by K Vale Nagle
The netted opinicus made the decision for him. One of the lassos came loose, and she lashed out, catching a trapper across the neck and face. Only the dull nature of her claws kept his head in one piece.
Zeph dropped like a boulder on a distracted trapper. The trapper’s spine punctuated the forest’s silence with an audible crack as it snapped. He sprang from that corpse to the next closest opinicus, the one whose lasso had held. That one tried to move out of the way, but he had wrapped the rope around his talons to make sure it held. His ribcage broke as he crashed against the tree and Zeph severed his neck.
Zeph slashed the ropes holding up the net and chased after the guard who had taken flight. Zeph ran along the ground, pushing up when he was below the opinicus. He caught a back paw and then folded his wings. His weight caused them both to drop to the ground.
The guard tried his best to hold them both aloft, but a loud pop in one wing showed that he didn’t have the muscle. Zeph let go when the opinicus’s wing gave and spread his wings, gliding to the floor. The guard hit with a thud.
“The reeves will tear off your wings for this. They’ll break every bone in your body just to watch them reset in strange new shapes. The horrors that await you—”
Zeph tore out his throat and went to check on the other opinici.
The last trapper, it seemed, had become entangled in the net with the grey opinicus when Zeph cut the line. The songbird had gotten behind her captor and was pecking at him mindlessly when Zeph arrived and put the trapper out of his misery.
“He’s dead. You can stop,” Zeph said.
She looked up. Her heart was pounding, and she was close to hyperventilating. Zeph chewed through the ropes and detached the dead trapper. Then he began to work on untangling her, careful to stay away from her claws. He’d seen trauma do strange things.
“I’m Zeph. Who are you? How bad is your wing?”
For a full minute, she said nothing. Then, quietly: “Orlea. I can’t fly, but I still have feeling.”
“Well, Orlea, you have two choices. If you want to walk back to the eyrie, I won’t stop you. I don’t know what life is like for you back there. Or, if you want, we’re at the border of the grasslands. If we can get into the weald, we can have someone look at that wing. There’s an old gryphon who specializes in wings on the edge of our hunting grounds. Which would you prefer?”
She looked up at him, finally seeing his ears and paws. “You’re a gryphon?” She began to laugh, high-pitched but not shrill.
“Hey, hey, you’re okay. I’m not going to hurt you. You’re okay now.” He made a calming, purring noise. One ear was facing her, the other scanned the forest for rangers.
“Okay?” She balked. “I’m starving. I can’t afford to have this wing fixed. They killed my mate over a year ago. Most of the rangers were reassigned, and I thought maybe, just maybe they wouldn’t be watching the forest for poachers anymore. I was so hungry.” She began to shiver.
He moved next to her and groomed her feathers. “You’ll be okay. I’ll make sure you’re fed and fixed up, but we can’t stay here. Someone might be looking for me. We need to get you across the grasslands to safety. Can you walk?”
She got up, took a few steps, then nodded.
“You start heading towards the plains,” he said. “I need to clean this up so the next opinici to arrive don’t know a gryphon killed these rangers. Maybe they’ll think it was poachers.”
He grabbed a frond and began to walk backwards, covering his non-avian tracks. When she just stared at him, he added, “I’ll cover yours when I finish here so they don’t see where you went. Don’t worry. You’ll be safe.”
She gestured towards a rocky outcropping in the distance. “There’s a monitor den over there. If you leave a trail, they’ll handle the bodies.”
He nodded. She began her walk to the grasslands.
Having cleaned up his tracks, Zeph bit off the guard’s foot and used it to create a trail to the monitor den. In his ideal scenario, the monitors would come out and drag the opinici back to their dwelling. At minimum, he hoped they should chew on the corpses enough to make it unclear what had happened.
The taste of opinicus in his mouth made him uncomfortable. He’d never killed a sapient creature before. He expected to feel something deep, for there to be some strong physical reaction. Instead, his stomach growled. It’d become accustomed to hunting and then eating.
He stole the harnesses off two of the trappers and the guard, then loosened the fourth to make it look like the monitor lizards had taken them to chew on. He searched around and found a camp. There seemed to be makeshift nests for four opinici, suggesting they’d planned on being out here for a few days. He left it intact, except for some stolen jerky to calm his stomach, but noticed several crates marked with circles. He sniffed at one. It smelled desiccated, like salt and bat guano. He poked and prodded the crate but couldn’t see a way to get it open that could be blamed on lizards or squirrels. Finally, he grabbed a branch and backed down the path Orlea had taken, obscuring their prints as he went.
“Coming up behind you,” Zeph called to Orlea. She’d made better time than he expected, and the ground was more vegetation than dirt now.
She turned to look at him. He was still walking backwards and using a branch to obscure the tracks.
“Why not just let your tail hang down and do the work for you?” she asked.
“I’m banking on opi nostrils not picking up any scents from our path, but if we leave little fluffs of down along the path, they might catch on.”
“Gryphons and opinici don’t smell that different, if they smell different at all,” she said.
“Oh? Did I just save a fisherfolk?” He took a moment to reevaluate her. Red beak. Brown and red plumage. No hint of ears. Well-defined, taloned forelegs.
She chirruped her displeasure at his gaze. “I didn’t lop off my ears, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“Ah, sorry.” He blushed.
They walked in silence until the tree forest gave way and revealed the grasslands that lay between them and the thick, untamed weald to the south. Zeph climbed a redwood and scanned the skies behind them. He didn’t see anyone from the eyrie headed in their direction. A few opinici flitted about, but none with gold and blue harnesses. The wind picked up. He looked at the path ahead but didn’t see the long blades of grass bending around any large shapes. A clever hunter would be hiding next to a rock or tree, but there wasn’t time for him to scout it all.
“It looks clear, but we should be quick,” he said.
“Why don’t we wait until dark?” she asked.
“Because the sooner we fix your wing, the better the chance it’ll heal quickly and without complication.” Because a wounded animal limping through the forest floor at night will attract more monitors than during the day. Because helping a limping opinicus through the forest floor would look like conspiracy to some prides. Because one opinicus has already gone missing in this area.
She hesitated.
“If they’re looking for us—” he began.
“Yes, I know,” she snapped. “Better to be in that forest than this forest. I’m just tired. Let’s do this.”
He placed himself under her injured wing to support it. She spread her other wing. At a glance, they might just look like one gryphon. One gryphon with a wing that was shorter on one side than the other going for an evening stroll. It wasn’t the worst plan.
He pushed her to pick up the pace and she whimpered in pain. He thought he heard a flutter coming from the canopy but didn’t see anything when he looked around. They made it across the grasslands, past the marker, and into the forest.
3
Hatzel
Hatzel reached up high with her forepaws and scratched down the trunk of a tree to leave behind her scent. Several of the gryphons who’d gone snake hunting, led by Xavi, had returned. Zeph would be relieved to find Xavi back when he got back from the eyrie. Zeph’s non-hunting responsibilities
in the pride consisted of taking over as Hatzel’s second-in-command when Xavi was busy elsewhere.
From the perky ears and swishy tails, the campaign to cull the snake population at the northern border seemed to have been a success. Xavi was busy helping store some of the snake meat for later, but the mission was more a matter of pride safety than food gathering. On their way back, they’d run into Triddle from Merin’s pride, and he’d tagged along.
“I’m supposed to be following the Snowfeather River, but it went underground forever ago, and I never found it again,” Triddle confessed. “I’ve been flying in circles all day.”
Since arriving at her nesting grounds, he’d been resistant to returning home. He snacked on a ground parrot and looked around with an interest that surprised her. He’d been here before, and the layout was simple. A redwood clearing, two caves going into the rocky outcropping, and nests above it made up her pride’s home.
While Triddle hadn’t done anything to help with the snakes, Zeph had always insisted that both Triddle and his lifelong friend, Askel, be afforded every courtesy. Being able to solve problems with water was too valuable a skill set to lose access to from impoliteness. Hatzel was just discovering that without Askel to rein him in, Triddle was one of the more talkative gryphons in the weald.
“Did Zeph catch this one? I bet it was Zeph,” Triddle said between bites. “Or maybe it was you, Hatz? Did you catch this one? I bet you both caught it together.”
She took a deep breath and remembered that practicing patience was a method of improving hunting skills that could be done at the nest. She chewed on some dried mint to calm her nerves. “I caught one. Zeph caught the other two.”
“Oh! He’s fast. That’s why I like him. But if there were like a super-giant parrot, then he’d have to run away. That’s why I like you.”
If Zeph were faced with a giant parrot, she was pretty sure he’d think of something. The largest parrots were already pretty big compared to him. He’d probably drop a branch on its head. He was cunning when he was hungry.
“Is Merin expecting you?” she prompted.
Triddle missed her implication. “Oh, maybe. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. Where is Zeph?”
“He left yesterday. There was something wrong with the herd squirrel things on the grasslands and an opinicus asked for his help.”
“He’s not back yet?” Triddle sounded genuinely worried. His crest and blue hackle feathers were up. While he had the hooked beak of most of Merin’s pride, he didn’t have the size of Merin’s immediate offspring.
“They were probably just held up,” Hatzel assured him. “Or he stayed overnight at the outpost there. I don’t think she ate him or anything.”
Triddle looked alarmed.
“A joke. I joke.” She’d never seen Triddle so on edge. His tail swept back and forth and his crest wouldn’t stay down. She turned all her attention to him. “Are you okay, Triddle? Did something happen to Askel?”
“No, nothing like that. I just… I have something to show you. I need you not to tell Merin I showed you.” Triddle looked up, gauging the late afternoon light.
She tilted her head to the side.
“Here, come with me,” he said and bounded south into the forest.
Triddle led Hatzel through the dusky forest, far from where the others had picked him up, to the edge of where Merin’s territory and her territory met. They were within walking distance of the taiga. It was here that the Snowfeather River disappeared underground.
There was a length of rope and a harness along the shoreline. By their age and quality, Triddle had probably scavenged them from the eyrie trash pile.
“I hope you’re not going to ask me to put that on,” she said.
“Oh, no, that one’s not for you.”
“I hope you’re not going to ask me to put that on you,” she rephrased.
“No, it’s for—.” He stopped. His back leg twitched.
She let the silence do the work for her.
“Okay, they have a prisoner. We have a prisoner. I don’t know.”
“Askel…?”
“No, not Askel, but I’m worried something bad will happen to him if I act. I need your help because I’m not strong enough, and you’re strong and not scared by Merin.”
She nodded but wasn’t sure what to say.
“I’m too hollow-boned and stringy for this,” he continued. “I’ve traced the river’s route. I think this river is the same one that flows into the cave below, and then goes deeper into the earth before arriving at a pond. I’ve run some tests with floats and string. They’re holding him down there. I don’t think he has long to live if we don’t do something. I think Merin is going to do something to the prisoner tonight or tomorrow at the latest. Even if Merin doesn’t do something, he’s not in good shape.”
Hatzel’s eyes widened. She’d never heard of a gryphon holding prisoners before. “What do you need me to do?”
“I’m going to lower the harness into the water. The float should bring it up when it gets into the cave. He’s supposed to tug five times when it’s securely fastened. When that happens, I need you to pull as hard as you can until we get him out. I think he can hold his breath long enough, but maybe not. He’s been in there for two days now.”
It turned out when Triddle said the harness wasn’t meant for her, he’d meant that the harness with the float on it hadn’t been for her. There was a second harness designed for her musculature. She slipped into it and prayed she didn’t get pulled into the water. He let the float go and they watched it get pulled underground. A minute passed. Two, three, four minutes. Then the tugging came: exactly five tugs.
“Pull!” He was behind her, pushing.
She pulled as hard as she could. It took almost a full minute, but finally the float and harness popped out of the river. She dug her claws into the bank while he ran over to help the prisoner onto the shore. Once the two of them were out of the water, she squeezed out of the harness and joined them.
The prisoner was in bad shape. Golden feathers were broken and matted. There were deep cuts and bruising. The very tip of his beak had been broken off. He held one of his talons at an unnatural angle.
“He’s an opinicus?” Not just an opinicus, the missing opinicus, she’d wager.
“I’m Cherine,” he gasped. “Thank you.”
They unhooked his harness just as a cry of alarm came from the direction of the cave mouth.
“Don’t worry, they’ll be heading to the pond,” Triddle said. “They won’t think to look upstream. Well, not at first. You’ll have plenty of time to get him to the medicine gryphon. Oh! They’ll expect me to help with the search.” And with that, Triddle flew off, leaving her alone with the opinicus.
“What’s…what’s your name?” Cherine managed.
She considered saying Zeph. “Hatzel. Now keep quiet and hang on.” She got under him and lifted his wet, damaged form onto her back. Then she made her way through the forest, out of Merin’s hunting grounds, and towards the mountains.
The chittering of squirrels went silent as Hatzel stalked through the forest. A monitor or two peeked out from behind the trees but decided not to risk messing with her. Even grounded, she still had a saber-toothed beak and sharp claws.
Cherine would need food soon, but she hadn’t found a safe place to leave him while she hunted. Her stomach grumbled a reminder of all the parrots she’d plucked but not eaten back at her nesting grounds.
The monitors may be keeping their distance for now, but if she left him on his own, they’d come looking for dinner. So, when she turned a corner and found a dead parrot with recent chew marks, probably from scavengers scared away by Cherine’s mumbling, she had an idea.
“Don’t eat the parrot,” she warned him.
He looked around, unsure of where he was. They were in a glen, on top of a small boulder.
“It could have been monitors that chewed on it,” she explained. “The mountain monitors, lace
monitors we call them, are venomous and may have left their poison on it. Just sit tight and whimper.”
He looked confused but obliged.
She ran off like she was chasing something, then doubled back quietly from a greater height. As she suspected, in her absence, several of the monitors that had been tailing them came out from hiding. They converged on Cherine. The largest was six feet from snout to tail—much bigger than she’d planned on. It was accompanied by two smaller lizards, probably its offspring, around three feet long each. They had blue stripes running down their heads and onto their backs that would fade as they matured.
Hatzel pushed off from the tree, then dropped straight down at the parent. The monitor was quicker than it looked and leapt out of the way. Hatzel hit the ground hard, sending a shock through her limbs that should have been absorbed by squishy lizard flesh.
The monitor hissed loudly at her. Hatzel hissed back. The juveniles seemed unsure if they should help or flee. One backed away, the other moved closer.
Hatzel had always considered herself a surprise-attack hunter. With her opening gambit a failure, she looked up at where the medicine gryphon lived, farther up the mountain. If she were bitten, would she make it that far carrying Cherine? She couldn’t leave him here. Her little experiment had proven he was monitor bait.
She drew herself up tall and spread her wings to their full width. The juvenile that was backing up now turned and sprinted away. The other two were unfazed. Keeping her wings out, she moved so that she was closer to the juvenile. She flicked her tail, the tuft at the end of it attracting the attention of the little one. When it pounced, she impaled it on her beak, not waiting to see if it were dead before she tossed it aside and flung herself into the air to prevent the adult monitor from taking its revenge.