The Very Best of F & SF v1 (62 page)

Which was all
nice, and I wished my mother and father could have heard what all these grown
people were saying about me. But then they turned and rode on into the Midwood,
the three of them, and only Molly looked back at me. And I think
that
was to make sure I
wasn’t following, because I was supposed just to go home and wait to find out
if my friends were alive or dead, and if the griffin was going to be eating any
more children. It was all over.

And maybe I
would have gone home and let it be all over, if it hadn’t been for Malka.

She should have
been with the sheep and not with me, of course—that’s her job, the same way
King Lír was doing his job, going to meet the griffin. But Malka thinks I’m a
sheep too, the most stupid, aggravating sheep she ever had to guard, forever
wandering away into some kind of danger. All the way to the Midwood she had
trotted quietly alongside the king’s horse, but now that we were alone again
she came rushing up and bounced all over me, barking like thunder and knocking
me down, hard, the way she does whenever I’m not where she wants me to be. I
always brace myself when I see her coming, but it never helps.

What she does
then, before I’m on my feet, is take the hem of my smock in her jaws and start
tugging me in the direction she thinks I should go. But this time... this time
she suddenly got up, as though she’d forgotten all about me, and she stared
past me at the Midwood with all the white showing in her eyes and a low sound
coming out of her that I don’t think she knew she could make. The next moment,
she was gone, racing into the forest with foam flying from her mouth and her
big ragged ears flat back. I called, but she couldn’t have heard me, baying and
barking the way she was.

Well, I didn’t
have any choice. King Lír and Schmendrick and Molly all had a choice, going
after the Midwood griffin, but Malka was my dog, and she didn’t know what she
was facing, and I
couldn’t
let her face it by herself. So there wasn’t anything else for me to
do. I took an enormous long breath and looked around me, and then I walked into
the forest after her.

Actually, I ran,
as long as I could, and then I walked until I could run again, and then I ran
some more. There aren’t any paths into the Midwood, because nobody goes there,
so it wasn’t hard to see where three horses had pushed through the undergrowth,
and then a dog’s tracks on top of the hoofprints. It was very quiet with no
wind, not one bird calling, no sound but my own panting. I couldn’t even hear
Malka anymore. I was hoping that maybe they’d come on the griffin while it was
asleep, and King Lír had already killed it in its nest. I didn’t think so,
though. He’d probably have decided it wasn’t honorable to attack a sleeping
griffin, and wakened it up for a fair fight. I hadn’t known him very long, but
I knew what he’d do.

Then, a little
way ahead of me, the whole forest exploded.

It was too much
noise for me to sort it out in my head. There was Malka absolutely
howling
, and birds bursting
up everywhere out of the brush, and Schmendrick or the king or someone was
shouting, only I couldn’t make out any of the words. And underneath it all was
something that wasn’t loud at all, a sound somewhere between a growl and that
terrible soft call, like a frightened child. Then—just as I broke into the
clearing—the rattle and scrape of knives, only much louder this time, as the
griffin shot straight up with the sun on its wings. Its cold golden eyes
bit
into mine, and its beak
was open so wide you could see down and down the blazing red gullet. It filled
the sky.

And King Lír,
astride his black mare, filled the clearing. He was as huge as the griffin, and
his sword was the size of a boar spear, and he shook it at the griffin, daring
it to light down and fight him on the ground. But the griffin was staying out
of range, circling overhead to get a good look at these strange new people.
Malka was utterly off her head, screaming and hurling herself into the air
again and again, snapping at the griffin’s lion feet and eagle claws, but
coming down each time without so much as an iron feather between her teeth. I
lunged and caught her in the air, trying to drag her away before the griffin
turned on her, but she fought me, scratching my face with her own dull dog
claws, until I had to let her go. The last time she leaped, the griffin
suddenly stooped and caught her full on her side with one huge wing, so hard
that she couldn’t get a sound out, no more than I could. She flew all the way
across the clearing, slammed into a tree, fell to the ground, and after that
she didn’t move.

Molly told me
later that that was when King Lír struck for the griffin’s lion heart. I didn’t
see it. I was flying across the clearing myself, throwing myself over Malka, in
case the griffin came after her again, and I didn’t see anything except her
staring eyes and the blood on her side. But I did hear the griffin’s roar when
it happened, and when I could turn my head, I saw the blood splashing along
its
side, and the back legs
squinching up against its belly, the way you do when you’re really hurting.
King Lír shouted like a boy. He threw that great sword as high as the griffin,
and snatched it back again, and then he charged toward the griffin as it
wobbled lower and lower, with its crippled lion half dragging it out of the
air. It landed with a saggy thump, just like Malka, and there was a moment when
I was absolutely sure it was dead. I remember I was thinking, very far away,
this is good, I’m glad, I’m sure I’m glad.

But Schmendrick
was screaming at the king, “Two hearts!
Two
hearts!”
until his voice split with it, and
Molly was on me, trying to drag me away from the griffin, and
I
was hanging onto
Malka—she’d gotten so
heavy
—and I don’t know what else was happening right then, because all I
was seeing and thinking about was Malka. And all I was feeling was her heart
not beating under mine.

She guarded my
cradle when I was born. I cut my teeth on her poor ears, and she never made one
sound. My mother says so.

King Lír wasn’t
seeing or hearing any of us. There was nothing in the world for him but the
griffin, which was flopping and struggling lopsidedly in the middle of the
clearing. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for it, even then, even after it had
killed Malka and my friends, and all the sheep and goats too, and I don’t know
how many else. And King Lír must have felt the same way, because he got down
from his black mare and went straight up to the griffin, and he spoke to it,
lowering his sword until the tip was on the ground. He said, “You were a noble
and terrible adversary—surely the last such I will ever confront. We have
accomplished what we were born to do, the two of us. I thank you for your death.”

And on that last
word, the griffin had him.

It was the
eagle, lunging up at him, dragging the lion half along, the way I’d been
dragging Malka’s dead weight. King Lír stepped back, swinging the sword fast
enough to take off the griffin’s head, but it was faster than he was. That
dreadful beak caught him at the waist, shearing through his armor the way an
axe would smash through piecrust, and he doubled over without a sound that I
heard, looking like wetwash on the line. There was blood, and worse, and I
couldn’t have said if he was dead or alive. I thought the griffin was going to
bite him in two.

I shook loose
from Molly. She was calling to Schmendrick to
do
something, but of course
he couldn’t, and she knew it, because he’d promised King Lír that he wouldn’t
interfere by magic, whatever happened. But I wasn’t a magician, and I hadn’t
promised anything to anybody. I told Malka I’d be right back.

The griffin didn’t
see me coming. It was bending its head down over King Lír, hiding him with its
wings. The lion part trailing along so limply in the dust made it more fearful
to see, though I can’t say why, and it was making a sort of cooing, purring
sound all the time. I had a big rock in my left hand, and a dead branch in my
right, and I was bawling something, but I don’t remember what. You can scare wolves
away from the flock sometimes if you run at them like that, determined.

I can throw
things hard with either hand—Wilfrid found
that
out when I was still small—and the griffin looked up fast when the
rock hit it on the side of its neck. It didn’t like that, but it was too busy
with King Lír to bother with me. I didn’t think for a minute that my branch was
going to be any use on even a half-dead griffin, but I threw it as far as I
could, so that the griffin would look away for a moment, and as soon as it did
I made a little run and a big sprawling dive for the hilt of the king’s sword,
which was sticking out under him where he’d fallen. I knew I could lift it
because of having buckled it on him when we set out together.

But I couldn’t
get it free. He was too heavy, like Malka. But I wouldn’t give up or let go. I
kept pulling and pulling on that sword, and I didn’t feel Molly pulling at
me
again, and I didn’t
notice the griffin starting to scrabble toward me over King Lír’s body. I did
hear Schmendrick, sounding a long way off, and I thought he was singing one of
the nonsense songs he’d made up for me, only why would he be doing something
like that just now? Then I did finally look up, to push my sweaty hair off my
face, just before the griffin grabbed me up in one of its claws, yanking me
away from Molly to throw me down on top of King Lír. His armor was so cold
against my cheek, it was as though the armor had died with him.

The griffin
looked into my eyes. That was the worst of all, worse than the pain where the
claw had me, worse than not seeing my parents and stupid Wilfrid anymore, worse
than knowing that I hadn’t been able to save either the king or Malka. Griffins
can’t talk (dragons do, but only to heroes, King Lír told me), but those golden
eyes were saying into my eyes, “Yes, I will die soon, but you are all dead now,
all of you, and I will pick your bones before the ravens have mine. And your
folk will remember what I was, and what I did to them, when there is no one
left in your vile, pitiful anthill who remembers your name. So I have won.” And
I knew it was true.

Then there wasn’t
anything but that beak and that burning gullet opening over me.

Then there was.

I thought it was
a cloud. I was so dazed and terrified that I really thought it was a white
cloud, only traveling so low and so fast that it smashed the griffin off King
Lír and away from me, and sent me tumbling into Molly’s arms at the same time.
She held me tightly, practically smothering me, and it wasn’t until I wriggled
my head free that I saw what had come to us. I can see it still, in my mind. I
see it right now.

They don’t look
anything
like horses. I don’t
know where people got that notion. Four legs and a tail, yes, but the hooves
are split, like a deer’s hooves, or a goat’s, and the head is smaller and more—
pointy
—than a horse’s head.
And the whole body is different from a horse, it’s like saying a snowflake
looks like a cow. The horn looks too long and heavy for the body, you can’t
imagine how a neck that delicate can hold up a horn that size. But it can.

Schmendrick was
on his knees, with his eyes closed and his lips moving, as though he was still
singing. Molly kept whispering, “Amalthea... Amalthea—” not to me, not to
anybody. The unicorn was facing the griffin across the king’s body. Its front
feet were skittering and dancing a little, but its back legs were setting
themselves to charge, the way rams do. Only rams put their heads down, while
the unicorn held its head high, so that the horn caught the sunlight and glowed
like a seashell. It gave a cry that made me want to dive back into Molly’s
skirt and cover my ears, it was so raw and so..
. hurt.
Then its head did go
down.

Dying or not,
the griffin put up a furious fight. It came hopping to meet the unicorn, but
then it was out of the way at the last minute, with its bloody beak snapping at
the unicorn’s legs as it flashed by. But each time that happened, the unicorn
would turn instantly, much quicker than a horse could have turned, and come
charging back before the griffin could get itself braced again. It wasn’t a bit
fair, but I didn’t feel sorry for the griffin anymore.

The last time,
the unicorn slashed sideways with its horn, using it like a club, and knocked
the griffin clean off its feet. But it was up before the unicorn could turn,
and it actually leaped into the air, dead lion half and all, just high enough
to come down on the unicorn’s back, raking with its eagle claws and trying to
bite through the unicorn’s neck, the way it did with King Lír. I screamed then,
I couldn’t help it, but the unicorn reared up until I thought it was going to
go over backward, and it flung the griffin to the ground, whirled and drove its
horn straight through the iron feathers to the eagle heart. It trampled the
body for a good while after, but it didn’t need to.

Schmendrick and
Molly ran to King Lír. They didn’t look at the griffin, or even pay very much
attention to the unicorn. I wanted to go to Malka, but I followed them to where
he lay. I’d seen what the griffin had done to him, closer
than
they had, and I didn’t see how he could still be alive. But he was, just
barely. He opened his eyes when we kneeled beside him, and he smiled so sweetly
at us all, and he said, “Lisene? Lisene, I should have a bath, shouldn’t I?”