The Dark Griffin Read Online Free

swamp.”
    Elrick shrugged. “I’m not blaming you. I prefer the safer approach with these things. Let’s just take a few feathers and be gone.”
    Rannagon had found his arrow embedded in Saekrae. It had gone in so deeply that only the tip of the fletching was visible among the blood and the vile muck of the ruined eye. He touched it with a fingertip. “By gods, I must have been in perfect form when I loosed that one. Are we just taking the feathers?”
    Elrick was already wrenching out the long flight feathers from Saekrae’s wing. “If you want the tail or the talons, be my guest. Kaelyn, could you give me a hand here?”
    Kaelyn fingered a clump of feathers. “They’re pretty rough. I’d say she hadn’t been eating so well lately. See how bony the haunches are?”
    “Well, those farmers weren’t about to let her keep taking their stock,” said Rannagon. “They must’ve moved them far enough to get them out of her range. I wonder why she didn’t just move further into the mountains. Griffins aren’t usually stupid enough to risk stealing.”
    Elrick ran a hand through his greying hair. “Unless she had something here to make her want to stay.”
    Kaelyn glanced at him. “You mean she was nesting?”
    “Maybe. We should have a scout around, anyway, just to be on the safe side. Can’t let her chicks starve to death.”
    He finished stripping the feathers from Saekrae’s wings, with Kaelyn’s help, while Rannagon took out a knife and cut the end off her tail for a trophy. Once they were done and the feathers had been rolled up in cloth the three of them returned to the open, remounted and flew back up to circling height.
    Rannagon leant forward to talk to his griffin. “What d’you see, Shoa?”
    Shoa scanned the ground for a time. “Nest,” she said at length, and circled down toward it. The others had also spotted it and Elrick climbed down off Keth’s back and into the nest. He poked through the nesting material while Rannagon and Kaelyn, lacking the room to dismount, looked on.
    “Anything?” said Kaelyn.
    Elrick straightened up. “Nothing. Just a few bones and some shell fragments.”
    “Stillborn?” said Rannagon.
    “No, they’re too well developed for that,” said Elrick. “Have a look.”
    He tossed a small bleached skull to Rannagon, who caught it and turned it over in his fingers. The delicate bone at the base of the skull had been broken, and the dark coating was peeling away from the beak; the whole thing was about the size of his fist. “Hmm. I see what you mean. I’d say it lived for a few weeks at the very least.” He dropped it back into the nest.
    “There’s another one here,” said Elrick. “It’s in better condition.” He pocketed the other skull and a few pieces of shell before climbing into the saddle. “I’ll take it back for Roland. He was nagging me to bring him something. All right, let’s get going.”
    Kaelyn sighed. “Poor little things. They must have starved to death.”
    “Yes, it just isn’t good territory here,” said Rannagon. “Not with humans so close. Maybe one griffin could’ve survived, but not with a nest full of chicks. It’s almost sad how animals try to breed even when it’s just not practical, isn’t it?”
    “Life holds on where it can,” Shoa interrupted. “Humans are the same.”
    “You’re right, as always,” said Rannagon, scratching her neck.
    She closed her eyes and crooned, but then abruptly turned away and took to the air again, forcing Rannagon to grab hold of the harness on her neck to avoid falling to his death.
    Elrick chuckled as Keth followed more sedately, and the two griffins flew up and out of the valley. Kaelyn’s griffin paused to poke his beak into the nest. He nosed at the cold litter and the pathetically small bones of the dead chicks.
    “What is it?” Kaelyn asked.
    He raised his head again and snorted. “A smell. It does not matter.” He flew off before she could ask any more questions, and