Back | Next
Contents

Nine

 

Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.

—Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

 

My Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary says this about griffins: "grif•fin n. Also grif•fon, gry•phon. A mythical beast with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion." The description doesn't do it justice.

The griffin heading down the road toward us didn't look anywhere close to mythical to me. It was the size of a tank. A big tank. A man rode on its back in some kind of saddle, weaving from side to side in time with the beast's odd walk.

It stopped in front of the fence. From the porch I could see the rider's face clearly; his lips were upturned just the slightest bit, like the hull of a large boat. He nodded; a knowing, calm nod.

Malachi nodded back.

At a command the griffin jumped the fence, sail-like wings flapping four or five times. Its claws dug into the earth when it landed; I imagined the sound of grass ripping. The rider remained in the dark brown saddle.

Malachi started down the porch steps, hand firm on Kaishaku-nin at his hip.

"We can't let him go out there!" I told Russ.

"You're right." Muscles tightened along his jaw. He headed for the steps.

"Are you crazy?" I asked. "We don't stand a chance." I'd meant that we should stop Malachi, not join him.

Russ stopped. "What chance does he have without us?" Asmodeus spread her wings, the right one ruffling Russ's hair. He soothed her gently. "Besides—he's doing it for you, Pete." He went down the steps.

I looked at Ariel. Her face was impassive.

Baseball bat in hand, Russ caught up to Malachi. They nodded to one another. They faced the griffin and rider and began walking closer. I looked again at the hellish beast. Its eyes were molten gold. As I watched it opened its arm-long beak and snapped it shut.

"Pete." Ariel was beside me now. "Help me get this pack off. I can fight better without it."

Oh, hell—I looked at her, then back to the griffin. The thing was big enough to come bulldozing into the house if we tried to stay inside anyway. "I'm coming, too," I said, and shrugged off my pack. I untied hers and dropped it onto the porch. I felt better, once the decision was made.

Ariel's hooves made a clopping sound as she walked down the steps beside me; then we were on the grass.

Malachi and Russ stopped when they heard us coming. We caught up with them. Russ nodded and smiled, tight-lipped. Malachi's face showed something I couldn't read.

We halted twenty feet from the griffin. It snapped its beak and screeched. My nostrils flared at a smell like hot brass. Liquid gold eyes blazed at Ariel. It lashed out with a leonine claw.

The rider spoke a word softly and the beast calmed somewhat, though with an obvious effort. I kicked myself mentally: shit—I should have brought the crossbow. It was in Ariel's pack on the front porch. I only had Fred at my side. I gripped the handle firmly, evenly spaced ridges pressing into the calluses which had begun to form on my palm. It would have to do.

Leather creaked with a comfortable, worn sound as the rider leaned forward and patted the beast on the base of the neck—the highest he could reach. "There, there, Shai-tan," he said. "Be nice." Plain black T-shirt, black straight-legged pants, scuffed and dusty riding boots—he should have been pouring sweat, but he wasn't. The cross-shaped handle of a broadsword was on his left side, the side facing away from us. It was thrust through a dark brown leather belt at least four inches wide. There was an indentation where the belt pulled into his stomach on the right side; the sword must have been heavy.

His face was angular, vaguely Germanic. "Shai-tan doesn't like to be held back," he said. He looked at Ariel for almost a full minute, then back at us. "Who owns the unicorn?"

Beside me Ariel spoke before the rest of us could answer. "Nobody owns a unicorn."

Rider and griffin blinked in unison. "So you think."

I stepped forward. "No one owns this unicorn. Her will is her own." I hoped the shaking of my hands on my sword handle wasn't visible.

He smiled at me. "It's you, then. What do you want for her?"

Malachi spoke up. "Get out of here." He glared through slitted eyes, his impassiveness discarded.

The rider looked at him as if barely acknowledging his existence. "This is none of your business, Lee," he said mildly. "I want to settle this reasonably with this young man here."

"You're on my property."

"I'll leave when I get what I want." He turned to me. "Now, what do you want for her?"

My bottom lip worked uncontrollably. "Fuck you."

He sighed theatrically. The griffin grumbled and lowered its head at me. The feathers on the back of its neck ruffled up like the hair on the back of a snarling cat. I stepped back, as if that would do any good. "I'll have her whether you agree to it or not," said the rider. He smoothed feathers on the griffin's neck. "But this would save us both a lot of trouble. You more than me." He saw my hand clutching Fred's handle. "How about your sword?" He cocked his head speculatively. "I could make it invincible in your hands."

"You sure think he sells out cheap," commented Russ. He'd had to put a hand to Asmodeus' talons, where they clutched leather on his burly shoulder, to keep her from flying at the griffin. "Or was that just for starters?"

The rider jeered. "You idiot. This isn't your concern, either. You're going to die over something stupid."

Chaffney shrugged, looked at Malachi to his left, Ariel and me to his right. "They're my friends," he said. Asmodeus shrieked.

The rider laughed. He said a word I didn't understand and the griffin turned to face us.

"No matter what you do," said Ariel, "I won't go with you. Even if you win."

"If I win you won't have a choice."

"You can't take me alive."

"Then I'll settle for the next best thing. Unless you'd rather Shai-tan held you down while I snapped off your horn. I'm sure my power is as strong as yours."

Ariel shuddered. I remembered her saying her horn couldn't be taken while she lived. So . . . take the horn, and she dies.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked suddenly, struck with a desire to reason with him, to reach some sort of common ground on which to settle this.

"He's doing it for someone else," said Malachi. "Aren't you?" He looked up at the rider.

The sharp-featured man ignored him. "You know," he said to Ariel, "that I'll kill them if you fight me."

"I know you'll try." She blinked and looked to her left. "Malachi, Russ—I'm sorry. But I can't let him take me."

"We understand," said Russ. "Nobody expects you to give in to this motherfucker."

"Pete—" She lowered her voice. "I can't go with him."

"You won't, Ariel. I promise."

"Enough bullshit," declared the rider loudly. "Shai-tan."

The griffin shook its huge eagle's head and cleared the twenty-foot space between us in two steps. It left clods of earth and torn grass where it had landed after jumping the fence. Malachi and I drew, but the beast knocked us aside with its bulk. Ariel leaped nimbly away. Russ hit it with the bat but the griffin didn't even blink as it reached out a brown-furred claw and knocked Russ on his back. Asmodeus screamed and flew from his shoulder.

Malachi jumped up and hacked at the beast's neck. Feathers flew like an exploded pillow, but no blood, no sign of injury. It had a claw on Russ's chest but wasn't bearing down. He struggled beneath it.

Instead of hacking, Malachi thrust into the thing's neck. All his weight went into it but the sword only penetrated a few inches. Whatever the hell was beneath those feathers, it was tough.

I got up and began hacking at the claw that pinned Russ. As if brushing away an annoying fly, the beast casually tossed its head and sent me sprawling. Fred landed blade-up on the grass just before I did. I saw it at the last moment and managed to do a shoulder roll over it. My momentum kept me going as I tried to come up from the roll and I landed on my tailbone hard enough to jar the wind from me. I picked up Fred and struggled to my feet once more.

Ariel and the rider glared at one another. I felt something was going on between those gazes and behind them, some deadlocked struggle for power.

I made it back to the griffin's huge lion's leg and began to jab and saw. Something I did made it scream. My lungs filled with hot air, a nauseating, smelting-plant odor. Malachi couldn't have been making any headway either; the thing felt like concrete beneath black and white feathers and brown fur.

I felt a change in the leg's pressure: it was bearing down harder on Russ. I looked up. The rider smiled down at Russ's struggles. "What good are your friends now?"

But Russ couldn't answer. His face had turned an odd red, dark and bright at the same time. His mouth made fish-out-of-water movements. His eyes began to film. Giant knuckles popped: Russ's ribs. Blood flowed from both corners of his mouth.

I screamed in impotence and tried thrusting upward at the underside of the leg joint where it joined the body. It turned its long neck so it could snap at me. I pressed my body against its, feeling hot, matted lion fur against me from the chest down, cool eagle feathers against my cheek. I flinched at the sharp snap at my ear as the halves of the beak slammed together. The foundry smell was strong, and so hot I was sweat-soaked in a matter of seconds. I'd have vomited if I'd had anything left to vomit.

It shrugged its shoulder and I fell onto my side, holding Fred clear. I landed at just the right angle to see what I hope no one else saw: the fierce eagle head lowered to Chaffney's bloody one. It screeched and put its beak over his face.

Snap.

I turned away. Malachi was sprawled face-down on the grass ten feet from the griffin, unconscious or dead. Kaishaku-nin was still in his right hand. Ariel and the rider remained locked in a kind of battle I couldn't understand. It looked on the surface like an adolescent staring contest, hard coal eyes versus bright blue ones.

A screech that was not the griffin's broke the rider's concentration. He looked up, and a tangle of blood-colored feathers plummeted onto the rider's face, flapping, tearing, raking. Flailing hands blurred with beating wings. Human screams mixed with falcon shrieks. Bright red blossomed and dripped onto the dark leather saddle. Desperate hands finally gripped the feathered wrath and threw it away. Asmodeus rose to circle high overhead, screaming ferally.

"Shai-tan!" The bellowed command brought the griffin up, powerful wings sending a breeze that chilled my sweat. "Shai-tan!" The rider's left eye was gouged out. All that remained was a stringy mess lying limply on his cheek. Blood from a deep cut on the left side of his jaw welled down his throat, darkening his black shirt around the shoulder and upper chest. His right eye was crimson with blood but I saw no cut. His hands groped until they found a firm hold on the large saddlehorn. He screamed a harsh word. The griffin took one step, leaped the fence, ran four or five steps along the street, and flapped itself aloft with heavy wingbeats. I watched until it was a dwindling black speck in the clear sky.

 

* * *

 

I remember staggering to Ariel and holding her, crying on her shoulder for I don't know how long, until Malachi tapped me on the shoulder. "Pete."

I turned to face him, wiping my eyes. "You're okay?"

"I'll be fine." Both his eyes were blackening and he had a cut along his forearm, but the bleeding had stopped.

"What are we going to do now?"

"We bury Russ. We pull ourselves together. Then you and Ariel get out of here."

"You're not coming?"

He shook his head. "I'm going after him."

"Who is he? A necromancer?"

"No. I don't think we could have stood up to a necromancer." He glanced at Ariel, back to me. "He's a sort of right-hand man for someone in New York City. He scouts the east coast, doing whatever his master needs him to do. I've . . . heard of him before."

I thought he was going to elaborate, but instead he said, "There are shovels in the garage. Let's make it quick."

I studied his face. It was stony.

Ariel watched silently as Malachi and I dug a shallow grave in the back yard. We laid Russ in it, wrapped in a white sheet. The body was soft in the wrong places. Malachi looked at it a minute. The bundle was wrinkled, bulky, deformed. There was nothing there to show it had ever been Russ. An absurd thought tugged at me: it looked like a gigantic marijuana cigarette.

Malachi dipped his shovel into the piled earth; it made a chuffing sound. Red Georgian clay, chunks of granite, and black earth spread an irregular pattern on the white sheet. He dug in again: chuff. I held my shovel tightly and did the same.

Asmodeus screeched overhead.

Malachi stopped and looked up. The falcon was circling. She spiraled down slowly and landed on the mound of earth beside the grave, pecking at it with her sharp beak. Cinnamon wings spread, darting eyes questioned.

Malachi drew his sword.

"What are you doing?"

Ariel nudged me reproachfully. "Leave him alone, Pete. He knows what he's doing."

"But—"

The sword hissed like a taut wire breaking. Malachi cleaned it, returned it to its sheath, and picked up his shovel. He started to push it into the pile of earth, but stopped when he saw my face. "If a man's buddy dies," he said, "he'll live through it. The pain will lessen in a few years, and in maybe ten years he won't even hurt anymore. But if the man dies before the buddy—" he cast another shovelful of reddish dirt into the grave "—the buddy dies, too. Slowly, painfully. I've seen it before. Believe me, Pete, it was the best thing to do."

Ariel had turned away. I left Malachi to fill the grave and walked beside her. "Are you all right?"

"All this has been because of me. The killing . . . the blood . . . all my fault."

"Ariel?"

"A man has just died for me—"

I reached up and touched her twitching neck. She jerked her head as if suddenly realizing I was there. Together we walked silently around the yard. The chuffing sounds soon ended, replaced by light gongings as the shovel blade tamped down the piled earth. Then a clang and a thud as the shovel was thrown to the ground. Malachi appeared around the side of the house. He climbed the steps onto the front porch. I followed him. Ariel remained in the yard.

Faust jumped up against Malachi, front paws scuffing his thighs. He absently scratched the dog's head. He bent down and picked up the backpack he'd removed earlier. I was silent as he shrugged it on, adjusting the straps and belt. "We're going to New York," he finally said.

"All right. I'll get my gear."

"No. Faust and I. Not you."

"Why not?"

"You and Ariel need to wander around, like you said. Don't give anybody a chance to come looking for you."

"Why can't we come with you?"

"You'd hamper me. I'd be too busy having to keep part of my attention on you, and that might get me killed."

"I can take care of myself."

He shook his head. "You don't understand, Pete. I'm going to New York."

"So?"

"That's my point. You don't even know what you'll be walking into. No, you and Ariel are safer if you head away from here—and not to New York. Head west."

"Why are you doing this?"

"I work best by myself."

"That's not what I mean."

He looked at me carefully before answering. "Because if I don't, she'll never be safe. Because it gives me a little more purpose than just surviving here in this city. Because I promised—I swore by this—" he patted Kaishaku-nin at his hip—"to protect her. Plus a few reasons of my own."

I said nothing. He looked down. "Faust?" The dog sprang to attention. "We're on our way." The dog barked once and ran down the steps and into the yard, circling frantically at the front gate. Malachi and I walked down the steps. Faust ran back to us, jumped against me, and again headed to the gate.

Ariel looked at Malachi as he stopped beside her. "You're leaving."

"Yes."

"We're not coming with you?"

"It will be safer—for me and for you—if you don't."

She nodded, a glint of midday sun catching the tip of her horn. "I understand. Please be careful. And . . . thank you."

He nodded. "Pete—take care. Don't make yourselves obvious. Maybe I'll see you again."

"Yeah. Sure."

He studied my face a few moments, then turned and strode out the front gate. Faust trotted gleefully at his heels. They turned right, heading north. Their brisk pace put them out of sight in a few minutes. Malachi never looked back.

"Now what?" asked Ariel.

"Now we gear up and follow him."

"I thought you'd say that."

"You don't think we should?"

"That's up to you."

"Bullshit."

"All right. We'll follow him."

I nodded. "I'll need a map. I wonder if he has a road atlas around here?" I walked into the house. My feet thumped with a lonely sound on the wooden floor. Looking back, I saw Ariel still gazing down the block where Malachi and Faust had vanished. The bodies of the two we'd killed this morning lay in grotesque positions near the fence. Flies hovered around them. Five yards from Ariel the ground was discolored where Russ had fallen, been crushed, died.

"Come on," I said. She followed me in silently.

Back | Next
Framed