The Black Gryphon

“I must speak with Amberdrake about that one. . . .”

Tamsin chewed his lower lip for a moment, his brow wrinkled a little with worry, and then sighed. “Well, greatest of the sky-warriors,” he said lightly, with a teasing glance to the side, “I think you won’t have any real need for us in the next few hours, so we’ll go tend to those with greater hurts and smaller egos.”

Skan pretended to be offended, and Aubri snorted his amusement; Cinnabar lost some of her anger as her lover took her hand and led her out.

Aubri settled back down, wincing a little as burns rubbed against bandages. Skan arranged himself in his own nest of cushions with a care to his healing bones and watched his tent-mate with anticipation, hoping for another battle of wits. But the Healing had tired Aubri considerably, and the easing of some of his pain had only left an opening for his exhaustion to move in, assassinlike, to strike him down. Before either of them had a chance to think of anything to say, Aubri’s eyes had closed, and he was whistling.

Skan snorted. “Told you,” he whispered to the sleeping gryphon.

At least the poor thing was finally getting some sleep. Skan was only too well aware that Aubri’s sleep had been scant last night and punctuated by long intervals of wakeful, pain-filled restlessness. Skan had wondered then why his tent-mate’s Trondi’irn hadn’t come to ensure that the gryphon at least got some sleep. Well, now he knew why.

Because this “Winterhart” doesn’t care for us. We’re just weapons to her; weapons that have the convenient feature of being able to find their own targets. All she cares for is how quickly she can get us repaired and back on the front line again. She might as well be fletching arrows.

Winterhart wasn’t the only person in Urtho’s forces to think that way; unfortunately, two of Urtho’s commanders, General Shaiknam of the Sixth and his next-in-command, Commander Garber, had the same attitude. Urtho’s most marvelous creations meant the same as a horse or a hawk or a hound to them. If a gryphon didn’t do precisely as ordered, no matter if the orders flew in the face of good sense, there was hell to pay. Obviously, Shaiknam picked underlings who had that same humanocentric attitude.

Skan put his chin down on his foreclaws and brooded. It wasn’t often he had his beak so thoroughly rubbed in the fact that he was incredibly lucky to have Amberdrake as his Trondi’irn and Tamsin and Cinnabar as his assigned Healers-of-choice.

And if anything ever happened to Amberdrake?

I could end up with another cold, unfeeling rock like Winterhart. And I would have no say in the matter . . . just as I have no say in when I may sire young, which commander I must serve, nor any way to change battle-plans if the commander does not wish a gryphon’s viewpoint.

The gryphons found themselves treated, as often as not, as exactly what Shaiknam and his ilk thought them to be; stupid animals, deployable decoys, with no will, intelligence, or souls of their own.

The more he brooded, the more bitter his thoughts became. Thanks to Amberdrake, he had led a relatively indulged life, insofar as it was possible for any of Urtho’s combatants to be sheltered. But Zhaneel was an example of how a perfectly good gryphon could be turned into a self-deprecating mess, simply by neglect.

Because too many of Urtho’s folk—and sometimes even Urtho! —treat us as if we aren’t intelligent beings, we’re things. We have no autonomy.

From where he lay, he had no trouble reading the titles on the spines of the books Urtho had loaned to him. Biographies and diaries, mostly—all humans, of course—and all great leaders, or leaders Skan considered to be great. Did Urtho have any notion how Skan studied those books, those men and women, and what they did to inspire those who followed them? How he searched for the spark, the secret, the words that turned mere followers into devotees? Or did he think that Skan read them as pure entertainment?

Make your motivations secret to the enemy, fool them into false planning, use their force against them, lead them onto harsh ground, hold true to the beliefs of your followers, and show them the ways they may become like you. Lead by example. Those weren’t fictions on a page, they were a way of life for those who had become legends in the past. Urtho knew half of these writers. A quarter of them worked for him when he created us. One he served.

Urtho had learned from all of them, and now so did Skandranon. So why must things remain the same?

Amberdrake came awake to the smell of simmering bitteralm-and-cream. Gesten bustled about with fluid efficiency as the kestra’chern awoke, whistling jaunty hertasi tunes while he folded towels and polished brass, pausing only to check the bitteralm pot on the brazier between tasks. Amberdrake couldn’t help thinking of morning-wrens greeting the dawn, like the hertasi tale of how the sun had to be coaxed from slumber each day with music.

Amberdrake rolled over and slid sideways, stretching his legs underneath the glossy red and silver satin cover that Urtho had sent to him when he had joined Urtho’s forces as a kestra’chern. He curled up around a body-pillow and hoped that Gesten wouldn’t realize he was awake, but it was too late. The hertasi pulled back a corner of the blanket and offered a cup.