Storm Breaking v(ms-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  But when he reached the council chamber, he found that although Tremane had accepted their offer, it was with conditions—and reservations.

  "Tell the men to stand down," he was ordering as Darkwind entered. "I'll try Tashiketh's way, but—but—" he said, turning to the exultant gryphon and raising his voice. "You, sir, will obey the orders of your commander, that is, me, and you will make the preparations that I tell you to and adhere to the conditions that I set."

  Darkwind could hardly believe the transformation that a few moments had made in the dignified gryphon. Tashiketh and his two escorts were wildly excited, hackles and eartufts up, eyes flashing as their pupils expanded and contracted rapidly, their talons flexing against the wooden floor and leaving gouges that would be the despair of Tremane's housekeepers. These were no longer the strange ambassadors of an even stranger culture, these were warriors, and he wondered how they had kept their nature hidden beneath those serene exteriors.

  "We have the time, if you and your wing are determined to fly a warning against these people, to take the precaution that is needed to prepare you," Tremane said sternly, every inch the commander. And now Darkwind wondered at the transformation in the King as well. Here and now, there was no uncertainty, no hesitation. This was the Imperial Commander, a man who knew both planned warfare and scrimmage fighting, the man who had been entrusted with the conquest of Hardorn. "There is time enough for you to see what maps we have of the area and speak with those of Shonar who have relatives in the contested area. I would have you see my armorer, so that he can make you breast- and side-plates to protect you from arrows, and helmets to defend you from slung shot, if there were time enough." Tashiketh opened his beak to protest, and Tremane swiftly overruled him. "Not a word, sir! I am your commander, I have been fighting these people, as you have not, I know what they can and cannot do, and I will decree the terms under which you will fight. I will not dictate your tactics, sir, for that is your purview, but I can and will decree what I need for your safety!"

  He looked so black and angry that Darkwind thought for a moment that Tashiketh would take offense. But one of the two escorting gryphons muttered something under his breath, and Tashiketh burst into laughter.

  "What did he say?" Tremane asked, his anger fading.

  "He said, 'What a surprise, to find after all these centuries, a commander who is more concerned with saving our blood than spending it!' And he is right." Tashiketh bent his head in submission to Tremane's will. "We will follow the wishes of the commander who does not waste anything. I'll send Shyrestral to bring the rest, and we will see your maps and plans rather than improvising solely upon what we find there."

  In so short a time that Darkwind was astonished, the gryphons were lined up in three ranks for a none-too-hasty briefing. Only one somewhat bewildered man, who had only visited the place once, could be found to tell the gryphons about the lay of the land in that area. He found himself overwhelmed by the gryphons' relentless questioning over details of the region's wind currents.

  On the fourth day after the messenger had arrived, the gryphon wing flew off to confront the enemy, and Darkwind and everyone else watched them fly off with mingled hope and dread. The gryphons seemed full of confidence and good humor; they might have been going off on a pleasure jaunt.

  Except that their behavior showed Darkwind very clearly that their hunting and killing instincts were roused. When they were not moving, they were intensely alert, heads up, eyes taking in everything, bodies poised. When they moved, it was with bewildering swiftness and utter sureness, as deadly and beautiful as the dance of warrior and sword. They took no notice of the snow beneath their claws, of the cold breeze; their eyes were on the blinding blue sky, and they could not wait to be up and out. When they took to the air, they leaped up, catching the shivering wind in their talons and conquering it.

  "You're sure they will have a chance?" Tremane asked, as the wing vanished into the blue distance. "I keep feeling as if I'm sending them to their doom."

  "Gryphons were originally created as fighters," Darkwind replied slowly. "Very versatile ones. It's in their blood, and a millennium or two isn't going to change that."

  "They may have been created as fighters, but are they trained?" Tremane said, his voice sounding strained. "I know what my men can do—but these creatures? Granted, their opponents aren't as well-equipped or skilled as my men, yet it only takes a single well-aimed arrow to kill someone. And you tell me that Iftel has kept war away from her borders for as long as the Valdemarans have known them. How can they be ready for this? Surely—"

  "'Forgive me for interrupting you, but has Tashiketh told you how his twenty wingmen were chosen?" Darkwind replied, before Tremane could voice much more in the way of anxiety.

  The King shook his head.

  "'I thought not. Let's go inside where it's warm," Darkwind told him, as the sharp wind cut through the seams of his coat and chilled him. He shivered involuntarily and stamped his numbing feet to warm them. "I believe I'm about to surprise you."

  The group retired to Tremane's study; several of his other staff members, who had overheard the exchange, had managed to tag along. The gryphons had excited a great deal of interest among the Imperials and Hardornens alike, and Darkwind didn't at all mind assuaging some of their curiosity. It was a close fit for all of them, but Tremane gave no hint that he wanted any of them to leave.

  "I've managed to learn a bit about the way things are done in Iftel, at least as far as the gryphons are concerned," Darkwind told the group, once they were all settled in a circle of chairs, Tremane's only a little larger and more elaborate than the rest. "It's not the peaceful paradise you and I might have imagined."

  "Oh?" Elspeth said. "But they won't even let the Mercenary's Guild establish a Guildhall there!"

  Darkwind could only shake his head. "I don't know of their origin, but because of what I have learned from Tayledras history and some Kaled'a'in information, I have a few guesses. Tashiketh either doesn't know the answers, or has been ordered to pretend that he doesn't, so this is speculation."

  Tremane uttered a scornful little cough. "Darkwind, at times your insistence on hedging is maddening. Tell us! Don't keep saying it's only your opinion."

  Darkwind chuckled, not at all offended. "Certainly. I think that the citizens of Iftel are descended from some of the forces that were cut off when the Mage of Silence's stronghold was overrun. There were gryphon-wings with several of the armies, and since female gryphons by and large are a bit larger and heavier than the males, females always fought alongside males, often their mates, so there would have been a breeding population."

  "You mean some of these gryphons are female?" one of the generals blurted, looking completely taken aback.

  Darkwind laughed. "You didn't even look between their haunches, eh? Yes, some are female. Probably half; males also spend as much time tending the young as females, since they feed their young the way young hawks are fed." He raised an eyebrow at the general's stunned expression. "Oh, come now—you didn't think anything with a beak like that could suckle milk, did you? I wouldn't want to see the result if one tried!"

  The general winced, and Tremane himself made an expression of sympathetic pain.

  "As for the concept of females being poor fighters, I would not venture that opinion around Herald Captain Kerowyn of the Skybolts if I were you," Elspeth added crisply. "She is likely to invite you to have a practice session with a few of her ladies—or worse, with her!"

  Darkwind watched the general in question as he took a second and third glance at Elspeth, finally saw the calluses and muscles, and realized that Elspeth was not the pampered princess he had thought. "So much for physiology; I am assuming that they must have come from Urtho's people, because gryphons are created creatures, and I can't imagine where else they could have originated. We know from Kaled'a'in stories that some of Urtho's people were cut off from their own forces—they knew what was going to happen when the enemy overran the last st
ronghold," Darkwind continued. "I guess that they threw up hasty Gates—Portals, to you—and just tried to get as far away as possible. They succeeded, and ended up in fairly hostile country and then the Cataclysm happened and the Storms began. At some point, something put up the Barrier; Tashiketh isn't being very forthcoming about that either. The problem with putting a wall around you, though, is that it walls you in as well as other people out. So, in order to keep from killing each other or losing such self-defensive abilities altogether, the Peoples of Iftel organized their aggressions."

  Tremane looked troubled. "Organized? How?"

  Darkwind sighed, for he was of two minds about what he had learned. He understood why, and sympathized, but he wasn't happy about what they had chosen to do. "Games, but games that verge on being blood-sport. If Tashiketh is telling the truth, no one has to participate, but in the highest and most competitive levels, there is real possibility of serious injury and even death. Serious wargames; Tashiketh says that in his part of Iftel there are several deaths among participants in every round of competition. That was how his wing was formed; every single one of these gryphons is the winner of contests in his district that pitted him against opponents of his own and other races, coming at him singly and in a group, and using weapons that were merely blunted, not rendered harmless."

  Tremane blinked. "Oh, he said, thoughtfully. "Interesting. They aren't as inexperienced as I assumed."

  "That isn't all, of course," Darkwind went on. "Each preliminary winner was required to participate in intellectual contests as well; what those were, I don't know for certain, but they probably included memory tests and logic puzzles. Tashiketh was the overall winner of everything. And the reason that the delegation is made up entirely of gryphons is that only gryphons would have been able to get here before the Storms started again. Now you know the gist of everything that I have learned or guessed."

  Tremane and the others seemed somewhat taken aback by the fact that the right to be an ambassador had been determined by a series of often-deathly-violent contests, but Darkwind privately thought that was a more logical means of choosing someone for an important post than some other methods he had heard of from supposedly "civilized" lands. Picking someone to whom you owed a favor, or someone whose family was important, or worst of all, giving the job to whoever paid the most for the honor—all those were recipes for sheer disaster, and whoever used such means probably got the disasters he deserved. Granted, most ambassadors didn't have to compete in highly dangerous war games, but then, most ambassadors weren't also authorized to participate in their allies' real conflicts, either. He just wished that the contests weren't so lethal.

  "Are you confident in their ability as a fighting unit?" Tremane asked him bluntly. Darkwind nodded.

  "I know my gryphons, and I know that these are well-trained," he replied. "I also know they aren't stupid. I don't think they would have been nearly so eager to volunteer if they thought your opponents had working magic."

  "Ah!" Tremane exclaimed, and chuckled. "I see. They don't expect to come within range of a normal distance-weapon, is that it?"

  "Probably not; they can stay out of range of arrows and drop large, heavy objects down on the enemy." Another of the generals started to chuckle, as if he found the idea vastly amusing. "Or spears, or firepots—"

  "Or any number of things that are inconvenient when crashing through one's roof," Elspeth interrupted, before the good gentleman could wax eloquent. "But telling you that they were going to do that would not have sounded nearly as heroic as they wanted to appear."

  "So, we will let them believe that we are still cherishing the illusion that they flew off to battle talon-to-sword with our foes," Tremane said firmly. "If they choose to tell us what their tactics are, we will then praise their cleverness. Otherwise, we will be effusive in our praises of their bravery. In either case, they will succeed in making it clear to troublemakers that we have a formidable ally that they do not; they will accomplish what they set out to do, which is to win this single scrimmage, and that may be all we need. I would rather have a bloodless victory than any other kind."

  "I've taken the liberty of ordering a congratulatory feast of wild game, sir," the Seneschal said diffidently. "I was afraid that if we left it too long, we would never get the meat thawed in time."

  Tremane nodded his agreement absently, which relieved the poor lad, who was still afraid to order anything on his own that might have a serious impact later. In this case, ordering a feast might lead to a shortage later. Darkwind privately doubted that, having seen the stores of frozen meat himself, but it was a possibility. Perhaps more than a possibility, when he recalled the sheer mass of food that Treyvan and Hydona could put away without hesitation. But now that Tremane had given his approval, the young Seneschal clearly felt much easier in his mind.

  I do miss Treyvan and Hydona, and their two little feathered fighters. I miss tumbling and playing with the little ones, and feeling Hydona preen my hair, and watching Vree dive after Treyvan's crest-feathers. And I miss their deep voices, their affection, and advice.

  "Now, gentlemen and ladies," Tremane said, his tone turning somber, "Let us consider what we must do if our allies fail."

  "It isn't likely, I don't think," Darkwind offered. "A single gryphon, half-asleep, can defeat a squad of fighters with less effort than it takes to preen. This is a group of twenty-and-one, fully awake and eager!" Several of the attendees laughed, looking quite convinced of that by what they had seen of the creatures. "But you're correct, of course. Preparations should be made for less than total victory."

  The rest of the day was spent making plans for just that contingency, but as sunset reddened the skies to the west, the victors came winging home, quite intact, and with the foes' leader's personal banner, a letter of surrender, and a pledge that he would come in person to swear his allegiance, all clutched proudly in Tashiketh's talons.

  The cheers that rose to greet them as they replicated their previous graceful landing in the courtyard were prompted as much by relief as by joy in the victory, but they didn't need to know that.

  Darkwind assured one and all that a tired gryphon was a starving gryphon, and Tashiketh's second in command nodded firmly. At the feast, to which the tired gryphons were immediately ushered, Tashiketh formally presented the surrender and pledge, and then modestly revealed the secret of their victory.

  "First we dropped rocks through their roofs," he said, with a faintly cruel chuckle. "Then we dropped one firepot on a thatched outbuilding, and circled in three subwings of seven each. After six passes, we threatened to drop more. That got their attention long enough for us to claim that we were a mere fraction of the winged army that King Tremane could command if he chose. And I hinted that we weren't too particular about waiting for provisions to arrive in a case like that, and were inclined to help ourselves. The idea of hundreds of us descending out of the sky, smashing big holes in every roof, setting fire to things, and snatching and carrying off who-knew-what to eat, had them in a panic. If that idiot leading them hadn't surrendered on the spot, I think they might killed him and served him to us on a platter with a good broth on the side!"

  Several of the generals laughed heartily at this, and even Tremane smiled. Darkwind thought it best to interject a cautionary note.

  "It won't do to make them think you're going to carry off children for snacks," he warned Tashiketh under cover of the laughter. "How could they trust a King who'd let his 'monsters' feed on children?"

  "No fear of that," Tashiketh soothed. "I made sure we were eying the sheep when I said that, and added a bit about how tasty fresh, fat mutton was, and allowed as how we could decimate their every flock and herd in a matter of days and just feel stronger for being so well fed. For a people on the edge of starvation, accepting surrender in place of that sounds very appealing. Our rules of combat have always stressed that we're not to intimate that we eat thinking beings. We might not have done this in earnest before, but we've had plenty
of training."

  "Good." Darkwind relaxed enough to chuckle. "I wish I'd seen their faces when you told them that you were only the vanguard. And of course, they would never know when you were bluffing."

  "It wasn't all bluff." Tashiketh said smugly, then suddenly took an extreme interest in his food, as if he realized that he had said too much.

  Well. Well! Darkwind took an interest in his own meal, as if unaware that Tashiketh had let fall something important. So Iftel has more interest in Tremane's welfare than I thought. Enough that they would back him with a significant force? It certainly sounds that way.

  If they would send an army to help him, what else would they be willing to offer? The secret of the Barrier? Other secrets?

  And how much of that would be of any use against the coming Storms, especially the Final Storm?

  Or would so little be left after that last blow that none of this would matter?

  "You could not possibly have conceived of anything more likely to have turned you into the Army's favorites," Elspeth told Tashiketh, as a roar went up from the watching crowd. Five of Tashiketh's subordinates climbed, crawled, flew, leaped, and contorted themselves across a torturous obstacle course under the bright noontime sun. It was cold enough to numb feet encased in boots and several layers of stockings, but that hadn't prevented the now-usual crowd from showing up as soon as the contest began. Typically, the former Imperial soldiers had gathered to watch, cheer—and then bet on the outcome. This was probably the most exciting entertainment in the entire country about now.