The Care and Feeding of Griffins (26 page)

“
Tis sweet.”  Ven had tried a square and was staring into space with a cautiously pleased expression.  “Is it always eaten thus?”

“
No, but this is how I got it.  You can melt some in a cup of hot milk, if you want.  Nice on cold and rainy nights.”

“
Milk?”  Ven laughed.  “Milk is for the very young!”

“
And for the very old,” Morathi added.  “I will try some.  Have it brought to me,” he said to Shard, his hand falling on Taryn’s shoulder.

She picked Aisling up and walked alongside the elder horseman, past tables where chocolate bars were passing from hand to hand, tentatively sampled and met with varying degrees of appreciation.  Outside, the rest of the horsemen were still working on the trenchers, standing close together to eat while foals snatched bites in between running to fill cups.  The talk stopped as Taryn appeared and started again in hushed and foreign voices when she passed by.

“I am pleased to have met you,” Morathi said as he led her across the commons.  “I have heard much.”

“
Really?  I wouldn’t have thought there was that much to tell you.”

“
How strange,” murmured the aged horseman.  “I detect no false modesty in your words.  Do you truly think yourself so unremarkable?”

“
Well…yeah.”  She laughed nervously at the sharp glance he gave her.  “There’s nothing special about me except Aisling.”

“
That is debatable.  But assuredly, the griffin is fortunate that t’was you who found him.”

“
I’d like to think that lots of people would have done what I did.”

“
Aye?  And whom did you entrust with his care before coming to Arcadia?”

Taryn ran her hands over Aisling
’s feathered head, silent.

“
Did you trust no one?”

“
I know people I think are honorable and good,” she answered slowly.  “But…how could I afford to make a mistake?  I’d be gambling with his life.”

“
If there are those you deem honorable, surely they could be trusted?”

It was not quite a question, and every word a test.

“You said earlier that the humans who enslaved your people probably thought they were doing the right thing,” she said.  “Because they didn’t see you as people.  Well, Aisling might be the only griffin left in my entire world, and I can guarantee you after trying to read up on them that humans definitely don’t see them as people.  I have friends…I had friends…who I thought were good people, but I couldn’t be sure they’d see him the same way I did.  I had to realize that all I really knew was that my friends were good to other humans and there really might be a distinct difference if these same people were introduced to griffins.  Besides, I’m not an infallible judge of character, and I don’t see everything my friends do.  That wasn’t something I really wanted to think about either, but once again, I couldn’t risk Aisling’s life.  The only people I really, completely trusted were my parents and my sister, and I still couldn’t tell them.”

“
Nay?”

“
He’s the only griffin there is,” Taryn said, stroking the soft feathers.  “That makes him either very threatening or very valuable to the wrong people.  They’d come and get him if they ever heard about him, and I couldn’t stop them.  I couldn’t protect Aisling, and I couldn’t protect my family.  I can afford to make all kinds of mistakes in my life, but not about this.  It was best just not to tell anybody.”

Morathi opened the door to a lodge and held it for her. 
“The waters of your heart run deep,” he said meditatively.  “I think it would be quite interesting to know you better.”

There was a fire burning low in the hearth and at least a dozen of those cot/cat-tower contraptions lining one wall, one of them separate from the rest and closer to the fire.  As Taryn circled, unsure, Morathi lowered himself onto the thing, tucking up his legs so that his weight was supported by the low cot-part.  The cat-tower instantly became a cushioned bolster atop a support sized perfectly for Morathi to set his folded arms atop.  He relaxed with a sigh, leaning his head into his folded arms, his tail swishing twice before it stilled.

“Come beside me,” he invited, gesturing to a pile of folded blankets.  When she had joined him, kicking off her shoes and curling against his sleek-furred side with a blanket thrown over both of them, he said, “Tis a euphemism for your kind, is it not?”

“
What is?” she asked, blushing.

“
When I asked you to sleep with me.”  He smiled at her and dropped a particularly evil old-man’s wink.

She giggled, ducking a little further under her half of the blanket. 
“Yeah, sort of.  It’s a human thing.”

“
Aye, well, we Farasai are brazen enough in that regard, as doubtless you will find if you spend very much more time among us, but we do not call the act ‘sleep’.”  He gave an especially horse-like snort at the very thought.  “And for that matter, you may be well warned that it is a horseman ‘thing’ for the Ven of a clan to offer her chieftain’s sexual services to well-favored travelers.”

Taryn blinked at him, then tried on a laugh. 
“Well, surely that wouldn’t apply to me.”

“
Ha.  Ven takes her duties quite seriously and she is much impressed by you.  I have no doubt she will make the offer.  And you will accept,” he added sternly, giving her nose a thump with the tip of one finger.  He laughed at her expression, adding, “To what purpose?  None.  But it would be a telling thing for the clan to see.  Ask him to teach you Castles.  I think you should be quite good.  Ah!  My milk is come.”

Shard had brought a tray with three cups and took one for herself after serving Morathi and Taryn. 
“I like your chocolate very much,” she said shyly.  “Father says we may make a honey pull for you tomorrow.”

“
Father?”

“
Tonka.”  The filly flicked her tail proudly.  “My siblings and I make very good honey pulls and ‘tis good to have an excuse to do so.  I would eat candy every day if I could.”

“
So could I, back when I was a kid.”

“
Kid?”  Shard drew back, puzzled.  “You are human, not satyr.  Why would your young be kids?”

“
Oh, human children have a lot in common with little goats,” Taryn said mildly.  “They eat everything, they climb on everything…”

Morathi laughed loudly.

“A riddle!” Shard said with delight.  “I know riddles!  Tell me another!”

“
Sure.  When is a door not a door?”

The elder
’s eyes sparkled—clearly, he knew this one—but he watched as the young filly puzzled over it.

“
When…when it is a hide flap?” she guessed.

“
Nope.  When it’s a jar.”

The filly stood there holding her cocoa for a second or two, and then made the leap from ajar to a jar.  Her mouth dropped open and her ears came suddenly forward. 
“That’s very good!” she gasped.

“
I would have thought for sure you’d get that,” Taryn said.  “I never did when I was younger.  When I was a kid,” she amended, just to see Shard smile.  “Humans don’t use words like ajar anymore when they can just say open.  Don’t ask me why,” she added.  “Human language is always changing.”

Shard nodded solemnly. 
“You use many words I understand only because of those you use aside of them.  But ‘tis still a good riddle.  Will you tell me another?”

“
One more,” Morathi said firmly.  Several other horsemen, mostly adults but some foals, had come into the lodge and were bedding down.

“
Okay.”  Taryn dug up and discarded a number of ones she thought too obvious or too obscure, and then said, “What has four wheels and flies?”

“
A dragon chariot!” Shard said at once.

“
They have but two wheels,” one of the other horsemen remarked.

“
Two dragon chariots!” Shard countered, just as energetically.

“
N-nooo.  At least, that’s a very good answer, but it wasn’t the one I was looking for.”

Morathi unexpectedly burst out laughing, slapping one hand to his brow. 
“Ah, I have it, I think,” he said, shaking his head.  “A manure cart.  Is it so?”

“
Yep, that’s it.”  Or close enough, anyway.  She doubted they had garbage trucks in Arcadia.

“
That’s clever,” a horsewoman said, lopsidedly smiling.  “You would be a prize to beat at the Gathering, traveler.”

Yeah, right.  The way a talking dog would be a prize to beat, but flattery was flattery, even if it was mostly due to the novelty of her.  It was a step up from setting guards on her.

The horsemen settled themselves and the fire burned low.  Taryn drowsed with Aisling on her hip and her back leaned against Morathi’s side.  The griffin’s gentle chirring led her through the unfamiliar territory of snapping coals and swishing tails down into sleep.

37.  Little Mare

T
he nightmare began in the barn, in a stall made into a cage by the addition of smoke-hardened staves.  They may as well be iron bars.  None of them, not even if they all pulled together, had the strength to break free.

The stall was not large
—it had been sized to pen cattle and last used to house one of the horsemen—but it held twelve of them now.  There was room enough to sit when sleep overwhelmed them, but the stink of rotting straw and their own filth forced most of them to stand whenever possible.  Most of them.  One of their number had not risen for several days.  She sat and rocked and sometimes wept, but would not stand.  The filth of their imprisonment was growing up around her; she would not clear it away.  Looking down the row of stalls was like looking into a hall of mirrors, but the stalls on the far side of the barn stood empty.  They were not all here.

Just who
‘they all’ were was completely unknown to Taryn.  Like the identity of the rocking woman who huddled at her feet, she recognized everything but knew nothing.  She knew this was a dream, but she didn’t know what to do with it.  Just knowing she was dreaming couldn’t seem to help her wake up, and that added its own dimension of dread and unreality to her surroundings that was difficult to feel past.

The barn doors opened and Taryn knew at once that the men were being brought in from the fields.  In the same unexplained way, she knew that there were less of them than had gone out in the morning.  Their faces were painful to see, masks of agony behind their bridles and blinders.  Taryn didn
’t know any of them, recognized all of them, knew that there was family among them, and couldn’t know who.  She watched in helpless horror as the men were stripped of their tack and forced into stalls by their inhuman captors, but it was not just the sight of them staggering into cages that filled her with apprehension.  Something was coming, something her conscious mind did not understand.

A single cry came from one of the women
’s stalls, quickly hushed by other prisoners.  There was sobbing, moaning, but mostly there was silence.  They were all waiting.

The horsemen locked the men
’s cages.  One of them began to move down the line, dropping handfuls of raw grains through the bars to the filthy floor.  Taryn watched these men she didn’t know scrabble for it on their hands and knees, punching at each other and kicking at the fallen.  She was still watching when the hand came through the bars and caught her chin.

She was forced to face him, to look up into his ugly, beast
’s face.  A part of her recognized Tonka; most of her saw only ‘horseman’, an animal that should by God’s will still be captive here.  He looked at her with his awful eyes and she looked back, dimly fearful and not understanding why.

“
Oh it must be this one,” Tonka said musingly.  “Aye.  See the way she stares.  She has no fear at all.  I think I must excite her,” he added with a small smile.

His fellows laughed.

Taryn wanted to talk to him, to ask what was happening, but her voice was frozen.  The stall was opened, women beaten back with horsehair whips and the butts of spears.  Taryn didn’t think to press back with the rest of them, although that much certainly seemed to be within her power.  She only turned around, bewildered and vaguely terrified on that same sub-conscious level, and watched a horseman reach in for her.

She was seized by the hair and pulled stumbling onto the bare floor.  Tonka was there, holding a bridle.  She had time to cry out once, the sound plaintive and confused, and then the bit was forced into her mouth, cracking a tooth and filling her mouth with the taste of copper.  She twisted around, searching him out with pleading eyes, and he covered them with blinders.

The horsemen were laughing as they crowded in around her, prodding at her shoulders and slapping at her thighs.  Tonka allowed it, extolling the virtues of his captive, calling loud attention to her hair and inviting comment on the wisdom of breeding her and to whom.  Taryn was jostled violently from hand to hand as this was debated.  She grabbed at the bridle, hunting out the buckles, and Tonka said, “It would seem my little mare is eager.  Let us speak of it another time.  I would not keep her waiting.”

A hard yank initiated their retreat.  Taryn staggered blindly, being dragged along by the head.  When she stumbled, as she often did, she was prevented from falling by his close grip on the reins, but hung by her neck until she could right herself.  She couldn
’t keep her feet under her for more than a few steps, but he never slowed his pace.  When she groped for his side for balance, he laughed and slapped her hips.

“
You’ll have all of me soon enough, little mare,” he told her, a cruel imitation of comfort.  “Control yourself.  You’ll not wait much longer.”

She heard a door open and then she was pushed.  She landed sprawling, her palms and knees stinging and wet when she touched them.  The door closed and she was pulled to her feet.

“Patience, mare.”  His hands undressed her roughly.  She tried to fight, but her slaps and kicks went wide; he ignored them and she was bared.  “Gods,” he muttered, and his voice was so thick with disgust that she raised her arms instinctively to cover herself.

He moved away.  She heard liquid pouring, the sounds of drinking, an empty cup hitting a wooden surface. 
“Gods,” he said again, quietly. 

Silence.  She stood shivering, waiting.  Eventually, he moved back to her and took up the reins again.

She was dragged head-first across the room and then pushed face-down onto a thinly-padded plank.  She knew what it was at once and she screamed around the bit, shoving wildly back, but his hand gripped her neck and pressed her flat.  A strap came around her waist, cinched so tightly that she could scarcely breathe.  She kicked frantically, but he caught each leg in its turn and held them easily as he strapped them to their wide supports.  Her arms weren’t restrained.  She tried to free herself, but couldn’t reach the buckles.

“
There now, my frisky little mare.  We can dispense with this.”  His hands pulled her blinders and then unfastened her bridle.  He smiled at her, his eyes shining with ugly contempt, as he set them aside.  “You haven’t done this before, I think,” he said.  “I shall explain how it is done.  This is a repayment, human, for abuses our females have suffered.  They were forced to accept your males in unnatural human ways.  Now you shall do the same.”

“
No, please don’t do this,” she babbled.  “Please, don’t!  Please!”

“
I am not swayed by ‘please’,” he spat, and then took a breath and smiled again.  “But I am not wholly dissatisfied to hear it.  Listen well, human.  What happens now is entirely your choice.”

Taryn pressed her hands to her mouth, tears streaming down her cheeks, and Tonka came towards her, towards her and over her, stepping onto the runners alongside the saddle.  He stopped there and stood his hind legs apart.  His voice came from the sky, surrounding her, cold and thick with hate. 
“Take me, human.  Take me in your hands.”

“
No,” she whispered.  “No, I won’t.”

“
Aye,” he said grimly.  “Aye, you will.  In your hands and in your mouth, as my sisters were forced to do for your filthy kind.  You’ll take me, human, and you’ll drink of me and if you do not, I shall be saddled.”

His organ, black and wet, began to protrude from his sheath.  His tail swished, slapping at her face. 
“Take me,” he commanded.

She covered her face and wept.

“Very well, eager mare.  I’ll have you if you demand me.”  He stepped back and off the runners, then moved around behind her, out of sight.  There was a mechanic rattle, the sound of rusted gears working, and Taryn was raised in two hard jerks.  His hand struck her sharply on her buttocks, a slap like the crack of a whip.  Then he reared—she could hear him rear—and came down on the runners again.  His hot belly crushed down on her back, pressing a gasping shriek out of her.  A greater heat slapped at her from behind; something hard and thick pushed between her thighs.

Taryn lost her mind to terror, screaming over and over until her voice cracked and her throat bled.  He waited, unmoving, until she was done, and then surged forward.

He did not penetrate.  His animal hardness pushed slickly beneath her, rubbing and parting her folds to nudge at her exposed belly.  He thrust, measured and steady, pushing breath from her in the same rhythm, making her a part of the mating.  She couldn’t struggle, couldn’t even twitch a leg.  She pressed her fists to her mouth, sobbing hoarsely, shoved and jostled by his movements until it ended with a great splash across her chest and belly.

She sagged into the bar beneath her, crying soundlessly, as he dismounted.  He came back before her, slapping her in passing to raise her head before he stepped onto the runners to present himself, his male organ wet and hanging. 

“Take me,” he said.

“
Please stop this!” she wailed.  “I didn’t do anything to you!”

He reared back in a storm of angry motion, his hooves slamming into the ground hard enough to shake the saddle. 
“We did nothing to you!” he shouted.  “We gave you grain when you were starving!  We showed you the ways of building lodges!  See how we were repaid!”

“
Please,
no
!”

“
Aye, beg me, little mare, beg me!  But you will each one of you answer for the obscenities you have forced on us and your part is here!  Take me now, mare, or I’ll be well-saddled!”

She slapped at her back, screaming, trying to reach her restraints.

Tonka drew a breath, let it out with a shudder, and moved away.  He poured himself another cup from the flagon on the table beside her bridle and drank it, watching her struggles with brooding eyes over the rim of his cup.  When he set it empty on the table again, his face was stone.  He stepped around behind her. 

His fingers invaded her, one and then two, plying and stretching her before finally forcing a third.  She shrieked, trying madly for freedom and succeeded only in rocking the saddle, an act that brought her roughly back against him.

“You like this, do you?” he spat, and pumped his hand hard into her.  “I’ll give you something to be grateful for, my eager mare.”

He clopped away and Taryn in a panic tried to get at her buckles again.  She could see him taking something down from the wall.  The bundle he fetched seemed at first sight to be a tangle of straps and buckles, but as he reared and began to connect rings to hooks overhead, a horseman-sized harness began to take shape above her.  When he had it up, gently ringing as it swayed overhead, he went back to the wall to retrieve another object, something like a pair of padded bars, which he fixed to the saddle
’s rear supports.  It fit over her, one bar curved snugly against her bottom while the other arched further out.  Tonka clamped it securely in place and then reached through the bars to prod at her sex.

“
I could kill you without this,” he said coldly.  “Thank me, mare.”

“
Please don’t do this to me!” she screamed.

“
Thank me, or I’ll not use it.  And you want me to use it, mare, for I mean to be well-saddled.  Thank me, or I’ll have it down.”

She sucked in breath after horrified, disbelieving breath, and as his
hand raised, howled out, “Thank you, oh God, please don’t do this to me!”

He reared.

She shrieked.

He came down into his harness and rocked forward.  His shaft, goliath and searing, pushed at her again.  This time, he shoved up and not forward, splitting her, imbedding himself perhaps an inch.  She hung forward and retched, and he pushed again, groaning, wedging himself minutely deeper.

“Gods, mare, you are a vise!” he groaned, and shivered back.  He withdrew, cantering away and striking at the ground for several long seconds before approaching her again.  His fingers invaded her, stretching, testing, but only for a moment.  He moved away and she could see him, the arm-length rod of him pulsing as he walked.  She heard him take something from the tack-shelf and then he came back to her with a clay jar in his hands.

“
I’ll do it!” she screamed.  “I’ll do it, I’ll do it, come back!”

“
Nay, mare, that soil is soured.”  Something cold and greasy slathered into her.  His fingers worked in, two and three and four and then none at all.  He set the jar on the table beside her blinders and resumed his place behind her.  He reared, the harness above her ringing melodiously as he fit himself to it, and then he was pushing through the restraining bars back to her. 

“
There, now,” he grunted, and shoved himself inside her.

Her voice shattered on her scream; she retched violently, the sound broken into hoarse gusts he directed with his entering thrusts.  The pain burst bright and ugly, but there was not so much of it that she could not feel him swelling her, filling her.