Gvalch’rienn, Witcher of the Griffin
The pogroms spread like a forest fire.
Alayna thought the metaphor was particularly poignant, since the brutalization of the elves killed the forests just as effectively as a wild fire. Yet fueled by cries of, “the traitor Cregennan!” they continued murdering non-humans with rapacious bloodlust. Through their noble efforts, smoke rose from Ban Glean all the way south to the outskirts of Vengerberg.
One such pogrom rode down the road now, towards Alayna. Despite that she was human, she drew her cloak above her head and hoped they would simply pass and leave her be. As they drew closer, her hope grew ever slimmer.
Fourteen of them traveled on the old forest road which ran along the border of Dol Blathanna, the Valley of Flowers. They laughed raucously, and had she not known that the cause of their laughter was the systematic murder of elves and dwarves in Aedirn, she might have thought that they were coming from a feast or wedding. Most carried clubs and sickles, and one sported a pitchfork, but three had bows and a handful of arrows.
“Oi, horseman.” A man with a crooked nose was the speaker. When he spoke, his words were tainted with a nasally inflection. “Show us some round-ears and you’ll be on your merry way.”
“C’mon, round-ears,” jeered a lackey, the one with the pitchfork. “Drop the ‘ood.” She dropped the hood in compliance. There was no point in inciting them.
A low murmur grew among the men. “A wench,” a large and surly man commented.
“A comely wench,” a beanpole of a man leered, hefting his club as if in compensating for something.
“With eyes like a cat,” the leader finished, nasally. “A witcher, she must be. I heard they had two razors, but I didn’t know they came with two tits.” The men roared, and were emboldened to try other, bawdier jests.
Alayna said nothing, but shifted uncomfortably in her saddle as she felt the eyes of the men travel all over her person and saddlebags. Many of them had been brigands and rapists before they had joined up with these simple villagers. Perhaps some of them had even raided and raped in the villages of their companions; it hardly seemed to matter in the face of the pogrom. Humankind united on the lowest rung of the ladder: the rung that even the morally crippled could reach. That rung lay closest to corpses which littered the ground beneath it. The dregs of society elevated themselves by stabbing the less fortunate dregs in the back. Alayna swelled with pride to be a human every time she thought of such things.
The leader’s eye alone was not roving. He reached gently across the distance between their spurs as if to stroke her face. She blanched and tightened her grip on the handle of her sword, determined that he would lose his hand if he caressed her. But he only swept her windblown brown hair from her ears, checked that they were round, and lowered his hand again.
He leaned very close to her. He had striking green eyes. They were stunning, guiltless eyes, such as she might have expected to find on an innocent fox or gentle bruin. She didn’t feel his hand around her waist until he had firmly gripped her sword hand. Like lightning, she jolted in her saddle and tried to draw her blade, but his grip was like a vise.
The bushes across the road rustled though there was no wind. Alayna saw two blue eyes and naught else. Probably an elf. Maybe even Scoia’tael. The eyes were unnoticed by the riders.
“You know what we seek,” their leader whispered softly. She felt a cold pit growing in her stomach. “Every Squirrel tail you bring in will be handsomely rewarded.” His grip loosed slightly, and his hand slid across her stomach as he pulled her closer, his intentions perfectly obvious. “And perhaps there might be another reward for you, if…” But her free left hand worked swifter, twisting in the three curious symbols that formed the Axii sign.
“I thank you for your concern. I will let you know if I find what you seek. Be on your way.”
He blinked once and leaned upright in his saddle. Shaking his head as if the air buzzed with flies and his ears were clogged with shit, he stirred in the saddle and led the pogrom down the road. When they were out of earshot, Alayna called quietly to the eyes.
“Ceádmil, friend. You can come out. I am friend of the Aen Seidhe.” The blue-eyed elf, for that is what she was, rose from the bushes and warily crossed the path.
“Ceádmil, gvalch’rienn. Those humans murdered my people. I thank you for sparing me from the same fate.”
“Gvalch’rienn? I have not heard that word in the Elder Speech. Yet I have heard that elves are haughty and cold, and you seem to be neither.” A look of pain flashed across the elf’s face, so intense that she might have been nursing a wound.
“There is no room for vanity to coexist with extinction. How can we claim we are a superior race when we are forced from the land that we called home before you dh’oine even had a word that meant the same? No, gvalch’rienn –that is griffin in your tongue – though your race should wipe out the whole of my people I will not be haughty to one who has offered kindness to an Aen Seidhe.”
Alayna nodded her head. “I am grateful. I am called Alayna, and you have rightfully guessed that I am a witcher from the school of the griffin.”
“Vatt’ghern, and yet also sor’ca… we have not met one such as you.”
Alayna nodded again. So far as she knew, she was the only female witcher among any of the schools. “What is your name, and what is your destination?”
“Bryanna.” She had blonde hair that fell in braids past her shoulders and cut a lithe figure that undoubtedly came from weeks on the run. “I go nowhere, except where those men are not. Yet it seems you wish to avoid them as well. Might I ride with you for a time?”
“My horse will easily bear us both. I ride to Kaerhen du Loc, where I will spend the winter north of the valley. Alone, unless you wish to join me. It is too large a castle for just one girl.” Bryanna had already swung herself into the saddle behind Alayna.
“It will do. Ride on, she-griffin.”
Alayna had heard that the elves rode light in the saddle, and it must have been true, for Calliope hardly seemed to notice the extra weight. She snuck a glance over her shoulder at the elven maid. With a poignant longing, Bryanna watched every tree and bird and stream as if it would be her last sight of them. Alayna turned back around.
“How old are you, Bryanna?”
“I have ground the earth beneath my feet for twenty springs. That is young in the estimation of the elves, but I judge you to be younger still.”
Alayna ground her teeth at that. “Aye. It is as you say. But I see your wandering eyes –Bryanna, Kaerhen du Loc is not a barren place. There will be birds and streams and hills and woods vast enough and lively enough to capture your gaze, even during Yuletime.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
“They will not be my birds, nor will they be my streams or hills or woods. Though I do not doubt that they are as fair as you say.”
“But,” Alayna was confused. “Will it not be the same? Will it not be better? There is peace in treading the familiar paths of the woods, but there is adventure in the novelty of discovery.”
“Do you find novelty in the discovery of a new stepmother at home?” Bryanna nearly snapped at Alayna. “This is our home, dh’oine. These are our family. No novelty could replace such as that. No novelty of your woods could replace father, sister… mother.” She fell silent for a time. Then, “Do you have a family?”
“My father was a strong man. A farmer, I think. By him I learned of root and herb and the name of every green thing that grows.”
“And your mother?”
“I remember nothing of the woman.”
She remembered the dour looking man who rode to the gates of their estate, and she remembered the woman he had carried on his saddle. She remembered the hilts of his swords obscuring her mama’s face as she called out to her. The woman had begged the man for mercy, but he made the same reply every time. ‘That which first greets you, that is what you promised me.’ The woman’s eyes had filled with tears. ‘Bid your daughter farewell.’ In desperation, the witcher had subjected a young Alayna to the Trial of the Grasses, mutating her body forever in a one-in-a-million success, before he died on the Path but a few years later. It all began with her mother.
Alayna repeated herself. “No. My mother is dead in my eyes.”
Bryanna watched Alayna as she reminisced, and then spoke rapidly, with a startling conviction. “My mother is dead, slain by your people for a senseless cause. I have as much reason for hatred as you. No, I have more. You humans have eyes, but you do not see. She is dead in your eyes? At least she is yet among the living. Gvalch’rienn, you must loose whatever it is which binds you to the past.”
Had it been a duel of blades, Alayna would have found a suitable riposte. Yet in matters of the tongue and heart, she was absent.
It is said that witchers are emotionless, and that is what makes them so cold and mercenary. That is no truer than to say that a clerk is spineless because his vertebrae are warped from disuse and abuse, stooping for a lifetime over a desk. The witcher was an emotional creature once, but they are swept from their homes in the height of nurture and removed to a forlorn castle where mutations and trials strip away their young innocence. Reviled and scorned, the witcher travels alone and so does not learn to love, only to hate. That is what makes them such mercenary defenders of humanity; they have been denied a seat at the table that they guard. It is a difficult life that inevitably leads to death.
After all, no witcher has ever died in their own bed.
Whatever bound Alayna to the past was still in the process of binding her. Her mother’s gift of her to the witcher who saved her life in the woods that day was the act by which Alayna became a witcher. And once a witcher, who could ever turn away? Fit a sword in the hand of a farmer and he will be a soldier until his dying day.
These things Alayna thought until Bryanna interrupted her in a low, clear voice.
“It is a pity that you do not wish to remember your mother. I am sure she was as elaine as you are Alayna.”
“I do not know that word – elaine.”
“Elaine: in the Elder Speech it means fair, beautiful. You see how it is the matron of your name? You do not carry the hardness of your father, but the elaine, the budding flower of your mother. I am sure she was lovely.”
Alayna was almost ready with a blistering retort, but it was never given voice. They had passed around the last bend of the forest and were now visible to the open plains, upon which rode a familiar group of fourteen armed men. The man sporting a pitchfork still held it aloft, now adorned with fresh blood.
“Down, Bryanna,” hissed Alayna. “Flee into the woods where they will not catch you.”
“Nonsense, elayna. They have seen me with you. I know something of fighting – we will dance together, we and they.”
Wordlessly, Alayna drew her steel sword and handed it to the elf. For herself, she drew her silver sword: steel for humans, and silver for monsters. She leaped from the saddle and landed on both feet. Bryanna and the enemy leader alone sat in the saddle with blades drawn. The battle began.
Alayna rushed in with superhuman swiftness. Humans did not possess the same animal instinct as the monsters she hunted. With one blow she swept the legs off the first man, then hewed at the neck of the next. With a loose grip and a curious flick of her wrist, she opened the stomach of one man and the chest of two more at a single blow. Yet valiant though the charge was, nine men remained against two young and unarmored girls who were barely into womanhood.
In the instant that she took to reorient her odds and plan of attack, Alayna found herself surrounded by the four men remaining with clubs in hand. She blocked two blows, felt the third bruise her shoulder and the fourth drive her to her knees. The men closed in, their gripping hands and hard feet kicking and hitting her as she fought for breath. Then a flurry of hoofbeats rushed by. ‘Good,’ Alayna thought. ‘At least one of us will escape.’ But instead, she heard the sound of rent flesh and felt warm blood pool on her leg. She opened her eyes and saw Bryanna’s back, her borrowed witcher’s blade dripping blood. With a quick thrust to the left and then a wide slash to her right, Alayna was surrounded by corpses.
But eight yards away stood three archers with arrows fitted to string. Behind them, smiling, was the leader atop his prancing horse. With the same nasally inflection, he ordered the archers to fire in the condescension of victory. Yet arrows flew not from the pogrom, but from the forest; an arrow sprouted from the chest of the nearest archer, whose arrow flew wildly into the ground. The shaft was colored green in the custom of the elves. The pogrom leader spoke one final command.
“Fire!”
The two archers loosed their arrows, and at twenty paces there was no doubt that both would find their marks. Yet never had they fought a witcher. With the supernatural grace afforded by mutations and years of training, Alayna was able to send the first shaft flying away in two pieces with her blade.
But the second arrow embedded itself firmly in her gut.
She ignored the pain and marched forward. The bloodlust was in her eyes and the remaining men were transfixed by the angel of death. From behind, Bryanna neatly lopped off the head of the man with a pitchfork, and the remaining two barely even noticed.
Alayna marched forward. Blood dripped from her sword, from her forehead, and from her side. The leader turned his horse to flee, but she reached up and pulled him from the saddle. He landed face first in the thick viscous mud.
“Witchers,” she said, “come with two swords. Steel for men, silver for monsters.” She raised her silver blade and let it fall through his heart. She thought of her mother as the bandit breathed his last, the beating of his heart shredding itself against the thick blade. She turned to the archer.
“Men like you sought to waylay a woman in the woods. Because of men like you, I was made to be a witcher. People like you – monsters like you – create monster hunters. Remember that.” She spoke the Igni sign and let her blade fall.
This man would live. He would live without a left hand and with a horribly scarred face, but he would live. As monstrous as they were, people were not monsters. Monsters did not learn from their mistakes. Monsters did not reform themselves. As evil as the pogrom was, the men who made up the pogrom were not Evil. Perhaps the mercy of disfigurement would save this man’s soul.
As for the archers in the woods, Alayna turned but only saw leave rustling in the wind. But Bryanna, daughter of the Aen Seidhe, called out to those who she knew were in hiding.
“Va fail, Aen Seidhe aep Dol Blathanna! Squass’me. Essea va’en aecáemm gvalch’rienn.”
‘Farewell, elves of Dol Blathanna. Forgive me. I am journeying to follow the griffin-sorceress.’ They were brave words, for Alayna knew that at twenty springs Bryanna was considered young among her people. Leaving her people on the brink of death was a difficult choice, but Alayna was glad that it had been made. With Bryanna there was a sense of belonging, a sense of camaraderie that she had not had since childhood. She remembered what it was like to love and trust.
Still, her misgivings betrayed her heart. “Bryanna, your place is with your people. You should help them rebuild.”
“There are enough elves left in the Valley of Flowers to bring our race back into bloom. And they are not the only ones who need to rebuild. They flee for their lives and live in hiding; you are not so different, I think. You hide something from even yourself, and when you find it I will be with you. Perhaps you may have greater courage with a friend at your side.”
There was a sudden sense of kinship between the two girls, as if they were sisters. “We could have been sisters, Bryanna, had my mother been an elf and your father a human.”
“Aye, but mine is buried in the ground and yours is buried in the recesses of your memory.”
“Bryanna,” the beautiful elf turned and looked at her. “My mother’s name was Syrenna. And she was wonderful. Truly elaine. Yet… I cannot remember her face.”
“That is because love keeps no record of wrongs, Alayna. Now show me your castle, your Kaerhen du Loc. I much desire to see its walls and explore its lands.”
They rode into the mountains and soon came upon a part of the land that had been long forgotten by the forces of men, elves, and dwarves. The mountains sheltered them from the wind, and the grass grew long and thick. The animals that lived there had not learned to fear people and stalked the curious pair which rode on horseback. Fox and rabbit and sleepy bear, and above all the falcon. The castle almost blended in with the grey peaks that surrounded it. Three towers rose at varying heights, and the walls ran between them and against the mountain. It was the only home Alayna had known for twelve years.
Bryanna spoke, breaking the silence between them. She had braided Alayna’s tangled hair as they rode. “This Yule I shall grow fat like the she-griffin in her nest of stone by the lake.” Alayna looked back, and Bryanna’s eyes were twinkling. She hugged Alayna about her waist like an older sister would, and Alayna found herself smiling back.
And the Witcher of the Griffin found herself laughing.