Mercedes Lackey: The Silver Gryphon

“Outpost Five,” the elder gryphon muttered, shaking his head so that the fragments of feather-sheath dislodged by his earlier scratch flew in all directions. A single headfeather, striped in brown and cream and as large as a human’s palm, drifted down to lie in the pool of sunlight beside him. Its edges were outlined in light, and the white fluff at the base glowed with a nimbus of reflected sunshine. “Outpost Five . . . now why does that sound familiar?”

This could go on for some time if Tad didn’t put a stop to it. He fixed Aubri with a look that said wordlessly, I know just what you’re doing and I’m not falling for it. In tones of deepest respect, he told his superior, “You and Commander Judeth took Outpost Five three years ago, sir, when we first took responsibility for it from the Haighlei. You said the tour of duty was a vacation from trainees who couldn’t molt without explicit written instructions.”

Aubri blinked mildly, but his great golden eyes were twinkling with hidden amusement. “Did I say that? I’m cleverer than I thought. Well, yes, I think I remember Outpost Five, now that you mention it. Pretty remote; it’s hard to find volunteers to man it. Good place for a vacation if what you want is thunderstorms every evening, fog every morning, and just enough of the sun to taunt you about, its existence. There’s a reason why the Haighlei call that kind of territory a ‘rain forest.’ It is wetter than a swimming kyree.”

Well, good. That’s one thing that wasn’t in our lessons on manning outposts. And there’s nothing in the briefing Blade read me that says anything about the weather there. “Would you say the weather is difficult enough to become a hindrance to our duties, sir?” he responded politely.

“Hindrance? I suppose if you’re the kind that thinks he’s going to melt if he has to fly in the rain.” Aubri’s mild manner turned just a trifle sharp, as if giving Tad subtle warning that he’d better not be thinking any such thing. His pupils dilated and constricted rapidly, another sign of warning. “No one promised sunny beaches and half-day duty when you volunteered for the Silvers.”

“It is dangerous to fly during thunderstorms, sir,” Blade put in politely, verbally maneuvering Tad from under Aubri’s talons. “And it can be dangerous to take off during heavy fog. We won’t be doing White Gryphon any favors if we get ourselves bunged up doing something stupid and they have to send in replacements and a rescue party. If the weather can become difficult enough to be dangerous, we ought to know about it in advance and know what warning signs to watch for. We can always ground ourselves and wait out a dangerous storm.”

“Well, now, that’s true enough.” Aubri was back to being the bumbling, genial old “uncle.” “But I don’t think I said anything to give either of you the impression that the weather was going to make it impossible to fly your regular patrols. You’ll just have to be careful, the way you were taught, and be diligent in watching for developing problems, that’s all. The thunderstorms aren’t violent, just briefly torrential, and the fog is always gone an hour after dawn.”

Both of which would have made his bones ache, if he’s having the same problems as my father. Aubri might be the oldest surviving gryphon from Urtho’s forces; he was certainly older than Skandranon. He looked it, too; his feathers were not as sleek or as perfectly preened as Tad’s were; in fact, they were a bit ragged, a trifle faded from what must have been his original colors of dark, warm brown and tan. Now he was rusty-brown and cream, and even feathers just grown in looked a bit shabby. Like Skandranon, he was of the broadwing variety, hawklike rather than falconiform, but he was huskier than Skandranon. His raptoral prototype was probably the umber-tailed hawkeagle, rather than the goshawk. There were signs of age in the delicate skin around his beak and eyes, a webwork of faint wrinkles, though those wrinkles were not as pronounced as the ones that humans got with increasing age. There was no sign of age in the mind, although you could not have told that from the way he was acting now.

“Acting,” indeed. It’s all an act, first to last, the old fraud. He never forgets anything; I’ll bet he remembers the order in which every trainee finished the last run on the obstacle course two weeks ago.

Aubri and Judeth were adept at playing the ally-antagonist game, with Aubri playing the absentminded and easily-fooled ally and Judeth the sharp-edged antagonist. Tad had caught onto the game in his first day of training, but then he had seen both Aubri and Judeth all the time when he was growing up. In particular, he had watched “absentminded” and “bumbling” Aubri best Skandranon time and time again over a game of stones, so it wasn’t likely that he would ever be fooled into thinking that Aubri wasn’t as sharp as his human partner.

Not that Father would ever admit to losing a game to Aubri except on purpose.

“Where is Commander Judeth, by the way?” he asked, for the white-haired human co-Commander of the Silver Gryphons had not been in evidence when the two of them arrived a few moments ago. Aubri jerked his beak toward the door, still standing open, as it had been when they arrived. On warm, pleasant days like this, most of the inhabitants of White Gryphon preferred to keep all doors and windows open to the sea breezes, and Aubri was no exception.

“Meeting with the Haighlei; they’re picking out the next set of Silvers to be in Shalaman’s personal guard when Sella and Vorn come back.” He preened a talon thoughtfully, chewing on the very end of it, his beak making little clicking sounds as he did so. “They’ll probably take Kally and Reesk,” he added. “They can’t resist matched sets.”

“You think so?” Blade asked skeptically; like Tad, she was aware that there were several pairs available for the duty whose skills were greater than the partners named.

Aubri snorted his contempt for anyone who would choose the looks of a set of guards over their ability. Not that Kally and Reesk were bad; no one was offered for Shalaman’s guards who was bad. For that matter, anyone who wasn’t up to Aubri’s standards was generally asked to find some other vocation long before they got out of training—and exceptions had better prove themselves within six months or they would have to return that coveted silver badge. But by the yardstick of these that Judeth and her partner picked to represent White Gryphon in the service of the Haighlei Emperor, these two were just average.

Nevertheless, they were showy, their plumage of ruddy gold and bronze would complement the gold and lionskins of Shalaman’s Grand Court, and they could stand at perfect attention for hours without moving a feather. Tadrith pointed out all of those attributes.

“The Emperor’s Chief Advisor has other things to consider, sir,” he finished politely. “It is very important, protocol-wise, for the Emperor’s guards to be as still as carvings all during Court. That stillness implies his power and control.”

“It’s not as if they’re ever going to have to do anything, sir,” Blade said injudiciously. “Even assuming an assassin or madman got as far as the Emperor’s Guard, he’d take one look at a pair of gryphons in full battle rage and pass out.”

Tad winced. That was not a bright thing to say— not to a veteran of the Great Wars and the Migration. There was a slight grating as Aubri’s talons reflexively scratched the terrazzo.

“Maybe,” Aubri replied with a narrow-eyed glare in her direction that thoroughly cowed her. “Maybe. Never assume anything, young Silver. Assumptions get you killed. Either you know, or you make your plans for the worst-case contingency. Always. Never count on the best happening. I thought we taught you better than that.”