The Black Gryphon

“You must hold this steady, understand? Must!”

Aubri nodded. “Y’got me this far, skydancer.”

Zhaneel’s nares blushed red and she leapt straight up, gaining altitude madly. When she had reached twice the height she counted as “safe,” she rolled over on her back, straightened, and folded her wings in tight, hurtling faster than any crossbow bolt. Her shadow streaked across the ground below as she flattened the dive. She felt the wind cut across her body and saw the landscape become a blur as she shot across the clearing, scant wing-lengths above the ground, following the same path in the air that her sweep earlier had done on the surface.

Behind her, she could hear fireballs erupting, and saw flashes of yellow light. Moments later, she traded speed for altitude and pulled up, to see sparks raining down on the entire clearing-and Aubri’s shield.

The improvised shield held and protected him from harm.

With the first victory cry she had ever uttered, she closed on him to lead him from his captivity.

Winterhart grimaced as the audience began cheering. Someone jostled her, jarring her back and sending a jab of pain down her right leg, further souring her mood.

Garber had ordered her to come here, orders she hadn’t much liked and wasn’t sure she agreed with. Right now, though, she wasn’t very fond of gryphons; it was a gryphon that had injured her back.

Be fair. It wasn’t her fault. She’d been having backaches and ignoring them-after all, who didn’t have a headache or a backache by day’s end around here? She had been restraining an hysterical and delirious broadwing with severe lacerations who had lashed out with both hind feet and sent Winterhart twisting and tumbling sideways. She hadn’t broken anything, but her back spasmed as soon as she got up, and it had been getting worse, not better, with time.

She was a Healer; she knew she should be seeing another Healer, or should at least stay in bed, flat, for a while. She was even fairly certain that she knew what was wrong. But there were no Healers and no time to spare, so she simply hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. She moved as little as possible, said she had “sprained” her back, and used that as an excuse not to do things that made it hurt worse. But she was in constant pain; there were only two positions she could take that allowed the pain to stop, and neither of them were appropriate for getting any work done. It was embarrassing. A Healer should be able to keep herself in one piece. This was altogether too much like a display of incompetence.

The pain wasn’t doing much for her temper, and getting jostled and making it worse didn’t help.

Damn Garber. He’s right, but for all the wrong reasons.

She’d been watching Zhaneel herself for several days, since she’d gotten wind of this “obstacle course” business, and long before dimwitted Garber had any notion tnat it was going on. Even before today she’d found herself torn between two violently conflicting opinions.

On the one hand she had to admire the little gryphon; obviously unsuited for combat, she had found ways to make herself suited to it. She had been pushing herself, finding her absolute limits, turning handicaps into benefits. The number of things she’d had to work out for herself to overcome her own deficiencies was incredible, and the ingenious ways she had done so were amazing. It was difficult to believe that this was the little runt Garber saw no use at all for.

But on the other hand, Zhaneel was exhausting herself completely with these so-called “training sessions”; no one had ever authorized her to do what she was doing, which made them quasi-legal at best. But that could be ignored. What could not be ignored was the fact that she had led other gryphons into trying her unorthodox tactics, with very mixed results.

Zhaneel herself had come out of these sessions with pulled muscles; she hadn’t come to Winterhart for any help, but that made no difference. The gryphon had been hurt, and she was the one who had invented the course and the training. Winterhart was afraid that one of the others was very likely to be seriously injured trying some of her nonsense.

Even if the other gryphons didn’t manage to hurt themselves on this course, the fact still remained that they burned off energy and resources they might need later, where it counted. Out on the front lines. The war escalated, resources diminished. Although it was not common knowledge, Urtho’s forces had lost ground, a little more every day. There was a new breed of makaar in the air now, and they took a toll on the gryphons. If the gryphons wasted their energy or strained themselves on this obstacle course of Zhaneel’s, they might not have that little extra they needed to survive an encounter with these new makaar. . Garber, of course, only knew that the gryphon cull was doing things he hadn’t ordered, not so much flouting his authority as ignoring it. No gryphon in Sixth Wing was allowed to think for itself; the very idea was preposterous. He was already aching with humiliation at the lecture the Lady Ci

Winterhart threaded through the crowd, more uneasy with every passing moment. She did not like confrontations. She particularly disliked them when there was a possible audience involved.

But she had direct orders. She also had an exact speech, delivered to her by Garber’s aide-de-camp, and duly memorized. Presumably the commander did not trust her to deliver a proper dressing-down . . . or perhaps he was as contemptuous of her intelligence as he was of the gryphons’.

Abruptly, she found herself in a clear space, and practically nose-to-beak with the runt.

Zhaneel blinked in surprise, and backed up a pace or so. “Winterrrharrt,” she said blankly. “What do you herrrre?”

That was all the opening that Winterhart required. “It is more to the point to ask you what you are doing here, gryphon,” she said coldly. “You are here without orders, you have commandeered equipment and perso

She expected Zhaneel to behave as she always had; to cower a little, stammer an apology, and creep off to her aerie, forgetting and abandoning her ridiculous “training program.” She had readied a magnanimous acceptance of that apology before she was halfway through her speech. Something that would make her look a little less like Garber’s mouthpiece. . . .

“I?” the cull replied, and every hair and feather on her body bristled. She drew herself up to her full, if substandard, height, and looked down her beak at the Trondi’irn with eyes full of rage. “I?” she repeated, raising her voice. “How isss it that I am to blame becaussse the commanderrr of Sssixth Wing hasss no morrre imagination than a mud-turr-rtle? How isss it that it isss my fault that therrre isss only one trrraining progrrram for all, no matter the cirrrcumssstancesss, norrr if they change? What isss it that I am doing wrrrong! What isss it that I am doing that I ssshould be accusssed of doing wrrrong?” Her voice rose to full volume, and the audience, which had begun to disperse, regrouped in anticipation of another sort of spectacle. It was clear in an instant that they would not be siding with Winterhart.