called himself Varula Soma, the embodiment of the god, and set about performing ‘miracles’ to impress crowds. He ignored warnings from the other priests when wyld magic had started behaving in unexpected ways, pushing on to greater heights. His own hubris had led to his demise.

  Xeros didn’t want to be like the last high priest. He refused to let the other priests name him Varula Soma, although he was the most powerful of all of the ones who were left and could have claimed the title. Humility seemed more suitable given their current exile. He would perform the spell that all of the clergy had spent months developing together and use it to drive out the usurper from their homeland, Kyratia. Maybe once they were back in the city and rebuilt their temple, he would claim a high priest’s title and accept what respect he had earned through his actions—but that was still far off in the future. For now, he would only focus on the task at hand.

  The priests, the ex
iled councilors, and the duke were all gathered outside of Sympaia to protect the city in case something went wrong. He could have used the city’s small shrine to Varula, but it was actually easier to be outside the city’s walls in a forest grove, and the tall trees around them provided natural cover for what he was about to do. Secrecy would prevent Galenos’s spies from learning about the attack and keep anyone from knowing about the duke’s involvement.

  Xeros glanced at Duke Kleon and Pelagia a final time for permission, then bowed his head. He sent a prayer up to Varula, lifted the staff above his head, and drove it deep into the dirt.

  He felt the wyld magic stir in response to his call. Power, starting with a trickle but slowly building up to a rush of energy, came up from the ground through his bare feet and the staff, into his hands. He let it build inside him, gathering as much as he could stand. It woke urges within him, animalistic needs to hunt and feed and mate, and he struggled to hold on to his human intellect against that roaring tide of instinct. If he called upon that magic too strongly, it would overwhelm him and he’d be lost to its whims.

  But Xeros had practiced handling wyld magic many times before. When he was almost at his breaking point, he pried his staff loose from the ground and thrust it above his head, loosing the power in a single, focused call. He saw nothing with his eyes, but he could feel it flowing out of him again and into the sky.

  Silence filled the grove. Xeros let his shoulders slump, drained from the loss of magic, and leaned against the staff to keep from falling. He stared up into the sky, which was strangely cloudless despite the winter season. The rain was elusive.