There was some traffic here, both on the road and the river, merchants and farmers and ordinary folk about their ordinary business. A courier went past riding north at a collected gallop, her white wand held high in her hand to claim priority on the road. Jasand held up his hand and his men pressed to the left side of the road to let her pass.
“What news, I wonder?” Bertaud said to the general.
Jasand shrugged. “We might have stopped her and asked. But we’ll be at Minas Ford soon enough and find out for ourselves.”
“You don’t want to turn off toward Minas Spring?” Diene inquired, guiding her tall gelding nearer the men.
“Minas Ford is hardly farther. And we can stay on the main road all the way,” said Jasand. “Good roads are not to be disregarded, esteemed mage.”
“Certainly not by me,” Diene said equably.
Jasand grinned at her, so that Bertaud realized the old general was happy to be on campaign again, even a little campaign against griffins rather than a proper company of Casmantian raiders. An open road before him and a hundred spears behind… for Jasand, this was a simple vacation from the sometimes tedious court life in Tihannad. His confidence was catching, so that Bertaud felt some of his own tension ease away into the pleasant day. Maybe dealing with the griffins would indeed be that simple; maybe there would be nothing difficult or confusing or controversial about it. He could hope for that, at least.
It was about sixty miles to Minas Ford from Tihannad. Still, if they pressed fairly hard, they should come to the town of Riamne by evening. Then it would be an easy enough day’s ride tomorrow to Minas Ford, leaving the men with energy for fighting. If it came to fighting. With luck, it would not. Better if Diene could speak to the griffins. And if Bertaud was called on to speak to them himself, in the king’s voice? What, he wondered, would he say? Probably Jasand had the right of it; probably better to enjoy the ride and let the coming days arrive at their own pace.
Riamne was a town of timber and brick with cobbled streets and tall, narrow houses. They reached it just as the last light failed. It had two inns, both of which were filled to capacity. Jasand had his men set up their small tents in a field outside the town, which they had to do by the light of lantern and moon. The general had his own tent set up among them. Bertaud displaced a well-to-do farmer and his family from the best room of the nearer inn and installed Diene there instead.
“Though I shall go back to the fields myself,” he said, smiling. “Jasand’s tent is large enough for two, and if he will stay with his men, I hardly think I should set myself up here. Fortunate woman, you are affected by no such concerns. You will be comfortable here?”
The old mage touched the mattress with one fragile hand and glanced around at the spare furnishings. She gave Bertaud a caustic glance at his question, though he had made sure his tone was entirely innocent. “Yes. Certainly. Or, if not, I should hardly dare to say so after your comment, young man.”
She had been a tutor to both the king and then later to Bertaud himself, when he had been a boy at the court of the old king. Then, Bertaud would never have dared predict the familiarity with which he spoke to her now. He grinned and offered a slight bow.
Diene lifted an eyebrow at him, moved slowly across the room, and sank with a sigh into the sole chair it contained. “It needs a cushion,” she remarked judiciously. “But it will do, since it is not a saddle. It has been years since I traveled even so far as this, you know.”
“I know.” Bertaud collected a pillow from the bed and offered it, with courtesy only a shade exaggerated. “Do you need assistance to stand, esteemed Diene?”
The glance this time was even more acerbic, but the old mage suffered him to help her to her feet. Bertaud arranged the pillow in the chair, and she settled back down with a nod of satisfaction.
“I will do very well. Will you join me for supper here? Or do you feel constrained to join the men for that, as well?”
“I think I need not go so far as that.” The men carried rations that were adequate, but hardly up to the standards of a good inn. “I shall have the staff serve us here.”
“To avoid the curiosity of men,” said the mage, her dark eyes sliding sideways to meet his.
Bertaud inclined his head, quite seriously this time. “To avoid the crowd and the noise. You may tell me more about griffins, esteemed Diene, as we in fortunate Feierabiand have never been plagued with the creatures. You may advise me on what the king’s voice should say to them, if we should speak.”
The mage half-smiled. “I hardly know what advice to give. I will tell you the lines of poetry I know that hold fire and red dust and the desert wind—I hardly expect you will remember anything of your youthful studies, hmm?”
Bertaud flushed and laughed. “Little enough, esteemed Diene, begging the pardon of my esteemed tutor!”
Diene nodded in disapproving resignation. “Young men so seldom care for the poetry and history we so painstakingly draw out for them. Well, I will tell you poetry, then, and you may tell me what intentions the king should have toward griffins.”
“Other than that they depart?”
“I hope,” said Diene, “that it proves so simple.”
So did Bertaud. Fervently.
The village of Minas Ford, when they arrived there, hoped so, too. There was an inn, small but pleasant, and perhaps half a hundred families who lived within a day’s walk. Some, wary of griffins, had evidently gone north to Riamne, and others south to Talend or west to Sihannas at the edge of the Delta. But many had stayed. They were happy to see a troop of soldiers with the king’s standard flying before them. This was clear even though they refrained from pressing forward toward the new arrivals.
“But a hundred men aren’t enough, young lord,” the innkeeper said earnestly, holding the bridle of Bertaud’s horse with his own hands. “There are a good many griffins in those hills, lord, begging your pardon, and they’re big, dangerous creatures.”
Red dust stirred under the hooves of the horse as it shifted its feet. It was nervous. Its ears flicked back and forth, listening to sounds a man could not hear. The breeze that moved through the courtyard of the inn had an odd, harsh feel to it.
“The king hopes there are not so many,” Bertaud said neutrally, dismounting with a nod of thanks for the innkeeper’s assistance. “And we all hope not to fight them, however many there may be. Have you seen them yourself?”
“Not I, lord—that is to say, just as they fly over now and again. But Nehoen and Jos and even Tesme have all been up there looking for Kes, and they say there’re a gracious plenty of them up there.” The innkeeper gave the horse to a boy to take to the stable. The boy had to weave a path past the onlookers to get it there.
Bertaud tilted his head in interest, glancing out at the crowd. “Nehoen? Jos, Tesme, Kes?” Jasand and Diene had come up silently to listen.
The innkeeper bobbed a quick bow. “Kes was… Kes is just a girl, lord. She had… she has some skill with herbs, and she can stitch a cut or set a bone. A man came and asked her to come, and she went up into the desert to help somebody who’d been hurt. Before we even knew there was a desert.”
Bertaud marked the past tense uncomfortably avoided in this answer. “And she has not returned?”
“No, lord. So we went looking, some of us. All of us, at the first. Tesme—that’s Kes’s sister, lord—Tesme kept searching. For days. And Nehoen. Nehoen is a gentleman of this district, lord, an educated man, not the kind to stretch the truth out thin, if you understand me. If he says at least fifty, he doesn’t mean five and their shadows, lord. He… well, lord, I think he promised Tesme he’d keep looking, so as she wouldn’t keep going up there herself. And Tesme’s hired man, Jos, he stayed out a long time and went up a long way, but even he, well, I think he maybe doesn’t expect to find her, anymore.”
“I see.” What might pass for educated in a little village like Minas Ford, Bertaud did not inquire. But the innkeeper seemed honest. Bertaud said, “Can
you find these good folk for me? We would greatly desire to speak to them before we ourselves go up into the mountains. Which we shall, early tomorrow, I expect. Ah, and I trust there is indeed room in your inn for us?”
“For the lady and some few of your men more, lord, if you please; we’ve little enough business just now, but, as you see, it’s not a large inn. And I’ll send my girls out with word you’d like to speak with those as have seen the griffins.”
Bertaud nodded his thanks and headed for the welcome comfort of the inn, not forgetting to offer his arm to Diene, who was finding it difficult to walk after two days on horseback but was trying not to show it.
“Fifty?” Jasand muttered on his other side. He shook his grizzled head in doubt. “Do you find that likely, my lord?”
Bertaud shrugged. “Likely? I want to see the men making the claim. You should ask, is it possible? And of course it is possible. And if it is true, General?”
“Then I would wish for more soldiers. Though come to it—” Jasand said consideringly, “—even in the worst case… I would set the men I brought against even a hundred griffins, my lord, if necessary.”
Bertaud knew Jasand was right to be confident. The soldiers of Feierabiand had never been able to afford the luxury of incompetence in either their ranks or their officers. Only a clear and continual demonstration of Feierabiand skill in the field, along both the river border with Linularinum and the mountain border with Casmantium, made room for the central of the three countries to remain untroubled. And Jasand did not need to mention his own record or reputation. Though Bertaud might have wished some part of the general’s experience had been against griffins. Or that they had, aside from mage’s poetry, a Casmantian advisor handy to offer counsel on the creatures. But he said merely, “We shall hope these townsfolk can give us a clear idea of what we shall meet.”
And, indeed, the men who came that evening to tell what they had seen in the mountains, Bertaud judged, might, in fact, be credible witnesses. The woman Tesme had not come, but Nehoen and Jos had evidently been close by the inn.
The hired man, Jos, was a plainspoken man who did not seem given to exaggeration or flights of imagination. And by his dress and manner, Nehoen was undoubtedly a wealthy man by the standards of the region and probably an even more creditable witness. Both men were clearly seriously worried about the missing girl and the griffins.
“Kes went up the mountain to assist someone who had been injured,” Nehoen said, giving Bertaud the respectful nod due his rank, but with the straight look of a confident man. “The same day the griffins were first spotted, lord. A man came to find her. Seemed to know she has a talent with healing, for all he was a stranger to the district. No knowing who he really was.”
“A mage, or so they say,” Jos put in grimly, with a wary glance at Diene. “I didn’t see him.” And blamed himself for his absence, by his harsh tone. Or everyone else, for letting her go.
“A mage?” repeated Diene, startled. The innkeeper had not said this.
“Yes, esteemed mage—clearly so,” Nehoen agreed, but the emphasis in his voice was clearly for Jos; he was obviously continuing a long-standing argument. “I saw him, and spoke to him, and he was surely a mage. A strange, dangerous sort, I would guess. Well, clearly so, or we’d not be missing a girl, would we? Middling age, a hard sort of face, a thin mouth. Black eyes. Hard-hearted, I would say—if I were guessing.” The landowner paused, visibly bracing himself. Expecting condemnation, Bertaud realized, for having allowed this stranger to take away one of the Minas Ford girls on some weak pretext. Nehoen added, as much to Jos as to them, “He took her and they just went, like that.” He snapped his fingers. “I swear to you, it was too quick for any of us to think twice about stopping it! They were just gone, right into the air.”
Jos set his jaw and looked grim, as though only the presence of the king’s servants kept him from a sharp retort.
“Neither of you could have prevented him, if the man was a mage,” Diene said firmly. Her mouth had tightened. “You think this man, this mage, took the girl into the desert? To the griffins?”
“Well, esteemed mage,” Nehoen said reasonably, “it’s a striking coincidence if he didn’t, isn’t it?”
Diene inclined her head. “By your description, the man is no one I know. And a mage taking a healer girl to the griffins? This is a puzzle.”
“I should say so. The griffins wanted a human healer? And this mage came and got them one?” Jasand said skeptically—Bertaud could not tell whether he was skeptical of the suggested connection, or skeptical of the whole story. The general frowned at the townsmen. “So you went looking for this girl?”
“A dozen or so folk of this district, yes, esteemed sir. We found… we found the desert. It’s grown since,” Nehoen said, with a simplicity Bertaud found very persuasive.
Jasand continued to frown. “And you’ve seen these griffins? You, personally?”
The man gave Jasand a nod. “Yes, lord. More than one or two. I’d guess fifty or more. But Jos went farther up than I.” He looked at the other man.
“There are certainly dozens of the creatures up there,” the hired man said, his tone still grim. “Fifty is a near-enough guess. Not many more than that, I’d say. I walked as close to them as I stand to you, and they did not even seem to notice I was there. They ought never be allowed to rest there on our land.”
“They lie in the sun like cats,” Nehoen put in. He spoke steadily, but his eyes had gone wide, abstracted with memory. “They ride the still air like eagles. Their eyes are filled with the sun. The shadows they cast are made of light. They are more beautiful… I have no words to describe them.”
Jos said, even more harshly, “Beautiful they may be, those creatures, but they took Kes and we did not find her.”
“I made Tesme stop looking lest we come across her bones,” Nehoen said quietly, to Jasand rather than to Jos. “But… we didn’t find those either. But if there are fifty griffins up there… You brought only a hundred men?” He seemed to become suddenly aware of his own temerity in offering criticism to officers of the king, and stopped. Then he said, “Forgive me if I speak out of turn, lord. But it seems to me it would be better to have more.”
“A hundred soldiers should do well enough,” Jos said roughly. “You clean those creatures out, lord, and you might bid your men, if they find a girl’s dry bones in the red sand, they might bring them out of the desert for her sister.”
Nehoen bowed his head in agreement, looking from Jasand to Bertaud and then settling on Diene. “If you… if you do go into the desert lords, esteemed mage, if you should find her… maybe she’s still all right…”
Jos made a grim, wordless sound that made clear his opinion of this chance. He said, “Destroy them all, lord. That’s all you can do for her now.”
Bertaud did not know whether he believed a mage had taken the girl—still less whether the mage had been working somehow with the griffins. But he said, “We will certainly bring her out if we find her, even if we find only bones. But we will hope for better.” And better still, though he did not say this, if they did not, in fact, require to do battle with the griffins. Whether or not there was a mage, and whatever had happened to the girl.
After the townsmen had gone, Bertaud, Jasand, and Diene discussed the griffins and the proper approach to them by the light of lanterns that threw shadows like half-seen glyphs across the walls of Diene’s room.
“A mage working with the griffins?” Jasand said, skeptical.
Diene gazed thoughtfully into the air. “One does not expect any earth mage to work with creatures of fire. However… there was a mage once, Cheienas of Terabiand, who loved the desert and spoke to fire and creatures of fire. He wanted to ride the hot wind, to catch fire in his eyes and understand it. He vanished from our ken, and it is said he gave away the earth of his nature and became a creature of fire. I wonder if he would strike a man as hard-hearted?”
“Would he be the sort to work again
st us?” Jasand asked practically. “And if he is, or if any fire mage is up there and set against us, can you deal with that, esteemed Diene? I’ve many men with animal affinities… but I’ve no one I’d set against a hostile mage. Mages were not something I expected to encounter.”
Diene raised her eyebrows, with an air of faint opprobrium, as though she found this showed an unfortunate lack of foresight. Not that she had suggested any preparations for this eventuality herself before they had left, Bertaud did not point out.
“Then it is fortunate I am here,” the mage said. “I expect I would indeed be able to handle Cheienas, if this is he.”
Bertaud asked, “And other possibilities?”
Diene considered. “There was a man named Milenne, originally from Linularinum, who lived in the high forest north of Tiearanan. One day he found a golden egg in the forest. Of the creature that hatched from that egg, he wrote only that it was a creature of fire, with wings of fire. What became of it, he did not write. But he left Feierabiand because, he said, it made him want to seek a deeper silence than that found in even the deepest forest.”
Jasand waved a disgusted hand. “Poetry and riddles. Golden eggs and wings of fire! Esteemed Diene, if you can handle this mage, whomever he may be, then I’m satisfied. What matters then is how many griffins there are, and how they can be made to go back across the mountains.”
“And your ideas about this?” Bertaud asked him.
“Well… well, Lord Bertaud, that man Jos only said dozens, and he seems to have had as good a look as any. Even the other man guessed only fifty or so. I think maybe we don’t need to worry about a hundred of the creatures after all. And then, we brought archers. Arrows are proof against any creature that walks or swims or flies through the air, whether it’s a creature of fire or air or good plain earth.” Jasand paused, thinking. “We must be certain of our ground. I do not want my men shooting uphill into the sun. If we leave the road—if we divide the men into two companies, say, and go up across the slant, in afternoon so the sun is at our backs—we can set up a killing field between the companies. That should do well enough. At least griffins can’t draw bows of their own.”
Lord of the Changing Winds Page 9