The Black Gryphon

Granted, Farle had a reputation for wanting to be near the action, but the General wasn’t stupid, and he was certainly the best-protected man in the Sixth! How had anyone gotten to him? Was it accident? Could it have been treachery?

“I was telling the others-we think that some kind of suicide group got through and took him out, him and most of the other chief officers of the Sixth,” Aubri said. “We don’t even know how or who did it. There was just an explosion in the command tent, and when the smoke and dust cleared, there wasn’t much there but a smoking hole. The mages are trying to figure out just what happened, but the main thing for us is that we’ve lost him.”

Skan swore. There was only one man of Farle’s rank that was not already in a command position: Shaiknam, the General that Farle had replaced. The official story was that Shaiknam was on leave while Farle got more command experience, although the real reason Shaiknam had been taken out of the post was his incompetence.

But Urtho could not help being his optimistic self, nor could he stop giving unworthy people so many second chances that they might as well not even have gotten reprimanded. Urtho would remember all the great things that Shaiknam’s father had done, probably assume that Shaiknam had learned his lesson and would give him back the command he had taken away, rather than promoting someone else.

After all, it would look very bad for General Shaiknam if Urtho did promote someone of a lower rank to command the Sixth, when Shaiknam was sitting there on his thumbs, doing nothing. Until now, Urtho had been able to maintain that polite fiction that he was “seasoning” Farle, and that General Shaiknam was taking a well-earned leave of absence to rest.

He would not be able to maintain it for more than a moment after the rest of the forces learned of Farle’s death. It was either shame Shaiknam, with all the attendant problems that would cause, or give the Sixth back to the man who’d never completed a task in his life.

There was no doubt in Skan’s mind which it would be. Shaiknam was too well-born, too well-co

That seemed to be the conclusion everyone else had come to as well. With Shaiknam in charge, the gryphons of the Sixth just became deployable decoys again. Right now, the big question seemed to be what, if anything, they could do about it.

Skan moved from group to group, just listening, saying nothing. He heard much the same from each group; this is dreadful, and we’re all going to get killed by this madman, but we can’t do anything about it. There was a great deal of anxiety-panic, in fact-but no one was emerging with any ideas, or even as a leader willing and able to represent them all.

Which leaves-me. Well, this was the moment, if ever, to act on the theories of leadership he had been researching all this time. Can you be a leader, featherhead? He looked around once more at the gathering of his kind; gryphons had started to pick at their feathers like hysterical messenger-birds, they were so upset.

I guess there isn’t a choice. It’s me, or no one.

He jumped up onto the highest sunbathing rock, and let loose with a battle-screech that stu

“Excuse me,” he said into the quiet, as startled eyes met his, and upturned beaks gaped at him. “But this seems to be a problem that we already have the solution to. Urtho doesn’t control us anymore, remember? We are just as autonomous as the mages, if we want to be. We can all fly off into the wilderness and leave the whole war behind any time we want.”

A moment more of silence, and then the assembled gryphons met his words with a roar of objections. He nodded and listened without trying to stem the noise or counter their initial words; most of the objections boiled down to the simple fact of the gryphons’ loyalty to their creator. No one wanted to abandon Urtho or his cause. They just wanted to be rid of Shaiknam.

When the last objection had been cried out onto the air, and the assemblage quieted down again, he spoke.

“I agree with you,” he said, marveling that not a single gryphon in the lot had made any objection to his assumption of leadership. “We owe loyalty-everything-to Urtho. We shouldn’t even consider abandoning him. But we do not have to tell him that. The mages all felt exactly the same way, but they were perfectly willing to use the fact that they could all pack up and leave as a bargaining-chit. We should do the same thing. If the situation was less dangerous for us than it is, I would never suggest this course of action, but I think we all know what life for the Sixth was like under Shaiknam, and we can’t allow a fool to throw our lives away.”

Heads nodded vigorously all around him as crest-feathers slowly smoothed down, ear-tufts rising with interest. “You’ve got to be the one, Black Boy,” Aubri called out from somewhere in the rear. “You’ve got to be the one to speak for us. You’re the best choice for the job.”

Another chorus, this time of assent, greeted Aubri’s statement. Skan’s nares flushed with mingled embarrassment and pride.

“I’ll tell you what, then,” he told them all, wondering if what he was doing was suicidally stupid, or would be their salvation. “I was trying to come up with a plan to get the confrontation over with quickly, before Shaiknam has a chance to entrench himself. Now, we all know that where Shaiknam goes, Garber follows, and I’m pretty certain he is going to be the one to try to bring us to heel initially. This is the tactic that just might work best. . . .”

Two messages came by bird from Garber, both of which he ignored. One of the gryphons who had a particularly good relationship with the birds smugly took the second one off for a moment when it arrived. When the gryphon was finished, the bird flew off. Shortly thereafter, messenger-birds rose in a cloud from the area around Shaiknam’s tent, and scattered to the far corners of the camp.

That left Shaiknam and Garber with no choice but to use a human messenger. The gryphons of the Sixth took to their lairs to hide while the rest made themselves scarce, and Skan was the only gryphon in sight. He reclined at his ease up on the sunbathing rock, as an aide-de-camp in the colors of the Sixth came trudging up the path to the lairs, looking for the gryphons Garber had summoned so imperiously.

The gryphons in question hid in the shadows just out of sight, although they had a clear view of Skan and the aide. They were not going to show so much as a feather until Skan gave them the word.

The young man glanced curiously around the area-which looked, for all intents and purposes, to be completely deserted. Skan wondered what was going on in his mind. The gryphons were not with their Trondi’irn, who obviously had not been told of this impromptu conspiracy. They were not on the practice grounds, nor on Zhaneel’s now-sanctioned obstacle course. They were not with the Command. They could only be at their lairs, unless they had all taken leave out of the area, and leave had not been approved.

Yet the lawn in front of the lairs was completely deserted. No sign of gryphons, nor where they had gone to. There was no one in the dustbathing pits, nor at the water-baths. No one lounged in the shady “porch” of his or her lair. No one reclined on a sunbathing rock.

Except Skan.

The Black Gryphon watched the man’s expression as he tried to reconcile his orders with what he’d found. Skan was not precisely assigned to the Sixth, but he had been flying cover for Zhaneel. Skan would have to do.

The aide-de-camp took another look around, then squared his shoulder, and marched straight up to the Black Gryphon. Skan raised his head to watch him approach, but said and did nothing else.

“General Shaiknam has sent two messenger-birds here to rally the gryphons of the Sixth,” the young man said crisply. “Why was there no answer?”