Windswept: Gryphon Riders Book Two (Gryphon Riders Trilogy 2)

by Derek Alan Siddoway

  No more riders showed themselves throughout the day. Eva hoped they were flying out of their territory. Although they didn’t drift much farther north, the weather continued to warm until it was almost like the beginning of fall again. A few hours before sunset, Eva called an early stop and they settled down on yet another hill, this one scattered with boulders and scrub brush. Ivan looked even paler and would’ve fallen out of the saddle had Chel not been there to steady him when they landed.

  They refilled their canteens in a small spring nearby. Eva and Sigrid changed Ivan’s blood-soaked bandages for fresh ones after cleaning off the dried blood caking his arm.

  “Not much of a Scrawl,” he said in a faraway voice, staring at the cut in his arm like it was someone else’s body. “Can’t even heal up a little cut.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Eva said, squeezing the hand on his good arm. “You used a lot of power today. Rest up. I’m sure tomorrow will be better.”

  But she wasn’t sure. Eva and Sigrid shared a concerned glance as they returned to their gryphons to settle them down for the night. Although it was uncomfortable for the animals after a fight and a day of flying, Eva and Sigrid decided to leave them saddled.

  “Why can’t he heal himself?” Sigrid asked in a whisper so Ivan couldn’t hear.

  Eva shook her head. Ivan should have recovered enough during the day to invoke a healing kenning, but Chel told them he hadn’t done any magic at all. “Maybe he just needs a bit of rest.”

  Chel managed to find them some rabbits and tubers for dinner, but Eva waved them aside, settling only for water. Although her stomach clenched and twisted from both hunger and sickness she didn’t feel like she could eat anything yet. Instead, she sipped water and studied Ivan wrapped in a blanket across the fire. He was unusually quiet, eyes staring off past the campfire into the darkness. He held his wounded arm against his chest, like a bird cradling a broken wing. Every once in a while he shivered and used his good arm to pull the blanket closer around him. The flow of blood seeping from his wounds had slowed some but he lost quite a bit through the day. Eva could see his exhaustion in the haggard lines breaking up the rune markings on his face.

  The gryphons, full from a heavy meal of horse that made Eva even sicker just thinking about, settled down and were asleep before the humans were even done eating. Eva volunteered for first watch, hoping she’d be able to sleep the rest of the night through but knowing sleep would be a long time coming as she replayed the events of the battle over and over in her head.

  Unlike the night before, both Sigrid and Chel fell asleep almost at once, leaving her alone with her thoughts. She wondered if the man had had a family, someone waiting for him back in camp, that would curse her name for taking their loved one from them. Remembering Sigrid’s advice she tried to push such things from her mind. She’d always known this moment would come, and wondered how she would be able to face it.

  While some riders, like Sigrid, were able to brush off the feeling, at least on the outside, Eva knew others that were haunted so much they left the Windsworn, vowing to never take up arms again. She found herself somewhere in the middle, haunted by demons of the dead, knowing the call for arms would come again.

  Late that night, Eva gazed around the harsh, windswept plains while everyone else slept. Until now, the journey had felt more like an adventure with close friends than a matter of life and death.

  With Ivan’s injury, the seriousness of their quest weighed on Eva, Soot’s words of warning sprang to her mind. She knew she’d been more concerned about meeting her father, what he looked like and sounded like, than with the dangers of the journey. The night sky seemed endless. Beneath the distant light of the stars, Eva suddenly felt very small, very alone and very foolish.

  Chapter Ten

  When Chel relieved her of the watch, Eva fell asleep faster than she thought she would. However, her sleep was plagued by a vision of Ivan standing before her. They were back inside the tower, the gryphons worrying at dead horses, bodies of the men strewn all around where they’d left them unburied for the vultures and crows.

  “Why did you let them kill me?” Ivan asked. Unlike before, it wasn’t just his arm that was cut. He had a deep gash going all the way through his chest, his face gray and his eyes sunken with dark circles.

  “You’re not dead!” Eva tried to tell him. “I didn’t let you die. I killed a man!”

  “And they killed me because you couldn’t be brave enough. You’re a coward and you hesitated.”

  Eva reached for Ivan, trying to tell him that she wasn’t a coward, that she had been brave and fought like the rest of them. But her hand passed through the Scrawl like he were a ghost.

  “You’re not dead!” She yelled at him. “You’re not —”

  “Eva!”

  Eva gasped. Sigrid knelt over her. She realized she’d been dreaming but her heart continued to race. The first orange and red rays of morning shone on the horizon. Chel and Ivan, along with the gryphons, were still asleep. Eva sat up, wiping the sweat away from her forehead. Sigrid offered her a canteen and she took a long, deep drink, the cold water hitting her empty stomach reminded her she hadn’t eaten anything that had stayed down in almost a day.

  “You were thrashing around and saying something but I couldn’t understand what,” Sigrid said.

  “It was just a dream,” Eva said, as much to herself as Sigrid. “I’m worried about Ivan.”

  Sigrid’s brow creased as she looked toward the Scrawl. He lay curled in a ball, muttering under his breath and clutching the blankets tight to him.

  “It would’ve been good if we could have stitched the wound shut, but I think he’ll be fine as long as it doesn’t get infected,” Sigrid said. “I was hoping after some rest he’d be able to heal himself a little as well.”

  Eva didn’t say anything, just stared at Ivan, biting her lip. She knew she was completely responsible and Ivan’s condition did nothing to make her feel like she’d made the right choice to drag them all out into the wilderness.

  “He’ll be fine,” Sigrid said. “I haven’t seen an injury Ivan can’t heal — just don’t tell him I said that!”

  Eva smiled at the joke and nodded. When Ivan and Chel woke, they ate a sparse meal of tubers and the last of the harvest fruit they’d brought with them from Rhylance. Her appetite returned, Eva scarfed down her portion. It did little to satisfy her aching stomach.

  Ivan drank only water, although Eva thought some of the color had returned to his face. When they checked his bandages before taking flight, the blood had slowed and only oozed out of the ragged cut. Although he still didn’t have much to say, the Scrawl could stand without swaying and didn’t seem to to be as weak.

  They continued on, little changing below them save for the placement of the next boulder-clustered hill or pile of ruins. Contrary to Eva’s hopes, Ivan grew worse the second night after the attack from the horsemen. Although he gathered enough strength to attempt a rune kenning to help heal the wound, the magic had no effect on the cut and left him weaker than before he’d started. On the third day, Ivan burned with fever. When they unwrapped his bandages that evening, his arm was swollen and a ghostly white tinge crept around the edges of the cut, seeping a pale ooze.

  “Infection,” Sigrid said, wrinkling her nose at the stench of the wound.

  Ivan glanced down at it with fevered eyes. “Blade must’ve been poisoned. It’s something I’m not familiar with…the runes and kennings aren’t doing anything to counter it. Every time I try to heal it, I only get weaker. I don’t understand…”

  “Maybe I can help?” Chel offered. “I was raised by a shaman among the Juarag-Vo. I may be able to find herbs to help the infection, although I am not learned in poisons.”

  She hunted for half a day until she found a collection of plants, most Eva had never seen or heard of. Her medicines kept the infection from getting worse over the next few days but Ivan showed no signs of improvement, nor did his rune kennings have any
effect.

  On the fifth day, they could barely get the Scrawl into the saddle and had to tie a rope around his chest so Chel could keep him from falling off from the motion of Belarus’ beating wings. They were forced to stop around midday when the Juarag girl almost lost him. By nightfall, Ivan shivered uncontrollably, no matter how many cloaks they piled on him or how hot they stoked their fire.

  Eva stared at her friend and felt her insides clench. “This is all my fault,” she said to no one in particular. Sigrid gripped Ivan’s hand in her own while Chel bathed his forehead with a cloth and began chanting in her native Juarag tongue.

  “Stop that!” Sigrid hissed, reaching for her knife. Chel sat back, confused and alarmed.

  “I am only trying to help,” she said.

  “How do we know that?” Sigrid asked. “You could be cursing him!”

  Chel held up her hands and twisted her arms around. “I have no rune magic. See? I mean no harm. I am only saying a prayer to the spirits of the plains. If it bothers you, I will stop.”

  Eva knew she should step in to keep the two from coming to blows, but all she could do was stare at Ivan, tears welling in the corners of his eyes. Chel pulled back the blanket and did her best to carefully undress the wound while Ivan convulsed. Eva winced. The cut had turned black around the edges and pale jagged lines spread outward across his arm from the cut.

  “You must hold him!” Chel said again as Ivan started jerking harder. Eva stared.

  “Eva!” Sigrid yelled, for the moment allied with Chel in their efforts to get through to Eva. “Get over here!”

  Eva shook her head and rushed to Ivan’s side. Joining Sigrid, she tried to hold down the Scrawl’s shoulder while he thrashed. Ivan’s eyes rolled wild in his head and spittle foamed between his clenched teeth.

  “Hold him!” Chel yelled, trying to prepare the fresh bandage.

  “We’re trying!” Sigrid shouted back.

  Ivan fought against them with manic strength. As she struggled to hold her friend, the necklace holding Eva’s Wonder stone slipped between the buttons of her shirt. A blast of pale golden light knocked Eva, Sigrid, and Chel backward.

  Shielding her eyes, Eva scrambled to cover the Wonder. Once she had it cupped in her hands, the women sat up, blinking at one another.

  “What in the tempest was that?” Sigrid asked.

  Before Eva could answer, however, Chel pointed to Ivan. “Look!”

  The boy lay still on the ground, breathing calm and regular. He looked the most at peace Eva had seen since the attack. Seized by inspiration, Eva held the glowing stone closer over Ivan’s cut. For all its power, however, the light did nothing to heal the wound. Eva’s heart sank.

  “Well, it’s a start, anyway,” Sigrid said.

  Still holding the stone on its necklace over Ivan’s bare shoulder, Eva tried moving it closer and further away, but it made no difference. After its first radiant display, the stone dimmed to a glow far more bearable to look at. Now that Ivan was laying still, Chel began dressing the wound. When she finished, Eva held the Wonder over Ivan once more, he continued to sleep peacefully although the spidery, ghostlike lines remained.

  “Your Wonder might have slowed things down but I don’t think it’s going to be enough to make him better,” Sigrid said. She didn’t add what they were all thinking: if they didn’t figure out something, Ivan wouldn’t last much longer.

  “You don’t think I know that?” Eva snapped. Her anger hadn’t meant to be directed at Sigrid but it poured out just the same.

  “Don’t yell at me,” Sigrid said, giving it right back to her. “I’m not —”

  She stopped but it was too late. “I know,” Eva said. “I’m the one who brought us out here. Don’t you think I realize that? Don’t you think I’ve thought about that every day since Ivan got hurt?”

  “Please,” Chel said, looking between the two of them. “Let him rest.What’s done is done.”

  Sigrid rounded on the Juarag-Vo girl, eyes narrowed. “A lot of help you’ve been, sticking weeds and who knows what else in his wound, no wonder it got infected.”

  Chel clenched her shaking hands into fists and vented a frustrated scream. “You stupid woman! You know nothing.”

  “Hey…” Eva stared into the darkness trying to make out the white shapes in the distance. Were they rocks? On the opposite side of the fire, all three of the gryphons’ heads shot up as well.

  Sigrid snarled and crouched in a fighting stance. “Come on then. Let’s see what I know knocking you on your ass!”

  The white things moved. Unless Eva was hallucinating, rocks didn’t move. The gryphons rose onto their feet, tails swishing.

  “Hey!”

  Both girls ignored Eva and advanced toward one another. The white shapes were much closer now, close enough Eva knew without a doubt they were people. Fury hissed, his fur and feathers rising.

  “STOP!”

  Eva’s shriek gave both girls pause. Sigrid and Chel turned to look where she pointed. Just outside the fire, a line of people watched them in silence. Daubed in white paint, Eva wondered if they were ghosts.

  No one moved as the two groups stared at one another. The group was a mix of women and men, clothed in tattered rough spun robes. Although they didn’t appear to have any weapons aside from walking staves, they didn’t seem concerned about the gryphons. On the contrary, each wore a long, forlorn expression and appeared wan and underfed. A couple of wide-eyed children peered through the adults’ legs.

  Eva, Sigrid, and Chel glanced at one another. To reach their weapons — aside from a couple of small knives — they would have to leave Ivan undefended on the other side of the fire. The gryphons crouched behind them, ready to spring, but Eva held up her hand.

  “We mean you no harm,” she said in a loud voice. If they understood, the white-painted people gave no sign.

  A man in the middle of the line studied her. His eyes were circled with charcoal, — combined with the white paint, it gave his head the impression of a skull. Numerous piercings covered his lips, nose, brows, and ears. He was shirtless and had a few rune markings daubed on in black and yellow but Eva saw no real rune tattoos. His weathered skin made his age hard to guess, but he might have been old enough to be her grandfather.

  “You…” The man’s voice came out hoarse and broken. He seemed to be struggling to find the words in their tongue and gestured to the sky. “The light?”

  After a confused moment, Eva realized he was talking about the light her Wonder had made. She cursed silently. Although it had helped steady Ivan, the light must have been visible for miles across the badlands.

  “Yes,” she said, then added as an afterthought. “We mean you no harm, we are travelers. Our friend is hurt.”

  The man stared at her with an unreadable expression. Soon, his dark, empty eyes drifted down to Eva’s chest and he cocked his head to the side. Eva’s skin crawled and her Wonder stone felt heavy beneath her shirt. Somehow, he knew it was there, knew where the light had come from.

  At last, the man broke his gaze and turned his attention to Ivan. Although the Scrawl had slept through everyone shouting, he looked frail in the flickering light of the fire. Seeing the tattoos on Ivan’s shaved head, the man’s eyes rose. He hid his surprise well, but several other members of the group pointed to Ivan and whispered among themselves in their own tongue.

  “He is…sick,” the skull-headed man said. “That wound — the Hippirio?”

  Eva looked at Sigrid and Chel, but they both shook their heads. No one knew what the word meant. Seeing their confusion the man frowned and tried again.

  “The…horse?”

  “Yes,” Eva said, realizing they meant the raiders. “He was cut on the arm and is very sick.”

  “Maelar.” The man spat on the ground. “He is need of cure or will die.”

  Eva’s stomach clenched. “Can you help him?” she asked. “Please!”

  The man shook his head. “I cannot cure. Must go makre cittol
is.”

  “Where?” Sigrid asked.

  The man furrowed his brow and waved his hands in frustration when the word escaped him. “Makre cittolis.”

  “Do you know what he’s saying?” Sigrid asked Chel.

  The Juarag-Vo girl started shaking her head then stopped. “No, but it sounds like —”

  “Mother of Cities!” Eva shouted as understanding struck her. “Is that what you mean?”

  The man nodded, vigorously. “Mother City, you say, yes. Can cure friend.”

  Eva’s heart leaped as new hope surged through her. “Where is it? How far is it?”

  The man stretched out a wrinkled but muscled arm toward the east. “Is three days.” He looked back at the saddled gryphons. “Me thinks…tomorrow if fly?”

  “Thank you,” Eva said. “Is there anything we can do to repay you?”

  If it weren’t for the group’s strange body paint and haunted expressions she would have rushed forward and hugged the man. She wished she had some food to leave them, but their supplies were almost exhausted and game to hunt had dwindled to nothing the past few days.

  The man shook his head and reached around his neck to remove a peculiar beaded necklace with a crudely carved hammer head. He held it out to Eva.

  “Take this and show when get to Mother City. Will get help.”

  Eva held out her hand and stepped forward. When the wooden necklace hit her hands, a chill ran through her. An overwhelming impulse to hurl it into the bushes overcame her. Instead, she forced herself to close her fingers over the talisman and flash the man a strained smile.

  “We must now go,” the man said. He grinned, revealing a mouthful of gray teeth. Eva realized with a shudder that they were made of iron. The man’s eyes fell to her chest again, to the exact spot her Wonder rested on her breastbone and lingered there several moments until he turned away. Without another word, the group melted into the darkness.