As he was poking around its roots, a chirping from above made him look up.
There was a bird’s nest built between two small branches high up in the tree. A bird was sitting in it; he could just make out its tail.
Arren grinned. He unlaced his boots and put them aside, and then pulled himself into the branches. His toes were long and flexible, and he nimbly scaled the tree until he was as high as he could reach, just high enough to be within grabbing distance of the nest.
The mother bird flew off when she saw his hand coming, and he groped his way over the side of the nest and into the bottom, straining to stretch his arm as far as it would go. Sure enough, his fingers brushed against the warm shells of three eggs. He picked them out one by one and ate them raw, perched there in the branches like a possum. They tasted delicious.
Some of his hunger satisfied, he began to climb back down. When he was at the halfway point, he heard the sound of rustling grass and froze instantly. The rustling came again. It was coming from the base of the tree. Something was moving down there. Arren looked down, searching for movement, and eventually spotted something in the undergrowth beneath the tree. It was far too small to be a human, and he relaxed and continued to climb down, watching closely. Maybe it was something he could catch.
There was more rustling, and then he saw it properly. It was a huge lizard, nearly as long as he was tall, its throat pulsating gently. It was examining his boots, its great thick tongue flicking in and out.
Arren descended to another branch, moving as slowly and quietly as he could. The lizard still hadn’t spotted him. He shuffled out onto the branch until he was just above it, tensed and dropped.
He landed inches away from the lizard, which turned and dashed off at high speed. Arren went in pursuit, his robe snagging on the bushes. The lizard’s legs were short; he caught up with it in a few strides and then pounced. He landed squarely on top of it, knocking it flat on its stomach. The lizard struggled, its entire body thrashing with astonishing strength. Its tail whipped at him, and as Arren tried to pin it down it turned itself onto its back and tore at him with its claws. One caught him on the back of the hand, cutting him, but the others snagged in the thick fabric of his robe, unable to penetrate it. Arren could feel the lizard wriggling its way out from beneath him, and knew that if it reached the nearest spice-tree he would never be able to get it down again. He snatched up a rock from the ground and bashed it over the head. The blow didn’t kill it but did manage to stun it. Quick as thought, he grabbed it by the head and twisted its neck hard. There was a dull snap and the lizard began to twitch and convulse violently, its mouth opening wide to hiss. Arren flicked it over onto its stomach and bashed its head in with the rock, and it finally became still.
Flushed with triumph, he carried the dead lizard to the fireplace and began to gather more wood. He’d eaten lizards like this one before, and they had rich, fatty flesh. He could live off one this big for days.
It took a while to build up the fire again; fortunately there were still some coals that had a bit of heat left in them, and he added some dry grass and blew gently on it until it caught. Once it was ablaze he added twigs and leaves and then a couple of larger branches, working patiently until the fire was going again. This done, he took his knife from his belt and turned his attention to the dead lizard. His stomach was already rumbling in anticipation as he skinned and gutted it. The flesh was thick and oily; evidently this lizard had been eating well recently. It would taste delicious.
As he was sharpening a stick to serve as a crude spit, he heard the sound of wings from overhead and looked up sharply.
But it was only Skandar. The black griffin had spotted him and was coming down to land. Arren shuffled back a little way to give him room, and he landed in the middle of the clearing, his four huge paws hitting the ground with scarcely a sound. He paused to preen his wings and then came toward the fire, his tail swinging gently behind him.
“Good morning,” said Arren. “How was the hunt?”
Skandar paused and looked at him. “No food,” he said briefly. His speech was slow and clumsy, though Arren had been helping him to improve.
“That’s not good,” said Arren. “You could try hunting on the ground. There’s a few ground-bears around and some rabbits, I think.”
Skandar came closer, ignoring him.
“Well, maybe the next place we go to will be better,” Arren went on. “There could be some sheep there for you.”
Skandar wasn’t looking at him. Arren realised with a horrible start that the griffin was intent on the dead lizard.
He got up sharply. “No, don’t even think about it, that’s m—
oof!
”
Skandar knocked him aside almost casually and snapped up the lizard. He swallowed it whole with scarcely a pause.
Arren got up. “
Skandar!
That was
mine
, damn it!”
Skandar looked at him and then started to groom.
Arren rubbed his forehead, trying to restrain his temper, “Listen, you greedy idiot, you can’t take other people’s food like that. I’ll starve if you keep doing it.”
Skandar glanced up. “Not understand,” he said, clicking his beak.
“Yes you do,” Arren snapped. “You understand perfectly well. Don’t try and get around me with that excuse. I caught that lizard. If you wanted one, you should have caught your own.”
Skandar yawned. “We go now?” he said.
Arren could see he wasn’t going to get anywhere. “Fine. We might as well.”
Skandar watched while he kicked dirt over the fire to put it out and then scattered the ashes as far as he could. He had left his sword leaning against a tree, and now he picked it up and strapped it to his back, making sure it was secure. Once he’d checked the campsite for anything that might have been left behind, he approached the griffin as slowly and respectfully as he could.
“Can I get on?” he asked.
Skandar regarded him for a moment, then crouched low to the ground and waited.
Arren climbed onto his back, being careful not to pull out any of his feathers, and settled down in the space between his neck and wings. It had taken a lot of persuasion to get the griffin to agree to this; to begin with Arren had had to put up with being carried in Skandar’s claws like prey. In the end, though, he’d explained to Skandar that carrying him on his back would both let him fly faster and leave his talons free.
Riding a griffin was harder without tack; Arren leant back as Skandar straightened up, and then put his arms around the griffin’s neck and held on as tightly as he dared. Skandar made a short, rough dash across the clearing and then leapt, his wings opening wide. They beat hard at the air, lifting the pair of them in a brief and unstable prelude to true flight before he found his balance and settled into a glide.
Arren relaxed his grip and sat back a little. Riding a griffin wasn’t as easy as it looked; human beings were heavy, and griffins weren’t built to carry large burdens over long distances. Making a sudden move or leaning too far in any direction could unbalance a griffin in flight, and that could have all kinds of unpleasant consequences, from making the griffin lose control and fall or collide with something, to simply causing it to become angry and refuse to carry such an inept rider any further. Fortunately, Arren had been trained and was fairly competent in the air. And over the last few months he had had a great deal of practice.
The sun was well up by now, and as Skandar flew high over the treetops, its light reflected off the silver feathers that covered his front half. He was not all black; no griffin was entirely one colour. But his furred hindquarters were: Arren had noticed that even the pads on his back paws were black. The rudder of feathers on the end of his tail was white, and his wings were mottled with black, silver and white. His scaly front legs and his beak were black, and so were the two pointed tufts of feather that grew over his ears, but the feathers on his neck and chest were silver. Arren had never seen or heard of a griffin with this sort of colouration; silver was uncommon though not unheard of, but as far as he knew there had never been a black griffin anywhere.
When they had first met, Skandar’s feathers had been thick and strong and his fur glossy with health. But the time he had spent caged behind the Arena had changed that. Now there were two rings of pale, weak scales on his forelegs—scars left by the manacles he had worn—and there was a patch on his neck where the feathers had not yet finished regrowing after the collar had rubbed them away. And there were scars and bald patches on his hindquarters and chips in his beak, relics of his many fights against both humans and griffins.
One of them had been against Arren himself.
Skandar’s condition made Arren feel slightly ashamed, but he knew that he, too, was far from a picture of health and perfection.
At twenty years old—he had celebrated his last birthday in prison—he was tall and lean, almost gaunt. He’d always been thin, but months of poor and sporadic food supply had made him even thinner. His face was pale and angular, with a raised, twisted scar on one cheek that looked almost like a tear track. He had curly black hair that had grown long and wild and permanently tangled—much to his dismay—and he had a pointed beard, which had also become unkempt and needed trimming. His eyes, too, were black—cold and glittering and wary—and the ragged robe that was his only garment had once been black as well, though now it was stained and grubby. It had no collar, and thus there was nothing to hide the deep, ugly scars on his neck. There were dozens of them, making a ring clear around it, like a necklace. It looked as if he had been stabbed repeatedly with a dozen small daggers.
Arren rubbed the scars without thinking, and sighed. He hadn’t seen another human in a very long time; neither of them dared go too close to inhabited areas. The trouble was that he was too recognisable, even on his own. Northerners were fairly common in Cymria, but not Northerners like him. No-one would look twice at a Northerner under normal circumstances; after all, slaves were hardly worth looking at. But a
free
Northerner—one without a collar or a brand—would attract attention straight away. Even if he managed to go on his way without being harassed, people would remember him. And then they would tell other people, and sooner or later a griffiner would hear about the wild-looking Northerner with the scar on his face.
By now they all must know that he was a wanted man. The different griffiner-owned city states were not unified by a single ruler, but they were allies. Capturing and handing over a fugitive would be an excellent way to foster good relations with a neighbour, and no Master or Mistress of an Eyrie anywhere in the country would want to be discovered harbouring someone who had committed his crimes. Stealing a griffin chick was enough to warrant an immediate death sentence, but murdering a griffiner was a hundred times worse.
Arren knew perfectly well that if he was ever caught he would be hideously punished, most likely tortured to death. Unspeakable things had happened to the few people found guilty of killing a griffiner. They had been burned at the stake, buried alive, starved to death, cut up and fed a piece at a time to vengeful griffins—punishments that would never be meted out to any criminal but the very worst and most hated of all.
Why am I afraid?
he thought, and not for the first time.
Why should any of that scare me? I’m already dead
.
But he knew why. He could still be hurt. He could still feel pain. And if those things happened to him …
Arren shuddered and held on to Skandar to reassure himself. The black griffin wouldn’t let anything happen to him, not while he could still fight. He had already saved Arren’s life several times. Whatever his faults were as a travelling companion, he would always protect his human partner.
The only problem, Arren knew, was that they had nowhere to go. They were trying to reach Norton—a town that was part of Eagleholm’s territory—but Arren didn’t have a map or much idea of how to navigate. He knew it was north of Eagleholm, and indeed they had been heading north, or at least roughly north, but Arren had an unpleasant feeling that they were too far west. At this rate they would reach the Northgate Mountains before they got anywhere near Norton, and the idea of turning back from there wasn’t at all attractive. Skandar wasn’t much help, either; until their flight from Eagleholm he’d never flown anywhere outside of the Coppertop Mountains, where he was born, and he had no knowledge or experience of long-distance travel. He seemed content to fly wherever Arren suggested, apparently believing that his partner knew things and had skills he lacked.
Arren could understand why; to Skandar, all humans had mysterious powers. And he, Arren, had had the power to capture him and put him in a cage and then take him to Eagleholm, where he had sold him to the Arena. In Skandar’s mind, Arren had the power to make cages, and therefore the power to unmake them. And he was the only human at Eagleholm the griffin had known back in his old home. Therefore, the black griffin had decided that Arren was the key to escaping and going home. He must have formulated a plan of some kind, though when and how Arren didn’t know.
The punishment for stealing a griffin chick was death. But while waiting for his sentence to be carried out, Arren had been offered an alternative: volunteer to fight in the Arena and win his freedom. He agreed, but insisted that he fight the black griffin, alone. After all, it had killed Eluna, and perhaps this would be his chance for revenge.