Owlflight

“We just worked out tentative placing for your traps, and ways for the hertasi to trigger them,” Snowfire told him, raising his voice to a more normal level. “I didn’t expect you to be awake, but I’m glad you are. You made all the right choices today, and you deserve credit for doing so.”

“Right choices?” Darian repeated, puzzled.

“Oh, you could have gone charging right into the village, thinking you could free your friends, but you didn’t,” Snowfire said, his voice muffled in the folds of his shirt as he pulled it over his head. “You stayed long enough to make detailed observations, then you came straight back here. You didn’t waste time with accusations and carrying on when you got here, you simply told us what you knew and then offered constructive suggestions. In short, Dar’ian, you behaved in every way as a man and a warrior, and I am very proud of you. We all are.”

Darian felt his neck heating up and averted his eyes. “Ah,” he stammered, “thank you. I - I don’t want anything bad to happen to anybody, and - “ He gulped, and decided to tell the rest of the truth. “The horse brought me out on the top of the bluff, not down at the edge of the village. If I’d been closer, I probably would have done something stupid. But there was no direct way down from there, and, well - that’s probably why I stopped to think.”

“You still made the right choices.” Snowfire sat down on his pallet, blinking at him with eyes that looked as large and dark as Hweel’s. “That is an important thing for you to know.”

“Heyla - it’s going to be an early day tomorrow, and the night is only getting shorter for all your talking,” Wintersky pointed out, a little crossly. “We do not all fly owls, here.” He was already lying on his sleeping pad, and he glared pointedly at the mage-light above Snowfire’s head.

Snowfire chuckled, and the light blinked out. “Good night, Wintersky,” he said. “And good night, Dar’ian.”

“Hmph,” Wintersky replied, mollified. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Darian said softly. He lowered himself back down onto his pillow, and the next thing he knew, Wintersky was shaking his shoulder, and it was morning.

The day wore on, filled with explanations and examples of trap placement and construction. Around him, there were the sounds of wood being chopped, branches split, and snippets of conversation in Tayledras. Darian caught himself feeling like he was playing, once, while he bent and notched saplings for lashing-traps. He felt a pang of guilt, since after all he was engaged in acts of war, to cause pain and even death to those who had done the same to his village.

My village? I suppose they are, when all is counted up. They weren’t the people I would have chosen to be with, but they were better than - alternatives.

Yet, making traps was at least something familiar, from a better time in his childhood. It brought back wistful memories of his parents.

He sighed, thinking about them while he tied off his fourth or fifth lasher, then hacked away steadily at a branch as thick as his upper arm. Things would have been so much better if they were here with him now. His mother always seemed to know the right things to say, or how to touch in just the perfect way to put him at ease. His father was always so strong and capable, with a quick smile.

“Dar’ian?” a timid voice asked from below a bush. Two small, pebble-scaled hands held out a cup of water from under the cover, and nothing else of the hertasi could be seen. He wiped his brow and murmured a thanks to his largely-unseen benefactor, then drank the cup dry. In a blink, after setting the cup down, it was gone, and a second hertasi voice spoke from behind another bush.

“Dar’ian, the stakes you requested are stacked on the east side of the red boulder. We hope they will be enough. We go now to prepare the vines.”

Then there was the slightest rustle of leaves and the sound of scuttling through underbrush, and Darian was alone again. Well, I’d better see how many they managed to get done.

I’m getting nowhere on this branch, and my arms hurt. If we can’t have enough of these traps ready to stop the soldiers, we might only wind up injuring them enough to enrage them, not discourage them. Darian sheathed his knife and started off toward the place the hertasi had told him of. Hertasi were amazing to him - shy ghosts with astonishing speed and industriousness. What were their parents like? He found it hard to imagine them having families like his, or the Tayledras. And what about the. . . ?

At that moment, a large shape detached itself from the shadows of the thicket surrounding the red boulder. Darian froze in place and then relaxed, exhaling sharply when he saw the shape resolve itself into golden-tipped feathers, the hook of an aquiline beak, and the flip and flash of a huge wing refolding against a feathered body. The gryphon stalked out, looking directly at Darian. He seemed impossibly huge even at this distance, yet Darian knew that was only a trick of the mind.

He caught himself blushing, wondering how long he’d been under the creature’s scrutiny. Kelvren looked down, picked from several clear spots for the most comfortable, and sat down, waiting for Darian to approach. The gryphon’s chest rose and fell quickly as he apparently recovered from some physical effort or other, and his gaze appeared to soften the closer Darian came to him.

“Grrreetingsss, Darrr’ian,” Kelvren rumbled as he dipped his beak in a nod. “I have jussst completed