Page 3 of Gryphon in Light

Devon nodded earnestly. “Yes, sir. And he’s hurt pretty badly. Birce is trying to stabilize him, but he can’t do it in the rain. We need somewhere to put him and it looks like we don’t have anywhere but in here. Would you—”

“I’ve been around gryphons before. Permission granted,” he replied, before the spinning of his vision grew to be too much for him. He drifted again.

Lucidity became intermittent after that, but he was aware of much talking and activity. His cot was moved against the wall of the tent by at least four people, he could tell, and the susurration of rain against canvas lulled him into true sleep.

Hallock awoke to an awful throbbing in his head again, and a burning ache in his gut. He groaned and clutched at his belly. It seemed as if the wind from last night’s rainstorm had moved into the tent with him, slowly but rhythmically changing in magnitude. Strange, acrid, and earthy smells struck his nose. When he opened his eyes, Birce was leaning over him. The Healer was dressed in a green tunic far cleaner than the last one, except for what looked like parallel rips and brush-strokes of dark paint all down the front and sleeves. He was wiping his hands with a rag as he looked Hallock over. “Good morning, sir,” he said gently. “Sir, just keep looking right at me. There was something that you said last night that I need to confirm with you. I need to be sure that it was not because of the influence of your medicine. You gave permission to share your tent with someone.”

Hallock grunted the confirmation Birce wanted. The Healer nodded and remarked, “Not many people are brave enough to share their tent with a wounded gryphon.” He laid his rag aside and offered his patient a cup of the dreadful but familiar drugged juice. “No one else wanted anything to do with him. Devon said you’d served with one before. In Haven.”

Haven. Where Genni was, even now, not knowing at all that her husband had fallen. Genni with her bright smile and milky gauze scarves, always ready to help anyone she met—probably going about the market stalls hunting up a good length of dyed cloth for those crinkle-skirts she loved to make.

Hallock blinked himself free of his wife’s memory and grunted once. “Haven. Collegium Guard. During the Storms, I was Master Levy’s escort. There were two gryphons at Haven, with two of their young. They helped the Crown. Helped the Crown save us all. When Levy went to confer with them, I went along. Met them. They were like royalty. Dignified.” After a pause to luxuriate in the melting away of his worst pain, he added, “They aren’t animals. I’m not afraid of them.”

“Candidly, sir, everyone else is. No surprise. Devon and I wound up closing an even dozen lacerations and a pretty serious puncture just among the crew that unloaded him from the wagon.”

Hallock rolled his head sideways to get a look past the Healer. What he saw was huge, as large as a horse, but in sorry shape. Flattened against the oiled canvas floor of the tent was what might have been a gryphon of the same species as the nobles at Valdemar’s Court, but precious little looked intact. Stains, smears, and pools of unnamed dark substances showed all around his trembling body, even after the Healers’ meticulous cleaning regimen. Broad patches of feathers were sheared away, revealing whipstitched gashes and a bulging, packed wound in the gryphon’s shoulder, with an exit wound in his upper back. Hemp rope was cut and knotted in clearly improvised splinting made from tent poles and greenwood, interrupted by clumps of broken and skewed chestnut feathers down the length of the right wing, which stretched to fill the rest of the tent. The gryphon’s eyes were covered with towels, and more rope to hold them in place. His body heaved in a wheezing but labored rise and fall as he breathed.

Birce frowned, gazing at his bizarre patient. “He’s been shot up, hacked at, lanced once, and I think he’s been poisoned,” the unhappy Healer continued, pausing to lick his lips, “. . . and . . . he won’t be flying again. At least as far as I know. That right wing of his was turned all the way around, with bone showing, when I got him in here. I’ve tried irrigating, filling him up with nutrients and keeping him warm, but beyond that I am lost. His blood’s alien to me. I don’t know his anatomy. I couldn’t do anything to help him except bind and stitch his more obvious wounds. He didn’t offer any useful help when he was conscious. He’s coming in and out, sometimes delirious or twitchy, other times wide awake. He claimed to be a leader of some kind, ally to Valdemar. I don’t know much more than that except his name. Kelvren.”

The gryphon muttered something unintelligible and the Healer left. There was quiet in the tent for a moment, but then the gryphon roused a little and spoke again. It didn’t sound as if he was aware that there was someone else with him, more as if he was talking to himself.

“Fffirrresssong. He may be a peacock . . . but he can fixsss anything.”

“Herrraldsss! Mussst know. Tell Herrraldsss . . . ssshow k’Valdemarrr I live.”

“Hurrrtsss . . . Ssskandrranon would not crrry . . . . ”

“Why issss it ssso darrrrk . . . . ”

The candlemark after the Healer left on his rounds was punctuated by fitful starts, groans and growls from the stricken gryphon, as well as scores of cryptic declarations. Hallock made it a practice to occupy his mind by piecing the rantings together, but could make little of it. The name “Firesong” he knew; that was the white-haired shaych Adept that he had escorted Master Levy to see numerous times, and “peacock” was accurate enough. If a Herald was anywhere to be found, they’d be told every word, but Hallock had yet to see any white cloth that wasn’t a bloodstained rag.

If only he had just a little more information, if only he had the ear of a Herald right now! Small wonder the two of them were together now. Both dying, both helpless to stop it.

The gryphon stank, and the insects were finding their way inside to him, despite the repelling quality of the lamp oil. It offended Hallock, but he mused that it spoke well of the painkiller Birce had him on, if something so minor was even an issue.

All the time that Hallock’s mind was not on the meandering speech of the gryphon he shared the tent with, it was on Genni and her little habits. He could see her at his side now, bringing him medicines and sitting with her palm on his forehead, singing popular songs or telling stories of the neighborhood children. He could see her curly brown hair falling down her cheek and neck, catching the sunlight through their dormer window. He could see her curling a few strands of hair around her fingers as she spoke of her sewing circle and the ceramics her sister had presented to the captain, hoping to catch the bachelor’s eye.

Then the gryphon clacked his beak loudly and said with surprising clarity, “Am I prrrisssonerrr?”

Hallock blinked and glanced side to side without moving his head. The blinded gryphon flexed a foreleg, the uninjured right one, and popping sounds of torn floor canvas punctuated the question.

“No. You’re a patient,” Hallock ventured, and saw the gryphon’s ears prick forward as far as the improvised hood would allow. “You’re in Valdemar, in a Healer’s tent. They say you were hurt defending the Crown’s soldiers, and when you fell they dragged you here.”

“Hurrrrh. Feel morrre like badly drrrresssed game than patient,” the gryphon hissed, not commenting on the rescue story. “Can barrrely think. Need Healerrr. Trrrondi’irrrn. Darrr’ian needs to know I am herrre, and Brrreon and k’Valdemarrr . . . wherrre isss Herrald?” He raised his head and whimpered, dropping down again as the strain unsettled the lance wound, repeating, “Wherrre isss Herrrald?” A good question that Hallock would very much have liked to have an answer to himself.

A question that almost broke his heart.

“I’m sorry. We don’t have one. No one knows when a Herald will arrive here, or a better Healer.” Hallock winced at his own choice of words. “Another Healer. The ones here are doing their best, but it would take the Gift to save us.” That choice of words was no better.

“Sssave usss,” the gryphon hissed, apparently clear of mind enough to read the implications in the Guard’s ill-advised comment. “Ssso you are asss clossse to death asss I. Hurrrh. I could Heal . . . ssstudied long at the Vale. But I am ssso exhausssted . . . ssso much pain, makess it harrrd to think.” The gryphon unstuck his foreclaws from the flooring canvas and tested his range of movement. Another whimper of pain and labored breathing revealed he could at least raise his head with evident effort. “Can block sssome of the pain . . . ssssimple charrrm. You sssoldierrr?”

“Hallock Stavern. Guard officer, Haven, Second of Sixteenth Regiment. I serve under the captain,” he explained, in case the gryphon didn’t understand their command structure.

“And the captain enjoysss you therrre, I am sssurrre,” the gryphon wheezed, apparently trying to make a joke, but falling flat in the delivery. “I am Kelvrrren, of k’Valdemarrr. Wingleaderrr . . . of all the grrryphons of the Vale.” A spark of pride lit in his voice when proclaiming his title, but was snuffed out when he went on. “Ssscouting forrr Brrreon. I mussst rrreport beforrre it isss too late. Therrre isss no one elssse herrre to tell. You arrre a ssseniorrr offissscerrr—you have a good memorrry? Or wrrrite?”

“Yes, but—you can’t see. I could be an enemy soldier pretending so I can find out what you know.”

The gryphon tucked his head down against his filthy and blood-encrusted breast-feathers, to pick with his talons at the eye-blocking towels and ropes that were evidently annoying him. “You arrre Hallock Ssstaverrrn. I can tell you sssspeak trrrue. Lisssten and rrrememberrr. Frrrom the forrrk of the white ssstrrream therrre is sssupply line, and camp of prrrisonerrrs to the eassst of the ssstand of black oak. Sssixty-two trrroops have built an arrow-nessst therrre—but arrrc of firrre isss blocked by fallen oak to the norrrthwessst . . . . ”