The Care and Feeding of Griffins (12 page)

And pow.

The hoppers sprang away in a dozen different fans of sand.  The ponies leapt out after them, six of them in all, and all of them aimed at the same hopper.

Taryn kicked back with a startled cry, unable to gain her feet in the loose sand with Aisling in her arms.  She couldn
’t believe what she was seeing.  Two ponies—those cute little cloven-hoofed horses—banged into their chosen hopper, knocking it out of the air mid-leap.  The other ponies were on it in an instant, abandoning the rest of the hoppers and letting them vanish into the tall grass.  Cute little pony-mouths opened.  They went right for the hopper’s neck, and unlike lions, who suffocate their prey with a similar bite, these adorable little ponies ripped the throat right out of it.

Taryn heard herself scream.  It wasn
’t much of a scream, more of a loud cough at a weird pitch, but it didn’t matter, as none of the ponies paid her any attention.  They gathered around their prey and began to feed, exchanging dinner-table chat with their zebra-like whortling sounds.  Tails flicked comfortably at settling insects.  Were it not for the twitching hopper legs that protruded from their huddle, they could have been grazing.  Because they should be grazing.  They were ponies!

Taryn rolled onto her knees and then climbed shakily to her feet.  She was panting, disbelief acting on her like a mile-long run.

All the urge to hike the golden plains and sparkling riverbanks of Arcadia were utterly gone.  She had way too many things she needed to do.  Laundry, for instance.  Couldn’t fritter the day away on a ramble like this. 

She left the grass ponies to their grisly feed and ran back to camp.  Carnivorous horses.  There were carnivorous horses in this world.

And every morning, she was waking up to the sound of hooves right outside her tent.

19.  The Horsemen’s Welcome

N
ow that he could see where he was going, Aisling really only had two modes: stagger or pounce.  In the early morning of the next day, Aisling staggered out of his blanket and then pounced on Taryn’s head.  His talons gripped at her ears like handlebars and he clacked his beak happily over her hair as she gasped and struggled.  When she finally managed to pry him off, he waggled his wings and panted happily, inviting praise.

“
You’re a goof, you know that?”

He butted heads with her.

“Well,” she said, crawling out of her sleeping bag with Aisling draped over her shoulder.  “If you’re old enough to wake me up, honey, you’re old enough to stop wetting the bed.”

She put him down so she could get dressed and he staggered off to pounce on her shoe.  As he gnawed on her laces, Taryn unzipped her tent and stepped out into the brisk morning air. 
“You have a choice this morning,” she called back to him.  “Porridge, or porr—”

She stopped cold, one hand still on her tent flaps.

She hadn’t heard hoofbeats running off this morning.  The intruder was still here and he wasn’t riding anything.

He towered over her.  Even if he
’d been a whole horse, he would have done that, but the part of him that was man-shaped put him into goliath proportions.  His fur was cinnamon-brown, tapering into black over his forelegs.  His skin was only a few shades lighter, gleaming with morning’s condensation.  His hair was black, like his tail, and it grew all the way down his back in a mane he’d stiffened with twists of grass and beads.  There were horse’s ears driving up through the black, rotating as a horse’s will as he stared her down.  His face was hard-cut, youthful and ageless at once.  He had painted a black bar across his eyes; it rendered him faceless somehow.  He was not smiling.

In his hands, he held a spea
r fully one head taller than he was himself and capped with a cruel steel point that put the full length at easily eight feet.  The spearhead was half a moon, the straight edge serrated and all sides blurred by sharpness.  It had been bound on with braided leather strips and horsehair.  It was not a hunting weapon.  It was a killing one.

Taryn dragged her eyes up to his face again.  She had no thought.  She could see him, recognize and accept him, but she couldn
’t think about him.  She knew she should be doing something, but she was frozen in place and time.  There was a centaur in her campsite.  It was looking right at her.

Suddenly, the horse-like ears pricked forward and Taryn turned to see what he saw.  Aisling staggered out of the tent, squawked, and pounced merrily in their direction.  Taryn turned back just in time to see the centaur
’s face darken.

His ears flattened and he reared up, a tower of rage.  His spear swung, the killing edge aiming down directly at her heart.  Taryn screamed.  Death came at her, electrifying, not paralyzing, and she threw herself aside, gathering Aisling futilely into her arms and curling around him.  The spear would cut her in half, she knew, her and Aisling both, but she tried to protect him anyway.  Her last thought was of her family.  They
’d never know what had happened to her.

Nothing.  The space between her shoulder blades itched, but nothing struck.

Taryn peeked back through her wind-tossed hair.

The centaur
’s forelegs pawed at the air, but his spear had lowered.  He looked confused, and when he saw her looking at him, that confusion became grim fury.  His hooves slammed into the ground and then he wheeled and ran, an army of one quickly vanishing in the mist.

Taryn slowly became aware of Aisling struggling inside the shell she
’d made of herself.  She uncurled, but couldn’t make herself release him.  Her teeth began to chatter.  She crawled on her knees, mindlessly seeking the enclosing comfort of her tent.  She pulled the sleeping bag over her head, forcing Aisling to lie with her until he quit fighting and fell asleep.  She didn’t.  She lay shivering, staring into the false darkness of the sleeping bag, and waited in terror for the centaur to return.

There was no point in packing up and leaving. 
She was lost on this world.  There was nowhere she could go that he could not follow.

20.  The Bridge

T
he chieftain of the horsemen ran for the bridge, taking comfort in the run, in the feel of the wind pushing against him, the endless thunder of his hooves.  His mind raced as much as his body; he could not make sense of what he had seen.

His running feet struck sparks from the ancient stone as he crossed the river, jarring him to the knees.  The pain heightened his senses, but could not clarify his thoughts.  The human
…What had she done, truly?

The lord of the V
alley must have been watching for him.  He was coming down the path to the overlook as the chieftain galloped up.  His legs locked and he skidded to a stop, stamping twice before he could control himself.

The lord waited, his eyes showing concern and his great hand flexing on the haft of his war axe.  The lord was ready to march at a word, ready to go down into the
human’s camp and deal the death that he himself had been unable to strike.  And that would be best.  That would answer every doubt.  Why did the thought fill him with such chaotic dread?

“
Tonka,” the lord said at last, and the sound of his clan name in his old friend’s mouth was the balm that his spinning thoughts demanded.

The horseman drew a breath, his flanks still shuddering from strain, and looked his lord in the eye. 
“I went to her,” he said.  “I showed myself to her.”

The lord waited.  He showed no disapproval, not yet.

“She had…a young griffin with her.”

The lord
’s head reared back, his eyes flashing.  Then he came forward, rage around him like a second skin, making him seem even larger.  “Then she dies,” he said, pushing soundly past Tonka and down the mountainside.

“
Antilles, wait!”

He did not want to, that much was clear, but names, even these names,
had a power.  The lord of the Valley stayed his step but did not turn.  He was waiting, but Tonka could see that when he had heard, he meant to go on.  He meant to kill.

And why did that unsettle his soul?  A human in the Valley had never been a precursor of peaceful times.  Was it not preferable to kill this one now, before she could work whatever evils she intended?

But the sight of her face at the instant she knew her death was come would not leave Tonka’s mind.  The way she had shielded her captive tore at him.  She had not even tried to run.

“
I think…I think she means no harm to it,” Tonka said now.  The words came from him as painfully as if drawn with hooks.  Hearing them, even he could not believe.

His lord did turn then, showing eyes filled with anger and open mistrust.  His powerful body was still tight with rage, still primed for bloodshed.  He said nothing.

“She put herself between it and my runka,” the horseman went on, and in a frustrated rush, added, “I don’t understand it either, but I do not lie!  With my own eyes, I saw her shield it!”

“
A human may treasure anything,” the lord countered curtly.  “They will run into a burning house to take out a box of jewels and leave their own young to the fire.  It means nothing.  That she has taken that life for her own is telling enough of her intent.”

It must be truth, but Tonka could not believe it.  He had seen the human
’s face.  He had seen the precise instant when fear came to it and it had not been fear for her own life.

“
Do not do this, my lord,” he said now, and again, Antilles paused.  “I will beg if you would have me beg, but do not kill her.  Not…not yet.”

Slowly, Antilles turned.

“I cannot be easy in my mind after what I have seen,” Tonka said.  “Your words call to me…but they do not convince me.  She put herself between it and my runka when I meant most to strike.  She cannot mean it harm.”

“
Harm or not, she has
taken
it!”  The lord’s voice suddenly roared forth, all his fury at the fore.  “I will not permit a thief of young in my Valley!  She dies, horseman.  She dies!”

“
My people have suffered a thousand times worse at human hands!  How dare you force me to beg for her life!” Tonka shouted back.  “Your father sees you still!  Will you be lord or tyrant?”

It was too much and he knew it the instant the words left his lips, but there was no calling them back.  Tonka stood, shudders taking his back and flanks where he fought most for stillness, and hated the human who had provoked this confrontation.

The echoes of his voice still rolled through the rock, but there was no other sound.  The wind still blew, the sun still burned behind its misty veil, and somewhere, Tonka supposed that stars yet wheeled and shone about their cosmic business, but he did not know it.  He had thought only for his lord and friend, and the shock he had put in those eyes.

“
Why?” Antilles asked finally.

“
Because my heart tells me it will be a murder.  My head does not understand this,” he added furiously, “and my hands and hooves yearn to strike, but I must obey my heart.”

“
And I must obey you?”

It was a calm question, almost an idle one, but Tonka was not fooled.  He bent his head, suddenly exhausted, and threw his runka to the ground.  It clattered over stone and rolled away.  He had received the staff from his own sire, Antilles himself had forged the spear
’s head, and he had tied fully thirty and three knots to mark the enemies fallen to its edge, but in that moment, he did not care if he never saw the thing again.  He had been poised to pierce the hateful heart of the invader and she had shielded her stolen griffin. 

Tonka raised his eyes and his open, empty hands. 
“I understand vengeance, lord.  I understand it very well.  But I must live with the blood I spill.  I must carry the faces of those I fell with me every day.  And this one…confounds me.”

“
Because she means no harm to the griffin she has taken.”  Antilles bent and retrieved the runka from the rock it had come to rest against.  He studied it there in his hand, turning it so that its killing edge caught the light and dazzled back at Tonka’s eyes.  “Have you considered that she may be raising the thing to harvest its grown body?” he asked quietly, all his gaze lying heavy on the runka.

“
Aye.”  Tonka rubbed at his brow.  A pain had set into him; all his mind seemed to be splitting itself apart.  “Aye, by all the gods, how could I not?  And believe that there is a part of me that rages to know I would defend such an obscenity, but I must be sure.  Can you understand that?  I must be sure, or I will forever wonder if it was a murder done on her.”

It was a long, uncomfortable time before the great head finally lowered and the sight of it brought the horseman more pain than relief.

“I would do this for no other but you,” Antilles said.  He held out the runka, and once Tonka had taken it, clapped his hand to the horseman’s shoulder in unspoken friendship and turned to set his feet back upon the sloping mountain path.  “But since now she knows you are here, let her know that you are watching.  Set a guard over her camp at all times and keep me informed of all her movements.”

“
Aye, lord.”  Tonka set the butt of his runka on the stone and leaned on it for support.  He felt sickened by the stand he had taken.  Worse, he was even more confused now than when he had left the human’s camp.

She had screamed and she had dropped to cover the unfledged griffin.  He could still see her eyes, striped by falls of her hair, watching him as she waited for the killing blow. 

He shuddered, hard, and then wheeled about and ran for home.