by K Vale Nagle
“Orlea seemed in better shape than Cherine,” he offered. “If she’s able to fly, she should know how to evacuate the lower quarters if things go wrong.”
Hatzel took a moment to consider. “Well, the medicine cave is on our way to the winter grounds. We can stop in and see.”
Kia and her escort’s initial flight towards the new shelter had cost them time when turning south for the medicine gryphon’s cave. She’d tried to ask for directions, but her escort—she hadn’t gotten his name yet—had just looked apologetic and said, “It’s just a cave.” They were backtracking over some of the same area, following the western edge of the weald where it bled into the mountains. The evening sky’s vibrant orange had changed into the bright blue of the center of a candle before fading into the cool darkness of a deep lake. Many gryphons and opinici had excellent day vision or night vision, but almost none excelled in the transition. In fact, it was her companion’s sense of smell that first alerted them. She’d been thinking about how easily that opinicus had died, and how easy it must therefore be for her to die. Her beak still ached, tasted of blood.
“Is something burning?” he asked, flying closer to her so she could hear him.
Kia looked around. Finally, she saw it—a small, thin line of white smoke coming up from the canopy. She pointed, and the gryphon caught sight of the smoke. They changed tracks and glided down to investigate.
Zeph and Hatzel arrived at the medicine cave to find two grumpy opinici and many exasperated apprentice medicine gryphons. Having spent every waking hour of the past few days together, Orlea and Cherine were both becoming friends and tiring of each other’s company.
Orlea described Cherine as a “bloated, stuck-up opinicus with his head so far in the sky the clouds were obscuring his vision of the eyrie.” Cherine thought of Orlea as a “narrow-minded poacher with no sense of the greater good.” Their favorite topic of conversation was the conversion of the land around the eyrie, once full of ocellated turkeys, to only allow hunting by the rangers. Even the aneda forests of the nearby mountains were ranger-exclusive now, and about half of the grasslands had been taken over by farming or capybara efforts.
Cherine’s view was that the non-ranger hunters were killing too many animals, which hurt the overall production of meat for the eyrie. By carefully managing the reeve’s hunting grounds, they could produce the optimal amount of food.
Orlea’s view was that Cherine was an idiot. Just how much of that meat did he think found its way down to the poorer opinici? They required the forest to get enough food to survive. They’d always lived off the land. Locking it away under arbitrary rules and ranger enforcement just made criminals out of hungry opinici.
Cherine wanted to know why Orlea didn’t just earn money some other way and buy the food.
Orlea wanted to know just how a hunter was supposed to get paid when the hunting grounds were closed off.
Hatzel wanted to know if they were interrupting, because she and Zeph could come back at a better time.
“Ah, my ress-cuer!” Cherine cheered. He had a bit more trill with the bandage on his beak.
“How’re you recovering?” Hatzel asked.
“It’s not so bad,” he managed. “Whatever they gave me keeps me drowsy. When that doesn’t work, I just talk to Orlea over there.”
Orlea clicked her beak in annoyance. He clicked his beak back, causing the nearby apprentices to frown. Obviously, they’d given up on trying to get him to rest his beak until it healed. It had been a fool’s errand from the start.
“How’s your wing doing?” Zeph asked Orlea.
“It’s not as bad as I thought. The net just stretched it in the wrong ways. I’m not sure what they did to it, but it’s just about as good as new. I’ve already flown a little, when the apprentices let me out to empty my bladder.”
“If you’re up for it, we need your help,” he said.
“Oh? Need something poached?” Orlea asked with a look to Cherine.
Zeph shook his head. “We need an expert on the lower levels of the eyrie who can help us in case there needs to be an evacuation.”
“What’re they going to be evacuating from?” she asked.
“Probably us,” Hatzel replied.
Kia and her escort’s investigation turned out to be a short one. When they broke through the canopy line and got a close view of what was going on, they both fled as fast as they could fly.
Until now, she’d forgotten about the fallen opinicus, having been more concerned with his compatriots. She’d heard his cries for help and assumed he’d been eaten by the monitors. Down on the ground there was a long line of blood leading to a small camp, presumably the one the rangers had been using. Next to the tents was the unmoving body of the opinicus, minus a wing. In his foretalons were flint and tinder. The top of a box with a circle on it was on fire, and the flames were spreading and growing.
Kia and the gryphon launched themselves back up through the canopy and put as much distance as they could between them and the camp.
There was a moment where it seemed like the fire might have burnt itself out. Kia resisted the urge to look back. Her escort’s willpower was not as strong, and he looked back just in time to see the explosion.
Both were rendered deaf and dumb by the concussive blast. The gryphon was also struck blind by the light.
The fire’s effect was less like a typical forest fire and more like liquid. It was as though a giant flaming opinicus had crashed into the water, and the flames went up and then landed like droplets across the forest. As her brain recovered, Kia saw the flames dispersing and thought of the oil used in the braziers across the eyrie. Drops of liquid fire clung to the branches, incinerating the redwood foliage until they finally surrendered and burst into flames.
The gryphon’s brain restarted first, but without his vision, he had trouble stabilizing. Kia’s mind kicked in a moment later, and she called to him. Her own voice echoed in her head like it’d been shouted from the bottom of the Snowfeather Dam. She flew up to the gryphon and helped steady him. She stayed close enough to keep him going in the same direction they’d been headed originally, but she didn’t know how they’d find the caves without his help. As the shockwave’s effects lessened, she began to feel a burning sensation across her body. She looked down at her forearm and saw small, smoking marks where the oil had splattered against them. Thankfully, she hadn’t been looking at the explosion. Most of the oil was on her flank and back. None of what hit them had caught fire, but they were both smoldering with oil.
Her wings began to shake when a white shape flying from the direction of the mountains caught her eye. The explosion must have caught its attention. It rushed towards her and came into focus. Its head was like a gyrfalcon. No longer all white, she could now make out black bars that became black rosettes as they traveled onto his latter half. He looked from Kia to the gryphon, then slipped under the blind gryphon’s other side and helped guide him.
Behind them, the fire fought to spread.
Zeph, Hatzel, and Orlea were all standing at the cave entrance, looking out at the small flames blossoming far in the distance. Hatzel was the first one to spot the two gryphons and opinicus flying towards them and raise the alarm. She and Zeph flew up to greet them and helped bring Kia’s escort down. Where the cave entrance narrowed to only allow three across, Hatzel and Kia helped the wounded gryphon through, leaving the taiga gryphon and Zeph alone.
Zeph noticed the snowy gryphon for the first time. Hatzel had mentioned one of the taiga pride was seen patrolling the border they shared with the weald, but she hadn’t mentioned which one it was.
“Younce?” he asked.
“Hello, Zeph. We haven’t seen you up in the taiga for a few years,” Younce replied.
Zeph tried to resist the urge to bristle but found himself bristling regardless. Younce’s tone was cold but not hostile.
Zeph had grown up with the taiga gryphlets until it became obvious that his feathers and fur were not ab
le to withstand the extreme temperatures. They’d coddled him through his first winters but finally gave him to the weald pride his father had been from.
When the taiga gryphons interbred with weald or kjarr gryphons, it was always tough to tell if the offspring would be more suited to the warmer or colder climates. It was up to the mother who laid the egg to move the gryphlet to the father’s nesting grounds if the gryphlet’s fur and feathers weren’t adapting well. Since his youth in the taiga had been marked with coddling, Zeph’s hatchmates tended to think of him as sickly or weak.
“The summers have been busy,” he said. “Good hunting times. You could always come to the weald, you know. I could teach you to hunt ground parrots. They’re less chewy than goliath birds.”
“I’m in the weald now,” Younce replied.
Zeph rolled his eyes. To the weald gryphons, the taiga began where the mountains started. To the taiga gryphons, the weald was everything below the elevation where the aneda trees grew. Hatzel’s border with the taiga gryphons had always been easier than the one she shared with Merin’s pride by virtue of the prey-free zone that divided them. This did raise a question for Zeph.
“What brought you so close to the border?” he asked.
Younce was scratching behind his ear with his back paw. “It’s summer. I was patrolling for opinici. Sometimes they stray off the goliath bird pass between the eyries. It’s become necessary to keep watch.”
“I suppose no one comes after the taiga in winter,” Zeph said.
“Oh, they do. We find them when they thaw in spring.”
Only their shared childhood allowed Zeph to know when Younce was joking. His delivery was as dry as the mountain air. Even now, however, Zeph wasn’t entirely certain.
“How’s the pride holding up?” he asked.
“Not as well as it could be. I never liked the term pride, being as modest as they come. I prefer to think of us as an avalanche of gryphons.” Younce’s demeanor broke for a moment as he saw a twitch in Zeph. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“I have a favor to ask you,” Zeph interrupted.
Everyone was allowed a few hours of sleep, but it was important to get to the eyrie before sun up to join the counteroffensive.
The wounded gryphon, Kia’s escort, turned out to be one of Xavi’s many children. The gryphon’s vision hadn’t returned. Some of the burning oil had gotten in his eyes, and the old medicine gryphon was taking care of him. She reassured him that his sight could improve in time. Until then, he would serve as Cherine’s new chat partner while Orlea joined Zeph and Hatzel.
When Zeph awoke, he found the old medicine gryphon attempting to strike a deal for aneda extract from Younce. As best Zeph could tell, she was bartering her blue and yellow spotted assistant for an unnamed amount of the substance. Younce remained stalwart, but Zeph could see his bushy tail twitching in amusement.
Zeph woke Hatzel and Orlea, then asked Orlea to go get Kia without waking Cherine, if possible. Cherine’s medication had knocked him out, but Kia had joined him after he was asleep.
“I never wake up to find someone in my nest,” Hatzel complained. She began the grooming process, starting with her face.
“That’s because you bite in your sleep,” Zeph remarked.
She balked. “What? No, I don’t!”
“It’s why we put Orlea’s sleeping nest closest to yours,” he explained. “She’s like a safe sleeping shield.”
Hatzel did not dignify him with a response but, instead, took to morning grooming with redoubled efforts.
“Younce agreed to take us along the edge of the taiga up to the eyrie so we can come in from the goliath bird pass and reach the flameworks unseen,” Zeph said. “The taiga pride’s already holding the line against the Crackling Sea Eyrie on the kjarr side of the mountains. He doesn’t want to swat the wasp’s nest on this side, too. But he agreed to take Cherine up to the taiga and says Orlea and Kia can come. That should keep Cherine away from Merin.”
Neither Zeph nor Hatzel was sure what the opinici would want, but it might give them a safe place to think it over, should the fisherfolk not get Xavi’s word in time.
Having heard Kia’s retelling of the previous night’s events, he was certain that, however the rangers intended to use the saltpeter, lighting the box on fire was not it. The concussive blast had hurt Kia and her escort but hadn’t spread the flames the way it could have. Much of the oil had been propelled from the explosion so quickly that it hadn’t combusted. From what Zeph had gathered from the opinici, the saltpeter had to be prepared and a fuse lit to cause real destruction.
A scouting party had revealed a crater and a circle of charred trees, but the damage was contained. None of the other rangers were ready to go, or they had orders to wait, because no more fires started.
Kia returned with Orlea, and they began their own grooming. Zeph found it fascinating how the addition of foretalons instead of paws made some things easier and other things harder.
“It must be nice to see some old hatchmates.” Hatzel motioned to Younce.
“Oh? Were you born up in the taiga?” Orlea asked. She looked at Zeph’s eyes, which were a mix of brown and orange. “You don’t look taiga.”
He stuck his tongue out, fuzz from grooming still attached. “They only change to blue in winter, when the days get shorter. Look at Younce, his eyes are green during the summer.”
Orlea looked over Kia to confirm the truth in Zeph’s statement. Kia was still smarting from the burn marks, so Orlea was helping her preen and reapply the ointment.
“It is nice to catch up,” he replied to Hatzel. Or as close to catching up as anyone can manage with Younce. “But I prefer the weald. Give me a plump ground parrot over a frozen frog any day.”
“Oooh, that’s not something you hear very often,” Kia said. “I’ve heard it said that the frogs are delicious. One merchant tried to freeze them and bring them to the eyrie.”
Hatzel looked up from cleaning between her paw pads. “I’m with Zeph, for once. They’re too sweet. They make me feel sick.”
As they finished grooming, a sound came from outside the cave.
“Helllllooo?” it called.
Kia and Orlea looked alarmed, but Hatzel calmed them down. “It’s just Triddle and Askel. They’re the ones who set up the plan to save Cherine.”
She was correct. Both came in with a bounce in their step, but only Triddle’s beak was open in a grin.
“Hatzel! Zeph! Kia! Cher-oh, I don’t know you. You have a secret opinicus? Other than the other two secret opinici? Hello! I’m Triddle. This is Askel.”
“Orlea,” she responded.
She stood up and bowed slightly, spreading her wings and tail feathers. Zeph and Hatzel looked at each other, but Kia seemed used to this greeting, so they shrugged. Triddle returned it happily, his crest falling forwards as he bowed, and smacked Askel, who also did his best imitation, fanning his tail mid-curtsy.
“I wanted to check on Cherine before we went in, in case he had any information on the eyrie. It looks like you found more opies, though,” Triddle explained. While Zeph was embarrassed by his use of opies, the opinici seemed unaware or ignored the fact that it was usually meant as an insult.
“Are you coming with us?” Askel looked at Kia and Orlea. They both nodded.
“How’s Cherine holding up?” Triddle asked.
“He’ll be fine, but he’s not ready to fly yet,” Hatzel said. “He’s asleep now, but he owes you his life. If you want to ask him something, I imagine he’d be happy to see you again.”
Triddle’s inner conflict danced from left forepaw to right forepaw in a little march as he came to an inner consensus. Askel, who’d probably heard about the shape Cherine was in after being pulled through a river, stepped in.
“No, he should recover his strength. Is he going to live in your pride after this?” Askel asked.
Hatzel shook her head. “No, it’s too much of a risk if Merin recognizes him. He’s
going with Younce to the taiga once he’s well enough to fly short distances. The mountains are too dangerous to be completely without flight.”
Hatzel motioned to Younce, who now had the blue-and-orange apprentice with the spots on her back half standing next to him. He pulled some wrapped aneda resin and bandages from his harness and gave them to the medicine gryphon. The taiga was a dangerous enough place that harnesses on gryphons were a given instead of an oddity. It was one reason Zeph hadn’t had a problem wearing one to the eyrie when he traded. He’d grown up wearing one for the first few years.
“We should get going.” Zeph chirped to let Younce know that they were ready. “We have a flight ahead of us if we want to get to the eyrie before dawn.”
Meanwhile, far to the south, Xavi jerked awake. He’d been flying for so long that he’d dozed off again. He was feeling the fatigue. There were a lot of gryphons who were better equipped for sky travel than he was. He’d always considered himself an average flyer at best, if he were being honest. He’d only stayed awake this long because he still itched from the resin in his fur. Zeph had run off with Kia before finishing his grooming.
Xavi wished he’d thought to bring some food with him. There were a few harnesses in the pride for trips to the city. He could have filled one with supplies.
The fisherfolk often carried goods with them and broke the trip up over several days, but a fast and light opinicus might be able to make it from the eyrie to the southern shore in a day. His muscular gryphon build worked better for forest acrobatics than long distance flights. He’d already pushed himself past his usual limit and knew he’d pay for it when he finally reached the shore. He could see the edge of the weald ahead, but he needed to rest his wings. It was too far for him to make it without a chance to rest, relieve himself, and drink something. Through a break in the canopy, he saw a small clearing with a stream and began his descent.
