“You’re a good mother,” Arenadd said politely.
Arddryn gave another ghastly smile. “Thank ye.” They finished eating, and she stood up and dusted herself down. “Shall we go outside? I fancy seein’ the sky.”
They went outside and both examined the sky. There was no sign of a griffin up there.
“When d’you think they’ll get back?” said Arenadd, uncomfortably aware that it would start to get dark soon.
“Oh, before night,” said Arddryn. “It’s nothin’ t’be worried about.”
“It’s just that I don’t want to be here too late,” said Arenadd. “We’ve still got to fly back to the village.”
“There’s no need,” said Arddryn. “Ye’re welcome t’share my cave, or ye can have a shelter back in the gorge with the rest.”
“Thank you, but I’d really rather go back to Eitheinn.”
Arddryn shook her head. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Arenadd tensed at once. “What? Why?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Arddryn snapped. “What, d’ye think ye can go flyin’ back into the village just as ye please? Ye think people won’t notice? Ye should be thankin’ the moon ye weren’t spotted on t’way here as it is. Anyway, there’s no need for ye t’be there. This is yer home now. Ye’ve got t’stay by me these next three months, too. The Blood Moon ceremony ain’t somethin’ what just happens. There’s things ye must know first, things I have t’teach ye, understand? Everythin’ ye should’ve learnt when ye was a boy. Ye’ve got hard work ahead of ye.”
“Three—? Look, Arddryn, please—it’s not that I don’t want to stay,” Arenadd lied. “But I left someone behind in the village. I promised I’d be back. I can’t just vanish.”
“Someone?” said Arddryn. “What someone?”
“Her name’s Skade. She’s my friend; I brought her with me.”
“Don’t worry about her,” said Arddryn. “Saeddryn can look after her.”
“I promised her I’d be back with her soon,” said Arenadd. “If I don’t, she’ll be—I can’t do that to her.”
“Why, are ye married to her?”
“Well, no—”
“Then it doesn’t matter,” said Arddryn. “Ye’ve pledged yerself to me, an’ now ye’ll do as I say. She can wait for ye.”
“Can I at least send a message to her?” said Arenadd.
“Maybe, if someone visits from t’village,” said Arddryn. “Worry about it another time. Now come with me. I got somethin’ t’show ye.”
She limped toward a large clump of bushes over by the opposite side of the pass, and as they approached, Arenadd saw them quiver. A strange sound came from within.
“What’s in there?” he said.
“This,” said Arddryn, and pulled the bushes aside to reveal a griffin. It was a scrawny-looking brown male, lying on his stomach with his legs folded beneath him. As the bush was pulled away and sunlight hit his eyes, he lifted his head and made a horrible groaning noise through a beak that had been tightly bound shut.
Arenadd stood back, seeing the ropes around the griffin’s wings. “What in the gods’ names—?”
“This one flew into the circle a few weeks back,” said Arddryn. “Some of our men caught him up there with his human an’ another griffin with a partner.”
“Oh no. What happened?”
Arddryn looked disgusted and shoved the bushes back into place. “Ouen, curse his hide. Griffiners come up here sometimes, t’hunt. We hide away from the bastards. But Ouen an’ some of his friends were up there an’ saw ’em inside the circle, an’ decided t’go up there an’ tell ’em t’clear off. Then Ouen decided to rob ’em as well, an’ things got out of hand. They killed that griffin’s human. Wounded the other, but he got away. The griffin went mad an’ attacked. Killed most of Ouen’s friends, but the idiots led him straight t’the hides. They tied him up an’ then asked me what t’do—I ask ye, what am I supposed t’do with a griffin?”
“For gods’ sakes, why don’t you just kill him?” said Arenadd. “And if that other griffiner got away—”
“Calm down,” said Arddryn. “They already came here. A few days after it happened. Group of griffiners flew into the circle an’ searched around here. They never found us down here an’ flew away before nightfall. Asked some questions in the village an’ left it at that. I tell ye, that Elkin’s losin’ her touch.”
“Well, you should still kill him,” said Arenadd. “What use is he?”
Arddryn shrugged. “I say, never throw anythin’ away. Dead he’s useless. Alive, we could find a use f’him. Either way, leave him be f’now. I just wanted ye t’know he was here so ye wouldn’t stumble on him by accident.”
Arenadd tried not to think of the terrible dead look in the griffin’s eyes. And he tried not to look at Arddryn either, at her deformed face, which made him feel sick.
Oh gods,
he thought.
What have I got myself into now?
32
The Hunt
S
kandar didn’t return that day, or the next. When he finally did, Arenadd immediately asked him to fly them out of the mountains and back to Eitheinn.
Skandar only gave him a blank stare.
“Skade,” Arenadd tried to explain. “I have to get back to Skade, understand?”
“Not want leave,” Skandar said at last. “Home now.”
“But Skade—”
Hyrenna had been listening, and she came closer now. “You will not leave, Arenadd.”
“I only want to go back to Eitheinn,” he protested. “I can’t just leave Skade there on her own; I have to see her, explain—”
“You will not leave,” Hyrenna repeated. “Not until the Blood Moon has come and we give you permission.”
“Human not leave,” said Skandar. “Not need mate. Find new mate.” Plainly, he was done with listening to Arenadd.
“Finish your learning,” Hyrenna commanded. “Try to leave and I will hunt you down.”
Arenadd shot her a venomous stare. “I’ve been imprisoned long enough, griffin, and nobody is making me stay.” With that he got up and walked away.
Skandar bounded ahead of him and stood in his path. “Not go.”
“Out of my way!”
“Not go. Stay.”
Arenadd made several attempts to get past him, but Skandar was faster and eventually knocked him over with an angry snort.
“Stay!” the dark griffin ordered.
Arenadd gave up without saying anything and returned to his new home.
He’d been given a shelter to himself in the settlement in the canyon, which according to its inhabitants was called Taranis Gorge. It was tiny, just big enough for him to lie down in. He had to pile his possessions, such as they were, beside his feet. But it was cosy enough, in its own way, and warmer than he had expected.
He spent the first day settling in, but his lessons began almost immediately. Arddryn had ordered several of her followers to teach him different things. A man called Nerth began teaching him how to track and hunt animals, and a woman called Wynne showed him how to make a bow and arrows, while her sister Hafwen taught him about the properties of different herbs found in the mountains. And from Arddryn he began to learn all the Northern lore and legends she insisted were so important. He learnt the language from everyone, since he was forced to speak it all the time. If he ever used Cymrian he was ignored.
He stayed on the lookout for Saeddryn, but she never returned from the village, and he quickly saw that the settlement in Taranis Gorge was almost completely cut off from the outside world. Arddryn explained that they seldom left it and that their friends stationed in the village only came to visit very rarely, to bring supplies when times were rough or to carry important messages. As it was, Arenadd had no way of contacting Skade or even asking after her.
A day or so after his first attempt to leave he tried again. This time, he was more careful. He waited until nightfall and slipped out of the gorge, sneaking off through the snow as quietly as he could.
He didn’t see Hyrenna or anyone else trying to follow him, but his attempt was foiled by the mountains themselves. The snow around the gorge was far deeper than he had expected. Before long he was soaking wet, chilled right through, and hopelessly lost. It took him half the night just to find the gorge again, and by the time he returned to his shelter the others were already getting up.
If anyone noticed his absence, none of them said anything. He suspected that Arddryn had guessed. Resentment simmered inside him, but he said nothing and did his best to at least take in what they were trying to teach him.
Life in the gorge was hard: food had to be gathered every day, and Nerth and a band of hunters devoted much of their time to hunting and trapping animals for skins. Arenadd went with them and by watching learnt most of the skills they used. He already knew how to tan the hides they gathered, which won him plenty of thanks and a little admiration. When he wasn’t doing that he was helping his other teachers with their daily tasks and listening to everything they had to tell him.
On the evening of the fifth day, Arddryn’s followers—twenty-two of them in all—gathered around a single fire to share their food and talk, and Arenadd was called upon to speak. He told the tale of Eluna’s death and its consequences, and finished with a brief description of how he had escaped from prison and killed Lord Rannagon.
The Northerners listened, their faces unreadable. They were a silent, unemotional lot; Arenadd found himself worrying that he was saying the wrong thing. He wondered if he was anything like them. Old memories came back to him of the voices of his friends back at Eagleholm. Flell caressing his face and saying, “You should smile more, Arren. You’re so solemn all the time!”
He shut that memory out.
“… and Rannagon disarmed me and was going to kill me,” he continued, “but I sent out a call, and Skandar came. He must have been looking for me. He stood between me and them, and he said ‘Mine! Mine! My human! Mine!’—just that, over and over again. Then he attacked Shoa. After all that time he spent in the Arena, he’d learnt how to fight. He killed her, and I killed Rannagon a few moments later. He was distracted when he saw Shoa die, and I ran at him and stabbed him through the throat. That was how he died.”
Arenadd wrapped his arms around his knees and looked at his audience. None of them had moved. “And that’s about it, really,” he added. “I took the sword, and Skandar and I flew away,”
All of a sudden, Nerth began to laugh. “So that’s how the mighty Lord Rannagon died, is it? Stabbed with a broken sword, by someone who’d never fought before?” He laughed even harder. “Lord Rannagon the mighty, killed by a broken sword! Hah!”
Some joined in the laughter, but others let out whoops and jeering. Half a dozen of them edged over to Arenadd and patted him on the shoulders, muttering to him.
“Thank ye, Arenadd, thank ye.”
“We’re honoured to have ye here, Arenadd.”
“I’m glad to have met ye.”
“Ye’re the one we’ve waited for,” said Wynne.
Being touched made Arenadd uncomfortable. “Thank you.”
Once the camp had quietened down a little, he sat cross-legged and rested his chin on his hand, trying not to see all the admiring stares being directed at him.
Gods. Everywhere I go, people want something from me. Everyone wants me to be something
.
“Some people think I’m a hero,” he said aloud, not really meaning to.
“A hero is what ye are, Lord Arenadd,” said Nerth. “An’ don’t ye think it’s otherwise.”
Arenadd sat back. “Some say I’m a hero, and some say I’m a villain. But—”
“Villain?” Wynne scoffed. “Ye killed a murderin’ tyrant, brought him t’justice. Where’s the villainy in that?”
Arenadd felt a sudden helpless anger go rushing through him. He stood up. “No,” he said, so sharply that everyone stared at him. “I’m not a villain or a hero. I’m a human being. And that’s all I want to be.”
He stalked off to his own shelter.
He’d been provided with a simple bed of furs and a pillow stuffed with dry grass, and he got into bed and covered himself up. He stayed there, feeling both angry and embarrassed, hoping no-one would bother him.
They didn’t, and he eventually drifted off to sleep.
That night he dreamt of Rannagon again, but this time he was in Skandar’s body, looking out through his eyes. His shoulders were massive and powerful, and his fingers were long talons. He could feel his wings stirring on his back and his tail swishing behind him.
Rannagon pointed a sword at him.
Stay away from me!
he yelled, in Shoa’s voice.
Kraeai kran ae!
Arenadd felt no fear. He reared up and lashed out with his beak, and Rannagon fell, blood gushing from his throat. It was exactly the way it had been that night in the Eyrie, but this time there was no fire and no-one bursting through the door. Arenadd looked down at Rannagon’s body and made a contented rasping sound deep in his chest. He could smell the blood and the flesh that contained it. The scents made his mouth water, and he tore into the food, ripping off great chunks and swallowing them. The taste of blood was like metal on his tongue, and he loved it.