Douglas Niles - The Puppet King

Discomfort was further aggravated by the stifling heat that penetrated even into the normally cool floor of the forest. The summer had been growing increasingly warm, and now the wind seemed to have died away to nothing. The sun blazed above the trees, and the stuffy air pressed close, drawing perspiration freely from each elf’s skin.

Finally they reached a place Porthios had remembered, a low bluff on the opposite side of the ridge from the escarpment over the camp. They had moved several miles closer to the coast, and with that distance behind them, he felt safe in exposing themselves for as long as it would take for the griffons to spread their wings and start to gain altitude.

“Mount up here,” he said tersely. The griffons went to the edge of the precipice, and the warriors helped their women into the saddles. The escorting archers took to the air, circling overhead. The two warriors with wives and babies were veterans of Porthios’s company in Silvanesti, and now they waited for his signal with the same discipline and patience that had carried them through decades of nightmarish campaigns.

“Good luck to you all. Let’s fly!” he said, sliding over Stallyar’s rump to rest as firmly as possible behind Alhana and the deep saddle.

With a spreading of silver-feathered wings and a flexing of powerful haunches, the mighty griffon pounced into the air, catching the wind and immediately driving them forward and away from the looming cliff. The treetops seemed to rush up from below, and Porthios held on tightly, wincing as a dizzying vision of the forest swept underneath.

With powerful strokes, Stallyar first held them at level altitude, banking slightly to get around the tops of the tallest trees. Then, very slowly, the griffon started to climb.

Still clinging to his wife and the reins, Porthios looked around and saw that the two other heavily laden griffons had likewise managed to bear their precious passengers aloft. The final two, bearing their escorting archers, flew just above them. With Stallyar in the lead, the creatures trailed slightly behind to the right and left, and the little formation winged its way along the valley. Far ahead of them, in the western distance, they could make out the glint of the sea.

“Bear southward,” he said to Alhana, who tugged gently on the reins. Anticipating the direction, Stallyar veered slightly, wings stroking powerfully as he lifted them gradually higher. With just enough altitude to clear the neighboring ridge, the griffon once again allowed them to glide, descending slightly while the valley floor dropped quickly below.

Now they had two ridges between themselves and the wing of blue dragons, but even so, the elves did not relax their vigilance. Porthios guided them along the course of this deep valley, making sure that they flew below the summit of the ridges that ran in serpentine crests to either side. Slowly the vista of the sea grew before them, with the brightness of the setting sun reflected in almost painful brilliance from the broad swath of water.

It was out of that brightness that death came seeking, a blue dragon and its black-armored rider plummeting right out of the sun. Porthios suddenly sensed menace there, vaguely saw the terrible wings extending to right and left out of the blazing sunset. He shouted an alarm, but Stallyar had perceived the threat at the same time. The griffon banked to the left hard and dived toward the treetops.

“Fly, Lord Porthios!” cried one of the other elven warriors, an archer who was alone in his saddle.

“And you—try to escape!” shouted the outlaw prince, sensing his loyal man’s intentions.

But the elf’s course had been chosen. Somehow he had his bow out and shot an arrow straight into the snout of the beast. The subsequent bellow of rage seemed to shake the air in the sky, a forceful onslaught of sound that rocked the griffons sideways and threatened to press the elves out of the saddle.

Next came the blast of lightning, and Porthios didn’t have to look to know that his bold warrior had been slain. The stench of burned flesh carried instantly to his nostrils.

Now the treetops were whipping past, and Stallyar was gasping with the effort of flying with his double load of riders. The two other couples were nearby, their mounts, too, showing the effects of the burdened flight. All three infants were squalling loudly, frantic and afraid. With a quick glance backward, Porthios saw that the remaining warrior of their escort was angling upward and away, shooting arrows and attempting to draw the dragon after it.

From the thunderous bellows of rage, it seemed likely that the monster was going after the pesky archer, but the elf also heard the harsh commands of the knight, who was struggling to bring his serpent after the greater concentration of enemies. He looked again, saw that the wyrm was reluctantly wheeling, preparing to dive after the three griffons and their riders now gliding right through the lashing branches of the trees.

It was a pursuit that could only have one outcome, and Porthios desperately sought some tactic that would give them a chance of survival.

“There, land!” he shouted as a tiny patch of clearing opened before them. “We’ve got to go on foot!” he shouted to the others.

All three griffons plunged to the soft ground, and the warriors and their women tumbled from the saddles, the men frantically cushioning the falls of their children and wives.

“Now, go!” shouted the outlaw captain, waving frantically to urge the riderless griffons into the air.

The dragon roared again, and Porthios looked upward. He saw that the knight was now slumped in the saddle, an elven arrow jutting from his back. The four griffons swirled about the azure serpent until those horrible jaws gaped again, spewing a lightning bolt that shattered one of the brave creatures with a direct hit. The elves groaned, and Porthios felt a sickening lurch in his heart. Because of the sun’s glare, he couldn’t see if the stricken griffon had Stallyar’s distinctive, silvery sheen on its wingtips.

“Into the woods! We’ve got a slight chance, nothing more!” he said, propelling the three women and two warriors ahead of him. They stumbled onto a narrow deer trail and jogged away from the clearing as quickly as the females could move. The babies, exhausted and numb, had again fallen silent.

After ten minutes they paused, gasping for breath, and Porthios scrambled up a lofty pine tree. He saw the distant figures of the dragon and at least two griffons, the smaller creatures leading the wyrm on a frantic chase. They were heading west, toward the sea, and the elf murmured a silent prayer to Paladine, thanking the god for their escape and begging his aid to help the brave griffons to escape.

Finally he dropped down from the tree to report on what he had seen. He looked at the somber, strained faces of his companions and knew that the course of their flight had been drastically changed.

“We’re going to have to reach Splintered Rock on foot,” he told them. “If we set an easy pace we should be able to do it in two or three days.”

With the fortitude born of months of living as outlaws, the others quickly agreed. Porthios led and one of the other warriors brought up the rear as the elves continued through the forest. Where the deer trails worked in their favor, they followed them. For a while, a shallow streambed gave them a path. When the underbrush finally closed in, the men took turns hacking with their swords to open a path.

As night fell they found a large willow tree, with a trunk that had been hollowed by years of decay. Using their swords to expand the makeshift cave, the elves managed to make a shelter that allowed all three women and infants to sleep with some degree of protection from the elements. The men hunkered down outside the entrance and took turns staying awake during the dark, silent night. A short rainstorm washed over them sometime before dawn, and though the warriors were sodden, their wives emerged from the shelter dry and at least partially rested.