The Shining Wyrm

6.3

Ginter was sure in his old bones he would never grow comfortable with the hauntingly deep and yet sharply piercing cry of a War Gryphon’s Howl.

Not if he lived another fifty winters.

It was customary to compare them in ballads and tales to the sound of wolves and the cries of eagles.

So sang all the minstrels.

But no man who had ever heard either could mistake that call for anything else.

Some northerners said that their call was like that of the giant elk, but deeper, crueler and more ominous.

Deaf men could feel the voice of a war gryphon bellowing up from inside their chests if it was close enough.

And the piercing shriek too it could carry from the horizon.

On the battlefield the freshest fighters among a levy were liable to break and run if caught unaware by that deep booming howl.

And when combined with the death that came down from above when enemy Gryphon Riders were in the skies?

It only took seeing a captain on his fancy charger skewered into the throat and out the small of his back by one of those horrific spears they called arrows to find far more practical fear to temper bravery and youth.

Ginter had served his time in the levy of the Countess’ army as a young fool. Called to war when the realm marched against the Magarska Kingdom in the south.

On the march south Ginter had gotten to witness the terror that was enemy Gryphon Lords in the air unmolested.

It was not the terror of a cavalry charge, although if you got within reach of their claws little armor would save you. It did not matter how thick the metal was if the thing could strike you hard enough to knock your head clear off, metal or not.

Smaller Gryphons might pounce from the air in deadly dives, the larger War Gryphons could do this too if their riders ran out of those Arrows.

But it was a rare act, only done when you made the mistake of being separated from the rest of the army when enemy Gryphons Riders were in the air uncontested.

No, the terror of War Gryphons was not their claws or beaks or the terrifying speed at which they could sweep down from the sky and cleave men’s heads from their shoulders in passing. Nor was it in how they could end one of their terrible dives by planting themselves so suddenly and thunderously from the air that the man so struck’s chest flew apart around it.

The true fear of Gryphon Riders and especially those that were lords as well is the Arrows.

They struck from the sky, often with no warning but the rallying cry of one’s own Gryphons.

If you were lucky you had time to brace and cower from sight before one struck out of the blue.

Longer than any but a knight’s torso was tall.

Killing you before you even properly had time to realize it was coming.

Any youthful dreams of becoming a footman and rising to command as a captain or even a lieutenant were dashed the day he saw what happened to them without support from allied Gryphon Riders.

He still could hear the sound of heavy wood and metal crashing through bone, flesh and armor.

The captains crumpled like grass underfoot.

Sometimes the blows went through a captain and killed the horse he rode on!

Ginter would never grow familiar or comfortable with the howling of War Gryphon on the hunt.

Flying death in the skies.

But that did not mean he was not out on the street to see the spectacle of one of the Countess’ Gryphon Riders arriving.

Sailing stately in his shining Armor.

Ginter did not know which one this was, his eyes were not good enough to make out the heraldry on the chest of the likely Baron slowly descending above the wide mainstreet of Kaeketeh.

But the terrifying howl of triumph from the gryphon turned his head.

And then something that Ginter had never imagined he would ever hear echoed after it.

The sound was metallic, buzzing, harsh and unfathomably vast.

It was like an iron comb running down a blade. It was the crow of a rooster. It was like a shout of triumph.

It was like all of these things.

In the same way that a songbird’s gentle warble was akin to the War Gryphon’s howl.

It suffused the world with sound and dominion. It felt like the roar of a fire briefly passed over him and drew his eye to the figure sailing in behind the Gryphon Lord.

The roar of it silenced the city and he saw the late sun catching gleaming scales, shining like gold, a serpent easily four, maybe five times longer than the gryphon leading it. Blurry shapes that might be wings extended out to glide. But that was far closer than any other Gryphon Rider could hold position behind a leader.

He knew how harsh the wake of a gryphon even gliding could be when it passed. A wall of howling wind that could flatten unbraced men and the frail or infirm.

And this shining serpentine figure blurred by his aged eyes was swimming in that maelstrom with hardly a seeming care to the effort.

The voice faded out and the two figures passed, still far overhead.

Moving onward past the rooftops of middle Kaeketeh and proceeding onward to their ordained place in the final courtyard at the keep itself.

Definitely a Baron and Lord then.

The Knights would have made a landing at the wallfort that separated the keep from the lesser opulence of the rich houses of high Kaeketeh.

The gryphon made one last bone shaking cry in the distance. Sounding small for more reasons than just the distance as it swooped up before its final landing.

Just as before again that tremendous thought dousing wall of sound echoed it. Smothering all other noise.

And the shining maybe winged gleaming serpent shape spiraled up and around the gryphon lord as he shed the speed of the gliding dive.

Then sunk just as gracefully and effortlessly as it had followed in the torrential wake up til that point while the bird-beast settled with a flapping that Ginter knew could flatten a marsheling attack.

He did not hear the criers or the rest of the ceremony from here.

He did not see the Countess.

But he had seen clearly what this meant.

There would not just be War Gryphons in the skies when next she mustered for battle.

The entire city seemed to be digesting that fact with him in a shared silence.

Not even the yap of dogs or cries of the river birds dared to risk following the domination that those two roars had brought.

Babes did not even cry.

It was only slowly that the lapping of the river at the wharf and the brush of boats on the docks began to ease the city back to life, motion and sound.

Ginter made his way to the pub, he needed to hear what those with clearer and younger eyes had seen, what those that listened in richer places or heard courtly whispers said.

To find out what it was that the Countess now commanded.