:Apology accepted,: Snowfire replied immediately. :And congratulations; you were truly magnificent!:
:I was, wasn’t I?: The reply was made with as much wonder as pride, and Snowfire chuckled under his breath. :Well, if Hweel could come help carry the body of the Little Dog, I can take the Big Dog, and we can drop them somewhere that they’ll never be found. Is wyrsa meat poisonous?’:
:Not that I know of,: Snowfire told him after a moment of thought. :I never saw dead scavengers around the carcasses, anyway.:
:Then we’ll dump them in a crotch up in the canopy,: Kel decided immediately. :Their masters will never find even a bone, then, and it will give the scavenger-birds a good meal or two.:
So that was what they did, he and Hweel laboring heavily up into the canopy until they were well screened from the ground, leaving the two bodies wedged tightly into forks in neighboring trees. Perhaps eventually bones would fall down, but not until every scrap of flesh had been picked away or eaten by insects and larvae, and by then the matter of their masters should have been settled.
Afterward, both owl and gryphon rested while they conferred with Snowfire.
:I honestly didn’t see anything that would make me think there were still any villagers there,: Kel told the Tayledras, as he cleaned the monsters’ blood fastidiously from beak and talons. :I will grant you, we weren‘t overhead long, but I can’t imagine where they would put the villagers if there were as many fighters as the boy thought.:
Snowfire thought back on the brief look that he’d had through Hweel’s eyes, and tended to agree. :We know they‘ve fixed the bridge, and that most of the buildings are still intact; we know that the enemy is still in possession of the place because of all the horses we saw. That’s really what we came to find out. If you want to go back, I’m certainly ready.:
Kel sighed, and spread wings which were probably starting to ache. He’d put his flying muscles through a great deal of abuse, and just about now was when they would start to complain. :I think we ought,: he replied, trying to sound reluctant. :I hate to admit it, but I’m not good for much more.:
:Oh, I think you could rise to the occasion if you had to,: Snowfire said encouragingly. :But I see no reason why you should have to. You were mighty enough tonight. Let’s go home.:
:Very well,: Kel replied, and took off - carefully - gaining altitude until he was above the treetops.
Snowfire began the slower process of making his way toward the clearing where the dyheli waited.
But Kelvren could not contain his pleasure in silence. :You know, I really was good tonight. Wasn’t I?:
Snowfire sensed a certain wonder behind the boast, and smiled. :Definitely,: he replied with warmth, too busy picking his way through the canopy to give a more elaborate reply.
But Kel didn’t seem to mind; he was still intoxicated with success - and mostly talking to himself. :I was,: Kel sighed with content. :I really was. . . .:
Six
Snowfire kept having to hide his smile the next day when he encountered Kel; the young gryphon was so pleased with himself - not in any truly vain way, but simply full of joy and astonishment at his own daring deeds. He had probably been a great deal less sure of himself at the time than he had pretended. In fact, he reminded Snowfire of a certain young Tayledras after his first successful mission, some few years ago. It was odd how certain things transcended the boundaries of species.
Nightwind, of course, had made a great fuss over Kel; over both of them, actually, but she was more demonstrative with Kel. So when, after greeting the gryphon, he’d gone to her to ask her to make sure he hadn’t done any damage to himself, he also asked her why she’d been so effusive.
“I was beginning to think you were being a little too enthusiastic,” he told her. “You know, the way doting mothers make a great fuss over a child who’s done something perfectly ordinary? I don’t mean to try to teach you your job, but Kel’s old enough to see through that sort of thing.”
“Gryphons, especially young ones like Kel, are a lot more fragile than you’d think,” she told Snowfire, as she checked his arm wound and rewrapped it. “They need a great deal of encouragement before they become secure in making their own judgments. It’s a fledging sort of thing; they really go through several stages of fledging, and the most critical is in learning to trust their training and make their own decisions instead of waiting for orders from someone else.” She sealed down the end of the bandage with a firm finger. “He really was very clever to remember Tadrith Wyrsabane, and the Changed creatures he encountered. I can promise you that not one in a dozen of the gryphons I’ve tended would remember a tale that old. Tadrith is ancient history, and the young ones tend to dismiss history out of hand.”
Snowfire thanked her with a smile, then stretched out along the rock rimming the larger pool to soak up the sun. That was his prescription for muscles aching from his unbalanced climbing last night. “I think he may be trying to model himself off this Tadrith,” he suggested. “It’s just a thought, but the way he Mindspoke the name suggested something of the sort to me last night.”
Nightwind unwound her hair from the knot at the back of her head, and shook it free; it fell in rippling waves to her waist. “I can certainly think of worse examples, and gryphons that have tried to follow them. Well, for one thing, trying to model himself off Skandranon would be a very bad thing to do. We don’t have any stories of Skandranon as a young, rash, and fallible gryphon, only those in which Skandranon succeeds beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and pulls off another miraculous, heroic coup. By this time there is so much myth associated with the Black Gryphon that trying to emulate him would be impossible, and failing would be devastating. No, he could do a lot worse than try to copy Tadrith Wyrsabane; by the time Tadrith was growing up, White Gryphon was well established, and we have plenty of tales about how difficult it was for him to make a name for himself in his father’s shadow.”
Snowfire rolled over on his stomach, and she began working on his back muscles without his having to ask. He sighed with content - and occasionally grunted in pain - as her hands worked out knots and sore spots. He decided to change the subject - he really wasn’t in the mood to discuss gryphonic myth. “About those little monsters - “
“Yip Dog and Attack Dog?” she said; the terms were so strange he wasn’t certain he’d heard her correctly, and craned his head around to give her a puzzled look. She giggled at his expression. “That’s what I thought of when Kel described them to me. The little one was like the small dogs one of the Haileigh peoples created. They’ve made pampered, spoiled pets out of a breed that was supposed to be alarm-dogs; very small, very fast, very annoying. When they see a stranger, they swarm him, yipping; we call them Yip Dogs, and when I reminded Kel of them, he agreed that the smaller creature was exactly like a Yip Dog.”
“Huh. Good enough name for it,” he replied. “So you think this Yip Dog was meant to raise alarms?”
“I’m sure of it - and I’m sure Kel was right. From his description, it detected the aura of magic that is a part of every gryphon.” She sounded quite positive, and after a moment of thought, Snowfire was inclined to agree tentatively with that conclusion. He couldn’t think of any other reason why it would have been able to find Kel in the heavy cover of the forest canopy.
“Do you think, perhaps, that it was intended to raise an alarm against people screening themselves magically, or using magic to disable sentries? Or was it set to catch mages trying to use magic to get past magical alarms?” he asked curiously.
“I can’t think of a better reason to have them,” she told him, as she bore down hard on the small of his back. “After all, they don’t know that the mage-storms are over, and a mage-storm could disable a magical protection. Animals, on the other hand, sleep more lightly than humans, and they aren’t disabled when mage-energy is disrupted. Fortunately, Kel followed his initial impulse, which was to go away from the place the Yip Dog was guarding. Otherwise, I think the whining might ha
ve escalated to something a lot louder. That’s what the real Yip Dogs do; if you stay near what they consider to be their territory, or worse, try to approach it, they get positively hysterical.”
“And the other - obviously the term Attack Dog suits it.” Snowfire rested his chin on his folded hands to keep it off the hard rock beneath him. “In fact, that’s probably why they were paired. If whatever the Yip Dog was warning about kept coming, the Attack Dog was to hold it where it was until the masters came.” He grinned a little. “It must have been awfully puzzled about how to get at Kel!”
“Fortunately for us, the masters didn’t consider a sortie by air.” She kneaded his shoulders vigorously and he grunted. “Does that hurt?”
“Yes, but don’t stop. No, you’re right about that. They must not know there are Tayledras anywhere about, and they’ve never encountered Kaled’a’in before. All I can say is, it’s a good thing we didn’t have any human scouts on this one.” The more he thought about it, the more grateful he was. Tayledras scouts would have sent birds in, seen nothing to worry about, and might perhaps have been tempted to come down out of the trees and go in afoot to recconoiter. They would never have been able to escape the fast-moving monsters - and only an eye-shot would have killed the beasts, given the way that Hweel’s talons just skidded off the scales.
“The Yip Dog was probably alerted by physical attributes such as scent and sound as well as by magic,” she agreed. “It wouldn’t be very bright to have them sound alarms only for the presence of magic.”
I’m just glad there were only two of them. “I saw them through Hweel’s eyes, and the things did look like wyrsa,” he told her, wondering if she had any more insights gleaned out of Kaled’a’in history for him. “Or rather, it looked as if their ancestors could have been wyrsa. Now, that triggered a dream last night of all kinds of creatures that looked as if. they also could have been bred from wyrsa, and that made me wonder when I woke up this morning if the being that Darian described as a ‘demon’ and the creature it was riding could have had wyrsa ancestors.” He cocked an eye back at her.
“That must have been one hell of a dream,” she observed. “I’m glad I didn’t share it. Still.” She paused to work on a particularly bad knot in his neck, and he clenched his teeth to keep from yelping. “The story says that the wyrsa Tadrith fought were definitely intelligent. And there is no reason whatsoever that there couldn’t have been more of them created somewhere else. Or at least, more wyrsa Changed in different ways. The beasts aren’t exactly stupid, so it’s not that great a jump to significant intelligence.”
“Intelligence enough to realize that it would be to the monster’s advantage to cooperate with a human?” he hazarded. “And given that we have a mage with these barbarians who, we assume, already knows how to make Changechildren - “ He took a deep breath as she let up on his shoulders a bit. “You see where this is going.”
“Yes, and I don’t like it. But it does make it all the more imperative that we concentrate on keeping Starfall safe rather than messing about with these people and alerting them to the fact that we’re here.” He felt her hands starting to tremble. Was the imperturbable Nightwind actually afraid?
She should be. Intelligent, humanlike versions of wyrsa! That is a truly frightening thought.
“How did Darian sleep last night?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject herself.
“Wintersky says he had a couple of nightmares, but nothing that even woke him. That’s enough, thanks.” He rolled back over and let the sun work on his chest muscles. “I don’t know what tonight will bring, but so far - I’m going to assume that minor nightmares are good, but the ones that send him out of sleep screaming in hysterics are bad?”
“As a general rule; we don’t want him assimilating too much, too fast.” She stretched herself out on the rock beside him “Ah, that feels good. He’ll probably have a hysterical one in a few nights, though. That is, if what Tyrsell did fades out at the rate I think it will. It might go more quickly; he’s a boy with a strong will, and that’s likely to make him fight what we put in place.”
Snowfire sighed. “Wonderful. Well, if he gets too hysterical for me to handle, remember your promise.”
She laughed. “Big, brave Tayledras warrior worried about a little boy’s nightmares?”
“Big, brave Tayledras warrior needs his sleep, or. he isn’t going to be much good at protecting annoying little Kaled’a’in trondi’irn,” he growled, cracking open an eye to see which side of her was uppermost, and smacking her on the rump when he had a target.
That, of course, led to her rolling him into the water, and him pulling her in, and a conversation that had nothing whatsoever to do with Darian, Kelvren, or wyrsa.
Darian woke screaming from a nightmare of fire, to find a sleepy, yawning Snowfire kneeling at his pallet, shaking him gently. “Easy, Dar’ian,” the Hawkbrother was saying, as if he had been saying the words over and over for some time. “It’s all right; you’re just dreaming. Wake up, little brother - “
There was a lot of light around; where was it coming from? “I’m - awake,” Darian said, feeling dazed and confused, and still full of a sourceless grief and fear. “I’m awake - “
“Good.” Snowfire smiled, but he had to put up a hand to cover his mouth as it turned-into a yawn. That was when Darian saw the source of the illumination, after Snowfire moved. There was a very dim globe of light hovering just at Snowfire’s shoulder, and Darian stared at it, distracted for a moment. It startled him, but Snowfire didn’t act as if it was something strange.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to it.
“My mage-light,” the Hawkbrother replied casually, as if he conjured such things all the time. Perhaps he did - and Darian just hadn’t been awake at the right time to see them. He had been so exhausted these last couple of days that he went to sleep almost as soon as the sun went down. “Would you like it a little brighter?” A heartbeat later, the glow intensified a measurable degree.
“You can make those?” he said, staring at it. “Really? Justyn couldn’t - “
Then all at once, as the sound of his own voice screaming Justyn’s name echoed in his memory, his fear and grief had a source; his throat closed up, and he fought back tears. A man shouldn’t cry; tears were useless. They hadn’t brought back his parents, had they? “Justyn’s dead, isn’t he?” he whispered, closing his eyes to hide the pain. “He’s really dead.”
“Yes, little brother, he is,” Snowfire replied quietly, with an odd inflection in his voice. Darian opened his eyes, to see the Hawkbrother looking down at him with - what? Pity? Understanding? He couldn’t tell; he hadn’t seen anyone in Errold’s Grove wearing either expression around him.
Just then, over on the other side of the hut, Wintersky snorted in his sleep, turned over, and mumbled. That seemed to make up Snowfire’s mind about something.
“Here,” he said, getting to his feet, and holding out his hand. “We shouldn’t wake Wintersky, and I don’t think you’ll be getting back to sleep soon, so let’s go for a walk.”
Darian hesitantly accepted the outstretched hand; Snowfire pulled him to his feet, then turned toward Hweel’s perch and held out his arm to the huge owl. He wasn’t wearing his arm-guard, and Darian gasped and winced as Hweel stepped onto the bare flesh - but the owl barely closed his feet around the arm and half-spread his wings to keep his balance instead of maintaining it by gripping the arm.
Snowfire turned to give him a reassuring smile. “Remember, Hweel isn’t an ordinary owl; I’m only going to take him outside to let him step up onto the roof. He can be very soft-footed when he needs to be for me.”
Yes, but if he gets unbalanced and can’t save himself, he may forget what’s under those talons - Mindful of that possibility, Darian stepped in front of Snowfire and held the curtain of vines aside so that the Hawkbrother wouldn’t have to juggle vines and owl at the same time. With a nod of thanks, Snowfire stepped out into the night, with the mage-
light trailing at his shoulder. Darian followed him.
Once outside, Snowfire raised his arm just enough that Hweel could move onto the end of an exposed roof-beam. Hweel stepped off his arm carefully, settled his feathers, looked all around, in that bizarre way only owls could. His head went nearly all the way around, then he settled on a direction, crouched down, and pushed off, flapping hard, vanishing silently into the darkness. Snowfire turned, just as silently, and after a backward glance at Darian, walked slowly along the path.
After a breath of hesitation, Darian caught up with him. Wintersky had given him what he called “sleeping clothes” - that was a new idea to Darian, who generally slept in that day’s shirt and put on a clean one in the morning, but he’d obediently changed into the odd garments every night. He saw now that Snowfire wore very similar clothing; a draped, pullover shut of some light, loosely-woven, cool material, and drawstring trousers gathered at the ankle made of the same stuff. Darian felt a little like a ghost, walking barefoot through the sleeping camp in the pale garments.
Ghosts . . . how many ghosts haunted Errold’s Grove now? One, at least. Or would Justyn have stayed to haunt the place?
“What are you thinking?” Snowfire asked quietly, hardly above a whisper.
“I was thinking - about Justyn,” he replied, feeling sorrow again rise to close his throat.
“I think that he must have been a very good and brave man,” came the quiet reply. “People of his sort do not need to linger, haunting their old homes; ghosts are those who left things undone, and I cannot think he left anything undone that truly needed doing.”
“Where - “ He couldn’t manage anything more.
But Snowfire must have guessed his question. “Having had no personal experience of one who has gone, I cannot give you firsthand evidence,” he replied, as one hand somehow came to rest on Darian’s shoulder as a comforting weight. “But - well, I know enough folk who have, whose word I trust, to make me certain that we do not simply cease to be. But as for the nature of the path he took, the faith we Tayledras profess tells us that each path is different, according to the belief and the nature of the one who takes it.” He paused. “I am not certain what your people believe, but would you care to hear what one who had been a Herald supposedly told one of my people?”
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