by K Vale Nagle
He landed a bit off from the clearing, which was why he didn’t notice that the branches had been broken to create the view of running water from above. He was thinking about his gryphlets, about Hatzel, about the return trip. He was practicing giving his warning to the fisherfolk in the most convincing way possible.
He was not looking for a trap.
The rangers’ nets came fast when he lowered his head to drink from the stream. He flung one off and was making a run for it when he felt a scratch on his leg. It was a light, painless cut, but suddenly the weight of fatigue smothered him. His eyes lost focus as he looked back and saw an emaciated opinicus with a silver talon replacement dripping with some liquid.
“You caught another one, Rakesh,” said a voice from the other side of the river.
Xavi prayed the fisherfolk discovered the wingtorn before the attack came.
Reeve Brevin’s ceremonial home sat atop the center of the Redwood Valley Eyrie, lit by braziers all night. A no-fly zone was enforced because the reeve did not like to have anyone flying over her. The metalwork on the Reeve’s Nest building, made from the first mine’s discoveries before it collapsed, had always given her the impression of a large bird cage. As a chick living with her mom, she’d looked up at the government building and thought an impossibly large opinicus was housed inside. She was awed to find out that it was her own father who lived up there. It explained why he’d so rarely come to visit her. She’d understood that once she could fly, she was to go to him.
She and Jonas were arguing logistics when a ranger burst in to give the news of the explosion. They’d been discussing the food situation at the Crackling Sea. A small fishing village had been set up across the sea from the eyrie to avoid the fish contaminated in the invasion, but it was too remote to properly guard. It was a stop-gap measure to stave off hunger. If resources had not been an issue—but what was all this about if not resources, she wondered—a new eyrie would have been built on the far side of the sea. As it stood now, if another invasion occurred, there’d be no way to protect it.
An alternative was to take the trained fishing opinici from the Crackling Sea and bring them south to the ocean coast, through the kjarr lands. Ideally, their fishing expertise would translate to ocean fishing. The problem was that there were currently no safe paths for goliath birds from the ocean to the Crackling Sea Eyrie. The kjarr lands were mostly peat bog. When the birds didn’t simply sink into the squishy ground, they cried in distress until every sailfin monitor in a hundred yards came to try to eat them.
The Crackling Sea Eyrie was exploring the possibility of relocating to the fisherfolk villages to use that infrastructure to bring the fish north through the new grasslands—currently the weald—and then take the pass by the Redwood Valley Eyrie to get to the Crackling Sea. It was a long route, but with starvation as the other option, it was looking better with every passing day.
Jonas had proposed modifying the fishing rafts used as deep-sea fishing camps to allow the transportation of goods along the southern coast as a possible future option. An expedition was doing just that as they spoke.
The truth of the matter was that the only reason they were able to feed the Crackling Sea opinici now was that so many of them had died in the initial attacks. Using the kjarr pride as wingtorn had been a ploy of desperation in case the invaders returned. They didn’t have the food to hold all the wingtorn at the Crackling Sea, so the gryphlets, Jun, and his most loyal kjarr wingtorn had been relocated to the forest for the time being to help with the grand plan to convert the weald into farms and ranches. It worked out well as there’d been fighting between the bog and kjarr wingtorn.
That left the question of what to do with the gryphons once the area was pacified. If the gryphlets converted well to eyrie life, they could use the extra defenses. This assumed the attack on the fisherfolk villages left the wingtorn forces intact. In her experience, no plans ever went off without a hitch.
“Take a moment to catch your breath, then repeat that, please,” Brevin commanded the messenger.
The ranger did so, reiterating his message. “The northwest pride cache exploded. None of the rangers guarding it reported in. When we investigated, we found the nesting ground abandoned.”
“Abandoned before or after the explosion?” Brevin asked.
“It isn’t known.”
Jonas sifted through the parchment on the desk next to the table and pulled out the weald map. It unrolled to show a marker for the nest with a rough sketch of the pride leader, Hatzel.
Her jagged beak looked sinister in the brazier light. Brevin’s scouts, prone to exaggeration about all things weald-related, claimed Hatzel could snap an opinicus in half with it.
“That’s the pride we suspect the spy came from,” Jonas said. “The merchant, Parrotbane, entered the city under the guise of trading parrots and left with information. His hunting grounds put him close to the grasslands where the university researcher disappeared. We suspect the scholar was tortured to get information out of him, but that his tormentors couldn’t read and left his field notebook behind.”
Jonas’s map included the locations of all the explosives, the locations of the pride nesting grounds, drawings of the pride leaders—with a few question marks by the southeastern plateau—and their best guess as to the population numbers.
He traced a talon down to the fisherfolk villages. “I wish we had better intelligence. Wolden’s right, there’s so much we don’t know.”
Brevin rolled her eyes. “Wolden would require the final feather count of each gryphon before we attack. Did you wait for accurate intelligence before cutting off the kjarr pride’s wings? What’re we supposed to do, send one of the wingtorn into the weald to ask questions for us? I hardly think their wingless state would lend itself to intelligence gathering. That just leaves the two kjarr gryphlets who fledged. Oh, and Satra. Would you trust her that far from the eyrie?”
Jonas shook his head. He’d often confided in the reeve that he thought keeping Satra unclipped was a mistake. There were rumors from their spies that she’d maimed one of her sisters and murdered a taiga gryphon. The fact that the taiga pride had not come to the kjarr’s aid spoke to the truth behind the gossip. It was also possible that after the kjarr pride took over the bog pride, the taiga pride had worried they might be next and thought the world might be better off without the kjarr gryphons.
Brevin had watched Jonas do everything in his power to make sure Satra had been treated like a reeve, going so far as to make sure she ate better than he did. His greatest complaint was that she didn’t act like a murderer, which hinted at something even scarier if the rumors were true.
Brevin turned back to the ranger. “What of the other rangers? The other explosives?”
“They’re still setting up,” the ranger replied.
“Did the Hatzel pride set off the explosion or was it an accident?” Jonas asked. “If they set them off, did they warn the other prides?”
“I saw a few others reporting in to Commander Wolden,” the ranger said. “None of the ones close enough to see the explosion had any gryphon trouble.”
“Then we’re fine. The fire should spread back up through the Hatzel lands. If they flee to the taiga, well, we have to deal with the mountain gryphons eventually,” Jonas said. “That’s what the rangers occupying the kjarr nesting grounds are working on.”
“If Parrotbane found out about the explosives ahead of time, he may know about the wingtorn. When do they begin their attack on the fishing villages?” She had no idea how long it took to walk the length of the weald to the ocean. It seemed like such a dirty place to walk through.
“They’ve recovered quite well here in the forest with proper nutrition. They were moving at a much faster pace than I anticipated. If they didn’t arrive yesterday, they should be there today. They could’ve already won the shore,” Jonas said.
“Or lost it.” She traced a talon down the old trail that went south from the Redwood Valley Eyrie
to the ocean where two villages were circled. A drawing of a crane opinicus marked the leader of the fisherfolk there. She dismissed the ranger. She’d seen the crane opinicus come with their trade delegation several times. It disgusted her that this war would begin with the spilling of opinicus blood by the wingtorn gryphons.
She’d sent Larren, the father of one of her seven children, to lead the assault. Wolden had insisted on sending rangers, but she’d wanted someone more expendable, someone she was certain would be expended.
Larren wanted the powers of a consort and had the ear of her favorite child. This solved that problem and would also make Jun apologetic when he returned and had to explain that Larren had died in the assault.
Jonas seemed concerned by Reeve Brevin’s hesitation. “If you want to save your people, you must do this. Do you think if we still had a reeve to turn to we would have come here? Before we saw their soldiers, their assassins took apart our reeve. They prepared him like he was a ground parrot meal and left him on the throne. We found him less than an hour before the invasion came. We didn’t discover the bodies of his children until much later.”
She shivered. She’d wondered how the invaders knew the location and identity of all his children. She would not fight a war on two fronts like the Crackling Sea reeve had. She would secure the weald before the next wave came.
8
Jun the Kjarr
From the thick weald underbrush, Jun stood watch as the predawn morning gave way to sunlight. They’d made good time despite several setbacks. The goliath bird trail had become a footpath, wide enough for no more than two gryphons at a time. They’d reached the bridge only to find it buried under a layer of dead foliage, and they’d been forced to clear a path across.
With the mighty river dividing the weald, there was no other way south for the wingless kjarr pride. The tributaries from the Strix plateau and taiga spilled into the valley and met on their way south to form Glacial Run, which cut down through the weald and emptied into the ocean, creating a wide delta that presented a tactical issue for the flightless wingtorn. The water flowing out to sea was too swift to swim, though islands dotted the delta like stepping stones between the twin cities of Crane’s Nest and Swan’s Rest.
As the wingtorn neared the fishing villages, the four opinici who were meant to serve as Jun’s jailors began to defer to him. While the rangers had escorted them through the weald, the guards had indulged in a level of self-importance. Larren, the main guard, and Maurle, his second, still maintained a pretense of being in charge while also agreeing with everything Jun said.
They’d served as city guards, not military, and were uncomfortable without the trappings of their station. Reeve Brevin had insisted they leave behind their uniforms and wear plain, black harnesses in case something went wrong. It was the only concession Commander Wolden had permitted to the possibility of failure. Larren, at least, had likely been incentivized to do well here in return for a higher station in the Reeve’s Guard when he returned home. He kept a close watch on Jun while sending Maurle with the wingtorn approaching Crane’s Nest across the delta.
Now, with the prospect of combat ahead of them, they deferred to “The Kjarr.” Whatever they thought of Jun’s current arrangement, Jonas had made Jun’s prowess clear—this was Jun the Kjarr, leader of the kjarr pride who’d ravaged the Crackling Sea Eyrie, razed the markets, conquered the bog pride, salted the farms, and burned the goliath bird ranch. If not for the murder of his eldest daughter and capture of his youngest, his reign of chaos would have continued unchecked. And so, Jun’s jailors deferred to his judgement, though this was his first time east of the mountains and his second time seeing the ocean.
They waited an hour’s march—a detestable way to travel for a pride that once ruled the kjarr skies—from Swan’s Rest. The night sky was long gone, but morning was not yet over. Several wingtorn shook dew out of their fur.
Across the delta, the other half of the army followed the western bank. They awaited his call to attack the sister town of Crane’s Nest. Thenca and Urious, half-siblings who could’ve hatched from the same egg they looked so similar, served as communications officers for the raid. Both were bog stock, but where their relatives had always resented Jun’s father for conquering their pride, Jun had befriended these two from a young age. He trusted them more than some of his mates and offspring. The rest of the bog pride, the ones who had made several attempts on his life during their wingtorn captivity, remained locked away in the bowels of the Crackling Sea Eyrie.
Thenca looked up at Jun. Her bog markings were clear, a dark beak gave way to a black band that went past her eyes, giving the impression of a mask. Neither she nor her brother were the best fighters, but both could imitate the call of a hundred wild animals loudly enough to be heard for miles. Jun’s father had considered them both useless, a novelty and nothing more, but Jun had seen their potential. Being able to communicate from miles away under the cover of parrot skraarks made it easier to raid opinicus farms or launch surprise attacks on the goliath bird flocks. The fact that neither had children irked him. With an army of mockingbird gryphons, he could rule the continent.
He shook his head at Thenca. Not yet.
The opinici, taking their cues from her, became restless. Larren clicked his beak in an annoying manner. He remained irritated when the first scout, a thin spotted gryphon named Ari, returned and nodded her head. All clear, no problems found. An hour passed without further incident while they waited. Larren’s clicking quieted when the second scout appeared, carrying the dead bodies of two children. One of the fisherfolk fledglings still held a branch of berries in her talons. The other, a gryphlet, shared similar markings. Siblings. The second scout nodded her head to confirm. Her section was now all clear, though the parents may come looking for their children.
The opinici—Redwood Valley opinici who were much more squeamish than their Crackling Sea cousins—looked at Jun like he was a monster. He laughed a little in the back of his throat. They’d heard the same orders he had: kill every opinici if you want your gryphlets to remain safe. Their lives for your lives, their children for your children. The midday light glazed the sand and rocks by the time the final scout arrived and added an adult opinicus to the pile with the same markings as the children.
Jun nodded to Thenca, and she let out a loud call that sounded like a parrot being killed by a monitor. They’d been practicing weald wildlife on the way over.
A few moments passed, then her brother’s reply call of a mournful parrot came back.
The wingtorn stampeded towards the villages.
The plan had been to attack at daybreak, but the delay while they waited on the scouts removed their ability to strike from the dark. Jun never attacked without knowing the lay of the land, and to his mind a late morning attack worked just as well. Most of the adult fisherfolk should still be out on the sea.
Their floating docks, rafts anchored well off shore, were dark lily pads from this distance. The small huts and nests were built at the forest’s edge, with rocks and sand buffering them from the sea. The fifty feet between the forest edge and the huts had been cleared of foliage. The wingtorn, now well-practiced at running—they hadn’t flown from the Crackling Sea Eyrie to the Redwood Valley Eyrie, after all—covered the distance before anyone sounded an alarm.
Many fisherfolk followed the opinicus practice of raising children in the homes of the adults that birthed them. Jun would have preferred all the children be in one place, but he would make do. He exploded through the side of a reed hut, catching a crane-like gryphon off guard. The crane was dead before he could scream. His mate, a cobalt opinicus, managed to call out before Jun silenced her.
The kjarr pride leader looked out of the hut and saw a small crowd of fisherfolk from the shore hurrying inland. He cleaned the blood off his front paw so he didn’t slip on the rocks. He’d heard tales of gryphons who went berserk after tasting the blood of their kin. They became unstoppable warriors, unthinking drones wi
th names like “the swarm” or “the wasp.” He wasn’t like that. Blood was blood. His heart beat faster, but his mind grew calmer. He waited in the hut for the fisherfolk on the shore to reach him. His heart swelled a little with pride. His gryphons followed their training, waiting inside the huts and nests. None of them rushed out.
The fisherfolk approaching the huts slowed down, confused. No one came running out to them for help. When the first brave opinicus opened the reed hut to look inside, Jun leapt out and raked his claws against the opinicus’s chest. It made a gurgling sound. Three of the opinicus’s friends attacked him, but a fourth flew to a pile of reeds a hundred feet from the village. Jun called out an alarm for Thenca, who relayed it. There was a cache of eggs nearby.
While he longed to handle the nest personally to spare his gryphons the emotional damage of killing unhatched children, holding the attention of three fisherfolk was more important. They were hesitant, bewildered, unsure of his lack of wings, unsure of how to fight, unsure what was going on. He bellowed a growl that shook their feathers. Two backed up, but the third, a crane gryphon, let out a cry and stabbed at him with her long, javelin-sharp beak.
He shielded his face, barely protecting his eyes at the cost of bloodying his freshly-cleaned paw, and knocked her off balance. He bit her across the shoulder and neck, throwing her back at her colleagues. She was still alive but wouldn’t be able to fight.
He risked a glance at the nest. Several fisherfolk were attempting to hold back the wingtorn as others gathered eggs and flew for the ocean.
He growled at the one on his left, then charged right at an alarming speed, barreling through the other. Without wings to depend on, his land speed had increased to an impressive rate out of necessity. While the wingtorn and fisherfolk jabbed and poked at each other, he leapt over both and landed between the fisherfolk and the eggs, a monitor among the parrots. The nearest opinicus grabbed an egg and tried to fly away, but Jun launched himself into the air and caught the opinicus’s legs, pulling him to the earth.
