The pealing of bells continued as Erin and Leslyn lent their hands to lifting the heavy saddle onto red Romo’s back. Even with the help of step stools, the griffin still needed to sink into a deep crouch to let them get it high enough to hoist over his spine. He then rested in a sphinx-like position, patiently waiting for the rig to be satisfactorily fastened.
Erin’s skin was already tingling with dread by the time they were done, but when Koben opened a locker and produced a fearsome-looking crossbow, she shivered as the goosebumps spread over her arms and a chill shot down her spine.
All of the usual mirth had vanished from the prince’s countenance, his golden gaze crisp and focused as he turned it on the younger pair. “Take your keets to their apartment, then join the other recruits outside. Before you leave, make sure no one else forgot to lock their keet’s cage. Thieves don’t engage with emergencies. They take advantage of them.”
“Understood, sire,” Leslyn said. “We’ll take care of it.”
Koben gave him a sharp nod, then turned his attention to slotting a fistful of bolts into a built-in quiver on Romo’s saddle.
Wishing she could shut her ears against the endless ringing of the alarm bells, Erin beckoned Phoebe and hurried with Leslyn to the keets’ apartment. They were moving against the current of riders, griffins, recruits, and Aerie staff who were rushing toward the exit. More than once, Erin had to double back to fetch Phoebe, who’d become overwhelmed by the noise and crowded corridors.
The keets’ apartment was deserted but for the babies themselves, and thankfully a little quieter. Erin tried not to cry as she shut Fee in, her lip trembling as she clicked the lock into place. She stood in a daze with her palm against the bars until Leslyn had checked all the cages by himself and come over to touch her shoulder.
“Snap out of it,” he said firmly, pressing her toward the door. “You can stare at her all you want after this is over.”
With a miserable sniff to hold in her tears, she nodded and hoisted her messenger bag more securely about her shoulder.
They were among the last to exit the Aerie, just in time to see two large groups of about fifty griffins each take off in formation. Captain Tannoran was at the head of one formation, Captain Esmor at the other. Several of the griffins carried an extra passenger or two. The two groups flew away, Tannoran’s group toward the east and Esmor’s to the south.
The wide, grassy fields around the city and Aerie were eerily bare of their usual inhabitants. Riders on horses and griffins were herding thousands of sheep and goats further inland, more than she’d ever seen in one place, massing them in an ocean of earthy colors and cloud-like fleece close enough that Erin could hear their chorus of terrified bleating. They represented the city’s food supply for both man and griffin.
Koben was standing by General Xavara’s black, shouting back and forth with the general over the constant ringing and livestock cries. She was the next to take off, leading a third formation to the north.
Erin watched them grow smaller with distance, her eyes trailing across the endless pastures and down toward the ocean. That was when she saw the cloud of tiny black figures moving toward them, coming through the sky like a swarm of locusts. She squinted, but couldn’t tell what they were. Were they large creatures afar off, or smaller ones much closer?
“You there, quit gawking and start passing these out to the prince’s men.” Erin didn’t even see the woman who gave the order, she’d gone by so fast. All she knew was that there was suddenly a huge, bulky bag in her arms. It was stupidly heavy, but she’d gotten a lot stronger while working at the Aerie and was just able manage it.
Finding it full of neatly-bundled crossbow bolts, Erin scurried among the hundred or so griffins who were already waiting on the ground in two separate formations, many of them still in the process of being saddled with the help of staff, various people who’d come in from town, and the newest recruits. She gave a bundle to any soldier who lacked for one, including Leslyn’s brother Liren with his gray griffin Yardi, only pausing when she was stopped to assist with lifting a saddle or attaching large, oddly-shaped packages to a griffin’s rig.
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Stopping for a breath after visiting most of the rider-griffin pairs, Erin chanced another look to the north.
She regretted it immediately.
Closing in on the pastures nearest the Aerie, a large swath of the swarm had passed right over Xavara’s unit and come near enough that she could make out the shape of the creatures in its number. They were similar in form to the griffins, essentially eagle-shaped but with leathery wings, thick reptilian tails, and equally thick rear quarters in contrast to the griffins’ streamlined, lion-like limbs and tails.
With a quick glance to General Xavara’s riders, already engaged in aerial battle near the north-most edge of the continent, it quickly became clear that the strange beasts’ bodies were much smaller overall than the griffins, though they outnumbered them at least three to one.
Once they were close enough, Erin saw that the heads of the approaching group were purely mammalian, with no beaks to speak of. Instead, they had saber-like fangs, which they bared in outraged snarls against the griffins who watched them from the ground.
“What are they?” Erin queried as Leslyn came up beside her.
“They’re dracats.”
She remembered the name from one of the earliest lessons on being a griffin rider. It’d meant nothing to her, then. But now…
“I’m scared, Desmond.”
Leslyn had the grace to ignore the mistake, stepping closer beside her and resting a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I think everyone is.”
“I want to wake up. I want to go home.”
“You said it yourself, Erin. We’re stuck here.”
This time, it was Leslyn who took Erin’s hand.
They stood that way in silence as Koben climbed onto Romo’s back at the head of one formation and shouted to the soldiers lined up behind them. Simultaneously, Romo spread his wings and sounded a deafening clarion call to battle. Both riders and griffins shouted back with an incomprehensible roar, and leapt into the air to meet their enemies.
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Minutes of dreadful anticipation passed by in the span of a small eternity.
Still holding tightly to Leslyn’s hand, Erin watched the pointed wedge of griffins repeatedly circle over the pasture where the vast herd of goats and sheep had been gathered for protection, patiently awaiting their foes to make the first move.
Some of the approaching dracats ignored them, diving immediately to make a kill and feast, but the majority of them were all too ready to fight for the uncontested right to the buffet of bleating animals below.
Ignoring the few who split off, the griffins held their formation, every other rider in each line rising up or dropping just below the one in front, so a large number of them had a clear view ahead. Crossbows were raised and fired the moment the Nilvaran riders were in range. A few of the dracats dropped, but only to large enough wing tears and one very lucky eye-shot.
The forward-most griffins rolled back and thrust their taloned hind paws out toward the dracats. Those wicked claws they snapped shut on the beasts like bear traps, or raked them with deadly strength. A dozen more of the invaders hit the grass, fatally pierced or shredded.
As soon as their formation collided with the swarm of enemies, the riders began employing nets and grappling hook-ended chains taken from their saddle packs.
The nets were made of heavy rope and had stones attached to each of their four corners, and when stretched between the talons of four griffins, they formed a nearly impenetrable wall. Dracats bounced off of them and became disoriented, or else were wrapped as tightly as a swaddled keet in numbers as high as three or four if the griffins were quick enough to cooperatively wheel and dive, closing the nets around them.
Chains, on the other hand, were used as lassos, their multi-hooked ends appropriately sized and shaped to catch a saber-toothed enemy by the neck, leg or wing. The hooks also served as a last-ditch bludgeon if a dracat’s hungry maw came within reach of a rider.
The dracats were much more mobile than the larger griffins and could avoid many of their attacks or cut off their escape routes with ease, hence the rider’s need for other tools and weapons aside from their crossbows. As well as overwhelming their foes by sheer numbers alone, the half-reptilian beasts also used their heavy lower bodies like battering rams, diving toward the griffins in groups, practically somersaulting at the last moment, and crashing full speed into the bigger animals. Their goal seemed either to throw a targeted griffin into a dangerous tumble, or tear it up with deep gashes from talons thrust with the force of double the creature’s actual weight, if not more.
Erin shrieked as a rider got knocked clean off their mount by the dracats’ trick and plummeted toward the ground.
Three different griffins broke formation and swooped in turns to catch the falling rider, but all of them narrowly missed.
The girl watched in horror as the rider fell like a stone onto the field, the final, gruesome death mercifully swallowed up and hidden from her eyes by the long grass that swayed so peacefully in the wind. She looked to the sky, fearful for the riderless griffin.
Her stomach turned when she saw what had become of it.