The Care and Feeding of Griffins (34 page)

“
He is Tonka and so believes all who live under his stewardship must obey.  But it is as you say, Taryn, we are all accountable to our own true nature.  Perhaps I told you my name only to lure you here, away from those who might protect you.”

Taryn searched his face and he stood still for her inspection.  His eyes were deep and stained with old, nurtured grief, but they were honest eyes, she thought. 
“No,” she said.  “I don’t know why you told me, but it wasn’t for that.”

“
Nay,” he agreed.  He sheathed his runka and started walking again.  He looked tired.  “We are all accountable, and therefore behold the measure of my integrity.  My mate sees me still.  My foals yet look to their father.  I have seen them revenged but I will not show them a murder.  Aye, Taryn, you may trust me.  I told you my name for one reason and one reason only:  Because I wished to hear it spoken again.”

Her brows climbed. 
“But by me?”

He lifted one shoulder and dropped it again.  He didn
’t look at her.

They reached another bundle-marked tree and continued on toward the next one, neither of them speaking.

“No,” she said finally.  “No, there was more to it than that, wasn’t there?”

He glanced at her with some indefinable emotion sparking in the shadows of his eyes.  His mouth opened and closed a few times as he silently picked through the bones of his answer.  Then he turned to her, his shoulders squaring, and started to speak.

He never did.

Instead, his hand flew out to catch her shoulder, shoving her swiftly and brutally to her knees. 
“Be still,” he whispered, before she’d even had to time to open her mouth.  He drew his runka silently and held it raised over one shoulder, ready to throw.  And that was all.  The wind stirred his hair; he made no other movement.

Taryn stayed curled around Aisling, holding his head to keep him in the dark and pinching his beak shut.  He grumbled, grawking and trying to twist out of her grip, but the dark worked its way on him as the seconds crawled by and ultimately, he began to doze.  As soon as she was satisfied that he wasn
’t going to try and wrestle free, Taryn raised herself up enough to see over the tops of the grass.

“
Still,” H’wathu breathed.  Not even his lips moved.  “And pray the wind holds its course.”

There was a creek perhaps a hundred paces away, the grass surrounding it trampled flat into a muddy clearing.  Grass ponies were gathered there by the dozens, separated off into several surly little herds.  It was not an altogether happy congregation.  They drank and glared at each other and craned their necks to crop moodily at the grain growing over them before pawing at the ground with their cloven hooves.  Every so often, one of them would bare its wickedly-sharp teeth and start a chain reaction of creepy carnivorous-horse displays.

Taryn didn’t dare set Aisling down.  He’d pop those little eyes open and probably go pouncing off into the grass at once.  But she could feel her slingshot burning a hole in her back pocket.  She knew she couldn’t fire it unless she had both hands free.  The knowledge made her heart go a little rubbery and she ran her eyes over the ponies, trying to count them.  “Will they attack?” she whispered.

“
Everything that moves.  Be still.”

He sounded so certain, so calm.  She couldn
’t help but remember that day with the hoppers, and how she’d been sitting on the ground, at eye-level and in arm’s reach of the things.  Then, they hadn’t even glanced her way.  She’d just sort of assumed they weren’t aggressive toward creatures much larger than they were, but H’wathu surely knew what he was talking about better than she did. 

She glanced up at him, silently pressing for a plan.  Should they just wait here for the ponies to finish drinking and move on?  Should they try to sneak away while they were still downwind of the threat?  H
’wathu’s stare was fixed and unhelpful.  Taryn tried to follow it, to see what he was seeing and perhaps determine which of the grass ponies he considered to be the biggest threat.  Maybe all they had to do was take out the leader and the others would—

Taryn
’s eyes, quite unexpectedly, focused beyond the ponies on some subtle motion in the tall grass beyond the clearing.  She felt herself frowning as she tried to pierce the play of light and shadow, to see what H’wathu saw, and all at once, she realized she wasn’t looking at grass at all, but at the brown-on-gold striped sides of a very large creature.  One of two, she saw, and as if all they had been waiting on was a little recognition, the two beasts suddenly coiled and attacked.

For some reason, Taryn
’s brain decided to focus on the biology of the creatures.  She didn’t know why.  Surely the evolutionary genesis of the things couldn’t be as important as the huge sprays of blood, the crack of bone, the death-screams of the scattering ponies, but Taryn was powerless against the insistence of her brain.  When the beast lunged out to catch and crush a running pony, she could only think that they looked a lot like giant badgers or wolverines, not really a leaping critter at all, or even a running one.  They weren’t very fast and they couldn’t jump very far, but when they did, yeah, those huge, wedge-shaped jaws were just the ticket for biting little ponies in half like that.  Those massive claws were perfectly designed to rip right down to the bone.  Those teeth were made for ripping little legs and heads off. 

They were, she decided, a male and a female.  The male was a bit bigger, deeper in the chest, and like the African lion he could have matched pound for pound, he had a mane of sorts
—in this case, a crest of stiff, black bristles that ran down from his head until it tapered out midway down his back.  Both creatures had squat, muscular bodies and small, bobcat-stubby tails.  Didn’t need long tails if they weren’t jumpers or runners, after all.

The noise had its effect on Aisling, or maybe it was the smell of blood.  Even Taryn could smell it now, a thick and coppery slick that seemed to paint the insides of her mouth and nose as she knelt frozen in the grass.  Her hands remained clamped over Aisling
’s head, her arm pinned him against her chest, holding him immobile over his wriggling protests.  Fortunately, the sound of carnage covered the irritable grumbles he made.

The slaughter was winding down.  The male chased a limping pony into the grass, running in great, clumsy bounds.  Taryn heard a pony-scream and then a roar, and then he came back, his muzzle bloody and gaping in a look of stupidly-brutal satisfaction.  The female picked up a pony, bit it in half, then dropped it and settled down to eat with her back to Taryn and her horseman escort.  The male circled the killing grounds, grunting loudly with each step, searching for something twitching to finish off.

“Wait.”  H’wathu’s words were no more than a stirring of air.  “Wait until he feeds.  There, he—Ai, damn the luck.  Stay down.”

More movement in the grass.  The male beast
’s head came up from the cavity of a dead pony.  It roared once, then uttered a short string of hoarse chuffing sounds, rising from its prey as a second male came out of the grass.  The newcomer was larger, more powerfully built, and scarred by past combat.  It shook out its bristles and chuffed back, showing its fangs.  The female continued to eat, uninterested, as the two males ended their display and crashed together, rising up on their haunches and grappling like bears in the blood-soaked grass.

On the nature programs that Taryn had watched as a child, the narrator always made a point of saying that conflicts between rivals may look fierce, but they seldom resulted in serious injury.  No matter how ferocious combat looked, it usually ended bloodlessly,
with nothing hurt but pride, so to speak.  Of course, Taryn couldn’t remember any nature programs warning her that miniature ponies could eat hoppy anteaters either.

There was never even one moment when the two males weren
’t trying to kill each other.  From that first shuddering impact, claws were slashing red furrows through tawny fur and teeth were sinking into flesh.  It was swift, exacting, and it ended not only in death, but in evisceration.  The newcomer tore out the first male’s throat, roared triumph into the air above the corpse, and then planted one paw on its victim and opened it from neck to groin.

Taryn began to be aware of an indistinct ache all through her body.  Every muscle was cramping at once from the effort of holding so still.  It didn
’t matter.  She was frozen as effectively as if she were in a giant block of stone.  She couldn’t have moved even if she wanted to.  She’d forgotten how to even try.

The victorious male eyed his prize.  He chuffed once, an aggressive sound, his claws flexing a warning in the meat of his dead
rival.  The female raised her stubby tail and shifted to splay her rear legs slightly.  She never raised her head from her feast, not even as she was mounted.  When it was done, the male selected a leg from the dead fellcat and settled down beside her to eat.

“
Now.”  H’wathu touched Taryn’s shoulder.  “Slowly.  Stay downwind and follow me.”

She tried, but couldn
’t move.

“
Taryn.”  His hand dug in just a little.

Her leg twitched.  Slowly, she uncurled, although she still couldn
’t feel anything but the slamming of her heart and the splintering ache of her too-tight muscles.  She stumbled back, unable to tear her eyes from the back of the feeding beasts, and let H’wathu take her away.

As soon as they were lost to sight, the shakes hit her.  Aisling started to slide from her arms, now kicking all four legs as he tried to get ou
t from her suffocating grip, but she couldn’t bring herself to let him go.  She needed to feel his heart beating under her hand.  Even his beak nipping at her fingers felt grounding. 

“
Come, Taryn,” the horseman said grimly.  His hand was a warm and welcome band to steady her arm.  “I must get you to your camp and hie back to tell our chief this news, now, while they are still about under daylight to be hunted.”

Taryn let go of her griffin
’s beak to grope blindly for H’wathu’s back, just to have something else living to touch.  “I d-didn’t kn-know,” she said, staring blankly at a point just over his shoulder.  “F-fellcats?”

“
Aye.”

She
’d known it.  She’d known it from the moment the things had leapt out and initiated the slaughter.  That was what had chased her that day.  That was what the magus had saved her from.  That was what the minotaur thought a little smoke in her hair would keep away.

“
Dear God, I’m living in a nylon tent,” she whispered.

H
’wathu grunted and rubbed at his brow.  His knuckles on the haft of his runka were white.  “I will take you back to Rucombe if you wish it, but as I know it, your encampment lies against the river near to the Tumbled Downs, and there, out of the common trod of the beasts of the plains, you are as safe as you would be in our kraal.  Safer, even, for that you keep no livestock to entice their injured to you.”

She focused on him, her eyes still unblinking. 
“You hunt them?  Is that what you said?  You have to go back so you can
hunt
them?”

“
It would be more accurate to say, we kill them.”  He sent a glance over the plains in the direction of the fellcats, frowning.  “It gets worse every passing year,” he muttered.  “Since the karkadan died out, our lord says.”

“
I’ve never seen anything…kill…like that.”

“
Aye.”  H’wathu’s flanks shuddered and he sheathed his runka.  “There are times I wonder if they were truly born of this world, or if they were made.  No mage has ever claimed them, but gods, who would?”  He focused on her again, stamping a hoof.  “Taryn, what will you?  To your camp or to our kraal?”

He was keen to go.  She could see troubled thoughts hiding in his eyes and knew that he wanted to be racing back to Tonka to get this hunt-thing underway. 
“Back to my camp,” she said, even though the last thing in the world she wanted was to be in a cheap WalMart tent with those…things…out in the plains.  “And I can find my own way.  You go, H’wathu.”

He stepped back, clearly torn, but didn
’t leave.

“
If you say I’m safer there, then I believe you,” she said, and tried not to hear the cold ghost of Antilles in her memory, whispering, ‘If they wish to hunt you, human, nothing can stop them.’  She tried to smile at H’wathu.  “It’ll make me feel a lot better to know you people are hunting them while I’m smoking the hell out of my hair tonight.”

H
’wathu looked over one shoulder, then back at her.  He stamped again.

She abandoned her attempt at a smile. 
“Go on,” she said quietly.  “Run and tell them.”

“
Do you know the way to go?”

Taryn glanced around and located the distant swaying shape of a straw-bundle. 
“Yes.”

H
’wathu nodded, tracking her gaze to her marker.  “Aye, then.  Swiftly go.  Taryn.”

She had already set off, but she stopped now and turned back.

“I did lure you out here to be alone with me,” he said calmly.  “And I gave you my name for that reason.  I wanted to see if you would kill me, if you had that chance.”