The Golden Griffin (Book 3)

by Michael Wallace

  “If something happens to us,” he said, “the chicks will be your responsibility until they’re fledged.

  “Nothing will happen to you,” Darik said.

  “Nevertheless.”

  “In that case, I’ll do my duty.”

  “Good. There’s a chest upstairs with a rope ladder in case you need to get down from here and can’t fly.”

  Darik nodded. “May the wind be at your wings.”

  After the others had flown off, Darik sat on the ledge and looked down the mountainside. He sat there until shortly before dusk, when it was time to see to the chicks. He climbed the stairs to Kellum’s pantry, where he found several hares hanging from hooks. The rider said the chicks were young—hatched after the battle, in fact—so he only took one, plus a knife on a shelf so he could feed them pieces.

  He took the stone stairs up another level, to the aerie. The room was about ten feet high and thirty feet wide. Big enough for several griffins, but right now there were only two little chicks huddled near the window. They turned when he entered, and squeaked anxiously.

  The chicks weren’t much bigger than large cats, though both their back paws and their front talons seemed oversized for their bodies. Their wings and eagle-like heads were masses of fluffy white feathers. No flying yet. The lion-like part at the rear was pudgy with a light, tawny fur. Like big, fuzzy balls. They waddled over, still chirping.

  “Oh, look at you,” he said. “You’re adorable. No, stop nipping at me. I’ve got your supper right here.”

  He dismembered the rabbit with the knife. They gobbled down the pieces. When they’d finished they looked chubbier than ever. He returned the knife to the pantry, then brought the chicks a bucket of water. When they finished drinking, he sat near the window and coaxed them over. They approached shyly at first, then nuzzled against his hands.

  Could I do this?

  He’d grown up surrounded by people. Balsalom was the curry pot of the earth, a mixture of people and spices from all different lands. The griffin riders were so few and so isolated. Had Kellum even seen another human since the battle?

  Daria may be flying hundreds of miles up and down the Dragon’s Spine at the moment, rallying her people to battle, chasing dragon wasps from the mountains, but wait until the war ended. What then? Would she live alone with her griffins? Maybe she’d take a husband and raise children, but even then she might not live with her children’s father, if her own parents were a guide.

  “I understand now,” he said. His voice sounded like lead as it came out. The griffin chicks cocked their heads and looked at him quizzically. “Daria asked herself the same questions. And she decided no.”

  A deep sorrow settled in his chest. He swallowed hard. The chicks crawled onto his lap. He buried his hands in their warm, downy feathers.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Daria entered the river again. This time she carried her clothes in a bundle slung over one shoulder, together with her swords and Joffa’s tether. A raw deer haunch hung over the other shoulder.

  Palina paced back and forth on the riverbank behind her. “Be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “Don’t touch his beak. And don’t challenge him. When you put on the tethers—”

  “Enough, Mother.”

  The golden griffin watched her approach. A full day had passed since she’d fed him the rabbit, and by now he would be ravenous. Daria had done her best to encourage his hunger. The rest of the deer had been roasting over a fire on the riverbank for the past two hours. Enticing aromas curled into the air. The two tame griffins waited nervously at the edge of the forest, afraid of their larger cousin on the boulder. The golden griffin had screamed the first time he saw them. Joffa and Yuli had refused to eat until Daria drew them into the forest, out of his sight.

  When she reached the boulder, she tossed up her clothing and gear, but didn’t let go of the deer haunch. She scrambled up.

  “You be good now. This is not for you. Not yet.”

  Daria watched him carefully as she dressed and strapped on her swords. She touched him with the tether. He twitched and squawked.

  “It’s not a snake—it won’t bite you.”

  She tucked the tether under her arm and let the end trail across his paw. Get him used to the feel of leather. Then she shaved off a strip of deer meet, still in its hide. She tossed it toward the front of the boulder. The griffin leaned forward as if to take it. As he did, Daria drew up the tether with the intention of throwing it over the griffin’s back while he ate.

  Without warning, the griffin wheeled on her. She flinched back. His beak snapped at her. Before she could react, it had the entire deer haunch and was turning away again. He pinned it under one enormous claw and tore off huge chunks with his beak.

  “Why, you greedy, treacherous vulture. Give me that back.”

  He squawked in triumph between gulps.

  Daria wasn’t really angry. In fact, she was encouraged that he seemed so pleased to have outwitted her. One of her worries had been that the wild animal’s mind would be too different, too foreign for her to communicate with. Yet he clearly saw her as a rival, which was a promising first step on the path toward considering her his master.

  She moved around the griffin’s flank while he ate. Her hand touched his fur and feathers, and although he twitched, he didn’t pull away. She let the tether rest against his back. When she got to the wound, she pulled away the bits of moonbalm that still clung to his fur and feathers. The flesh was closed, with a good scab.

  He finished eating and turned his head to look at her.

  “What is your name?” she asked. “What shall I call you?”

  It was a question for herself rather than the animal. She’d been turning it over since the previous day. None of the traditional griffin names sounded right. Something descriptive, maybe. He scratched against the rock, making fresh marks next to all the other gouges. Those talons were impressive, wickedly curved like a dragon kin’s scimitar. She had no doubt he could tear a sheep in two with those talons alone.

  “How about Talon? It will sound boastful when I ride you back, it’s an arrogant move to swoop in riding a wild golden griffin in the first place.”

  Daria rubbed his back while casually draping the tether around his neck. She fastened a single, loose knot. It wasn’t much, but any more would rouse his suspicions.

  “All right, Talon. Ready for a ride?”

  She turned toward the shore and cupped her hands. “Get ready with the others!”

  Palina returned a short nod, then made her way back to Joffa and Yuli. She climbed on Yuli’s back, while stretching a long tether to a simple loop around Joffa’s neck, as if he were a fledgling being taken out for training.

  Daria took a deep breath. She guessed Talon would be too sore to fly, at least for another day. Most likely he’d dance around and try to pitch her into the river. But she wasn’t sure.

  “Don’t panic.” She put her hands on Talon’s back. “It will go easier, I promise.”

  He gave her a suspicious look. Then he jerked his gaze toward the riverbank as Palina and the other two griffins took to the air. He tracked them through the sky.

  Daria jumped onto his back and dug in.

  The griffin screamed and whipped his head around to tear her loose. But Daria ducked out of the way. She leaned back, bobbed from side to side and even jumped down, then back up again while he snapped at her. She never let go of the tether. His body tensed as he went for her, and she prepared for a sudden heave. When he did, it was powerful, but not as quick as what a young white-crowned griffin could manage, and she held on easily. He tried one more time, then settled for shaking her and complaining.

  “What’s all this screaming and fuss? I’m sitting on your back. I’m not going to stab you or pluck out your feathers. Tomorrow morning we’ll try again, and maybe you’ll feel like flying. For now, I’m going to sit up here until you settle down. After that—”

  Talon leaped fro
m the boulder. His wings stretched, and he gave two powerful flaps just before they hit the water. Then he was beating ferociously, climbing straight into the air. Daria held on for dear life.

  About a thousand feet up, he made a big loop and returned to the river. He headed upstream, back toward his mountain aerie and the nesting ground of the other golden griffins. But Daria’s mother was in the air already, and now she bore down from above, together with Joffa and Yuli. The white-crowned griffins were skittish, jumpy, but did as they were told.

  With a scream of frustration, Talon tried to break through, but they forced him toward the trees. Daria couldn’t steer with her knees—they were dug in too tightly to the griffin’s ribs—and so she pulled with the tether. Talon ignored her direction.

  When he got to tree level, he rolled. Under normal circumstances, Daria could handle a rolling griffin, but he came in at the level of the tree tops. The tips of pine trees grabbed at her cloak and whipped in her face. Her legs fell loose, and when the griffin began another climb, it was all she could do to keep the tether wrapped around her waist and shoulder.

  She was crawling up his back when he pulled back his wings and plummeted toward the ground. As he did, he rolled again. Daria lost her grip. She fell to the end of the tether, where she caught hold.

  “Give up,” she shouted at him as he beat his wings again. “You won’t lose me.”

  But he was still losing altitude, albeit at a slower rate. He dragged her into the pine trees. They thrashed at her face and filled her mouth and nose with needles. A branch slammed into her ribs. She couldn’t climb the tether, she couldn’t get above the trees. She could barely hold on.

  Daria let go and flung herself at the top of a pine tree. She clung to its swaying crown. Talon flew away with a victorious cry.

  Palina found her a few minutes later. She circled above on Yuli while she directed Joffa in for a landing. Now burdened by two heavy bodies, the tree groaned and swayed. Branches snapped off. Daria threw herself onto Joffa’s back. He struggled to get clear of the tree and airborne again. Moments later, mother and daughter landed their griffins back on the riverbank. Daria checked herself for broken bones. None, but she’d suffered more than a few bruises.

  “I almost had him. I can’t believe he got me with that last trick. Joffa tried that once when he was a fledgling.” She scanned the skies. No sign of the golden griffin. “That was a good tether.”

  “No matter,” Palina said. “I’ll short trim mine and we can share. So long as we avoid any more enemies, we’ll be fine until we’re home.”

  “Did you really think I was going to give up so easily?”

  Palina sighed. “I was hoping. But no, I didn’t think you would.”

  “Let’s hope Talon also underestimated me. That will make him easier to catch.”

  “So what, we’re going to wander into the canyon against all those golden griffins? How will we do that without getting torn apart?”

  Daria thought about how she’d gained Talon’s back in the first place. “How about a peace offering?”

  “They’re not starving. They’re not going to be enticed by a few scraps of venison.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about venison. What’s a griffin’s favorite food?”

  “Young, juicy lambs.”

  “It’s the least the flatlanders can do for the war effort, don’t you think?”

  A broad smiled stretched across her mother’s face. For the first time in days, Palina looked pleased with her daughter.

  #

  Daria and Palina were deep into the Wylde. To find lambs, they’d have to return to settled lands, so they flew south along the eastern spine of the mountains. A vast plume of smoke rose to the south. It burned for miles, engulfing one entire mountain.

  Daria pulled alongside her mother and gestured. What do you think—dragons?

  Palina returned a grim nod.

  Had another dragon arrived to challenge the victor of the earlier battle? Or was something else going on?

  Instead of fighting the smoke and fire—which would take them close to the site of the dragon battle—they hooked west over the mountains. It was green and damp and unburned on the other side. From there, they continued south until they reached the northernmost of the Free Kingdoms.

  They camped in the mountains that night. In the morning, they followed a rushing brook that passed through woods and meadows. In the lowlands, they flew over a man with several cows, who readied a sling as they passed, prepared to defend his cattle as best he could.

  Daria signaled to her mother. Keep going.

  Poaching lambs was a chancy business. A griffin was too large and conspicuous to circle unseen high in the sky like a hawk or eagle. Solitary raids might be met with a hail of arrows. It would be easy enough to swoop in en masse and devour an entire flock, but even the most standoffish griffin rider recognized that the flatlanders deserved a life free from harassment. Also, Daria’s people were too few to sustain prolonged hostility with the vast kingdoms and cities of the plains and valleys.

  For the most part, riders thus contented themselves with what they could hunt, fish, and gather themselves, saving sheep raiding for periods of hunger and desperation. During those times, it was easy to justify in the name of keeping the mountains safe from dragon wasps.

  The problem with the present situation was that starvation stalked the land on both sides of the Spine. Bandits had already decimated many once-fertile grazing lands, had carried away or butchered entire herds. If the shepherds and farmers resisted, they would be carried away or butchered in turn. Meanwhile, there was plenty of game in the mountains.

  A few days earlier, when flying to the keep where she met Darik, Daria had been shocked by the destruction in the surrounding lands. This area was little better. But shortly they passed several freeholds where the stone walls remained in good condition, smoke curled from the chimneys of tidy mud-and-timber houses, and farmers were in the fields, harvesting wheat and barley.

  They found a boy with half a dozen sheep, some of them young enough to be called lambs. It was such a pitiful flock that Daria ignored her mother’s signals to swoop down and snatch a couple. Instead, they scoured the countryside until they found a larger flock grazing in the meadows outside a walled village. They came in fast and loud, the griffins screaming to send the flock into a panic. Arrows from the village chased away the griffins. But the sheep had scattered, and moments later Joffa and Yuli were beating their wings with their prizes in hand.

  Daria brought them down in a wooded vale a few miles east of the successful raid. The griffins complained loudly when the women secured the lambs to their backs instead of letting them feed.

  Daria pushed Joffa’s head away as he turned and tried to nip at the carcass on Yuli’s back. “Don’t you try it. No, I’m serious. You’re eating venison for supper again.”

  That night, Daria bedded under Joffa’s wing in the sturdy branches of a large maple tree, the sheep carcasses tied above the ground to keep them safe from bears and wolves, but far enough from the griffins that they wouldn’t be tempted into a late-night snack.

  She pictured herself on Talon’s back. It was that last roll that had done it. He’d jerked her legs free, then flipped her off with that clever maneuver. Next time, she would be ready.

  #

  They woke to the smell of burning trees. When they crossed the mountains again, they entered a smoky maelstrom. Daria had slept poorly, waking throughout the night from dreams of taming the golden griffin, and her first, muddy thoughts were that they’d gotten lost the previous night and crossed further south.

  The two women drove their griffins higher until they were above the worst of the smoke, into the frigid air a thousand feet above the highest peak in this part of the range. If the cold hadn’t already snatched away Daria’s breath, the horrific destruction below her surely would have.

  The fires had spread, jumped a river valley, and seized another mountain. It wasn’t particularly
dry, and she couldn’t see how it was growing so aggressively, unless—

  A dark form swept through the smoke below. It left a curling, twisting vortex in its wake. It was a dragon, with several wasps and their riders flying several hundred yards off its flanks.

  The dragon was several miles north and at least two miles below, so it was hard to tell the beast’s true size until the wasps curved in to fly closer to its sides. Then Daria gaped.

  It had to be a hundred feet long, far bigger than the larger of the two dragons she’d watched battling a few days earlier. Its scales shimmered such a deep, gleaming black when they touched the light that they appeared almost iridescent, like a flake of obsidian. A single, curved horn rose from its head.

  It was the victor. The smaller dragon from the battle. After destroying its enemy, it had then devoured it—scales, bones, wings, and all—and somehow taken on its bulk.

  The dragon reached the edge of the burning fire and was soon flying over unburned trees. Their branches shook from the firestorm blowing to the south. Red and gold leaves lifted skyward on columns of hot air.

  The dragon opened its mouth, and a cone of flame roared out. It swung its head from side to side. Beneath, the forest caught fire and burned.

  Daria let out her breath in a long hiss. This was how it spread. Not a side effect of two dragons battling, but wanton destruction. This monster had emerged in all its power and strength and was now flying up and down the mountain range, unleashing hellfire.

  A flock of crows burst from the burning woods, followed by sparrows, robins, jays, hawks, and other birds scorched from their homes. Below, Daria imagined, thousands of woodland creatures, anything without wings, were roasting alive in the roaring inferno.

  Helpless to intervene, the women and their mounts paced the dragon and its retinue for several miles. They flew as high as they could, risking at any moment the chance that the dragon kin would glance skyward. Then the chase would be on.

  As they entered the Wylde, some of the creatures fought back. Giant owls dove at the wasps, and several ravens at one of the dragon kin to peck at its eyes. A giant emerged on a rocky ledge and hurled a boulder down at the dragon. The stone was the size of a small cottage, and if it had struck a full blow might have brought the monster down, but the dragon veered to one side and it whistled by. Two more giants emerged, chucking rocks the size of a griffin’s head. One of them smacked into the dragon’s chest as it reared back. The blow made a sound like a splitting tree. The dragon roared in pain.