Page 1 of Gryphon in Light

PROLOGUE

Valdemar has weathered the Mage Storms, and all the nations and peoples of Velgarth work to stabilize in the aftermath. In the north of Valdemar, Darian and his compatriots have returned from their quest to find Darian’s parents. Errold’s Grove, Kelmskeep, and the newest Hawkbrothers Vale, k’Valdemar, forge ahead alongside the western refugees, while in the east, ancient Iftel has opened its borders for the first time, and to the east and south, Hardorn and Karse are no longer the threats they once were.

The trouble now, though, is from within. A trade baron named Farragur Elm and a coalition of major tradesmen, distributors, and warehousers have seized all resources in the vicinity of Deedun and created a putative secessionist movement, using the entire—stolen—livelihoods of the region’s workers as leverage. The strong arm of the plan is a mercenary force, once under Haven’s pay, hired over to Elm’s side. The Crown has sent Heralds, Guard regulars, and Cavalry to test the situation. And k’Valdemar—sent gryphons. Or rather, a gryphon.

Kelvren. The Brave. Or at least, that is what he likes to call himself . . .

Second Guard Hallock Stavern fought toward consciousness, only to find that his eyes had been glued shut.

There was a feeling that he knew was pain, but it was of such magnitude that it was not a part of him—instead, he was just a bit of flotsam tossed around on its churning flow. Hallock felt only a sickening detachment. His awareness of his body extended as far as knowing he had limbs—two legs, yes, and arms—two of them. Breathing created a heaving pull of muscle that seemed to roll upward and never recede quite as much in return. Moving his hands was no more productive, because Hallock’s body seemed to be restrained by a web of thick syrup. At least that was how it felt, insofar as he could feel anything with certainty. He couldn’t move by his own volition, but as best he could tell he was moving. Carried—that must be it. He was being carried.

Hallock moved his head to the left and right, feeling wet webbing restricting the sway of his head and neck. The viscous glue that held his eyes shut cracked, apparently dry at the edges, but then returned to pool in his eyes, dimming what little he saw. His right eyelid reluctantly slit open enough for Hallock to perceive a lurching view of sky and trees. Vertigo made them spin around him.

That wholly unwelcome vision provided enough added disorientation that he gave up on consciousness as a place of residence. For an unknown amount of time, he would only be an occasional visitor there.

Hallock found awareness and memory returning in sporadic fits. There were recollections of the skirmish, the fallback, and the formation for retreat. Then, the peculiar memory of falling to the ground, watching an arrow fall with him. That much he remembered, as clear as remembering his last birthday or his daily sword drills. In memory, he was on a dapple-gray stallion named Dughan. Hallock had been yelling a break order to his company third, and then he found himself spinning sideways. He hadn’t intended to. As the ground came up to meet his face, he remembered seeing a great war arrow dropping along with him. Its bladed tip was as long as his own sword hand, barbed in well-cut triangular serrations, and it was trailing a line of slow-falling blood. He struck the earth, left shoulder first, then rolled to his side and onto his back. He remembered seeing a riderless horse churning the earth to run away. His vision narrowed in from all sides and that was the end of the memory.

Then there was the vague memory of jostling and trees, and the unsettling vertigo, and being carried. Then—nothing for what could have been weeks.

When Hallock regained awareness of his own being, it was from feeling his eyes being prodded at. There was a voice, murmuring a reassurance in Valdemaran. It didn’t register just yet what the specific words were. Even though that sensation of tremendous full-body disorientation was still present, he knew someone was messing about with his eyes, and that was truly annoying. He hazily realized that the clinging goo that had blocked his vision had been congealed blood, and plenty of it. He lifted his right hand to swat the offending “help” away, but his arm didn’t respond as expected. There was a movement, to be sure, but his hand might have been waving a baton in front of the Company Chorus, as far as he could tell.

“Just stay still until I get you cleaned up, sir,” the voice insisted, and Hallock felt his arm being put at his side. There, at last, was a point of reference. A nudge of his left hand against his hip confirmed that it was in a similar position. Left leg—kick. Not quite. More of a twitch.

“Sir, you aren’t helping,” the voice snapped, with clear exasperation.

“Is he giving you trouble, Birce?” another voice called out from afar.

“I’ve had worse,” the voice responded close by Hallock’s face. “I’ve had to patch up Heralds before. They think they’re ready for action with two broken legs and a hangover. This one’s just twitching right now because he had his bell rung, I think. Could you come over here for a look?”

There was still a surreal element in all of this. Reason told him that he was hurt and being attended by Healers, but to Hallock it felt like it was happening to someone else. He was aware he was alive and that things were not right. There was something where pain should have been, pain that somehow didn’t hurt him as much as it filtered out anything in his mind that made normal sense. Fear, logic, or linear thought were immaterial. Time was just an unneeded detail, discarded in favor of a floaty haze.

Hallock sucked in a deep breath and had an inexplicable sensation that he couldn’t exhale as much as he’d drawn in. His forehead felt the size of a horse regiment, and it throbbed like a regiment’s hoofbeats with his pulse. The sensation of pressure was relentless, in his lungs and in his head. The Healer attending him held a glass vial to his crusted lips and poured a syrup into his mouth, which somehow absorbed into his tongue and throat and never got any fur—

Hallock surged upward in a cry of pain, very much awake. Full consciousness rushed in. To say that he suddenly “hurt” would be like saying that Lake Evendim was “damp.” His eyes came open suddenly, and he found himself on a cot, looking up at stained and patched canvas strung with cords holding dozens of bright oil lamps. Clots of blood, still stuck to his eyelashes, blotted out most details. The dozens of slightly different shadows cast by the individual lamps complicated the view further, mixed with the dazzle from the pain. Hands pushed him back onto the cot even as he already felt himself falling backward, and the two healers in attendance were practically screaming at him to calm down. Hallock realized that they were screaming to be heard over his own howls of pain, and pulled himself together enough to lower his utterances down to a series of groans.

“Sir . . . sir, I’m going to give you something for your pain,” the one apparently named Birce told him as he propped his head up from the cot. “Stavern, right? Second Officer Stavern? I had to get you awake and cleaned up first, I’m sorry. I know that was unpleasant. Things will be better. I’m Senior Healer Birce Bedrin. Drink this.” Birce. I know that name. Birce Bedrin.

Birce Bedrin, heavyset but clearly strong, was not in the best of shape himself; his own neck and temple had small bandages, and several uncovered abrasions and bruises graced his businesslike midlands features. His accent was upper-class Haven, but this was obviously a man who was unafraid to be in the thick of mud and muck to do a job.

“Just—” Hallock began, then grimaced as a cupful of some cold, thick, and lumpy juice laced with something tasting of charred bark was all but poured down his throat. “Just get me an officer in here to report.”

“Soon, sir. Sorry about the taste. Devon’s going to get someone for you as soon as he can. Devon?” Birce looked around to find the only other man in the spacious tent. “Devon, the Second here needs an officer from his unit.”

“Sixteenth Regiment, Third Company,” Hallock murmured, and heard it repeated to the other man more loudly. Devon was thinner than Birce by half, with the swarthy skin of a far southerner, and hair as black as coal. Devon gave Birce a significant look, and the senior Healer excused himself, wiped his blood-caked hands on his Greens, and went to confer further at the tent entry. Devon nodded and left, flipping the tent flap aside with a hint of frustration.

What Hallock saw hanging from the tent flap filled his attention entirely, all pain and misery forgotten in a moment of dread. It was horrible to contemplate. And a wave of nausea swept him as he looked at it. Just a ribbon. Just a simple ribbon. But oh, not so simple after all. Just last week had found him walking with Genni under trees laden with fragrant white blossoms in the narrow presentation walk in front of the Guard house. Genni, with her lovely light brown eyes, and her dreams of the future and their children, had lovingly taunted him that they would grow old together as great-grandparents before he retired from the Guard.

He had known and trained with enough Healers to recognize what was tied to the tent’s closure tab and what it meant. It was a loosely knotted yellow ribbon—one knot indicated “one patient.”

And yellow, in Healer sorting code, meant “unlikely to survive.”

A sullen-looking man in a Guard-blue undershirt and riding pants lurked around the tent’s doorway as a light spattering of raindrops tapped at the stretched canvas of the tent. He wore a uniform cap with Support bars and looked as weary as if a horse had been riding him. He didn’t give his name, but related a briefing from four respectful steps away that allowed Hallock to piece together the order of occurrences that had put him here in this isolated tent. The candlemark of steady medicinal fluids had made Hallock lucid enough to realize the impact of the past days’ events.

Haven’s Sixteenth Guard Regiment had been sent at point, with three companies of light horse and moderate support following a day behind, to reinforce Lord Breon’s household troops after reports of a particularly nasty trade dispute. On the way there, the Herald who rode with the captain warned that the situation was bad enough that there was a possibility of encountering a full insurrection around Deedun. The word was that a former city magistrate named Farragur Elm had been propped up by twenty or more major trade barons and declared “Chancellor of Prosperity,” a pompous title at best. He was reportedly already making declarations about a fledgling nation claiming independence from Haven, in the northwest of Valdemar. Secession was not forbidden in Valdemar, but this coup was apparently being built upon goods seized from honest tradesmen, expressly for the purpose of staging the secession. The illegality of that was clear, but what was clearer—and had brought the troops out—was news from Kelmskeep that entire villages had found their expected income cut out from under them. Entire taxpaying villages of loyal citizens, to be more specific.

When a Herald returned with word from Deedun that a mercenary force under contract to the Crown had been hired out from under Valdemar by this Chancellor, the Guard mobilized. When it was realized that the Herald was a circuit rider evicted from Deedun at swordpoint, the response from Haven took on an entirely different feel. This wasn’t a trade dispute, it was an insurrection.

The problem with Hallock Stavern and his fellow Guards being dispatched to assist Lord Breon, though, was that Deedun was between Haven and Lord Breon’s hold of Kelmskeep. The Terilee River ran as strong as ever on the eastern side of Deedun, and the only main route was the trade road north from Haven. This was, he’d suspected at the time, a testing mission to get a feel for the resolve of the insurrectionists’ hired swords when they saw troops of some kind on the move toward them.