Owlflight

saw, the mounted fighters are the least disciplined. Would that be enough to generate extra energy for him?”

“Probably; it isn’t a lot, but these days, when there isn’t a lot of energy to be had, a mage would grasp at anything.” Starfall blinked, and rubbed his eyes. “At least he isn’t practicing blood-sacrifice.”

“I’ll say this much for the barbarians; so far as I know, they don’t tend to stoop to that. They’ll use the power generated by slaughter on a battlefield, but they won’t practice blood-sacrifice. Or at least, not of humans.” He grimaced. “Let’s hope this lot runs true to form.”

“Dar’ian would never forgive us if anything like that happened,” Starfall muttered, and shook his head. “Well, he’s due for another try, and I need to be on guard; keep me informed if you can.”

Starfall raised the containment shield again, and sank back into his trance. Snowfire left him with his falcon standing watch and returned to Daystorm.

“I think you can drop the close watch on the village,” he told her. “Starfall says the mage hasn’t reacted to what we did at all.”

She sighed with relief. “Oh, good. If I don’t get myself stretched out, I won’t be any use for the raid. I’ll leave the hooligans in place; I don’t need them here, and they’ll call me if something catches their attention.”

“Good plan,” he said approvingly, and went to check on the others.

Wintersky had taken charge of building their packs; each of them would carry an identical load of climbing staff, short bow, arrows, and throwing darts. The idea was not to get into combat, if they could avoid it; the idea was to free the slaves and guard their backtrail. Snowfire wished he had some other sort of magic than the type he had; it would have been so useful to be able to turn water into drugged brandywine and arrange for the remaining barbarians to find it!

Seventeen Tayledras and one adopted boy would be the whole of their army; Nightwind and Kel would remain behind to guard Starfall, with five dyheli and three of the most timid of the hertasi. Wintersky had finished seven of the packs, with ten more to go; he was checking each and every weapon with utmost care as he packed it, and there was a small pile of rejected arrows beside him. Snowfire didn’t interrupt; he had the job well in hand.

Seventeen against how many? We must be mad. Yet if they could just avoid rousing anything or anyone, the odds of pulling this off were good. Or at least, they weren’t insurmountable.

Time to check on someone whose optimism more than equals my pessimism. He left Wintersky and took the path that led to the pools and Kelvren.

The only quiet place to practice was beside the bathing pools, and Darian was more than tired of repeating his tiny magics over and over when Kelvren provided a welcome interruption.

“What passsesss, brrrancherrr?” the gryphon called, as he flew low over the pool, craning his neck to the side to keep his eyes on Darian. When Darian waved at him, the gryphon executed a slow and graceful gliding turn, then backwinged to a perfect one-claw landing on the rock edge of the pool beside Darian. Darian had to duck his head and shield his eyes against the dust storm kicked up by the gryphon’s wing-beats, but he grinned a greeting anyway.

“Nothing much passes except time, and that’s passing too slowly!” he complained, as the gryphon settled himself with a couple of crisp wing-flicks. He noticed that Kel had a bundle in his right front talon, which he placed on the ground behind the rocks, just out of sight. “I want to do something, not just sit here!”

“I agrrree,” Kel responded readily. “But I happen to have sssomething you can do. Do you sssuppossse you could give me a hand with grrrrooming? Nightwind isss bussy prrepar-ring herrr weaponsss, the herrrtasssI arrre all gone orrrr busssy, and I am no grrryfalcon, to have handsss that hold toolsss well.”

Help Kelvren? In a heartbeat! Darian was absolutely thrilled to be asked, and jumped to his feet, prepared to do anything that Kel requested. “Do I need to get anything special?” he asked anxiously. “The feather-oil or anything?”

“Not featherrr-oilsss,” the gryphon replied, “I have ever-rrything we’ll need. Thisss will be battle preparrrationsss.”

With his foreclaw the gryphon picked up the bag which he put down in front of Darian. He opened it and spread out the contents on the ground. It contained the usual brushes and combs, but also held files, a thin and flexible chest protector that was clearly made to fit over the chestplate on Kel’s harness, and a set of sharp metal claw-sheaths. “Thessse fit overrr the talonssss,” Kel said, indicating the metal sheaths. “You’ll have to file my talonsss to fit; they arrre a bit longerrr than they werrre when I wasss fitted with thessse.”

Darian picked up the set of three files and the right-side set of sheaths and went to work, as Kel advised and corrected what he was doing. He found that if he sat just under the gryphon’s chin with his back against Kel’s chest, they were both able to see what was going on clearly and were more comfortable. It was very pleasant, sitting there with his back against the feathery warmth of his friend, working diligently with the files on the shining black talons. He could almost forget why they were making these preparations. He couldn’t help thinking what the other boys Of Errold’s Grove would say if they saw what he was doing now. Wouldn’t their eyes just pop!