by David Rice
Egrant slowly turned to face the young major. “You mean your Grandfather?”
“Of course, I mean him.”
Egrant looked at the setting sun and then lightly tapped his golden scroll case against his palm. “I am afraid that this direct order from the King takes precedence. Now if you’d like to complain to the King in person, Graniteside is that way.”
“The King will certainly hear of how Duke Wyntress gave shelter to this criminal.” “Careful,” Egrant smiled. “I don’t believe that King Lornen would approve of anyone slandering his future father-in-law.”
Codie huffed twice before lowering his voice. “Your Grace, since you are indisposed and unable to lead a pursuit, I ask for your permission to apprehend the traitor Arundy and his party myself.”
Egrant looked at Wyntress. “Very well. Since you are so persistent. But I am going to need your men. You may take five mounted with you. In the morning. After our official announcement of the happy news and the formal dinner.”
Codie rolled his eyes. “Only five? This is intolerable,” he spat. “Crimes must be punished or they invite worse.”
“Oh, please, Major, save me this indignation. He is just one old man in a wagon with a few women and children along to mind the goats. Surely your military prowess can handle that much.”
Codie whispered something under his breath.
“There is nothing more to be said. Leaving tomorrow at first light will certainly have you overtaking him by noon.” Egrant nodded to the Duke. “Where did you think he was heading, Your Grace?”
Wyntress cleared his throat. “Oh. Ah, I believe he was hoping to find refuge with his old friend Duke Stronn in Hillsedge.”
Codie wrinkled his nose. “As you wish, Your Grace. I will take my five best and ride at first light.”
“Then you are dismissed, Major.”
Codie stopped at the door, a sneer barely hidden. “If he offers any resistance, Your Grace, I will put them all in the ground.”
Egrant ignored the show of bravado and waited for the major to stomp away. Then he leaned towards the Duke. “We can leave for Eastfork tomorrow, Your Grace, or the next day if you prefer.”
Wyntress nodded though his eyes were fixed on some distant unknown. “Tomorrow before that intolerable fool comes back would be best. I can’t believe he is so hateful towards his own family—pardon me for stating the obvious despite the charges—towards someone as honourable as Arundy.”
Egrant shrugged. “Maybe his father was too gentle with him?”
Wyntress suppressed a bitter laugh. “I doubt his father was around at all.” “Dinner, then?” Egrant suggested.
Wyntress rubbed his forehead. “Yes. A hot meal before a long ride would be wise.”
Egrant bowed and dismissed himself. A deep drink before a long ride suited him even better. The situation was changing more quickly than he liked for his own comfort. If he could just keep balanced between Lornen’s whims and Gow’s stubbornness, they could still manage. And to keep in the midst of that balance he needed to keep in touch with old friends. A letter to Koppinger in the Graniteside docks might just do the trick.
***
Balinor had left Duke Arundy’s refugees quietly camped in the deep shadows of the unfinished irrigation canal. No pursuer would see them unless they fell over their tents. And now, squinting through exhaustion, he had led his small group on towards the morning, across the canal, and upward into the foothills. Ahead, the shield reflected moonlight like a small star and guided Balinor and his party towards Alain’s shelter with ease. Despite discomfort, Vargas trotted along with them throughout the night.
A quarter league from Alain, Balinor halted when he heard Vargas growl low and hunker down. A shriek carried aross the hills that chilled his blood and made the horses scamper and whinny.
“Thornwings,” Balinor hissed. “Off the horses and let them run. Keep your heads down and your eyes up. We push on from here on foot.”
“Are ye daft?” One of the soldiers replied. “I’m not letting some damned birds hurt my horse.”
Balinor slipped from the saddle and threw the saddlebags over his shoulder. “Thornwings aren’t just birds. They’re massive killers. If your horse panics, you’ll be tossed and they’ll just as likely eat you.”
“Do what he says, Melvin,” one of the seasoned troopers instructed. “Balinor’s been doing this a long time.”
Another shriek penetrated the night, followed by an answering call to the sound.
“Hurry,” Balinor hissed and began loping upslope, weaving with the curvature of the hills, his head down and his sword ready. Vargas ran alongside.
Displeased, Melvin acquiesced to Balinor’s demand and followed the lead of his companions. They soon formed a long line snaking towards a flickering pinprick of reflected moonlight.
Huffing and puffing, they closed the distance while the shrieks became more shrill and numerous. Balinor was the first to realize that the reflection was not from the shield but from Alain’s weaving blade.
Shaped by his own traditions, trained by dwarves, and polished by cycles of practice at the hands of the Rajalan Speaker Ashak, Alain was holding his ground against three thornwings. They hovered and jabbed at him, remaining just beyond his reach where he stood at the mouth of his improvised shelter. His stance was wobbly with exhaustion. Drying blood streaked down both arms and his left side. One thornwing lay crumpled and unmoving beside him.
In one motion, Balinor dropped his saddlebag and sword, drew his bow, and let fly, catching a thornwing at the neck and sending it crashing to the ground. His companions followed suit, dropping their gear, and charging forward with swords raised. Vargas growled and charged, circling and snapping at the surprised raptors. The thornwings cried out and flew away to circle above. Balinor hit the same thornwing with another arrow and it retreated into the darkness of the sky. Two remained circling outside of range, their shrieks echoing from the hills.
Balinir’s heart was racing. He whistled for Vargas, pointed at the shelter, and said firmly, “Guard.” Vargas trotted past Alain and sat at the shelter’s edge whimpering with frustration.
“By the twelve,” Alain gasped. “I wasn’t going to last much longer.” He sank to one knee. Vargas leaned over and licked his hand.
Balinor waved for his patrol to approach and kept his bow trained skyward. “Bandage him,” Balinor ordered. “How’s our friend?”
“Dindur Pebblemaw,” Alain ground his teeth as a a touch of whiskey was poured across his wounds. “And now that nothing’s been eating him, that shield is a work of the One. His wounds have all closed and he’s sleeping.”
Balinor nodded. “I found Arundy. He’ll join us by noon but troops from Egrant will be looking for us. Any ideas?”
Alain shrugged. “I have to go to Thunderwall. There’s Dindur and the shield, of course, and the archivist in Graniteside gave me a message for Jarl Volsun.”
“What?” Balinor exclaimed. “Another message?”
“Don’t know what about,” Alain replied. “Not my place to look.”
“Well aren’t we full of secrets,” Balinor chuckled.
Melvin was staring down the hill towards the most recent cries of the thornwings when an ebony mass swooped like a hawk.
“Look out,” a trooper yelled, only to see the smith’s assistant disappear with a crunch of bone, a spray of blood, and the thick sounds of flapping wings climbing away.
“Close up at the mouth of the shelter,” Balinor ordered. “Keep down. Their eyes think the tarp is part of the rock face. They won’t get to close because they think it’s a cave.” “Strange creatures,” one trooper said.
“Disgusting,” another added.
“I count two above,” Balinor stated. “Any others?”
“Mebbe two others from the south. I hear their shrieks,” another trooper added.
“So, we’ve killed one, wounded one, and fed one. And there’s still four?” Alain commented.
&nbs
p; “An’ six o’ us,” the trooper replied.
“Do they go away at dawn?”
“Usually,” Balinor replied.
“Dawn’s a long way off, so keep your eyes sharp,” Alain added. “Call out any motion.”
“Lay down for a bit, Rickert,” Balinor suggested. “Take a hold of that shield and let it heal you, too.”
“Not on your life,” Alain answered.
“C’mon. Someone needs to be awake in the morning,” Balinor responded. “If I need you, I’ll shriek and gurgle as I’m being carried away.”
“Not funny,” Alain chuckled. “All right, but just for a moment.” He crept under the tarp and thumped to the ground. Upon placing his hand to the warm metal of the shield, it flashed with a sudden light that faded quickly.
Looking back through the spots in his vision, Balinor noted that Alain was instantly asleep. “I hope that flash doesn’t bring more troublesome friends,” he whispered to himself.
The shrieks to the south blended with the unseen circling calls above.
“Don’t those creatures ever sleep, Balinor?”
“I’d like to think so,” he replied. “Stay alert and we’ll get through this.”
The soldiers needed no prompting. Several times the black masses swooped, the force of their beating wings and the rake of their claws blasting just above the troopers’ ducking heads.
Vargas growled, barked and snapped the air as they passed by.
Frustrated with their quarry’s cover, the thornwings chose a different tactic and a different target. Three landed near the shelter mouth, their beaks darting inward to stab at the soldiers incessantly while a fourth landed to feast upon its fallen broodmate. The soldiers repeatedly swiped at the lunging beaks, occasionally clanking a blade off the bone hard chitin, just enough to maintain a balance of threat.
Balinor brought his bow up between the soldiers at the centre and fired point blank into the biggest thornwing. It shrieked, spasmed, and thrashed its wings fiercely slashing its broodmates on either side and one of the soldiers. The thornwings retreated angrily and the soldier collapsed, spurting blood from his near-severed forearm.
“Use your belt. Tie it off above the wound,” Balinor called out. Then he raised his bow to cover the gap and with a flurry of shots fired three more arrows into the wounded thornwing. It shuddered, cried out once more, and hopped into the sky to glide away.
The remaining thornwings looked up suddenly and their feathers bristled. They emitted a strange low series of caws and then burst into the air in all directions.
“Take cover in the shelter,” Balinor cried, and stepped aside for the confused soldiers to squeeze in beside Alain and the dwarf. “Put the wounded fellow’s hand on the shield. It might help him heal.
The soldier’s subdued moans quieted.
“By the One that’s a gift beyond measure,” another trooper declared.
The soldier closest to the entrance chanced a look outside and whispered, “What scared off them thornwings? Is it something worse?”
Balinor was glad no one could see him shivering or notice how pale he had become. A burly dark shape pounced hard onto the remains of the half-consumed thornwing and then tucked its wings neatly across its muscular back. Balinor gasped as he recognized the eagle-shaped head and lionlike shape of its body, and he could clearly see the green burning intelligence of its eyes regarding him as it started to feed.
The gryphons hadn’t been hunted to extinction. They had found a way to adjust and survive.
Balinor lowered his bow, bowed reverently, and sat down.
“I don’t think we need to worry about the thornwings anymore,” Balinor whispered.
One by one, the unwounded soldiers stuck their heads from the shelter and gaped in awe.
“We’ll stay right here till it’s done,” Balinor whispered. “Let it know that we’re friends.”
“Why would it think we weren’t?” the youngest trooper quietly asked.
“Because a century ago, folks like us hunted them to the disappearing point.”
“Why’d one rescue the Prince then?”
Balinor rubbed his eyes. “Son, I don’t think he was doing us any favors was he?”
The soldiers took a moment and then burst into quiet, dark laughter. Balinor waited until the rest of his group nodded off one by one and then he patted Vargas firmly. “We’ll let the big guy take the next watch, okay buddy?”
Vargas whined once and licked Balinor’s hand where the bowstring had built the most callous. Sleep came suddenly.
When Balinor awoke with a parched throat and aching legs, the sun was warming the slopes, and the gryphon was gone. Only patches of dried blood and long black thornwing feathers decorated the landscape. Vargas nudged him with his wet nose until he stood and stretched.
One by one the soldiers emerged, followed by Alain. The soldier whose arm had nearly been severed now had a deep purple welt where the razorwing had slashed through flesh and bone. He managed to flex his hand slowly despite a throbbing pain and let it hang easily in a sling.
Alain pulled back the tarp to reveal where he had overturned the cart and squirreled away their supplies. He checked on the dwarf, Dindur, and shook his head in wonder. “Fella’s slept through the whole thing and he’s still sleeping. But his wounds have all closed over. It’s the
One’s work for certain.”
Balinor imagined Helba standing beside him with a chiding smirk upon her face and he could hear her saying, “I told you so.” He turned suddenly to brush away a rush of unwelcome tears. The happy bark of Vargas in the distance helped his mind refocus upon the present, and his eyes mercifully dried. When he looked carefully down the sloping hills, he could see a small column of wagons and a collection of horses kicking up thin clouds of dust.
The Duke always seemed to possess a quality of timing.
Balinor pointed in the direction of the wagons and smiled. “I’d have to agree with you this once, Alain. The One’s looking out for a whole bunch of us lately.”
“Let’s hope he welcomes the idea of visiting Thunderwall,” Alain grinned back. “I think the presence of thornwings and gryphons might be just as convincing as the promise of good food and better ale.”
“And troops at our heels,” Balinor added, his smile fading. “How far?”
“Only a few days straight north,” Alain stated. “It will be good to rest.”
Balinor thought of his friend Muren, mindless and helpless in Graniteside, and he thought of Kirsten facing unknown dangers from the elves of Longwood. “You can rest,” Balinor finally said. “Once we are safely to Thunderwall, I have some more promises to friends I have to keep.”
“Those your little secrets?” Alain teased lightly.
Balinor’s heart panged. “Yes,” he responded slowly. “These are mine alone.”
***
The sun was just rising over Wyntress Keep and, inside its sprawling courtyard, Major Codie Poll sat atop his Highlands grey charger Esteem while squeezing his riding gloves and waiting for the 3rd Platoon of The Marshall’s Personal Guard to form up for inspection. To the Major’s chagrin, Baron Egrant appeared from the keep in full dress uniform, marched across the grounds and stood alongside.
The major saluted briskly.
Egrant nodded with a smile. “A fine morning, Major. Came to send you off with some good wishes.”
“Your Grace does me an honour,” Poll replied dryly. While Egrant and the rest of the household drank the night away, Poll had been making plans for this morning. He was starting to warm to the idea that Egrant would be here to witness them in person rather than hear about them later.
The Sergeant’s voice boomed through the yard and was met with a flurry of activity the way a henhouse responds to the yips of a fox. Uniformed troops burst from the barracks under the wall to quickly assemble in three ranks, and another contingent slowly emerged from the barns across the yard, leading their horses smartly, brass buttons, silvered sabres,
and dark coats shining.
A corporal began marching the troopers on foot towards Egrant and Poll. Another trooper brought the sergeant his horse, a chestnut mare of sixteen hands, which he accepted briskly and mounted with surprising grace. Soon the entire unit was standing steadily awaiting approval from the Major.
“Today,” Major Poll began, “Baron Egrant has authorized me to commense the unpleasant task of apprehending a traitor to the King who is currently on the run from our authority. He is accompanied by some thieves and mercenaries who have foolishly sworn their allegiance to him alone.”
The troops stood steady, letting the Major warm his vocal cords with a customary speech. The horses bobbed their heads and puffed clouds of cool air.
“The Baron has authorized me to take only five men on this important task. However,” Poll smiled, “I am sure that the King would welcome additional volunteers for such an important task.”
