In spite of myself, I couldn’t help but think: Go get them, Grimshaw!
An eagle’s screech reverberated from all three as they dove forward into combat. Shaw’s talons and beak were a blur that tore or bit limbs from each foe. What the other two did so surprised me that I almost stood up to see it more clearly. Each of the pair faced down three of the largest wyverns remaining. The two griffins crouched into defensive positions…
And then they swung their lion’s tails around to the sides and made them undulate like snakes. A gleam from each of their tails caught my eye. In a flash, I realized that both griffins had tipped their tails with a hard, shiny metal point.
Their tails danced and moved with a grace that I hadn’t thought possible, the wyverns’ eyes locking onto the movement. A couple shook their heads as if to clear them. Then the smaller of the two griffins moved to attack. In the blink of an eye, he tore the throats out of his enemies as they remained in a trancelike state.
The larger griffin slashed his foreclaws out to one side, decapitating the two wyverns on his left. He stiffened the end of his tail and then plunged the metal point like a spear into the eye of the remaining one. Neither of the two so much as paused to survey their handiwork, leaping to join the fight that still swirled around Grimshaw.
Another eagle cry, this one from much closer. Yet another griffin fought a quintet of foes on the stern of the grounded boat. Beak and talons flashed, and the guts of two wyverns spilled out onto the fouled deck. The other three reptiles charged in, smashing their opponent back into one of the tangles of fishing net.
The griffin fought back furiously, slashing another foe to pieces and pushing back across the deck towards the bow of the wrecked boat. Loops and rills of netting draped over all of the combatants, though the pace of battle was fierce enough that none paid it any attention. The last two wyverns moved in and tried to crush their opponent against the boat’s wooden railing.
With a crack, the railing gave way. All three creatures rolled backwards across the sand and then down into the small slot canyon right below where I crouched in relative safety. Nightmarish hisses rose up from the canyon below.
As well as the despairing cry of the trapped griffin.
Chapter Thirteen
The smells of warm sand, sweat, animal musk and blood wafted up to my nose.
“Damn it all!” I cursed.
The Dayna of the LAPD, the Dayna of six months ago, was a much more sensible person. That Dayna knew very well that she didn’t have a ‘dog in the fight’, as her friend Shelley would have said.
But the Dayna of the here and now wasn’t about to let one of Shaw’s kin come to harm if she could help it.
I gripped my gun so tightly the sweat in my palm threatened to make it squirp out of my grip. I climbed out of the bush, moving to the edge of the berm. Now I was exposed to anyone who wanted to swoop in and make me several inches shorter by severing my stupid head.
The griffin lay about fifteen feet below me and a little off to the left. Coils and snarls of netting and deck rope wrapped so tightly around the creature’s body that all but a slight motion of the beak and neck were impossible. Movement further down the canyon to my right caught my eye. One of the wyverns, a spiky-looking reptile the color of a fresh oil slick, thrashed its way free from the pieces of net holding it. With a teakettle hiss, it advanced towards its trapped foe.
No matter how far I leaned out, I couldn’t get a good shot at it from where I crouched. My throat brutally dry, I forced myself to swallow. It was now or never.
I sat down and swung my legs out over the side of the berm. Then I pushed off with my free hand and went skidding down along with a miniature landslide of sand. I landed with a grunt, water squishing around my feet and flowing over the tops of my shoes. Icy needles pricked their way through my absorbent socks.
The wyvern was surprised to see me, to say the least. It obviously could tell I was a human, but I wasn’t running screaming from it. The reptile was only ten or so yards away, but it raised its head ominously, looking big and dangerous to any potential foe.
It also gave me a perfect target. I raised my gun, carefully took aim at the monster’s scaly forehead, and squeezed the trigger three times.
My shot grouping was pretty bad. One bullet went high and threw up a little puff of sand from the top of the far berm. Another dug out a bloody crater in the wyvern’s throat. Not great, but the last went exactly where I wanted it: right between the creature’s eyes. Said eyes went out like a light that had been switched off. With a thump, the thing fell dead in its tracks. Green and red ichor lay in chunks all down the back side of its head.
Behind me, the griffin continued to struggle. I didn’t see the remaining wyvern anywhere, so I holstered my gun and sloshed through the water and wet sand to see if I could help out. Though the griffin could only move its head so far, one of its eyes swiveled to watch me as I approached.
“It’s okay,” I said, putting as much assurance into my voice as I could. I even raised my hands to show I meant no harm. “I won’t hurt you, I’m a friend of the griffins. My name is Dayna Chrissie, and I’m here with Grimshaw of the Andeluvian Air Cavalry.”
I got a blink of surprise from that. Then I got a surprise of my very own. The griffin spoke to me in a bell-clear, melodious woman’s voice.
“I understand,” she said. “I am called Hollyhock. You, I should name ‘Dragon-Hand’, for you shoot flames from your fingers! Truly, my father Grimshaw keeps strange company.”
That reply made me do a double-take. Actually, it made me do a triple-take.
For starters, I was as guilty as a chauvinistic man in assuming that all the warriors in a lance were males. Maybe it was because I’d only met male griffins like Grimshaw and Firewing so far. More likely it was because I’d mentally categorized griffins into the ‘all looking alike’ category.
That categorization fell to pieces at a second glance. A fringe of downy feathers graced the trailing edge of Hollyhock’s wings. Her eyes were set slightly wider apart, with gold irises tinged jade green at the outer edge. Finally, her build was slighter, and where Shaw’s beak and neck were sharp, straight lines, hers were softly curved. Taken all together, these features made her look distinctly feminine, though no less deadly than her companions.
But what really made the thunderclap go off in my head was the fact that she called Shaw her ‘father’. For some reason, it hit me like a ton of bricks: This was Shaw’s daughter.
“Uh, yeah.” I grasped a length of the net, trying to figure out where to start to untangle the mess. “I can only shoot fire with a special device from my world. And I can only do it a few times.”
Hollyhock strained against the piece of net over her face as the section I pulled went taut. A snap of her beak and a small chunk peeled away, freeing her neck another few degrees. Her gold-green irises swiveled like a pair of rifle sights as she spoke again.
“Let us hope you can do it at least one more time,” she said calmly. “There is a wyvern coming up behind you.”
I didn’t hesitate: in a flash, I pulled my gun and swung around.
The emerald green scales of the remaining wyvern gleamed in the light as it stalked down the canyon towards us. It rested one taloned foot on the still-steaming corpse of its predecessor and let out a long snarl. The thing wasn’t even that close, but I could smell its rank breath. Carrion and something like hot metal made me wince.
I squeezed my weapon’s trigger again and again. In fact, I emptied what was left in my magazine at it. One of the thing’s eyes went dark. It howled and fled back up the canyon into the darkness.
“It will be back,” Hollyhock stated. “You must free me, hurry!”
I holstered my gun with shaking fingers. I had an extra magazine, but it was in the pack at the top of the berm. Along with a Swiss Army knife I could have used to help cut this damned netting. Of course.
“Doing my best,” I said grimly.
It felt like it
took forever, but I found another length of netting that I could pull taut. It compressed the griffin’s throat, making it tough for her to breathe, but she could reach it to slice through it with her beak.
A cough. “Better. One more coil, and I shall be able to move my neck freely again. I am lucky that my sire brought you.”
I methodically combed through the massive tangle of lines. It took real effort to tamp down the gut-wrenching urge to hurry. I had to find the right one to pull!
To keep the awful feeling of panic at bay, I remarked, “So…if you’re Grimshaw’s daughter, why don’t you speak like him?”
I received a puzzled blink in response. “How else should I speak?”
“I’m used to hearing a few more ‘thees’ and ‘thous’.”
“Ah. My father is of the older generation. The traditional ways of speech die hard.”
I found the right line to pull. Leaning back, I gave it a yank as I heard a rapidly approaching hiss from behind me. Hollyhock’s beak made short work of it, leaving her head and neck free. She began desperately tearing at the other lines that bound her as I whirled around. Reflexively, I groped for my now-empty weapon.
The wounded wyvern, its right eye a bloody, cratered socket, half-flew and half-slithered down the canyon. I’d forgotten how fast they could move. Time slowed to a deadly crawl as the thing’s mouth gaped open, revealing row upon row of needle-sharp teeth.
With a ka-WHAM, a boulder dropped in from up above, crushing the monster. The thing’s tail twitched once, and then went still. The largest of the griffins I’d seen in action hovered above the narrow canyon for a moment, kicking up a dusty vortex of sand and mud. Then he furled his wings in midair and landed with a splosh in the wet sand.
“I did not mean that. To rob you of your kill,” the larger griffin said, in a voice carrying a lot of bass. For a second I thought he was apologizing to me, but his eyes met only his trapped companions. His sentences were short, almost choppy, but easily understood and also lacked Shaw’s archaic inflection. “You could have handled it. You had a strong human here to protect you.”
“Go pass a clutch of eggs, Blackthorn!” Hollyhock shot back. She returned to the task of snapping and biting her way free of the nets.
A deep-throated chuckle was all she got in reply before Blackthorn turned to address me. “Do not mind her. I am her elder sibling. I take joy in ruffling her feathers.”
That got my mind racing again. Sibling? So this is another of Shaw’s kids!
And just like that, the day promised to get even more interesting.
Chapter Fourteen
The griffin spread his magnificent wings for a moment as he bowed his head to me. Aside from his size, Blackthorn’s distinguishing feature was a sprinkling of black spots that ran across his face from either side of his beak up to and over his eyes. Depending on the angle one viewed him from, he either looked as if he were scowling or weeping.
“I am Blackthorn of the Reyka Pride,” he announced. “The battle has been won. You have helped us. You kept one of us from being hurt. So my Lance Captain owes you. I shall fly you out. Take you back home to Kescar.”
“Ah. Well, thank you for the offer,” I managed to stammer out as my stomach vehemently voted ‘no’ against another flight. “I’d have done the same for any griffin I could help, Blackthorn. But I’m not from Kescar. My name is Dayna Chrissie, and I’m traveling to your homeland with your father, Grimshaw.”
“Dayna Chrissie? Your name. It sounds familiar.”
“Because she is from that other world,” Hollyhock put in. With a last couple of snaps of her beak, she finally pulled free of the nets. “Grimshaw has spoken to the Elders on her behalf and bestowed great praise upon her.”
That was encouraging. It was nice to know that Shaw had spoken well of me, especially considering the subject matter. Most recently, I’d asked him to press the Elders on my behalf for information about the stone dragon, Sirrahon. They in turn had made him swear an oath not to leave the grounds of Fitzwilliam’s palace until he’d spoken with Albess Thea. The one person in this world who refused to see me.
Or was being kept from seeing me.
“Then we speak later,” Blackthorn declared, and I had to shield my eyes as he and Hollyhock took off in a whirlwind of beating wings.
I opted for climbing out of the ravine the old-fashioned way. It was only about fifteen feet, but the sides were crumbly sand for the most part. I had to scramble onto the firmest parts and clamber up exposed roots and the odd rock.
A bright golden lion’s paw extended down to me as I got close to the top. Grateful for the help, I grabbed it. The paw curled about my hand and effortlessly pulled me out of the ravine to stand atop the berm. It was the griffin I’d seen fighting next to Shaw. This one had a coat a shade or two lighter than the others, except for where a cut along one flank stained it red. The griffin sat looking me over curiously from head to toe for a few seconds. Just at the point when things were starting to feel awkward, he spoke in a voice that was deep, but an octave above Blackthorn’s.
“I mean you no disrespect. You are the first human I have seen up close. You are strange looking, but I suppose that the Eternal Sky has a reason for the way you are put together.”
Not much I could say to that. “Yeah, there are days I wonder about that, but thanks for the helping hand. Or paw, if you will.”
The griffin made a cawing sound that approximated a laugh. “I am Lance Captain Ironwood. Grimshaw has told me who you are. Have my younger siblings been so rude as to not offer to fly you out from down there?”
I almost laughed myself, but for different reasons. Another older brother? How many kids did Grimshaw have?
“One was trapped, and the other did offer to fly me out but I turned him down. Your father leapt into battle once he saw your lances go into action. With me still atop his back. So, the idea of flight–”
“Say no more.” He shook his head. “One of his three True Born I may be, but his rash love for combat only bred through completely in Blackthorn. Yet one needs a cooler head at times. It is why I command these lances and not he, though he is the greater fighter.”
“You all seem tough enough,” I said honestly. I noticed that Ironwood had called himself ‘True Born’ with more than a little pride. I certainly heard the capital letters he put into the title. “The other reason I wanted to climb up here is that I needed to get my backpack.”
“You mean this?” Ironwood reached off to one side into the bushes and held up my sand-smeared pack. It seemed undamaged, so I quickly slipped it back on. The Lance Captain turned his side to me and added, “Mount me so that we may join the others by the remains of the Kescar ship. I need to hear from my lances.”
“Um…”
“Still your fears. I shall trot, not fly.”
With that reassurance, I climbed onto Ironwood’s back with about as much grace as a child scaling a haystack. Once I had my leg thrown over his side, the griffin moved out at a slow walk along the canyon lip. When we got to the seaward end, he spread his wings for balance as he half-slid down the sandy incline and took us over to the shattered remains of the fishing boat. The griffins had clustered around the corpse of their fallen comrade. What was left looked like a bald eagle and a ginger cat that had been hit by the business end of an eighteen-wheeler.
Shaw bounded up to me as I slid off of Ironwood’s back. His breaths came out in heavy wheezes, but otherwise he seemed no worse for wear. He let out a cry of relief and draped a paw over one of my shoulders.
“Dayna, thou art unhurt?” he asked. “Shamed I would be if my boast to the centaur wizard was for ill. Battle madness overcame me when I should have been at thy side.”
“I’m fine,” I replied. “You’d be proud. I even got one ‘kill’.”
His golden eyes went wide. Then he turned, keeping his paw on my shoulder, showing me off to the group. “One kill to the human from another world! Thou canst see why I take pride in the nam
ing of Dayna Chrissie as mine own friend.”
The assembled griffins let out a chorus of caws and squawks in approval before their Lance Captain raised one taloned paw for silence. “Honored are we that my sire and his friend have joined us in this victory. We shall be her honor guard for the flight to the aerie. But even as we tell of our victory over the swarm, I need the leader of each lance to speak.”
The griffin who stepped up first had a curved, feminine neckline and a fringe of feathers like Hollyhock. Flecks of gray mottling her coat implied that this griffin was closer to Shaw’s age. My guesses were borne out as she spoke in an older woman’s voice.
“As the second of thy lance, I report two injured warriors, none seriously. Thou hast been blessed in this battle, Captain.”
I raised my eyebrows a little at that. The speaker appeared to be unhurt, but the two griffins behind her looked pretty beat up. One even held an obviously broken forepaw aloft so that he wouldn’t put weight on it.
“Did you find any human survivors in the hold of the ship? Or in the woods surrounding the beach?”
“Nay, Captain, I did not.”
Blackthorn stepped up next. The spots across his face definitely made it look as if he were scowling right now. “Two injured. None serious. One fallen in battle. Honorably.”
“Name the fallen.”
“Cloudburst, of the Korlson Pride.”
Ironwood looked pained, but not surprised. “I told them. I told the council that she was too young to be in a combat lance.”
“I agree. I was not allowed to teach her the Way of the Serpent.”
At the mention of that, Shaw removed his paw from my shoulder. He peered intently at both Blackthorn and the Lance Captain, as if weighing everything that was said.
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