Eyrie

by K Vale Nagle

  Eyrie

  Gryphon Insurrection Book 1

  K. Vale Nagle

  STET Publishing, LLC

  Contents

  Hatzel

  Reeve Brevin

  1. Zeph

  2. Redwood Valley Eyrie

  3. Hatzel

  4. Kia

  5. The Forger

  6. Merin

  7. Saltpeter

  8. Jun the Kjarr

  9. Wingtorn

  10. Flameworks

  11. Insurrection

  12. Predators and Prey

  13. Conflagration

  14. Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  Cover art by Jeff Brown.

  Interior art by Brenda Lyons

  Interior graphics by Crystal Gafford of Crafty as a Coyote.

  Published by STET Publishing, LLC, Denver

  WWW.STETPUBLISHING.COM

  WWW.KVALENAGLE.COM

  Copyright © 2019 K. Vale Nagle

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition

  ISBN-13: 978-1-64392-001-6

  For Sare, who wanted more novels with gryphons and fewer novels with people.

  Hatzel

  Gryphon

  Reeve Brevin

  Opinicus

  1

  Zeph

  Thirty feet up a tree that reached twice that height into the forest canopy, Zeph clung beak-down and surveyed the forest floor. Several large, flightless ground parrots pecked at crushed berries. Violet stains covered their green plumage. The berries were casualties of a conflict much higher up. Two flying squirrels fighting on the sunny tree tops had dropped them, splashing Zeph with juice when the berries landed. While the rush of sugar the berries offered was tempting, that was short-term thinking. Instead, he groomed the juice from his feathered face, left the area, climbed one of the many massive redwoods, and glided back to a good vantage point. The local ground parrots had become wary of the fresh scratches on trees that marked the climbing habits of gryphons. Not that ground parrots were particularly bright birds. The species, as a whole, survived mostly by virtue of laying many eggs, foraging effectively, and running away at the slightest provocation.

  A plump parrot, a full four feet in height, shouldered the younger birds out of the way. There were a few squeaks of indignation, then the birds all froze and looked around to see if anything had heard them. Zeph remained unmoving against the tree, his banded brown fur and feathers matching the slits of light against the bark. Backward-facing dewclaws on each paw held him in place and even allowed him to slowly climb higher, should the need arise.

  Several more parrots peeked out from the overgrowth and jostled each other to peck the last of the berries. Just as the original plump one took a swipe at its rivals, Zeph pounced from the tree, snapping the parrot’s spine on impact. The other parrots fled in all directions, and he set off after the next largest. Thick ferns blanketed the dimly-lit forest floor, providing cover if the parrot could slip out of view. Heavy storms normally provided lightning to burn away the ground cover during the summer months, but this year there hadn’t been any fires, and the vegetation was at its thickest in living memory. The parrot squeezed under a rotting log. Zeph leapt over it and spread his wings, gliding in pursuit. Thick vines and branches bred agile forest gryphons. Gryphons had hollow, muscle-covered bones to enable flight. Bones that broke easily if they caught on something.

  He did his best to drive the parrot towards the edge of the forest. Once it was in the grasslands between the weald and the eyrie, it would be an easy catch. Right as well-groomed feathers, the parrot burst out of the forest edge, and Zeph pounced. He held it down with his ever-useful dewclaw and snapped its neck with his beak.

  The sun beating down on his wings was a pleasant change from the shade of the forest, so he spread out his plumage and looked towards the eyrie. The opinici had built a large city at the northern tip of the Redwood Valley, nestled against the mountains. The forest around the eyrie was well-maintained, and they’d cleared a large swath of trees between them and the weald to create grasslands for capybara herds and farms. Ground parrot was tastier and healthier than capybara, but parrot meat’s unique flavor made it worth significantly more than just its nutritional value to opinicus merchants. The parrots around the eyrie had fled when the opinici cleared out the undergrowth, and the untamed gryphon lands were the only place to get them now. Zeph looked to see how the capybara herds were doing.

  Instead of capybaras chewing and lazing about, the ground was soaked in wet blood. The fence at the edge of the grasslands had been destroyed, and a trail of dark red led into the weald.

  He grabbed his kill in his beak and retreated to the safety of the trees.

  Zeph returned to the smashed berries to find Hatzel standing over his first kill. A full five feet at the shoulders, she dwarfed him. Her feathers were a brown so dark they appeared black this far down the canopy. Only at higher tiers would the light reveal where her feathers stopped and her dark fur began. She was built for strength, bulky by gryphonic standards, and her beak had a jagged edge that resembled a tooth. She trilled a greeting to let him know she’d seen him.

  “Zeph.”

  He put the second parrot down. “Hatz-el.”

  Their names played together like the call of a songbird. She bowed a little in front of the plump parrot. He nodded to her and returned the second kill to his beak. They dragged the parrots through the brush, back to the nesting grounds. Years of helping each other transport food had taught them to talk with their mouths full. More specifically, it had taught them to understand each other’s muffled sounds.

  “The capybaras in the field nearest here are all dead,” he said.

  “What?”

  “It’s just blood and broken fences. Someone got in there and killed all of them.”

  Hatzel’s brow furrowed. “Someone? Not something? You don’t think it was monitors?”

  Large monitor lizards were known to sometimes break fences while trying to dig under them. While they tended to feed on carrion, they were not above hunting. Early summer was a time of plenty, and monitors were more likely to risk hunting when failure held little risk of starvation.

  Zeph hopped over an abandoned parrot’s nest. He nearly missed his landing with the additional weight in his beak. “There was enough blood that I think it was an entire herd. They were dragged into the forest.”

  Hatzel nodded. Zeph knew her first instinct was to pick a fight, but the world had changed over the last five years. The grasslands development project had changed the dynamic between the weald and eyrie. There were things you could fight, like a monitor, and things you couldn’t fight, like an opinicus.

  They continued their journey in silence.

  The undergrowth soon gave way to a rocky glen, the nesting grounds of Hatzel’s pride. The leaves and branches of the redwood canopy above had been cleared to allow some light down to the forest floor, and rocks for sunning had been painstakingly transported from the mountains. On the tops of trees, branches woven together into the shape of gryphons were covered in feathers soaked in violet berries. Young gryphons, who could fly and climb as soon as their feathers came in, were taught to make their way above the tree line if lost and locate the blue feathers to find their way home.

  The markers also served as a way of telling other gryphon prides that this hunting groun
d was claimed. From the heights, on a clear day, Zeph could see up to the taiga prides and down to the southern coast where the strange fisherfolk lived. Even if it was overcast, he could usually make out the dark red marker of their neighbors, Merin’s pride, the only gryphons who could match Hatzel’s strength.

  Hatzel’s nesting grounds had been chosen for their proximity to the river and the abundance of rocky outcroppings. While the pride and nesting grounds were hers, none of the eggs had been her own for years now. The grounds housed a half dozen gryphlets each year, with the pride’s adult population numbering around thirty-five. While some pride leaders chose to lead and have young, she hadn’t chosen to lay any eggs in Zeph’s lifetime, and he wasn’t much younger than she was. He assumed she’d given it up when she took control of the pride. With the canopy cleared and the undergrowth beaten back, the nesting site was relatively safe. In the sky, gryphons had no natural predators. Only on the ground could monitors sneak into camp if the eggs or gryphlets were left unattended.

  Zeph got to work pulling the feathers from the parrots and enjoying the sun while Hatzel went inside one of the two caves to check on the gryphon guarding the gryphlets. When a shadow fell across his parrot, he looked up and saw an avian shape circling the camp. He made a sound of caution, and Hatzel came out to greet the newcomer.

  The opinicus had colorful green and blue plumage with splashes of red, which faded into chestnut-colored fur painted with green spots to create continuity before the feathers began again at her tail. Her back legs were gryphonic, if thin, but her forelegs were taloned like a bird’s. Their sharp tips had been sanded down to allow her to grip things with help from one backwards-facing talon. She was wearing a vest-like harness with several pockets.

  “Is Hatzel here?” she asked. Her voice was pleasant, with a humming quality, but her words were terse.

  Zeph’s feathers perked up in annoyance.

  “How may we help the eyrie?” Hatzel asked, rising to her full height. Opinici tended to stand taller than gryphons due to their long necks, but Hatzel was able to stare this one in the eye.

  “I’m Kia. There was an incident at the grazing lands today, and I need to ask you a few questions.” Zeph followed Kia’s eyes as she looked around the nesting grounds. There was no sign of the missing capybaras. There was also no sign of Hatzel’s other hunters, most of whom were north dealing with an explosion in the snake population. If a gryphon were going to steal from the opinici, surely, they wouldn’t bring their illicit goods back to the nesting grounds.

  “I heard as much from Zeph. He was hunting nearby.” Hatzel also seemed to be following Kia’s gaze. “The others are up by the Snowfeather River.”

  Kia looked over to Zeph, taking note of him. His ears faced backwards in agitation, a trait opinici couldn’t replicate with their lack of external ears.

  “You saw who did it?” she asked.

  “I only saw the broken fence and blood,” he replied. “I was busy tracking ground parrots.”

  Kia’s foretalons clenched reflexively. Opinici loved ground parrots but were terrible at catching them. “Did you see anyone else while hunting?”

  Zeph continued his grooming. He hadn’t seen anyone, but he’d heard several gryphons earlier in the day. At least, they’d sounded like gryphons. A gryphon’s beak had more give to it than an opinicus’s, being hard and sharp only along the edge. This gave them more flexibility when it came to language and made opinici sound like they were speaking with an accent, though opinici would say the same about gryphons. Still, after a few years of working with the fisherfolk, many sea-loving opinici were able to imitate a gryphon accent. The one or two gryphons who lived in the eyrie with the opinici were ostracized upon returning to the forest until they lost their opi trill.

  “I didn’t see anyone, no, but I heard several others over the course of the morning.”

  “Did you recognize them?” the opinicus asked.

  “No, none were close enough.”

  “Gryphon or opinicus?”

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t hear a trill from where I was at.”

  She took out a small notepad and scribbled something down. Zeph’s eyes were drawn to a magnifying glass sticking out of her harness pouch. In the eyrie, glass was rare. In the weald, it was unheard of. He wondered what she used it for. It was amazing the things opinici could do with their talons. Each of them was taught to read and write at a young age. Only about half of the weald gryphons could read. The farther one lived from the eyries, the less likely they were to learn. There were gryphons in the deep mountains who never learned to read.

  When Zeph had realized that trading ground parrots for other goods was lucrative, he’d learned to read and write. He couldn’t grip a pencil or a quill pen—an innovative sort of recycling he had to admire—but he could scratch into bark or dirt.

  Hatzel had gifted him a pouch with sand and a wooden box. It lacked the permanence of using ink on paper but allowed him to practice and check the figures when trading in the city. Most merchants were honest, but some would misrepresent the taxes to pad their coffers. Being able to show he knew how to calculate the price kept them honest. When times were lean, and lean times always returned, the ability to trade with the eyrie kept Hatzel’s pride strong.

  Their reputation for being literate and willing to trade was probably why Kia had come here first and by herself. It would take an insane opinicus to visit Merin’s pride alone and make accusations. For a pride directly across the grasslands from the Redwood Valley Eyrie, they acted more like kjarr gryphons, coveting the easy life of the eyrie. Zeph thought this was silly. If they loved the city life, why not go live there? A few gryphons had, but he knew it wasn’t that simple. Life in the city wasn’t easier for gryphons, only for opinici.

  Kia broke him out of his thoughts. “I’d like for you to come with me to look around,” she said.

  He looked helplessly to Hatzel, who shrugged.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “I need another pair of eyes.” She pointed her claw at his flexible beak, specifically his nares. “And you smell better than I do.”

  Hatzel, out of Kia’s view, snorted her disagreement with that sentiment, but didn’t protest the escort request. “You’ve hunted for the day. Go, show Kia the forest. We’ll be fine here.”

  Hatzel and Zeph had dragged parrots through the forest faster than Kia was making her way through the brush. Part of her problem was that she was ill-suited to forest flight. She’d made the journey from the eyrie to the forest easily enough because the skies were clear. There was nothing to dodge or watch for along the way. Under the canopy, there was vegetation and wildlife everywhere. He’d already had to untangle her once. The second half of her problem was that she had to investigate everything. Her inquisitive nature was probably why she’d been assigned to look into the problem in the first place, but in the forest, suddenly, everything became interesting.

  When she jostled a nest of flying squirrels, she stopped to take notes on how they glided, asking questions and making comments he’d never considered.

  “None of the early surveys of the weald include squirrels,” she’d said. “I don’t think they had them when we settled the valley.”

  When pulling vines off her startled a snake, which flung itself to a nearby tree, she began to ask questions about how many types of snakes could glide. When she had to take a break, she chose a low branch, and he advised her to move up higher to avoid monitors. Then she asked about the types and numbers of monitor lizards and how many attacks there had been over the last fifteen years. He’d always thought of himself as a bright gryphon, but he found himself taxed by the time they reached his morning hunting spot.

  “This is where the berries fell, so this is where I was waiting when I heard the sounds,” he said. To his relief, she didn’t ask about the types of berries and where they grew and the different types of birds that ate the berries and the history of the ground parrot and why did ground parrots not
fly but snakes and squirrels could glide. Instead, she switched to a professional mode, grabbing a new notebook and putting the other one back into her vest.

  “You said it was a few of them. How do you know it wasn’t just one gryphon talking to himself?” she asked.

  “It sounded like at least three different voices. One was rougher, one was higher pitched, and the other was lower. There could have been more, but I feel like there were three. And they might not have been gryphons.”

  He saw the conflict weigh on her face: the need to be an impartial recorder of facts coming up against the casual racism of but it’s the weald, who else would it be?

  “So, the other hunters, at least three—”

  “I was hunting. They might not have been hunters. They were talking loud enough that I could hear them this far away. Obviously, they weren’t worried about scaring the game.”

  She scribbled it down. “So, three unknowns talked loudly east of here in the mid-morning. They were probably not hunters and may or may not have been gryphons.”

  He nodded.

  “But why would opinici be in the forest?” she asked.

  “Why would gryphons talk so loudly in hunting grounds?” he countered.

  “Have you ever seen an opinicus in the forest? Do they ever come out here?” she asked.

  “I’m with an opinicus in the forest right now.”