by Jess E. Owen
Jolted, Shard joined them, with a last look at Brynja, but she was back to her task of drawing the wyrm’s gaze with her fire. The brown male Shard didn’t know swung off to one side, joined by two more gryfons. He saw a third triad winging toward them from the orange haze and the squirming, thunderous chaos below.
The wyrm Rhydda seemed to have lost track of Shard, and chose her new target—the flicking torches, Brynja and Dagny. Shard flew snug to Kjorn and Asvander. It was as if he’d never left either them, and none of them needed to speak. He understood what Brynja meant, and why she’d said it, with no time to explain.
Like the eagles.
Rhydda swooped down. Brynja and Dagny dove, their torches threatening to gutter out, the uncertain light drawing her furious attention.
By silent understanding, Kjorn, Asvander and Shard shot down after them, an arrow with Kjorn on point. Like the eagles of the Voldsom, they would attack above and from the sides, to bring down a much more massive foe.
Brynja and Dagny brought the wyrm up short by flaring to sudden stops and bearing the torches high, threatening her gaping jaws with fire. Rhydda flared with a hollow grunt, whipping her spade tail toward the gryfesses—but they scattered away.
Kjorn slammed down between her shoulders. Shard landed hard on her haunch, Asvander on a thrashing wing.
She wailed in rage, then a long, low bellow Shard suspected was to summon help.
Shard focused on digging his talons into her leathery hide, timing quick, hard shoves with Kjorn to push her down. They were one single, fighting mind. His body rocked with her hard, deep wing strokes. He felt her jerking with the impact of more gryfons, from the sides, from below. Like the eagles.
“Your idea?” he shouted at Kjorn, and the golden prince shrieked a laugh, wings flashing wide.
“I think Caj would be proud, don’t you?”
Rhydda’s head flailed at the end of her muscled neck, the thick, sharp horns seeking any target. Shard heard a scream, and knew a gryfon had fallen. Blood pounding, he dug in, shoving. Rhydda’s spade tail curved, seeking targets but ruining her flight coordination. They fell, a knotted, writhing mess of gryfon and wyrm, leathery hide and claw and talon.
Haze and fire whirled around them.
They fell into the larger, squirming mass of battling wyrms and gryfons.
A smaller wyrm of near black coloring darted in, claws splayed toward Asvander. The Lakelander shoved off and away. The black wyrm ignored him, circling tightly to seek another target without harming the larger she-wyrm.
Kjorn roared a challenge, still dug into Rhydda’s shoulders. He clamped his beak on her neck. The smaller wyrm’s spade tail lashed toward him, but he didn’t move. With a roar, Shard leaped, throwing his body against the non-lethal muscle near the spade.
“Fly, Kjorn!”
Looking stunned by his near-death, Kjorn disengaged and fell away, swearing.
The gryfons holding Rhydda peeled off as other wyrms thrashed away from their fights and closed in to save her.
Shard let the wyrm fling him off his tail, and rolled through the air, flaring only when he sensed enough room for his wings.
The wyrms screamed in renewed fury, and as Shard righted himself and glided fast, seeking Kjorn, he saw why. Through the fire he made out smaller, darting, winged shapes pelting toward the wyrm’s heads, their faces, their eyes.
“Eagles!” Dagny’s bright voice was unmistakable through the din. The unexpected assistance drove the gryfons to fight with fresh vigor, reform their triad attacks, and drive at the wyrms.
And the doubled assault was too much for the foe.
Shard saw Rhydda, clear of her attacks, bleeding but whole, flying up over the clash.
Her bone-rattling roar sliced through the fighting. The wyrms broke off. One by one, they broke from the knot of battle. And fled.
Younger warriors, hot with the energy of battle, sped after them.
“Stay!” roared Kjorn. “Don’t pursue! Let them flee like cowards!”
She got away, Shard thought, trying to gain his breath and his thoughts. He had no time for his maddening frustration and disappointment. She escaped my words, and she escaped vengeance. But he had not imagined the vision in her eyes, the dream of that green land.
Maybe, yet, he could get through to her. But not that night.
A ragged cheer rose, lion roars, eagle screams. Voices shouted Shard’s name, Kjorn’s name, a dozen voices, then more, calling for their prince, and he didn’t know which one they meant.
He landed hard on the ground, leaving his wings open, and at a loss. All around, gryfons stooped and landed, propping their torches against rocks, calling out for their friends. Eagles glided fast over the scene, seeking the wounded.
Still bewildered by the turn of events, Shard decided he would go where he was needed, to help the injured. He turned to follow the alarmed cry of an eagle.
“Shard,” said Kjorn’s voice behind him. Shard stopped, holding a breath. During the battle, it had felt like another vision, a dream. But when he turned around, Kjorn stood there in the orange half light of the torches, bloody, disheveled, and majestic, like something from a legend. A warrior prince. “Shard, come with me, my brother. You have a duty.”
Shard gazed at him, with so much to say, but when Kjorn shoved back into the sky, Shard could only join him.
They flew high into the fire lit haze.
A torch bearer caught sight of them and followed, so all could see.
They flew until they could see all the war band scattered below. Shard saw Aesir, Vanir, ragged exiles and sleek, lean gryfons who reminded him of Vanir, but were not. He saw many of his own gathered pride, those healthy enough to fight. His heart beat a cautious rhythm of victory.
At Kjorn’s first, triumphant roar, all halted and turned their faces upward.
When his roar died away, Kjorn looked at Shard.
“They need to see you,” he urged. “Shard, they came for you. They need to see and hear you.”
Every muscle in his body shook, but hungry, hardened, battle-shocked eyes stared at him. Shard shook his head, then gathered his breath, and echoed Kjorn’s roar.
“Victory!” he shouted.
Kjorn laughed, and joined with his deep voice. “Victory!”
The cry took up. “Victory!”
“Victory!”
As the chant rose, Shard and Kjorn glided in a circle around the warriors, then landed in their rough center.
They stared at each other. Kjorn appeared taller than Shard remembered, brighter, and older. Shard wondered if he looked the same, and Kjorn answered the unspoken question.
“You grew, brother.”
Looking at him, Shard thought of all that bonded them, and the lies and mistrust and divisions that had parted them. Now, they seemed a distant thing, the problems of two other gryfons who no longer existed. “And we are, still?”
In Kjorn’s eyes Shard saw the hard winter, his flight, his trials in hunting him through the Winderost. He saw their own lies and revelations. He realized that Kjorn wanted forgiveness and friendship just as much as he did, and saw doubt that Shard would give it.
Kjorn stepped forward. “Always, Shard.”
“You came all this way to find me?”
Kjorn gave a weak, broken laugh. “What else was I to do?”
Tilting his head, Shard extended his wing, and with a grateful look, Kjorn stretched his own to eclipse it.
Aesir believed important things best done under the light of Tyr. But they had the blazing light of fire around them, and the white light of Tor above, and the stars of Midragur.
“Wind under me when the air is still,” Kjorn said. At first Shard thought he had raised his voice over the clamor, then realized all the others had fallen silent to watch them.
“Wind over me when I fly too high,” Shard said, quietly, only for Kjorn.
Kjorn’s wing pressed to his. “Brother by choice.”
“Brother by vow.”
Eyes locked, voices nearly breaking with disbelief, together they ended, “By my wings, you will never fly alone.”
Shard let loose a breath he felt he’d held all winter. Kjorn laughed and swept his wing over Shard’s head, running the feathers the wrong way. Someone raised a happy cry, and Shard thought it was Brynja. Then a new cheer began.
“Hail, Kjorn!” Firm voices of Aesir.
“Hail, Rashard!” Ragged, devoted Vanir.
“Victory!”
“Victory! Hail Kjorn! Hail Rashard!”
The cry swept them, thundered in rolling roars and eagle cries through the canyon, chased the fleeing wyrms, and pounded across the dead Outlands, their torches glowing like the light of dawn.
“VICTORY!”
~ 50 ~
A New Wind
THEY REMAINED ENCAMPED RIGHT where they were, to tend the wounded, to rest.
Before anything, Shard found and took the Vanir to his mother’s body. Together they sang the Song of Last Light. He offered to burn her body in the way of the dragons, but the Vanir, named Toskil, declined. He stood just taller than Shard, his feathers warm brown and gray, with a paler, flecked face.
“This land was her home for ten years, as harsh as it was. She raised me here.” His gaze lifted up over his mother’s body to the dawnward horizon. “She would be glad to rest here. With my father.” He looked at Shard with a half glad, half puzzled expression. “You and I were born the same spring, my lord. We would have grown up together.” His ears flicked back, and he looked again at his mother’s body.
Shard watched him quietly. “We’ll come to know each other now.”
The Vanir dipped his head in acknowledgement.
Shard nodded, hesitated, then saw it best to leave him alone.
He found Kjorn first.
The gold prince was conferring with a huntress of the sleek, shore dwelling gryfons who called themselves Vanhar, but when he spotted Shard, he drew away.
Ears perked their way and whispers fluttered as they walked out to the edge of the fire light. They’d made bonfires to light the area, to warn against wyrms, and to warn them away.
Shard turned to Kjorn. Away from the fires the night was chilly, frost gathered on the rocks and his breath misted between them. A question nagged him, and he dug a talon against the hard ground.
“How did you do it? Asvander said the warriors always lose themselves in fear, that they’ve never been able to use a strategy before. But you did. It was amazing.”
“We remembered ourselves,” Kjorn said simply, his blue eyes near gold in the firelight, searching Shard’s face.
“How?” Shard demanded. “They fell apart at the Dawn Spire.”
“They were surprised at the Dawn Spire. And we were prepared.” Kjorn’s gaze grew shrewd. “And a wise old warrior suggested that before the battle, we all take a moment to think of what we love. And remembering what we love,” he said quietly, his gaze hard on Shard’s face, “we would not forget ourselves.”
Shard nodded, almost wanting to laugh. So simple, and yet. “What warrior was that?”
Kjorn draped his wing over Shard’s shoulders. “Walk with me, Shard.”
Dawn saw them gathering to return to the Ostral Shores.
Your uncle is alive.
It pounded through Shard’s skull, Kjorn’s simple words, over and over. He saw the spade tail lash, saw Stigr crash to the dirt. His nightmares of blood and black feathers overlapped the memory.
“Vanir to me!” he called as the great band of gryfons rose on the wind. They all turned their faces dawnward, to the Ostral Shores. Distantly, they’d heard the wyrms in the night, so knew they hadn’t fully fled the Winderost, but Rhydda and her horde did not return for them.
Stigr is alive, Shard.
He saw the black gryfon, lying in the red mud, bleeding, his wing severed.
Your uncle is alive.
“Aesir of the Dawn Spire to me!” Kjorn’s voice echoed in the fragile dawn chill. “Company of Rok, son-of-Rokar, to me!”
The sleek huntress Kjorn had been speaking to the night before called, “Vanhar to me!”
“Lakelanders!” boomed Asvander, simply.
Shard shook his head, hard. They flew in clean, divided formations so they could keep track of their numbers. The Vanir insisted to Shard they were all healthy enough to fly, and that it was time. If, in two days, no more had come to Shard’s beacon, nor to the fires after the Battle of Torches, as they called it, they knew no more would come.
The outcast eagles who’d found Shard’s beacon remained at the Voldsom with Hildr and the Brightwing aerie. She’d laughed when Shard expressed surprise at them coming to the gryfons’ aide, and told him only that he was behind the times.
The few Outland painted wolves ran beneath the flying gryfons, for a young rogue named Fraenir seemed convinced they would be accepted into the Serpent River pack, who now dwelled near the Ostral Shores.
A warm scent drifted to him, then her voice.
“You seem pensive, my lord.”
Shard flapped once, turning to see Brynja gliding neatly beside him. He’d seen and imagined her vividly so many times that it felt natural to see her there, her broad, ruddy wings brushed by cold wind, her face touched by pale light.
It seemed natural, but not real.
“Brynja,” he whispered, and knew his beak remained open.
She searched his face. “I didn’t seek you last night, because I knew you had much to do.”
“I would’ve found you,” Shard said, “but…” She’d already said it. Shard closed his talons, trying to remember what it was he’d said in all his daydreams of her that had worked. “I’ve missed you, Brynja. I can’t change the way I fled and left all of you, but I am sorry for it, and I’ll make it up to all of you.”
Stupid. Not all of you. Just you, just you.
“You already have.” Her gaze darted around to the joined flocks of gryfons, and her expression quirked in amusement. “Shard…” her ears flattened, and she looked forward toward the dawn. “Kjorn told you of Stigr?”
Shard held a breath, then loosed it. “He did.”
“He doesn’t blame you, you know. No one does.”
“Except King Orn.”
“Well.”
They flew in silence. Shard could feel the host of Vanir at their backs, watching him.
I should choose a Vanir. One of my own. Accepting her would be too much to ask of them, after they’ve lived ten years in exile in a wasteland. Because of Aesir.
But it was not their mate he was thinking of. It was his own. He drew a breath, narrowing his eyes. And their exile was not because of Brynja. They needed a strong queen. He needed a strong queen. His thoughts flung in all sorts of useless directions, most of which were chilled with doubt.
“Shard,” she said, and he looked at her. “I missed you, too.”
Her eyes were bright with the dawn, with the same light he’d seen the night he told her his heart. It had faded then, overshadowed by duty and poor timing. It didn’t fade now. He thought of all that he would have to ask of her. Leaving her home, her obligations, her family. He couldn’t ask it of her.
“And Asvander?” he asked tightly, looking forward.
“Asvander missed you too.”
Shard barked a laugh, glancing forward toward the host of Lakelanders who led their formation. “Brynja…”
“Rashard.” Her eyes gleamed like dragon gold. “I’m not letting you fly away from me, ever again.”
When he looked at her, he realized that the worst of his struggle had been trying to make decisions that were not his to make, and his doubts melted now in the warmth of realizing that she had already decided.
“Now,” she said, when he only stared, and tucked her talons under her feathers, “why don’t you tell me about that new scar on your leg?”
No one grudged Shard flying a little faster as they approached the Ostral Shores, creeping a bit ahead every sunmark, unt
il he outpaced the rest of the band by a few leagues, and was the first to arrive at the Ostral Shore, sunset on the second day. A lakeland sentry saw him, and would have questioned, but then he spied the distant mass of gryfons behind.
“You’re Rashard?”
“I am.”
“There’s someone waiting for you.” The sentry banked, stretching a wing toward the water, and Shard’s blood beat fast in his ears as his gaze roved, searching.
Then a shout from the ground. “Shard!”
A black wing flared, drawing his eye.
With a sharp sound, Shard dove, his heart clutching, diving as fast as if he meant to attack the black gryfon who ramped and called to him from the shore of the lake.
He landed hard and graceless near the lapping waves, talons crunching the wet pebbles. He managed a breath, and looked up.
Stigr bounded to him, and stopped. Stigr. His uncle.
Your uncle is alive.
So Kjorn had said, and so, there he stood. Taller than Shard. Onyx of feather. A single, fierce green eye, like Ragna’s—the other, scarred shut from his battles in the Conquering. Before Shard could form words, his gaze dragged to Stigr’s shoulders. One wing was perfectly whole. Where the other had been lay a raw, gnarled scar, and a longer, thin line, still mending, ran from the base of his neck to his hip. Sorrow hollowed his joy at finding his uncle alive, for Stigr, who had taught Shard all he knew about sea flight, night flight, and the gifts of the Vanir, would never leave the ground again.
“Shard,” the black gryfon murmured.
A quivering wave of nausea, a wash of the whole winter and all his trials buckled Shard at every joint. He sank to his belly in front of his uncle and touched his beak to the wet pebbles.
“Oh, Uncle. Please forgive me. Forgive my foolishness. Forgive me for running. I thought…I thought you were dead. I fell witless. I thought—I didn’t think I would ever see you again. It’s all my fault. Please forgive me. I would take your wound if I could.”
The shush of lapping waves and quick cries of distant lake gulls thundered in Shard’s ears.