My eyes closed.
Dream-Esteban had asked me: How could you leave me when you have all this?
I don’t know, I whispered. How could I stay, when I would lose all of this here?
As if in answer, I stood before the angry eyes of King Fitzwilliam’s court. Lord Ivor and his son, the knight Sir Ivor, stared at me with hard, glittering eyes. The glitter was reflected in the field of cyan-hued cornflowers that grew all about me, preventing me from reaching the throne to appeal to the king. A scratch at the oaken doors to the throne room caused all eyes to turn to see who it was that demanded entry.
With a start, my eyes snapped open. The fire was down, almost out, and the moon hung much higher in the sky. Shaw remained asleep at my back, an inert, reassuringly warm mass. I peered blearily into the night. A mist had rolled in and clung to the ground, or at least it seemed to. I could hardly tell if I was awake or more than half asleep.
The scratching sound again. Closer now. Furtive. As if it were trying to approach without being seen.
At the edge of my vision, I made out a black shape in the fog. A pair of golden eyes gleamed at me, unwavering and intent.
A ripple ran through Shaw’s body and he let out a truly awe-inspiring belch before settling back to sleep with a loud series of snores.
The eyes froze in their motion. Then they vanished, along with the dark shape.
I shivered. I meant to turn, to wake Shaw up.
Instead, it was his paw that shook me awake.
“Huh?” I grumbled, before realizing that Shaw’s noble eagle head was framed against a bright sunrise the exact shade of ripe tangerine rind.
“Wake, Dayna. Thou canst be no sluggard today.”
I stretched and began rubbing my eyes. I tried to sort out what I’d dreamt versus what I’d actually seen last night. In the end, I had to ask myself the obvious question: who or what could sneak into an aerie stocked to the brim with fully-grown griffins?
I had no answer for that one. Maybe I’d dreamed the whole thing?
“I’m up, I’m up,” I said with a yawn. The fire had gone out, but I could probably use one of the MRE heating elements to warm up some of the slop that the U.S. Army called instant coffee.
“That much is good,” Shaw said gravely. “Tonight is the Rite of Autumn Winds. Which means that my offspring shall be here shortly to meet thee. Needs I must be elsewhere, for I do not wish to change their fighting focus from the Valkir Pride to me.”
Right. I got up and squinted into the sunrise, which had shifted color from tangerine to ripe, fleshy pink. It was the perfect color for a contest ‘to the blood’ day.
Frying pan, meet fire.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I gave my three-foot long griffin shillelagh a twirl as I listened to Ironwood give out final commands to his lances.
I stood at the edge of the raised sparring platform, trying and mostly failing to keep my eyes off of the far end of the field. The Valkir Pride had brought four lances of griffins to the match while Reyka remained with its core three. That meant Reyka was only slightly outnumbered at four to three. But the Valkir griffins had a certain grimness to their bearing that bothered me.
“Valkir has been trying out a number of radically new tactics in order to beat us,” Ironwood stated calmly as he paced before the assembled lances. “My guess is that they are driven by desperation, since we’ve clouted them to the ground in every match since last autumn.”
He got a chorus of upbeat feline yelps and avian chirrups in reply. I’d have thought that he was simply rallying the troops, but with gatherings this small, the truth was easy enough to ferret out. Shaw’s children really had transformed this pride into a high-morale force.
“So, we need to stay flexible. Stay ready to shift at a moment’s notice till we figure out what they are up to.” Out in the audience, one gold-and-gray furred paw rose in response. Ironwood nodded. “My second wishes to speak her mind. Please, share your thoughts, Alfhild.”
I recognized the gray-flecked griffin as the reeve who’d reported on the injured members of Ironwood’s lance in the battle with the wyverns. She bowed and spoke again in the dignified voice of an older woman.
“Lance Captain, I never question thy plans,” Alfhild said respectfully. “Yet this seems unlike thee. Leaving the initiative to the enemy.”
“We follow the principle of the second-to-strike,” Hollyhock corrected her. “We absorb the blow, understand what their objective is, and then take the offensive.”
Interesting, I thought. Humans would probably call that ‘counterpunching’. Yet Alfhild has a point. The objective is already known. After all, I will be standing right under it.
“My lance and I will be in first contact with the enemy,” Ironwood declared. “Hollyhock shall defend the middle zone with the remaining two lances, ready to assist at the front or the rear as needed.”
Blackthorn raised an eyebrow. “And I?”
“You get to be the inner defense. Any drake or reeve gets within your striking distance of the nest, I want you to crush them.”
“That is acceptable to me.” The larger griffin nodded tightly and flexed his talons in anticipation.
“One final word on this match: You all know that it is to the first blood. Battle madness, while not a thing to be feared, can easily get out of hand when blood is spilt. We must watch for this and not succumb.”
A younger griffin off to my side spoke up. “Valkir will take no such cautions.”
“Perhaps. But my siblings and I…we fly on disturbed winds right now with the Elders. The last thing I want at the moment is to spark a blood feud with another pride.” He spread his wings and reared, forepaws slicing the air. “So, for the honor of the Reyka, let us show these fledglings how flying and fighting is done!”
A chorus of leonine roars and flapping wings followed him into the sky. Holly stayed back for a moment to give me some last minute advice.
“Dayna, as the nest keeper, you should watch the sparring unfold,” she began. “But should you see it draw past the midline of this field, retreat back to the safety of the columns. They are designed to slow a griffin’s advance and force them to furl their wings. It will buy me enough time to come and help you, should any be stupid enough to challenge my brother Blackthorn.”
“No worries there,” I reassured her.
She took off in a flurry of wing beats, seeking to catch up to the two lances already aloft. Blackthorn banked in my direction, acknowledging my presence with a dip of his wings. I waved back as he hovered for a moment in plain view, then slowly descended into the brush below and off to my right. To my surprise, only a few of the other remaining griffins of Reyka or Valkir remained in flight; the others also landed and went to ground.
Everything went creepily quiet for a solid minute. Then two.
Then five.
This was starting to feel a lot different than the match against Korlson.
A startled cry came from far off, in the underbrush. The sound of tussling, crunching branches, and griffin snarls. The noise died out, then the same thing happened further up the field. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a flash of white light from one of the ravines, right before another snarling cat-fight between two griffins broke out.
Suddenly the entire midfield erupted in a mass of wings and talons. The ranks of the Valkir rose as one against both Ironwood’s single lance and Holly’s two. The snap of jackhammer-tough beaks and the scrape of claw against claw rattled my nerves, even at a distance.
Soon, griffins began to fall away from the fight. One had a bloodied neck, another dropped from the sky with a badly gashed wing. The Valkir were fierce fighters, but I noted immediately that they were far from mindless. Their tactics were pinning the Reyka lances where they were. What’s more, they were driving a wedge of warriors between Ironwood’s group and Holly’s larger one, keeping them separate and under such pressure that they could not use the Way of the Serpent.
A
single thought sent a chill through me: I still hadn’t seen Thundercrack, the only griffin on the field larger even than Blackthorn. Something told me that I better get under cover of the columns by the nest’s flag. I listened to that something as I gripped the handle of my club more tightly and found it slick with sweat.
I’d taken maybe three steps back when the Lance Captain of the Valkir Pride erupted from the tree line at the base of the platform. He let out a gut-churning roar that belonged in a monster movie. His razor-sharp beak and claws were fully extended and reaching out for me like something out of my worst nightmares.
I can be brave sometimes, but not that brave. I let out a shriek of my own and tried to run. My movements felt as if I were wading through fresh tar. So slow. Too slow. The look in that griffin’s eyes said nothing about stopping with a single taste of my blood, either.
A darker gold blur hit my attacker in mid-leap.
Blackthorn’s midair tackle slammed the two into the corner pillar, snapping the stone column off at its corroded base. The impact knocked me to my knees, both of which would have been badly skinned had I not swapped out my work slacks for jeans. The sour taste of rock dust filled my mouth. I scrambled as quickly as I could for the center of the platform and backed up against the column holding the banner. The branches of the thorn bush at the base of the column crackled under my shoes and scratched at my ankles. Worse, the banner’s cloth made an annoyingly loud snap in the breeze, and I reached up my free hand to still it.
The cloud of dust from the falling column finally settled. I peered through the remaining pillars to see Blackthorn’s form, lying still on the outer platform. His chest moved, so he wasn’t dead, at least. But Thundercrack had done something I’d thought impossible. He’d knocked out one of the fiercest griffin warriors I’d ever seen, taking him down like a lightweight.
My gaze swung down one row of columns, then the other.
I didn’t see the Valkir leader anywhere. That was impossible, unless…
My fingers closed on the banner where I held the bottom corner in one hand. I jerked the cloth down from where it hung as hard as I could. It fell around my head, draping over my shoulders like a red and black poncho.
I ducked as a shadow dropped out of nowhere to perch atop the central pillar. Talons raked the air just inches above my head. I let out another definitively non-heroic shriek as I struck out blindly overhead with my club. It was a clumsy, backward overhead swing, but it connected.
A sound like someone’s knuckle cracking rent the air, then a high-pitched yelp, followed by a snarl that wouldn’t have been out of place from a lion carving out his place on the Serengeti. Only this lion talked as well.
“I’ll take first blood from you for that,” Thundercrack snarled as he shook his injured forepaw, annoyed. “Just one cut. But no one said how deep I could make it!”
His body supported by the pillars around me, he danced from column top to column top as I fought to stay away from him. He reached down like a cat trying to pull a mouse from a hole, his claws gouging deep scrapes in the stone around me. The dust he kicked up choked me, and at his next lunge I dropped down to my already smarting knees to avoid his killing grasp. The only thing keeping him from finishing the job was his great size; where another griffin could slip through the pillars, he had to remain atop the entire nest structure. But even so, he kept on shoving his forepaw and shoulder into any gap he could, coming closer on every lunge.
Then a second shadow appeared overhead against the sun. With a shriek, Holly swooped in from above and to the side, raking Thundercrack’s flank. Shavings of gold-brown fur floated down to my level as the larger griffin was bowled off the side of the platform.
“Yield, Captain of the Valkir!” Holly snarled. “Your warriors are marked with first blood, and so are you!”
“Not till I take your blood in turn!” he snarled back. The two griffins faced off, Holly smaller and with the higher ground atop the pillars, Thundercrack larger and harder to reach. “Try your martial art on me, child of pride, child of arrogance! The Valkir do not watch others’ tails!”
A thought struck me. If Thundercrack couldn’t be distracted by the Way of the Serpent, why not something else?
I set down the club and pulled the banner from around my neck. Then I twisted it tight. The two griffins were still at a standoff as I stepped out to the edge of the pillars. Holding the cloth between my thumb and forefinger, one hand kept tight against my chest, I whipped my makeshift towel out to flick the very edge of Thundercrack’s long, lion tail.
It was a poor slap, something he probably barely even felt. But it was enough. The drake’s head turned. His beak opened in a snarl of recognition and anger.
Holly leapt forward. Talons extended, she grabbed the bigger griffin’s head in her paws. For a split second, I thought she was going to try and break his neck.
Instead, she put on a last burst of speed with her wings and slammed Thundercrack’s head to the stone floor of the platform with a resounding crunch. The Lance Captain’s limbs moved spasmodically for a second, then went still.
Despite the fact that he’d just been trying to maim me, or worse, I ran over to the fallen griffin. I shifted one of his burly forepaws out of the way so I could put an ear to his chest. His fur smelled of musk and ocean spray, but it was short and fine against my earlobe. Dimly, I heard the steady beat of his heart.
I relaxed a bit. Griffins were simply incredibly tough customers when all was said and done.
Holly, on the other hand, had gotten angrier. I heard her squawking and raised my gaze from Thundercrack’s still form to where she harangued the now conscious Blackthorn. Her sibling looked more annoyed than anything else as he rubbed the side of his neck with a paw.
“Stupid, stupid! How could that lout have knocked you out that way?” she hissed at him. “What were you thinking?”
He scowled. “Only about what must be done.”
“Not unless I am–”
“I am ashamed,” Blackthorn said loudly, cutting Holly off. “Dayna, I have failed you. I was taken in by a trick. I fell in battle. Lucky you were nest keeper. Else we would have lost.”
“You didn’t get taken in,” I reassured the crestfallen drake. “That just looked like bad luck to me, the way you two hit the columns.”
“Yes, bad luck,” he agreed quickly.
“And bad luck that Thundercrack here suffered battle madness at the end,” Holly said, giving me a meaningful look.
I paused. Thundercrack had sounded like he’d wanted to get me, true. But he’d also sounded pretty darned coherent for someone who was ‘suffering madness’. Then again, honor was at stake here, and Ironwood was concerned about the start of a blood feud. So, my guess was that Holly was trying to save everyone’s face.
The Valkir had put up a good enough fight to bring them back some of their lost honor. I still had my swab samples. And as for Thundercrack, no one could blame him for being a little over-zealous in his pursuit of victory if he’d had a temporary bout of insanity. Everyone ended up with something. Hopefully that included a concussion for the Lance Captain, but I would take what I could get.
“Yes,” I said, and Holly’s expression brightened as she realized that I had ‘gotten it’. “It was definitely a stroke of bad luck. No one could blame him if his blood was up, and victory so nearly in hand. Or talon.”
“Or talon,” Holly agreed. She moved to my side, motioning for me to mount. “Let us go, Dayna.”
I got on board as best as I could, handing the banner over to Blackthorn as I did so. “Where are you planning on taking me, Holly?”
“First to your cabin, to pick up your magic brush kits.” I could hear the smile in her voice as she added, “But afterwards…we fly to the Rite of the Autumn Winds.”
As I felt the push of her strong legs and stronger wings catapult us from the ground, I realized that I’d just helped the Reyka pride to its win over the Valkir. My chest filled with the feeling of exhi
laration and lightness, and for a moment I thought: There could be worse things than to be in the Air Cavalry if I had Holly as my friend and mount.
Maybe Shaw was right. Maybe I did speak as one hatched from the egg.
Maybe there was more than a little griffin in me now.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Holly turned on one wingtip into the wind, steering us away from the griffin aerie. We were joined along the route by a multitude of other griffins. My ears were buffeted by the sounds of wing beats as we merged into the vastness of the gold-furred and white-feathered prides. The sky turned from the blue of the morning to a deep aquamarine as we drew close to the border of the Griffin Lands.
We flew over a sound or fjord that arrowed away to the north. Puffs of vapor rose up from the water. I leaned over as far as I dared and spotted a pod of black and white whales breaching as their route passed under ours. They could have been orcas, but in Andeluvia they could also have been an intelligent species all their own.
Streamers of purple smoke rose from the base of a clump of mountains on the west side of the sound. As we drew closer, I realized that the smoke rose from nine roaring bonfires set at intervals along a wide sandy beach. Each fire supported a blackened metal tray the size of a barn door. Branches laden with red and gold leaves crackled merrily on the makeshift braziers, filling the air with the promising scent of freshly cut apples.
The mass of griffins landed, split roughly equally amongst the nine fires. One of the council members sat or reclined on a raised dais in front of each of the smoke columns. In the middle distance I spotted Belladonna, reclining as if she were a bedraggled eagle-lion goddess. Holly had chosen the fire presided over by Elder Ulrik. The older drake sat regally in his spot like a statue before an ancient Egyptian temple.
Grand Theft Griffin Page 16