'What did he say?' Tremane asked, his anger fading.
'He said, 'What a surprise, to find after all these centuries, a commander who is more concerned with saving our blood than spending it!' And he is right.' Tashiketh bent his head in submission to Tremane's will. 'We will follow the wishes of the commander who does not waste anything. I'll send Shyrestral to bring the rest, and we will see your maps and plans rather than improvising solely upon what we find there.'
In so short a time that Darkwind was astonished, the gryphons were lined up in three ranks for a none-too- hasty briefing. Only one somewhat bewildered man, who had only visited the place once, could be found to tell the gryphons about the lay of the land in that area. He found himself overwhelmed by the gryphons' relentless questioning over details of the region's wind currents.
On the fourth day after the messenger had arrived, the gryphon wing flew off to confront the enemy, and Darkwind and everyone else watched them fly off with mingled hope and dread. The gryphons seemed full of confidence and good humor; they might have been going off on a pleasure jaunt.
Except that their behavior showed Darkwind very clearly that their hunting and killing instincts were roused. When they were not moving, they were intensely alert, heads up, eyes taking in everything, bodies poised. When they moved, it was with bewildering swiftness and utter sureness, as deadly and beautiful as the dance of warrior and sword. They took no notice of the snow beneath their claws, of the cold breeze; their eyes were on the blinding blue sky, and they could not wait to be up and out. When they took to the air, they leaped up, catching the shivering wind in their talons and conquering it.
'You're sure they will have a chance?' Tremane asked, as the wing vanished into the blue distance. 'I keep feeling as if I'm sending them to their doom.'
'Gryphons were originally created as fighters,' Darkwind replied slowly. 'Very versatile ones. It's in their blood, and a millennium or two isn't going to change that.'
'They may have been created as fighters, but are they trained?' Tremane said, his voice sounding strained. 'I know what my men can do—but these creatures? Granted, their opponents aren't as well-equipped or skilled as my men, yet it only takes a single well-aimed arrow to kill someone. And you tell me that Iftel has kept war away from her borders for as long as the Valdemarans have known them. How can they be ready for this? Surely—'
''Forgive me for interrupting you, but has Tashiketh told you how his twenty wingmen were chosen?' Darkwind replied, before Tremane could voice much more in the way of anxiety.
The King shook his head.
''I thought not. Let's go inside where it's warm,' Darkwind told him, as the sharp wind cut through the seams of his coat and chilled him. He shivered involuntarily and stamped his numbing feet to warm them. 'I believe I'm about to surprise you.'
The group retired to Tremane's study; several of his other staff members, who had overheard the exchange, had managed to tag along. The gryphons had excited a great deal of interest among the Imperials and Hardornens alike, and Darkwind didn't at all mind assuaging some of their curiosity. It was a close fit for all of them, but Tremane gave no hint that he wanted any of them to leave.
'I've managed to learn a bit about the way things are done in Iftel, at least as far as the gryphons are concerned,' Darkwind told the group, once they were all settled in a circle of chairs, Tremane's only a little larger and more elaborate than the rest. 'It's not the peaceful paradise you and I might have imagined.'
'Oh?' Elspeth said. 'But they won't even let the Mercenary's Guild establish a Guildhall there!'
Darkwind could only shake his head. 'I don't know of their origin, but because of what I have learned from Tayledras history and some Kaled'a'in information, I have a few guesses. Tashiketh either doesn't know the answers, or has been ordered to pretend that he doesn't, so this is speculation.'
Tremane uttered a scornful little cough. 'Darkwind, at times your insistence on hedging is maddening.
Darkwind chuckled, not at all offended. 'Certainly. I think that the citizens of Iftel are descended from some of the forces that were cut off when the Mage of Silence's stronghold was overrun. There were gryphon-wings with several of the armies, and since female gryphons by and large are a bit larger and heavier than the males, females always fought alongside males, often their mates, so there would have been a breeding population.'
'You mean some of these gryphons are female?' one of the generals blurted, looking completely taken aback.
Darkwind laughed. 'You didn't even look between their haunches, eh? Yes, some are female. Probably half; males also spend as much time tending the young as females, since they feed their young the way young hawks are fed.' He raised an eyebrow at the general's stunned expression. 'Oh, come now—you didn't think anything with a beak like that could suckle milk, did you?
The general winced, and Tremane himself made an expression of sympathetic pain.
