by Mark McCabe
As a swirling wind buffeted both him and his mount in the aftermath of the winged creature’s passing, Grartok struggled desperately to keep a tight grip on his rein and to stop from falling from his saddle. When another of the massive creatures swooped over his shoulder, his horse reared up in panic, throwing him to the ground and almost trampling him as it frantically tried to escape.
Grartok fell heavily to the turf, feeling the breath rush out of him as his own weight added to the force of his impact. Panting for air, he struggled groggily to his feet as quickly as he could, one hand still firmly gripping his axe while his other tentatively reached for his throbbing temple. His horse had caught him a glancing blow with one of its hooves as it danced about wildly in its desperate bid to escape from the strange winged creature that had appeared so suddenly, as if out of nowhere.
Pulling his hand away from his forehead, he wasn’t surprised to see it was covered in blood; his head was still ringing with an ache that befuddled his thoughts. The ground beneath his feet was swaying about alarmingly, as if the whole world was rolling about wildly on its axis. Somehow he managed to stagger drunkenly away from where he had fallen as several more of the winged beasts glided over his head. Their hideous screeches wailed through the sky above him. They were like huge eagles, he thought as he stumbled across the uneven turf, only misshapen in some terrible way he couldn’t discern in his current condition.
Realising that he was wandering aimlessly across the hillside, Grartok stopped and tried to steady himself by leaning on the haft of his axe. A wave of nausea swept over him as he concentrated on regaining his composure. After a few moments, he felt that he had recovered sufficiently to stand without falling. Turning slowly and unsteadily towards the field of battle, he looked in horror at the scene unfolding before him.
The winged beasts had begun to attack the Sagath. He could see what seemed to be a dozen or so of the fell creatures from where he stood. They were circling above his army and swooping down to drag warriors from their mounts, tearing them limb from limb or simply letting them fall back to the ground as they effortlessly climbed back up into the air with just a few flaps of their mighty wings.
Grartok had never seen their like before. The sun glinted from their plumage as they dove down on his hapless army, sending panic and confusion throughout his force and bringing the attack on the Algarians to a sudden and grinding halt. Though he could see that the Sagath were desperately trying to fend off the foul beasts, their spears and axes seemed to be having little effect. Here and there, he could see crossbows being aimed at the beasts, but once again, with no apparent success. It was as if they were impervious to his warrior’s weapons, easily fending off their feeble attempts to defend themselves from this deadly airborne attack.
As Grartok began to stumble down the slope in the vague hope of joining the battle, an arrow suddenly thudded into his left thigh, sending a sharp stinging pain shooting up into his groin. He slowly sank to one knee, grappling groggily for the missile with the aim of pulling it from his flesh. Before he could complete the task, another arrow thudded into his chest. He grunted as yet a third of the missiles pierced his skin.
The slig leader slumped to the ground. Dimly, way off in the distance, he heard the sound of trumpets. He knew what it was. As the darkness descended over him, he knew that Zar’s acolytes were sounding out their clarion call. Another slig warrior was making his last journey, to his final resting place, to the Halls of Gollohim. His time on Ilythia was over.
~~~
Elissa let the tears run unchecked down her cheek as she gazed out across the plain before the city walls. Even from where she stood, on the balcony of her private apartments, high up in the royal palace, she could still smell the stench of the dead and the gagging fumes from the funeral pyres. Reaching out with her hands, the queen steadied herself against the intricately carved stonework in front of her. Leaning against the balustrade, she closed her eyes for a moment, hoping to blot out the memory of the painful scenes she had witnessed over the last few hours. It was no use. Opening them again she saw that nothing had changed. The same dismal scene confronted her that she had been watching for the last hour or so. She guessed that the memory of what had preceded it had been indelibly etched on her soul.
“So much death, so many horrors, so many broken and shattered lives. For what?” she lamented, making no attempt to conceal her bitterness. “To feed the egos of two men? Is that all this was for? So that Grartok and Golkar could both pursue their obscene dreams of glory?” Her heart was empty. There was no rejoicing in Keerêt, neither here in the royal apartments nor down in the city itself, there was only sorrow, sorrow and anger.
The Queen of Algaria wept silently as she stared out across the plain that spread from the walls of the city to the distant hills beyond. Though the battle was over, the signs of the carnage that had taken place only a few short hours earlier were still there for all to see. Other than an occasional sob or gasp from those around her, for several minutes, all were silent. The enormity of the situation could not help but weigh heavily on every observer.
“So many lives,” she finally exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, struggling to keep her emotions in check as she spoke. “Such senseless slaughter, and for what purpose? This morning as I watched the ranks of our soldiers as they assembled I was so proud of their courage. I couldn’t help but feel their vitality their vigour, their hope. Now . . . now it’s like a forest floor covered in dead and decaying leaves. So many dead, from both sides. So many who will never return home again.”
After a few moments of silence, she finally gave vent to the anger that was quickly displacing her grief.
“This is Golkar’s doing,” she exclaimed more loudly, turning her face away from her companions as she spoke to hide the tears welling up in her eyes. “What will he do when all of the leaves have fallen? What further horrors will he inflict on Ilythia then?”
“The Guardians failed us,” she continued after a few moments, turning to look at Regulus as she spoke. “The bodies of countless Algarians are burning this evening because the Guardians failed us.”
“The Guardians didn’t fail us,” Regulus replied wearily, returning her look. She could see from the harrowed look on his face that he was equally as gutted as she was by what had befallen their city. “One of the Guardians failed us. The other two died valiantly trying to defend us. Let’s not let our bitterness besmirch their memory. They gave their lives for us Elissa, without question and without hesitating, I suspect. Perhaps it was us that failed. Perhaps we were too complacent, too willing to let the Guardians watch over us and to not be ready to defend ourselves. For how many generations have we relied on them and them alone for our safety? Now we will have no choice. Now we will have to stand on our own feet. Maybe that will be a good thing.”
“Maybe it will,” Elissa responded, sighing. “It’s hard to see things right when you look out from the walls of your city and see the bodies of so many of your subjects heaped upon the funeral pyres. I’ll think more clearly on the morrow, I’m sure, but tonight . . .” She took a long deep breath as she paused. “Tonight all I can do is weep.”
Regulus moved a step closer to his queen and drew her to his side. With their hands about each other’s waists, they stood silently, looking out from the balcony above the city at the remnants of a fateful day. The count could still hear the horns ringing in his ears. He would never forget that moment, the turning point in the fortunes of the Algarians, when they had seen the wondrous winged beasts come in over the hills and begin to destroy the slig army.
They had all stood there, stunned, all of those that had taken to the walls to watch what would become of their army as it rushed to get back to the safety of the city. When the winged beasts had turned up, the gryphons as they now knew they were, they had thought at first they were something conjured up out of nightmare, some demons or monsters that the sligs were somehow in league with and which had come to join in the slaughter.
It was hard to conceive that so few of them, just seven he had counted, though it had seemed like many more at first, could have turned back a whole army. He hadn’t known then that they were magical beasts, possessed of awesome powers and abilities, though even watching them it had been clear that the sligs were unable to do them much harm, that there was a power within them, unlike anything anyone had ever seen in a beast.
Then Brassilius had sounded the trumpets and the Algarians had turned and rallied. The horns had rung out and the seemingly routed Rangers had checked their headlong flight for the city walls and bravely turned and stood their ground. Slowly, the tide had turned. Men who had been consumed by fear had found courage again. Soldiers who had forgotten all of their training had suddenly regained the discipline their training had taught them. The fleeing remnants of the Algarian militia had become an army once more.
Eventually, together with the gryphons, they had driven the harried sligs before them, back into the hills, back finally to the very edge of the Sarrowmar River. The battle had gone on well into the afternoon. Finally, it had ended. What was left of the sligs had fled, or was left dead or dying on the field of battle.
Then, despite their exhaustion, the army had reformed and Brassilius himself had led it northwards into the dusk of a dying day to head off the threat from the sligs on the northern front. There would be more fighting on the morrow, but the outcome of the war had been decided here today. The bulk of the slig forces had been defeated and scattered. The second slig force by itself could be contained. Once the outcome of today’s fighting was known, it would probably dissipate and move eastwards as quickly as it could in an attempt to cover the retreat of the remnants of their forces. The war was as good as over.
It had been a great victory, but at such a cost. As Elissa had said, too many good men had died needlessly. Too many of Regulus’ friends would not come back. The clean up would go on for a long time. The pyres would burn all through the night, and tomorrow again, no doubt, there would be more of them. Though the city was relatively quiet now, many of the wounded were still being brought in. It was an unnatural quiet that had descended on the city, a quiet borne of grief, not of inactivity or sleep. Many would not sleep at all tonight.
“You were brave,” he said To Elissa, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. “It must have been quite a sight to see you stand your ground when Kaladyr came to the city.” Like everyone else, Regulus had heard the tale of how the gryphon had come to the city and spoken with their queen, how it had hovered with great flaps of those monstrous wings a short distance beyond her balcony while she had spoken with it. He wished that he had seen that. If he had waited on the walls, he would have; but he had been too anxious to reach her side once he had seen that the battle had turned in their favour. He had missed what must have been one of the greatest moments in the history of Algaria.
“No. I don’t think it was bravery. More like stunned awe, I think. I could feel the good in him right away. Somehow, I knew that there was nothing to fear from him. I didn’t think of him as a beast at all, you know. It was like speaking to a person, even though the whole conversation took place in my head. I even knew his name, though I don’t recollect him ever saying it. It was so strange. Perhaps it was all just a dream after all.”
Elissa stopped for a moment, shaking her head at the memory. “I know that I was scared after he’d gone, though. I couldn’t stop trembling for a long while. You saw how I was. It must have been a delayed reaction.”
“Call it what you will, the bard’s will turn it into a legend before the night is out, mark my words. The tale of Elissa and the King of the Gryphons.”
Regulus smiled as he saw the broad grin that came to his queen’s face as he spoke. It was the first light-hearted comment he had dared to venture. It had been too solemn a day for jesting.
“He never said he was their king, or even their leader. He just told me that they had come at the request of a friend, and that the Guardians were all dead, that Golkar had killed both Tarak and Kell, but that we were safe now, and that Golkar was gone. He didn’t say how he knew all of this, but he made it clear he was sure that Golkar was gone, that he had been forced out of Ilythia. Then he said that the gryphons had fulfilled their promise and he sort of dipped his head, as if he was bowing to me.
“I wasn’t sure what to do, so I thanked him. I said it aloud, so I hope he understood me. I told him we were in their debt . . . and then he left. He flapped those huge wings of his and just rose up and away, so effortlessly. Then I went back into my room and I collapsed, right into Brina’s arms. Then you and the others turned up. It really wasn’t anything glorious, certainly not the stuff that legends are made of.”
“Who summoned them to our aid?” asked Regulus, still wondering at her words, despite having heard her story once already. “Did he say? And how did you know it was a he?”
“He never said who and I didn’t get the chance to ask him. He didn’t wait around long enough. I don’t even know how I knew he was a ‘he’. I just did, that’s all. I hadn’t even questioned how I knew that until you just asked me.”
“Well, if Golkar killed Tarak and Kell, and if the gryphon doesn’t know how or why Golkar left, then there’s a couple of big chunks of the story missing somewhere.”
“I know. But quite frankly, I’m too tired to think about it any more right now. I just give thanks to Mishra that they turned up when they did.”
“Yes. I’m sorry. We should both get some sleep. There’s going to be a lot to do to sort this mess out. And we still have to deal with the threat from the north. I don’t think this will be truly over for some time yet. For many, I guess, it’ll never be over.”
“Yes. I’m sure you’re right. But before I go to sleep I must go down into the city. I want to visit the sick and wounded again before I allow myself some rest. Will you come with me?”
“Of course.”
“Good. I was hoping you’d agree. It isn’t a task I would like to undertake on my own. I must show them a strong face. I may need an arm to lean upon. By the way . . . thank you.”
“What for?”
“For being here, for letting me lean on you, for understanding, for caring about me.”
“I don’t care about you, Elissa. I love you.”
“I know. And you know that I love you too. It feels like I always have and always will. Maybe it’s time for me to acknowledge that.”
With that, the two friends turned and walked back, hand in hand, through the open doors behind them. They had been simple words, casually spoken, but they had both understood the depths of the feelings behind them. They both knew that they could go on now. They both knew that there was still something to live for, something to hope for.
~~~
Jinny’s thoughts were elsewhere as she slowly made her way back to the campsite, scanning the ground as she went for dried pieces of timber to add to the pile she already held within her arms. The day was rapidly coming to a close and they would need to get the fire lit and their meal cooked before darkness fell. Though they felt safer now that they had left Kurandir, they would still have to be cautious. The ridgeline above the town allowed them a good view of the surrounding area, but an open fire at night would also leave them exposed to sight should any sligs still be about.
As she picked her way across the stony ground, she wondered at the closeness that had grown between
Thom and her over the past few weeks. The friendship that had existed between them before the war had blossomed now into something much more than that.
Thom had visited their farm often over the past few years, always ostensibly as a result of some errand or message from his father to hers, and he had always made a point of seeking her out and spending some time with her before he would leave. At first, she hadn’t known how to respond. Even when she could think of something to say in response to his kind words or his gentle enquiries, her shyness seemed to prevent her from contributing to what inevitably became very one-sided conversations. She would nod and smile at his comments and keep her eyes on her sewing or whatever it was she had been about until eventually, he would say it was time for him to go.
Nothing ever seemed to deter him though, and she found that she began to look forward to his visits. Somehow, she began to find the courage to speak up and even to risk the occasional glance in his direction. She thought him handsome and kind and, over time, she began to count him as one of her closest friends. Although after a while he also began to figure prominently in her daydreams, it had never really occurred to her that he might be as fond of her as she found she had become of him.
She knew now that he cared about her very much. They had become as close as friends could be, though she still didn’t dare to tell him what she really felt about him. Perhaps he guessed. From the way he held her to him when he hugged her, she could tell that he liked her, that he liked being close to her, and she knew that he liked to kiss her. Jinny felt her face going red with embarrassment at the last thought, pleasant though it was. Thank goodness he couldn’t see into her mind.
Reminding herself that she needed to hurry and get back to the camp, Jinny turned her mind back to her task. Bending down, she took a hold of a large piece of bark that had fallen to the ground beside an old rotting tree. Once she broke it up, it would make an ideal addition to the load she had already collected.
