Authors: K.J. Taylor

The Griffin's Flight (9 page)

BOOK: The Griffin's Flight

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She looked at Arren again, at his scarred face. She had never seen a Northerner who was not a slave. This one was bolder and far more well-spoken than the rest of his race. And he was intelligent, as well. But clearly desperate—for something.

You will help me,
she decided.
You and the black griffin. I do not care any more. I will break the curse
.

Arren stirred in his sleep, and his lips formed a single word:
falling
.

Skade sighed.
You are right to sleep uneasily,
she thought.
Murderer
.

S
kade was still there next morning when Arren woke up. He’d half-expected her to be gone, and when he was woken at dawn by Skandar’s screech the first thing he did was look toward the spot where she’d been lying the previous night. She was there, and stirred when Skandar screeched again, though she didn’t wake. Arren felt curiously relieved to see her.

Skandar finished his calling and came down to land at the edge of the camp. He stretched and fluttered his wings a few times and then strutted over toward Arren. “We go now?”

Arren scratched his head. “Not yet. I need to eat first. And”—he looked at Skade—“we have to talk to her.”

Skandar shook his head irritably. “Why talk?”

“She hasn’t agreed to help us yet,” said Arren. “I have to talk to her some more and see if she’s made up her mind yet. And if she says no, then I’ll just ask her if she knows which way to go.”

The black griffin started to preen his feathers, hissing to himself. “Not like. Human smell wrong. Look wrong.”

“If she can help us, I don’t care what she looks or smells like. Try and be pleasant to her, Skandar.”

Skandar didn’t reply. Arren left him to sulk and went to check on the sheepskin, which he’d hung from a tree. It was smelly and still a little damp, but it looked to have cured nicely, and he draped it around his shoulders, wool side down, to try to stave off the early-morning chill while he set to work getting breakfast ready. There was still some meat left on the sheep’s carcass that he hadn’t smoked, so he refuelled the fire and cooked it. Skandar, apparently still satisfied from the previous day’s gorging, gnawed on a couple of bones.

While the meat was cooking, Arren walked back to the pool. It still looked filthy—and it hadn’t been improved at all by his having used it as a tanning solution—so he climbed the rocks by the stream that fed it and followed it for a while until he found a spot where it was a little deeper. He drank from it; the water here was clear and fresh, and the taste of dirt in it didn’t bother him. Once he’d satisfied his thirst, he looked speculatively at his reflection. His face looked thin and grubby, and his beard was a mess. So was his hair.
I look ridiculous,
he thought glumly.

Well, he had some time now. He wandered off and picked branches from a soap-bush and took them back to the water’s edge, where he wet his hair, then crushed the leaves. They released an oily sap, and he washed his hair as well as he could with it. The sap helped soften and dislodge some of the dirt, and from his pocket he took a comb—he’d carved it himself, rather crudely, from a piece of wood—and started to try to put his hair into some kind of order. It wasn’t easy. Skandar generally insisted on leaving shortly after dawn and landed when it suited him. Time not spent in the air generally went toward looking for food, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a moment for personal grooming. His hair had worked itself into a horrible mess.

But he combed away diligently at it until it was as neat as he could make it and then used some more soap-bush sap and his knife to try to do something about his beard. It didn’t work very well: the knife was too blunt to be much good as a razor, and the sap was a pathetically inadequate substitute for real soap. He persisted anyway, removing the moustache that had started to sprout. He hated having hair around his mouth. It made him feel scruffy.

He cut himself a couple of times before he achieved what he was aiming for: a pointed tuft perched on his chin. He’d only started wearing a beard very recently, but when he checked his reflection again he decided it rather suited him.

The faint image in the water smiled grimly up at him. Everyone in Cymria could recognise a beard like this one. It was in all the history books, the ones that described the savage Northerners trying to invade from the cold lands beyond the Northgate Mountains centuries ago. Unlike the brown-haired people of the South, the Northerners had never forged an alliance with the griffins. They had come south in great numbers and had waged war with the Southerners, a spectacularly idiotic thing to do. Today, the only surviving Northerners were either slaves or vassals.

Arren ran his fingers through his still-wet hair. It looked a lot better now. Maybe Skade would take him more seriously if he didn’t look like a beggar.

Sudden realisation dawned. Arren scrambled to his feet and dashed off, swearing.

It seemed to take forever to get back to the camp. He stumbled through the trees, still cursing.
Idiot!
He must have spent half the damn morning mooning over his reflection, and the gods alone knew what could have happened while he was gone.

He finally reached the clearing and slumped against a tree, panting. Skade was there, awake now and sitting near the fire. Skandar was on the other side of it, and the two of them were glaring at each other.

Arren came closer. The meat he’d put over the fire was still there, burned to a crisp.

“What’s going on?” he asked, using griffish.

Skade turned to look at him. “Where have you been?” she said abruptly.

“I was—getting a drink,” said Arren. “Why did you let the meat burn?”

The silver-haired woman nodded toward Skandar. “Your friend would not let me touch it.”

Arren crouched beside her and pulled the spit out of the ground. He examined the meat, but it was patently obvious that it was inedible. He dumped it in the fire. “Why did you do that?”

The black griffin clicked his beak. “Your food, not hers.”

Arren hesitated briefly. He had to concede that made sense. Regardless, he said, “Well, it was for her, too. Now you’ve forced her to let it go to waste. Can’t you stop being a pain in the neck for once?”

Skandar dug his talons into the ground, obviously aware that he had just been insulted. “You ask,” he snapped. “She tell. Now.”

Arren groaned inwardly. So much for diplomacy.

Skade, however, laughed. She had an odd, harsh laugh, but it was sincere enough. “Your friend knows what he wants, doesn’t he?”

“I’m sorry,” said Arren, reverting to Cymrian. “He doesn’t speak griffish very well, and … he’s not very good with people.”

“I can see that,” said Skade, using Cymrian for the first time since they’d met. She spoke it quite well, but with what Arren easily recognised as an Eastern accent, typical of someone from Withypool or its surrounds.

Skandar was watching them. Now the griffin suddenly advanced, tail swishing ominously from side to side. “You talk, talk to me,” he hissed.

His voice was low with anger, and Arren quickly saw that he had made a mistake. He turned to Skade. “Look, Skandar and I have talked,” he said, speaking griffish now, “and we’ve agreed that if you want us to help you, then you have to help us first.”

Skade glanced quickly at Skandar. “I do need your help,” she said. “I confess that now. And you have been a great help to me already. What exactly do you need me to do for you?”

“We go North,” Skandar said instantly. “You tell us way.”

“No,” said Arren. “Not yet. Skade, I want to go to this spirit cave with you. If you’ll let me, I’ll come with you. Afterward, we can go our separate ways.”

“No,” Skandar rasped. “Norton. You say we go to Norton. Not cave. Norton.”

“Well, the plan’s changed,” said Arren. “Norton can wait.”

Skade was giving him a long, slow look. “And why do you want to go there, Taranis?”

“Because …” Arren faltered. “Because there are things I want to see there. If there really are spirits living there, then they could give me guidance. Besides,” he added, with a sudden burst of inspiration, “there’s no reason for you to come with us to Norton. If you want to be cured of this curse, whatever it is, then we should go to the cave first. What do you say?”

Skade was silent for a long time. “Agreed,” she said at last. “But there is a problem.”

“What’s that?” said Arren.

She fiddled with a lock of her silver hair. “I do not know the way to the cave,” she said. “I am as lost as you are.”

Arren’s heart sank. “But don’t you know anything about where it’s supposed to be? What it looks like? Anything at all?”

“It is said to be near a river,” said Skade. “Between two mountains. The legend says it is not far from a place called Healer’s Home, where herbs of every kind grow.”

Arren scratched his beard. “I’ve never heard of any place like that. But I’ve never been that far north, so—”

“We could find it by following the river, maybe,” said Skade. “The mountains must be part of the Northgates.”

“Yes, but there must be dozens of caves in the mountains,” Arren said wretchedly. “How are we supposed to know which one it is?”

Skade shook her head. “The spirit cave must not be too far from the river. If the Healer’s Home is a village or a city, it would need to be built near water.”

“Wait a moment,” said Arren. “Healing—does that mean there’s a temple there?”

“It could,” Skade conceded.

“Well, if it’s an important place for healers and healing, it makes sense for the priesthood to be running it or at least supporting it,” said Arren. “So if we can find a temple near the river—”

“What temple?” Skandar interrupted.

Arren glanced up. “Oh. It’s a building, Skandar. It would have a roof shaped like this”—he made a dome shape with his hands—“and a big gold disc on top.”

Skade looked thoughtful. “That makes sense. I am willing to try.”

“We’ll do it, then,” said Arren. “All we have to do is find the river.”

“Norton,” said Skandar.

“What, Skandar?”

“Norton,” the black griffin repeated. “We go to Norton. Not cave. Not want go there.”

“I don’t care what you want,” Arren said coldly. “I am going to this cave, and you can’t stop me,”

It was the wrong thing to say. Skandar snarled and lunged forward, scattering the fire with his claws. His beak struck Arren directly in the chest, knocking him violently to the ground, and before he could get up, the griffin had pinned him down, his huge talons threatening to crush him. Skade darted out of the way, but neither of them paid her any attention.

Arren found himself looking up into a pair of blazing silver eyes. Skandar brought his beak down toward him, hissing. “My human,” he rasped. “Mine!”

Arren struggled. “I am not yours, damn you!”

Skandar pressed down harder. “Mine!”

“Gods damn you!” Arren yelled. “Get off me! Get away from me! I hate you!”

“Mine!”

“No!”

Man and griffin stared each other in the face for a few moments, challenging each other. Arren knew that, if Skandar wanted to, he could crush his chest to a pulp. He had done it to men in the Arena, dozens of times. It had made him famous. But he glared back anyway, not caring what the griffin did.

“Now you listen to me,” Arren rasped, the pressure on his rib cage making his voice sound strange and hoarse. “This is your fault, griffin. What happened to me was because of you, understand? I am going to the spirit cave and I am going to be healed there, and you can go to Norton or anywhere else you want, but you can go on your own. Because I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of you, and I’ve had enough of this, and you can help me or you can go away. I don’t care.”

The silence stretched out for what felt like an eternity. Skandar did not move. Arren could feel the griffin’s hot, rank-smelling breath on his face and see the myriad of tiny black veins that crossed the silver in his eyes. The only sounds were the wind in the trees and the faint crackling of the fire.

Skandar removed his claws and backed away, hissing.

Arren sat up, wincing. He said nothing but continued to stare coldly at the griffin, full of anger and a kind of hot, sick guilt.

“I go,” Skandar said at last. Without another word, he turned and walked away. When he was a good distance from Arren, he opened his wings and broke into a stumbling run. Arren scrambled to his feet, suddenly afraid, but there was nothing he could do. Skandar took off in a clumsy flurry of wings and flew up and over the forest and then northward, growing smaller and smaller.

Arren stared at the sky, full of shock. “He’s gone,” he said blankly.

“So it would appear,” said a voice.

Arren looked around, and froze.

It was Skade. She was walking toward him, her sharp face wearing an expression of steady, cold determination. She was holding his sword.

BOOK: The Griffin's Flight

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