The Black Gryphon

His eyes twinkled as he watched Urtho from beneath his heavy lids, and his beak gaped in a broad grin when Urtho laughed aloud.

“I submit to the inevitable, my friend,” Urtho said, still laughing, as he slapped Skan on the shoulder. “I suppose I must consider this as your test of adulthood, as the Kaled’a’in give their youngsters. You gryphons are certainly not my children any longer—not anyone’s children.”

Then he sobered. “I am glad that this has happened now, Skan. And I am glad that you are here. I need to pass along some grave news of my own, and this will probably be the best opportunity to do so.”

He called in the hertasi, who waited discreetly just on the other side of the door, and gave him swift instructions. “I wish you to summon General Shaiknam and take him to the Marble Office; once you have left him there, summon the commanders of the other forces to the Strategy Room.”

He turned back to Skan. “I am splitting the non-human manpower of the Sixth among all the other commanders—I have reason enough since all of them have been complaining that they are short-handed. That will leave Shaiknam in command of nothing but humans. Is there any commander that you think the gryphons of the Sixth would prefer to serve?”

For once, he had caught the Black Gryphon by surprise; Skan’s grin-gape turned into a jaw-dropped gape of surprise, and his eyes went blank for a moment. “Ah—ah—Judeth of the Fifth, I think.”

Urtho nodded, pleased with his choice. “Excellent. And she has had no real gryphon wings assigned to her forces until now, only those on loan from the Sixth or the Fourth. Consider it done.” Urtho regarded Skan measuringly. “Still, the gryphons should have their own collective voice, even as the mages do. There are things that you know about yourselves that no human could. There should be one gryphon assigned to speak for all gryphons, so that things will not come to the pass they have with Shaiknam before I come to hear about it.” He stabbed out a finger. “You. You, Skan. I hereby assign you to be the overall commander of all the gryphon wings and to speak for them directly to me.”

Skan’s surprise turned to stupefaction. His head came up as if someone had poked him in the rear. “Me?” he squeaked—yes, squeaked, he sounded like a mouse. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Me? Why me? I am honored, Urtho, but—”

Urtho waved his objections aside. “You’ve obviously thought about becoming the leader of the gryphons, or why else would you have read all my history books about the great leaders of the past? The others clearly think that you should have that position, or why else would they have sent you here to confront me over Shaiknam?”

Is it unusually warm in here? Skan felt his nares flushing, and he hung his head. “They didn’t exactly pick me,” he admitted. “They couldn’t seem to do much besides panic and complain, so I . . . I took over. Nobody seemed to mind.”

“All the more reason to place you in charge, if you were the only one to take charge,” Urtho said implacably. “How do you think I wound up in charge of this so-called army?”

Skan ducked his head between his shoulder blades, his nares positively burning. “I’m not sure that’s a fit comparison—”

“Now, I have a few things to tell you,” Urtho continued. “I don’t know if you’ve been aware of it, but I’ve been sending groups of families and noncombatants into the west ever since we first thought we’d have to abandon the Tower.” He turned back to the map and stood over it, brooding. “I didn’t like having such a great concentration of folk here in the first place, and when I realized what chaos an evacuation would be, I liked it even less.”

Skan nodded with admiration. He hadn’t realized that Urtho was moving people out in a systematic way. That in itself spoke for how cleverly the mage had arranged it all.

“I’ve been posting the groups at the farthest edges of the territory we still hold, near enough to the permanent Gates there that they can still keep in touch with everyone here as if nothing had changed, but far enough so that if anything happens—” Urtho did not complete the sentence.

“If anything happens, we have advance groups already in place,” Skan said quickly. “An evacuation will be much easier that way. Faster, too. And if the fighters know their families are already safe, their minds will be on defense and retreat, rather than on worrying.”

“I don’t want another Laisfaar,” Urtho said, his head bent over the table, so that his face was hidden. “I don’t want another Stelvi Pass.”

Skan had his own reasons to second that. The lost gryphons there sometimes visited him in dreams, haunting him. . . .

. . . fly again, as Urtho wills. . . .

“Who will you pick for your second, Skan?” Urtho asked after a long silence, briskly changing the subject. “I assume it’s going to be one of the experienced fighters. And—” he cast a quick glance out of the corner of his eye at Skan, who caught a sly twinkle there. “—I count Zhaneel as an experienced fighter.”

Skan coughed. “Well, it will be Zhaneel, of course, but because she has the respect of the others. Even