by K Vale Nagle
Askel and Triddle were explaining rivers to him. Specifically, dropping things into rivers. They brought Merin—and his pride—a certain prestige because they fixed problems that gryphons would not consider fixable. He appreciated that, but he also thought they were lying to him.
Everything they’d dropped into the river in the cave had come out in the rapids that divided the weald into north and south. Whatever the underground river was, it must feed into the much larger glacial runoff, Glacial Run. If the opinicus’s corpse was stuck, any of the dozen things they’d thrown in should have knocked it loose. The opinicus had probably escaped. They’d find him frozen halfway up the taiga, or his bones would be discovered regurgitated by a monitor during the spring hunt. Or, if he hadn’t escaped the water, he’d been washed out to sea near the fisherfolk city of Swan’s Rest.
“I think if we maybe wrap it in a seed casing it might explode when we put it in the water and dislodge his corpse,” Askel was saying. His reddish brown tail fanned like he was in flight as he jumped up to mime the explosion. With Triddle’s plan being to throw things into the water, it didn’t surprise Merin that Askel was trying to find a way to make that explode.
Merin’s tail, hidden behind him from Askel’s view, twitched. Merin stood much taller than the rest of his pride. Both his father and mother had been muscular gryphons, but not like him. He was more than the sum of his parents. Yes, his beak matched the rest of his pride. Its top curved down wickedly like an icicle at the tip. His colors, browns and golds, those had come from his parents, too. But his size had come from somewhere else. It was like the forest itself decided there needed to be larger gryphons. Had there been a hook-beaked monster of a gryphon anywhere in the weald, the mystery would have been solved. Instead, his mother said that the weald itself had seeped into his egg.
While he felt he had no ancestors, he’d wasted no time in creating the next generation. Several of the gryphons wandering the nesting area were nearly his size at half his age and shared his hook-beak. He yawned, a long, drawn out affair, and Triddle took the hint and pulled Askel away. It was no use scolding them. Better to let them think he was bored of their excuses. Their minds would latch onto a new project soon enough.
What he really needed them to work on was a way of extending the pride’s lands. He’d pushed the southern boundary as far as he could without risking the ire of the Feathermane and Fantail Prides. The runoff from the taiga and plateau that formed Glacial Run were too obvious a border. It was too bad Triddle couldn’t shift the rivers south.
Merin had tried to push further into Hatzel’s lands, but the border they shared was good parrot hunting grounds, and she wouldn’t back down. For a pride of only thirty, she held onto her lands like a lace monitor protecting its young. Moving east was its own hassle, as those prides were restructuring themselves. It was hard to know whom he could risk offending. And by the time he’d thought to expand north towards the eyrie, the opinici had taken advantage of the fire to create the grasslands. What he needed more than anything was what he couldn’t have: land. There was no point in growing his pride just to exhaust their hunting grounds. He’d even take a slice of the taiga if it weren’t so frigid. He’d sent his eldest son along with four of his best flyers to explore the lands beyond the taiga. They had yet to return, but he didn’t expect them back for several seasons.
Once, the prides had talked more. There was some taiga stock, some kjarr stock in his pride. He remembered being a fledgling and traveling with his father once and looking up at gryphons who sparkled green like a pond on a sunny day. Now, he couldn’t remember what they called their pride or where they’d come from. They’d looked at his size and recognized it, possibly from one of their own. He’d asked his son to find those gryphons before coming home.
He looked over at Askel and Triddle. They were nervously watching the crate taken from the prisoner. He shared their anxiety. They’d cleared a meeting area away from the nesting grounds, but having seen what it could do firsthand, he wasn’t convinced they’d gone far enough.
They’d already forgotten Merin and were wrapped up in further discussions about the substance in the box. Triddle wanted to submerge it in water—the underground river, in fact. Triddle thought the water might make it safer; Askel thought the water might make it explode. Either way, they both wanted to try it and find out. Merin had vetoed that idea but allowed them to experiment with the smallest of doses of black powder and the opinicus’s flint and tinder. Askel had already found a replenishment for the tinder by drying what he now called tinder fungus. Or, more likely, he already had a stockpile of dried, flammable items that the flint had made exciting again.
A rustle overhead announced the arrival of several gryphons from the eastern prides gliding down to the meeting area. He recognized most of them, though he saw none from the Fantail Pride who lived in the southeastern corner of the weald and no Hatzel.
Strix flew down and settled next to Merin. Strix was a uniformly dark gryphon with only a hint of red on the underside of his wings. His owl face lacked the ear tufts most gryphons had, giving him the appearance of youth despite his long years, but he’d earned a reputation as an adept night hunter. When hunter training was in session, he’d make the new adults learn to hunt in the dark. If they fell asleep, he’d sneak in and kill something in their camp without them waking. He was twisted like that. Merin bowed a little to him in thanks, understanding that Strix’s vanity needed to be indulged for a meeting so far across the weald before nightfall.
All the prides expected to arrive were now here except Hatzel, who had asked for the meeting in the first place.
Hatzel’s pride lazed about in the afternoon, trading stories and gossip. Instead of circling down from atop the forest, Zeph glided in, tucked his wings, and crashed like a boulder into Xavi, sending them tumbling into a pile of fir branches. A leaf-nosed snake that was trying to sneak to the wood pile to check for bugs flipped onto its back and played dead as the gryphons crashed into its destination.
“Welcome back!” Zeph said.
“Oomph,” Xavi replied. The fir branches cracked, leaking sap onto Xavi, who was on the bottom. Zeph hopped off, and Xavi attempted to stand, a small tree’s worth of branches adorning his fur and feathers. Moving only spread the stickiness, so he stood still, looking like a scruffed gryphlet.
Zeph just grinned and began to groom the sticks and resin off Xavi. He was always happy when Xavi returned and he no longer had to bear Xavi’s responsibilities as Hatzel’s second.
“How was your trip? Did they teach you how to hunt? You’re growing up so fast,” Zeph said.
“I’m older than you,” Xavi protested. “And I know how to hunt. This wasn’t for beginners. I killed a snake!”
Zeph stepped back and put on his surprised face for Xavi to see. The leaf-nosed snake took advantage of the distraction to right itself and slip back into the forest.
“A real snake, not just a vine? Well, I guess you have your adult feathers now. What did you fall in? You’re sticky.”
“It was a big snake. Like, bigger than three gryphons.” Xavi looked around for a gryphon to illustrate the point. Hatzel had glided down and was giving them both a strange look. A tiny gryphlet bounded up to chirp at Hatzel and see if she wanted to play. While Xavi was trying to point at Hatzel, Zeph sat back on his haunches and measured out the size of the gryphlet from shoulder to shoulder, then expanded that by three.
“No, like, three Hatzels,” Xavi said.
“Now you’re just telling tales. Nothing is as big as three Hatzels.”
“This is why I throw rocks at you,” Hatzel said as she took the gryphlet back to the nests.
“Where’ve you been?” Xavi asked.
“I went to the eyrie,” Zeph said through a mouthful of feathers and twigs. “It was big, like two and a half Hatzels big.”
He was glad to see the nesting grounds in one piece. He’d bypassed them while walking Orlea to get help in case more opinici had b
een sent to look for either of them. They’d left Orlea and Cherine with the medicine gryphons for the time being. Zeph liked his pride, but he didn’t want to put them in the position of harboring fugitives. The medicine gryphons, on the other paw, were known for helping anyone in need. No one would hold it against them.
As relieved as Zeph was to be back, Xavi seemed even more relieved to let Hatzel take charge. She’d dispatched the fastest gryphons to call together the prides, asking Merin to host the meeting to keep the eastern flights from having to fly into the northwest corner of the weald. Once Xavi was deforested, she and Zeph were working out how to get Cherine and Orlea’s information to the prides without revealing that they were hiding two opinici. The answer came via a greeting from above.
Blue, green, and red, Kia descended upon their nesting grounds for the second time. Zeph rushed up to her when she landed but seemed unsure of how to greet her—certainly not with a pounce into the fir resin. The sort of opinicus who painted intricate designs into her fur would not appreciate being covered in anything sticky. One exciting trip into the city didn’t make for life-long friends, but she’d been in his thoughts. He’d worried that his extrication from the eyrie had caused her strife. She seemed to radiate color next to his brown bands.
She was out of breath, but once her beak opened, everything came out at once: the kjarr and bog prides were now the wingtorn, Satra and the kjarr gryphlets were hostages, and the wingtorn had left to march on the fisherfolk. Oh, and there were opinicus rangers planting boxes of saltpeter across the weald because everything was going to explode. Kia tossed Cherine’s map down in front of them.
Hatzel looked to Zeph. Both looked down at the map. Cherine had told them he’d found several camps full of crates, but he hadn’t known what they were for. His best guess was a new mining operation.
“We can’t bring her with us,” Zeph said before Hatzel could suggest it. “We’ve seen how Merin’s pride treats opinici.”
“They’re going to ask us how we got this information and why they should trust it. Kia speaks to both of those things. With her, we have a reliable source without having to talk about our,” Hatzel realized that most of the pride was staring at them and Kia, “well, our other source.”
“Did you find Cherine?” Kia asked.
Zeph took her and led her away from the pride. “Why don’t we get you some food and water, and we can explain along the way?”
As they walked away, Zeph heard Hatzel ordering Xavi to fly as fast as he could to the fisherfolk and warn them. As the fastest gryphons had already been dispatched to tell the other prides of the meeting, Xavi was their next best hope for getting word down there. Instead of waiting for supplies, he leapt into the air, his blue markings expanding as his wings stretched.
Hatzel arrived at the meeting of prides to find the other leaders waiting on her. Not ideal, but she’d needed the time to bring Kia into the fold before coming here. Kia and Cherine presented problems. Orlea could probably return to the eyrie without anyone the wiser, though she’d been on the brink of starvation there, but Hatzel worried that Cherine and Kia had burned too many bridges the moment Kia left. Hatzel would offer them a place in her pride if no one else objected, but she couldn’t imagine two minds as inquisitive as theirs being happy out in the weald, far from the university. Orlea might be an easier sell since she was a hunter by trade, but scholars were a different bird altogether.
Hatzel landed and saw Triddle restraining Askel from waving and reconsidered her initial assessment. Cherine and Kia might find at least two kindred spirits out here, but that raised another question. What would happen if she took Merin’s prisoner into her pride?
She nodded a greeting to Merin and Strix. They were all assembled in a circle. The canopy was sparser here, hinting at the past nesting site abandoned after the stampede. The sunlight’s penetration over years had grown soft grass for them to lie on while they talked. In the center, someone had cleared the grass away to form a stone-ringed dirt crater. Before Hatzel could begin, Merin took over.
“We have a problem. An opinicus problem. When they cleared the burned weald to make the grasslands, we didn’t speak up. Now, their rangers hunt in the weald, stealing our game. We caught one of them, but he opted to drown himself instead of speak.”
An elder from the Parrotface Pride, with a face and plumage that resembled a tired ground parrot, spoke up. “What of it? We capture them and send them packing. It’s a game, nothing more. We used to sneak through the eyrie lands and catch turkeys when I was young. Is this what I was brought here for?”
The parrotface gryphons were known for being mild. This one must be cranky, Hatzel decided. They controlled most of the northern weald. Only the feathermanes, south of the river, had more territory.
“There’s more to it than that. Askel, Triddle?” Merin prompted.
At Merin’s command, the two brought the smallest bit of saltpeter to the center of the circle of pride leaders and placed it on a rock in the crater.
“This is what they’ve been bringing into our forest.” Merin held flint in his paw and struck it against the saltpeter mixed with flint, causing a burst of flame and noise. All the gryphons jumped to their feet.
“Irresponsible!”
“What is that?”
“Skraark!”
“Was that really necessary?”
Merin smirked and looked pleased that he hadn’t burnt off his paw. Askel and Triddle must have been working to figure out the right amount of saltpeter for his theatrics all morning.
“I don’t know why the opinici brought it here, but I know we can’t let this stand,” Merin said.
Strix, the only pride leader who hadn’t settled down onto his stomach as was customary for meetings, was looking up into the canopy far behind Hatzel. His concave face allowed him to capture sound in a way that the others couldn’t. “Why do we not ask them? I can hear that opi trill from here.”
There was murmuring among the pride leaders.
“Calm your feathers,” Hatzel said. “I’ve been doing my own investigation after the herds turned up dead.” She saw no sign from Merin but thought Strix was looking at her more intently now. It was tough to read his earless visage. Word of the slaughter must have traveled quickly to have reached even his far plateau. “The eyrie is worse than we thought. Please show respect to my guest, as she has much to say about what’s soon to come.”
Hatzel whistled. Zeph and Kia descended. Hatzel had advised Kia to start strong, weather the storm of questions, and then leave with Zeph when the discussion turned away from her. It was too risky to take her to Cherine just yet. She’d have to stay with Hatzel’s pride for the time being. Perhaps the fisherfolk would be a good haven for her and Cherine if Xavi’s mission succeeded.
Kia sat on her haunches instead of on all fours, putting her well above the gryphons she spoke to. “The eyrie captured the kjarr pride, enslaved them, tore off their wings, and are going to blow up the weald.”
Despite Strix’s critique, there was little trill to Kia’s words. Like the explosion of the saltpeter, there was a long moment where all the air from the glen was gone. Even Merin seemed surprised at the revelation.
And then the arguing and questions began.
“Why the kjarr pride?” This came from the parrotface elder. She had several grown offspring with fathers from the kjarr pride.
“There was a dispute and the kjarr salted the fields, starving the Crackling Sea Eyrie,” Kia explained.
“Jun never did have any sense of cause and effect,” Strix mused. The owls had been the last pride to adopt the common language, and his accent made it hard to tell when he was being facetious.
“Why burn down the weald?” asked another pride leader whose feathers formed a mane.
“They need to recreate the grasslands experiment on a grander scale to feed themselves and the Crackling Sea opinici,” Kia explained. Hatzel had advised Kia to use they instead of we when speaking of the eyrie opinici
in front of the gryphon pride leaders.
“How much of this explosive have they brought to the forest? When will they set it off?” the feathermane asked.
“Soon,” Kia replied. “The wingtorn were already dispatched to raze the fisherfolk villages and set up a trap to catch any gryphons leaving the weald.”
Hatzel pushed the map to Merin with her paw, who looked it over and gave it to Triddle. He and Askel cleared the rocks away and began to recreate the map in the dirt while Hatzel talked.
“We don’t know for sure. Our contact—” with this, she nodded to Kia, who allowed Zeph to begin to pull her away from the meeting and back to the nesting grounds, “was able to find a map with some of the locations.”
The map came to life before them. Askel and Triddle were unusually adept at this kind of work. They often drew out what they expected to happen when they diverted a river—returning later to update their map with what had actually happened. Now, they converted the dirt crater into Cherine’s map of the weald.
“The circles are the crates of explosives? They’re mostly along the grasslands edge, then,” Strix said. His pride was best situated if this were the case.
“These are the ones we know about. We could be greatly underestimating how deep into the weald the rangers went,” Hatzel said. “Think of the border areas between the prides and how deep they go.”
No one wanted to think about opinici sneaking past gryphons in the deep forest, but the crate in Merin’s hunting grounds had been there long enough to collect moss. Several other prides admitted to turning back opinici that were deep into their lands. Even the Fantail Pride’s leader admitted to opinicus tourists being turned away.
“We also don’t know if the wingtorn are carrying more explosives with them,” Hatzel added.
“What time did they leave? Did your opinicus see them?” Merin asked. “The kjarr was a massive pride. Jun’s father conquered and assimilated the bog pride, combining the nesting grounds, which now strech from the kjarr to the peat bogs to the edge of the goliath bird plains. Depending on how many kjarr gryphons were enslaved, these wingtorn could outnumber all of the weald.”
