Hour of the Gryphon - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The Letter

I disarmed him again, smashed his training waster out of his fist and sending it clattering onto the courtyard stones.

"Do you see? I can't go," he panted, snatching the wooden blade up. "I can't! God, Avelia, it'll kill me!"

Akanaz was my best friend, had been since childhood. I would have given my life for his. At this moment I wanted to kill him, and was glad that the sword in my hand was not real. Men were fighting and dying out there, some of them without leaders, without hope, and he balked at his duty to House and family. The gentleness within him that I had always treasured so deeply now seemed like cowardice. Such a peaceful soul does not belong in our House. Certainly doesn't belong in the army.

"It's war," I snapped, coming at him again. "Dying is what men do."

I was trying to help him not do that. Ever since I had come to Fort Hollyvale, which was farther from the front than my own fortress of Ironfell, I'd been training with him every day. But you can only do so much, and Akanaz was not cooperative. His heart wasn't in it. We hadn't even progressed to using live steel.

Now he fell back, defending, always defending. I batted his waster aside and cracked him across the ribs, sending him to the ground. He lay there a moment, gasping for breath, then ripped off the practice helmet and threw it aside.

"You'd better learn to keep your guard up or the ravens will have the fat behind your eyeballs," I said. "Actually, if you were blind, you couldn't possibly be any worse at this."

"Damn you, Avelia, do you think I don't know that?" He was shaking, with rage or sorrow, I wasn't sure, and I immediately regretted my words. His father's body had only come down the King's Road the morning before, was barely half a day in its tomb. Any day we expected the letter from General Greyshadow calling the new Baron to war. This would be my last practice with Akanaz. And it might, unless I'd managed to beat some sense into him with these stupid wooden swords, be the last time I ever saw him.

I offered him a hand. He took it after a moment, pulling himself to his feet. I thought he was going to snap at me again, but then he just looked down at the ground, at his sweat-stained practice armor.

"I can't do it. This . . ." he lifted the sword, dead weight. "It's not for me."

A wind blew in over the wall, carrying the smell of the moors. Someone out there was plowing early. I could smell the turned earth. And somewhere out there my father, Avelian, the Duke of Ironfell, risked his life against the combined strength of the Chimera Queen's army and her paid bandit lords.

I wanted to be there, but as a woman and an only child I was forbidden to fight. Akanaz and I joked about it, but it wasn't really funny. Our blood, the blood of the Gryphon, was never a populous line, and it seemed to shrink with every passing day. War was my right and duty, had been bred into me for generations, but rather than allow me to take my rightful place among the soldiers, among my people, my father wished me to preserve the family line. Stupid, since if the Chimera Queen won, there'd be no family lands, no rank, nothing. All we had would be wiped away.

"Do you know what I would give to go in your place?" I asked him. "Do you have even the first clue?"

"No!" he spat. "No, and I don't understand it. Why would you risk your life for this? It's folly!"

"My father is risking his life. Your father gave his life. Do you believe their cause unworthy? That what they fight for is foolish?"

"No, I -"

I turned away, threw down my waster. "This war will spare none of us. None. If we lose, these lands will belong to the Chimera. Their bandit lords will rule here, commoners, half-breeds."

"It is not our duty to decide these things. It is for the Emperor. And he has decided that there just aren't enough of us to -"

I ripped off my gloves, threw them down. "The emperor is weak, Akanaz! Weak and young and a fool. He can't see that what he is doing is destroying the Southlands! And if we don't defend what is ours, it will be taken from us at the point of a sword. Will you allow that to happen?"

"No!" he exclaimed. "No! I will not! But I can't serve like this. I'm wasted in war, Avelia -"

"Shut up. Let me get this off you." He turned obediently and I began untying his padded jerkin. "You enjoy this well enough. Sparring. You said you like it."

"I do like it, but I'm not any good at it. I enjoy riding, too. Does that make me a knight?"

I sighed. "How do you know you're unfit for war, when you have never fought?"

"What good would I do?" Akanaz turned to look at me from the corner of one green eye. "What purpose could I serve? I'd die in the first pass. They could prop my body up for the bandit knights to tilt at, I suppose, but they would likely tire of the sport. I'm a small target." His laugh was bitter. "I'm no bigger than my sister. You're stronger. The lowest foot soldier has more idea of how to kill a man than I do. I'm not made for war."

I sighed, pulling the last of the practice armor off him. His body was lean, slender, long of leg and narrow-shouldered. He was beautiful, but his long-fingered hands were not made to hold a sword. He looked so young. "No. You're not. But it is your duty."

He lowered his head, and I brushed his hair back.

"I love you, Kanic," I whispered, using the pet name that was most dear to me. "I've never had a better friend. I doubt I ever will. But if you do not do this thing, you betray your House to the enemy."

"If I do this thing badly, I might as well hand them their victory on a platter."

"I would fight for you, if I could. Ride in your place. War suits me better." I gave him a little smile. "If only you'd been born my father's daughter, and I your father's son."

"Oh, but you don't belong astride a warhorse," he snorted sarcastically, mopping at his sweaty face. "You belong astride a husband, ensuring the future of your line. Aon! That's as stupid a waste as putting me in armor."

"Yes. I am wasted. Even my fiance is doing his duty," I said bitterly. "With any luck, he'll die a hero, and save me the trouble of marrying him." I wanted to spit. I hadn't wanted the marriage, had been glad when the duke's son I was to have married had been called to the front. I wanted to be there too, fighting, where I could do the most good.

Akanaz took his rings up again, the Baron's signet among them. He turned it over in his fingers. "I can't use a sword, I can only ride for show, and my father's ring doesn't even fit me. Look at it." He tossed it to me, sat on a bench to take off his fighting boots. "I have to wear it on my thumb."

"The price you pay for taking after your mother," I said. "I'd string it about your neck, if I were you, or get it resized. Don't want it flying off while you're in the middle of giving orders."

I was trying it on when a courier in a dusty uniform came in, guided by the steward. The messenger looked at the two of us, saw the ring on my finger and addressed himself to me.

"My Lord of Hollyvale, a message for you from General Greyshadow."

He extended a small packet of papers, and I stared at them uncertainly for a moment, not sure whether to be amused that he'd mistaken me for Akanaz, or offended that he apparently took me for a boy.

Amusement won, narrowly, and it was winning in Akanaz' face as well. When we were younger, and both dirty from splashing about in mud puddles and ponds, it had taken tickling to tell us apart - he is, and I'm not. The resemblance still persisted, evidently, under padded armor.

They were not marked confidential, so I opened the papers, perused the first page. Orders to report to the General's camp. I handed the packet to Akanaz, who skimmed them with a look of growing horror on his suddenly ashen face. I played for time.

"Thank you. I will have my answer to you before dinner. Rest and refresh yourself." I waved him off, and he went. I didn't dare laugh about it, because Akanaz was shivering a little, even in the sunlight. What he had read scared him.

"I'm sorry, Kanic."

Akanaz wasn't listening, just looking blankly at the papers. "I have to go, Avelia. Go a thousand miles away to face enemies who want to kill me beside men who do not even know me. I'm not even reporting to my father's camp. They're replacing him with an experienced man. I get to go and stare down hawk-faced General Greyshadow."

The words hung between us. The General was no laughing matter, and his soldiers were hard men, hard-used.

My heart felt like it was breaking. I was going to lose my best friend, and still be stuck here. I wanted to hit something, to break something, to scream my fury over the castle walls until the ravens flew away in terror. Trapped. Trapped, because I was a girl. Because people were too stupid to care who wanted to fight and who did not. Perhaps they could not even tell the difference.

"No," I breathed. "No, you don't."

Akanaz barked a short, humorless laugh. "Are you suggesting I run? There's a million Gryphon soldiers between here and anywhere else. And after them, there's Chimera, and a million more of them would be sure and chop off whatever our fellows had missed!"

"No. Akanaz of Hollyvale has to fight."

"I don't understand."

"But he needs his father's sword. And a horse. And a ring." I held my hand up. The ring on my first finger caught the light.

The first rays of understanding touched his face. I nodded.

"And I'll need your name."

Continued in Part 2

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