Flight of the Godkin Griffin, page 15
“And what will you say,” I ask, “if I tell you either way?”
I must look too much the political creature because the flash of sadness in his eyes is otherwise inexplicable. I flush at my ears.
“Controlling our men’s outrage may be like penning a bull with the frothing, ma’am. You know how serious a crime this is,” Donal says. “Particularly in the Godkindred Kingdom’s heartland.”
Oh, do I. We punish very severely for those who seek pleasures in other people’s bodies without their permission…but that is only a fraction of the punishment we extract for those who appropriate another person’s womb without her consent. Bloodline is not just important. Bloodline is everything, and to further your own through violence…let us simply say that bastardy for us is not simply a shameful matter, but a criminal one.
“Let them be outraged, then,” I say. “As long as you and your fellow captains can keep them in hand, their anger will serve them.”
“Then the rumors are true,” Donal says. He’s handling this with a delicacy I honestly hadn’t expected of him.
“The rumors…” I pause, then sigh. “Yes.”
His hand touches the handle of his knife. Not his sword, a weapon of honor and military duty, but his knife, the tool you gut carcasses with.
“Not just true,” I say, “but in the most heinous of ways. I was overwhelmed not by a single person but by an unchecked horde of half-mad beasts, and their shepherd did not stop them from their multiple crimes.” Gods, this is hard to say out loud. My limbs are trembling with what I believe is anger. “And their chief would have forced himself on me when I was bound and too injured to resist.”
“Would have,” Donal says. I’ve passed my tremor on to him. “What stopped him?”
“Ragna,” I say. “She attacked him at great risk to herself. Realized risk, for now she is bound for sacrifice because of what she did to protect the integrity of my family chain.”
“This is monstrous,” Donal says. “The impossible task you give us is not to destroy two thousand pards, Mistress, but to keep us from doing so.”
“Then I hope the intelligence our spies retrieve will make that opportunity for us,” I say. “Go do my work, Donal. Only when we have rent this culture limb from limb will I be able to rest again.”
“Aye, Mistress,” he says, hard as folded metal, and takes himself outside.
Chapter
Thirteen
“Mistress! Come outside, please!”
I appreciate the scout’s urgency, but I am not going to be moving quickly any time soon. Still, I feel much better this morning than I did yesterday. With Magwen’s help I hobble outside my tent to see what the fuss is about.
On one of the rocky slopes I see a blanket of people. They’re flying a succession of colors from a pole: not flags, but strips of colored ribbon. As I stare, squinting, Colblain arrives, flanked by two people, and I feel like laughing.
“Headman Pedeel, Shaman Negrat,” I say. “You are a long way from home.”
Negrat says, “The wind told us some time ago that we would be wise to march here. We brought fellows from the cliffs. It seems as if every time we stopped to make camp, more people joined us…strange how that happened.”
“And how many stragglers have you brought me, wise shaman and gentle headman?” I ask.
Pedeel says, “Seven hundred, crazed Godkin woman.” He glances with great nonchalance at Negrat. “Oddly enough, each one seems to be an able-bodied man. We deem this convenient, since our valley kin have told us we are needed to fight the pards.”
I shake my head, torn between laughing, a deep affection and a little fear. Weeks past, I left Negrat and his headman and his village behind after my unsettling evening vigil on the topmost bluffs in the mountains between Shraeven and the Kingdom. I honestly hadn’t thought of that night since…and yet, here they are, adding the numbers to my force I’ll need to dominate the pards. I had no idea I had earned their allegiance.
“Thank you,” I say at last. “You will help me to tame the mountains for those who live here and those who travel them. I greatly appreciate your…strangely…timely arrival.”
Negrat studies me. His gaze snags on my belly and I know that among all my more obvious injuries he has noted the invisible one. “I came because I was needed. The others came because they trusted me. You will fight for us, and we are glad to help you.”
And so I have my sufficiency of allies.
“According to what we’ve discovered,” Colblain says later in our briefing, “the rite will take place in four days. The able-bodied of each clan will travel from village to village, amassing ever greater numbers until they arrive in a single mass at a nearby crevice encircled by sheer walls. The ritual begins at sundown and is completed at dawn with the release of the pard-beasts on the sacrifice.”
I frown. “Surely not. A ritual, at night, in a crevice surrounded by high ground? Did they design this situation specifically so that they could be approached without warning and killed en masse by warriors ringing the crevice?”
“They’ll have guards, but it’s a hard climb,” Gavan says. “They have never had reason to plan for enemies.”
“I can’t believe they’re that arrogant,” I say. “We must be careful not to indulge in a similar arrogance planning this just because it looks easy. How did we uncover this information?”
“We talked to some of the valley natives who’d been captives, and had some of them listen in on discussions taking place around the village,” Colblain says. “And we had help.”
“Help?” I ask.
He unfolds several crumpled bits of leather and sets them on our camp table. Ragna’s handwriting covers it, neatly lettered but with a splotchy, quick-drying ink. Dark brown ink. Oh, Ragna.
“How did she get these to us?” I ask.
“The corvid messenger found her on its own initiative and brought these back,” Gavan offers.
“We are never sending that bird back to the Godson,” I say. “Let’s talk about this cliff. I assume someone spied out the location?”
Sketches are produced. We bend together to plan. In four days, we will hammer on the pards like the fists of the gods.
Four days to the ritual.
Three.
Two—they fly.
I lie awkwardly on my cot, trying to sleep and failing. Shraeven is changing me already. I don’t feel ready for it. I am of the Kingdom—but the Kingdom has cut me loose.
Who am I? Where do my allegiances belong? I would have said the Sunblood Cliffs and the Godkindred Kingdom, but the Godson does not seem to care whether we live or die…whether any of us do in the process of extending his empire. But I cannot say Shraeven, for all that the people seem to find me worthy. Sometimes.
I am used to dealing with violence as a soldier, not as a diplomat. I don’t think I’m doing a very good job with the pards. But I simply can’t allow them to exist as they do today.
What would the winds counsel me if I stepped outside? Would they whisper out of the clear dark to tangle my long hair and cool the crannies between my feathers? Or would they be silent, watchful, judging?
What if I’m going to be a mother?
A mother without a husband?
Oh gods.
All I can do is kill these people, kill them and kill them until they never rise up against another person, or in my memories or nightmares ever again. I have to turn soldier. Doesn’t every governor have to resort to force sometimes?
Why am I weeping?
Ragna, are you safe tonight?
“I’d forgotten how quickly you heal.”
I look over my shoulder—not hard, given the length of my neck—and find Silfie at the tent’s opening, framed by the flap and Magwen’s antlers. The steward is lacing me into my leather armor; he’s being very careful, but masking it with his deliberation, as if he doesn’t want me to realize he’s trying to judge how fragile I am. But I kid no one when I say I heal quickly…and while I don’t want to move very quickly, and I still have bandages on my arms and legs, if my bones don’t knit within a week they don’t knit at all. Some have whispered that it’s the coatl in my blood that brings such supernatural ability. I just think it’s luck. Luck and good breeding.
“It’s useful,” I say, realizing that Silfie is just standing there, looking gloriously martial but extremely tense. “Are the men in position?”
“They’re ready,” she says. “Runners report seeing the first of the pards accumulating in the crevice.”
“Good,” I say. “What’s the weather like?”
“Some ugly clouds, but I think they’ll pass before we make our attack.”
“Even better,” I say. “I hate fighting on wet rock.” I turn, run my hands down the stiff white leather over my ribs. My wings are folded and carefully bound since (unlike my limbs) they need more time and less give to heal properly. I won’t be flying for another two weeks, maybe three. Magwen buckles my sword and knife at my waist as I hold my arms above his head. He’s lucky I’m this tall—his antlers would be an inconvenience for anyone shorter.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Silfie asks.
“Of course I’m sure,” I say.
Her ears dip downward and back forward so quickly I almost miss it. “Angharad, you’re moving too slowly,” she says. “You’re a target.”
“That’s why I’ll be on Honeydipped directing the action, instead of in the fray disemboweling pards,” I say.
Her copper eyes fasten on mine. “But that’s where you want to be. Which means that’s where you’re going to end up. And then what will I do?”
“Protect me,” I say. “Happily it’s one of your duties.”
“Angharad—,” she begins.
“Save your strength for the fight,” I say. “We’re not stopping until there’s enough blood to feed our messenger bird and all of its kin.”
She watches me as Magwen brings me my cloak. No, not me. Her gaze traces my injuries, snags at my navel. “Did they—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I interrupt. “What you see would be cause enough for what we’re about to do.”
Her eyes are fiercer than lightning. “But if they did—”
“Later,” I say. “We have work to do.”
“Angharad!”
“Silfia,” I say, then sigh. This is not at all decorous. Poor Magwen, to have to ignore this conversation. “Silfia, I am only one of their victims. Let’s keep these things in perspective.”
“You might be only one of their many victims,” Silfie says, “but you’re the one I care about.”
My ears almost flush peach, but we’re beyond that, aren’t we two? Instead I say to Magwen, “Thank you.” And to Silfie, “It’s time.”
I exit my tent to find Honeydipped waiting for me without a handler, saddled and bridled. Also waiting is the final contingent of soldiers and natives I’m leading to cut off the passage to the crevice after the pards have filled it. When I stop in front of them, dressed for battle and standing unaided on my own feet, they cheer. They don’t stop, either. The wind is high, the sky is ruddy and my ears feel heavy with their accolade. My skin is tight beneath the barrage of their ferocity, their blood-anger. The breeze tries to chase the heat off my cheeks and brow, but still I feel that I’m radiating with power and fury and a feral joy.
I let them cheer. And then I thrust my fist into the sky, little caring at the complaint of my abused and healing muscles. “DEATH TO THE PARDS!”
“DEATH TO THE PARDS!”
Around this time in a battle, I’m usually airborne, scouting, evaluating, planning.
This is no usual battle.
Standing at Honeydipped’s side with one arm draped over his saddled back, I watch the stream of pards flow past narrow walls splashed with the last red rays of the failing sun. Some of them are bringing torches, splotches of light that smolder as twilight creeps into the shadowed blue nooks of the crevice. It’s strange how fire seems more intense in the in-between times at dusk and dawn.
I think about Ragna and her blood-written notes, and as if summoned the corvid messenger lands on the pommel of my saddle with a theatrical flap of his pointed wings.
“You will eat well tonight,” I say to him. He gapes his beak as if grinning. Who knows? Maybe he is.
We watch, my silent contingent and I, as the pards fill and fill and fill their sacred space. There’s no altar in the center, as civilized people would have, but a pen. A pen you would trap an animal in. And as I watch this is where Ragna is thrown.
Of course I can see her. Do you think I have so many sharp-sighted birds in my lineage for nothing?
I also see the pard children, the beasts that these villagers hold so proudly as examples of what we are meant to become through the wonders of true-breeding. They are held back by leashes, these snarling, snapping beasts, twice the size of real animals but without a thought in their combined heads to restrain them. This, then, is the pinnacle that the pards would bring us to, this rabid, frothing mindlessness. Fierce devotion toward the Godkindred goal of interbreeding swells in me, and my feathers ache to spread against their bandages.
But I am not an animal, and I control myself.
Beside me, a man holding a pennant waits for my signal. Not patiently. But with discipline despite the tension that holds him so rigidly at my side. This is sacred. This is what we seek, we Godkin. This discipline. This nobility.
This is worth fighting for.
This is worth crushing Shraeven for, if Shraeven gets in my way…and gods save anyone who does what these pards have done to me, ever again.
The pards begin their celebration, and with each moment that they sing and dance and laugh, I coil more and more tightly. With each moment that Ragna slumps a little more, I tremble a little more. With each moment that passes, each moment that they’re free, I strain to hold back. But I do hold back, until I judge that we have waited long enough.
“Go,” I say to the flagger, who waves his pennant. And then the hail of arrows begins…and I watch as the pards die.
Scores die in those first volleys. They have thick fur, but my archers aren’t using sport bows. They’re using war bows that require a year’s training to draw, aim and shoot. Arrows shot from these bows can pierce plate armor. Mere hair is nothing.
I observe the splash of blood, glowing as if lit from within. I feel a fierce pleasure when the pards mill in panic, stepping over one another, tripping on dead bodies. I can’t hear them screaming, but I can imagine it and it sounds like music. The killing goes on and on. I begin to think we won’t even have to draw our swords—we can just finish this off from above.
And then my sharp eyes catch on the pard chief as he shoves his way to the center of the crevice and into the pen. He grabs Ragna, holds her up against his body, and presses a knife against her neck, up under the jaw. There is something horrible about that line right beneath the jaw, where the blood is so close you can watch the skin flutter.
The pard chief is scanning the cliff tops. I’m not there, but I know he’s looking for me. I know this is now a private conversation between the two of us.
Call off the killing, he says in the silence, through the rain of blood and arrows, his mouth unmoving. Call them off, or I will kill her.
“How do I know that you will keep your promise?” I imagine the conversation going. “How do I know that if I stop the killing, you won’t open her and let her heart pulse out all the life in her body?”
You don’t know. But you know that I certainly will kill her if you don’t stop.
I stare at his rigid form, at Ragna’s hands on his arm. I can see the blood trickling from the claw-hold she has on him, but he doesn’t release her. The screams are real now and it’s because I’m on Honeydipped and charging for the opening, the wind streaming in my face, through my fur. The messenger bird’s shadow is flowing cold on my shoulder. My contingent of the combined army is following me because they think this is the signal for us to cut off the pard retreat. I guess it is, because I’m not about to let Ragna die.
Oh gods, I wish I could fly. I would pluck her from his arms. We would laugh because she’s scared of flying. I would promise her, honestly promise her, that the very next time I take her for a ride it won’t be in a killing thunderstorm or to deliver her from a maddened battle. It will be through a glorious summer-blue sky with flower-scented winds.
I’m coming, Ragna. Stay alive, just a little longer, stay alive.
My charge is the signal for the rest of the force to attack—they can see me from the high ground, though I won’t be visible to the pards until far too late. I can see the chief but he is still searching for me on the bluffs, amid the men now sliding down ropes with spears aimed at those waiting for them on the ground. The battle is complete chaos, and as with all battles, it starts slowing.
Will I make it before he sees me coming and slits her throat?
Will my headlong charge make him push her away to defend himself?
Will she die?
Will I?
Honeydipped crashes into the fray and time starts again, as if I am passing through an ocean wave as it shatters against the coast. I am killing someone who’s in my way—someone else—my body hurts. If I’d been a god, I would have healed myself completely before doing something this ill-advised.
I wonder where Silfie is.
Blood smells like food, sometimes. I wonder if that’s the coatl. Maybe just all the hungry beasts in my lineage combined. Angharad the predator—ha!—
In Glendallia, there’s a fountain carved in my likeness. The Glendallians don’t remember anything else about me, except that my sword never stopped dripping, so they put the water channel down the blade. I think they were being melodramatic. My sword stops dripping within minutes. There’s too much gore on it. It gets sticky.
More death. More screaming. I’ve done this before. It’s old. I want to retire.
Ragna.
RAGNA!
