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‘What are you waiting for, Roargh?’ asked Shrii. ‘Pluck out one of your three feathers and give it to the humans. Perhaps it will console you to think that by doing that, you are paying your dead king’s battle debts.’
Ben felt Barnabas gripping his arm. Maybe the Pegasus foals were not lost after all.
‘Suppose I don’t pay them?’ retorted Roargh. ‘Will you set your dragons on me?’
Tattoo gave vent to a growl.
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ said Shrii. ‘No. I’ve seen all the fighting I want to for the time being. You have two passions that I don’t share, Roargh: for war and for gold. Give the humans the sun-feather, and I will give you my share of Kraa’s treasure.’
Roargh’s eyes widened with distrust. And greed. That was a royal price to pay. No one knew better than Roargh how much gold Kraa had hoarded in his long life. All the same, Ben could see that he would rather have eaten them all, probably tearing TerTaWa and Kupo to pieces first. But Firedrake and Tattoo never took their eyes off Roargh. Curse the lindworms! They were looking at him as calmly as if they owned the world. Yet they didn’t seem to have the faintest wish to rule it. Roargh imagined crunching their scales in his beak like seashells. But he remembered the stony figure of Kraa only too clearly.
‘Well, why not?’ he croaked. ‘Give me your share and they can have the feather.’
Shrii nodded to TerTaWa.
The hatch over the treasure was secured with hundreds of knots. Kraa’s lorises had tied them, and only they could undo them. But Kupo had been one of those lorises for long enough to know how.
The treasures that she and TerTaWa heaped up before Roargh’s claws were of enormous value: the crowns of long-forgotten kings, silver-plated chainmail worn by Kraa in equally long-forgotten battles, golden circlets that he had used to adorn his paws like bangles…
One of those looked very familiar to Twigleg, and he was not the only one to have noticed it. TerTaWa reached for it before it rolled over to Roargh’s beak and put it in Barnabas’s hands. ‘I think this is yours, Greenbloom,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Kraa will ask no more payment.’
As Barnabas thankfully put Bagdagül’s bangle in his pocket, Roargh dug his beak into the treasures with as much relish as if he were going to warm himself on the gold.
‘See that! Shrii isn’t just brave, our friend is also clever,’ Barnabas whispered to Ben. ‘He’s sowing discord among his enemies. Do you see how enviously the other griffins are staring at Roargh?’
Roargh straight
ened up, with his claws planted on his loot. Then he pushed his beak into the plumage around his neck, plucked out a feather and threw it at Barnabas’s feet.
Barnabas bowed as if he didn’t notice the hatred in the griffin’s eyes.
‘I will treat this feather with the utmost respect, Roargh,’ he said. ‘I know it was won with great courage.’
The griffin moved his head, and for the first time looked at Barnabas with a touch of interest.
‘That feather grew when I killed three sand basilisks who were foolish enough to attack our nests. It was ten times ten years before the colour turned golden. Don’t tell me what you want it for, or I might kill you after all!’
Yes, he might well have done that very thing.
Barnabas was careful not to pick the feather up too quickly.
‘Will Shrii grow a sun-feather for today’s fight?’
‘Very likely,’ growled Roargh. ‘And I hope one day a human comes along wanting that feather. But a more warlike human than you, glass-eyes. One who will repay Shrii’s treachery by drenching this island in his blood!’
Then he turned abruptly, and with his beak he beckoned several monkeys over to his gold.
Barnabas stroked the tawny down of the feather. Yellow loam came off, colouring his fingers, and the feather began to shine as if the light of the sun were nesting in it.
Ben hardly knew what to do with himself, he felt so happy. They had done it. They had actually done it!
Shrii was standing beside Firedrake and Tattoo. Barnabas went up to him and bowed so low that his glasses almost slipped off his nose.
‘Noble Shrii!’ he said. ‘I must confess that before I came here I did not have a very high opinion of griffins. But you have taught me better!’
Shrii gracefully returned the bow.
‘And I did not have a very high opinion of your species, Barnabas Greenbloom,’ he replied. ‘Maybe we should choose our friends not by their species but by what their hearts are like?’
