Page 40 of Gryphon in Light

This “floating barge” was a strange craft to Kelvren’s eyes. Its hull was like hammered armor, with bulges and ridges to break its way through obstacles. By the look of its creases and scrapes, it had done so for centuries. It hovered above the ground at about the height of the dyheli’s horns. It was not made of wood, although the floating barges that Kel was familiar with from White Gryphon were. It was made of something extremely tough, something he did not recognize at all, and seemed to be made all of a single molded piece, somehow. It had a very shallow keel, so in theory, he supposed, it could be put in the water. This one had been painted very cleverly to blend in with forest undergrowth. Unlike flat-topped cargo barges, this had a sort of living quarters that rose above the deck with sides slanting inward toward each other, ending with a flat roof. The living quarters were where the windows were. The flat roof had a bit of a railing around it, so he supposed things could be tied down up there as long as weather wouldn’t harm them.

Kel walked around it, as the Hawkbrothers untethered the dyheli from the barge, although they didn’t take the harness off him. “So, you’re coming?” he asked the stag.

:I am. I’m Ransem. And you’re Kelvren.: The stag trotted out of the way while the Hawkbrothers secured the barge. :We—the bachelor herd, that is—think that the way the Valdemaran humans are treating you is disgusting. They should have been giving you a procession and a medal! A hundred medals! A dozen hundred medals! One for every life you saved because you stopped the fighting! And prime grazing forever!:

Kelvren was completely taken aback by this, and stood up a little straighter. “Well, thank you, Ransem. But . . . you know,” he continued, because honesty prodded him to it, “. . . it’s politics. I don’t understand it either. But humans are strange.”

Swiftbow looked as if he might say something for a moment, then thought better of the idea.

“So the whole dyheli bachelor herd is coming with us?” he continued, and thought about that as Ransem nodded. “Just how many is that?” he asked, finally, hoping his trepidation did not show. Dozens? A hundred? Tyrsell’s herd was massive. As an extremely powerful Mind-mage, he attracted dyheli from all over and kept them in the herd with his leadership skills.

:Twelve,: said Ransem. :Counting me. Two to tow each of the barges, while two more rest while grazing along the way.:

Kel tried not to sigh. Not as bad as it could have been, but still . . . there was going to be no way to evade anything. Not with a procession of a herd of dyheli and three floating barges, and—

“Ah it’s here!” Ayshen crowed, as he came around a turn in the trail. “I particularly wanted this barge.” The Hawkbrothers finished their tethering and greeted Ayshen with waves and nods. “Kel, do you see those things that look like bolsters along the top of the roof?”

He had, in fact, but had thought they were just there to help confine whatever was tied up there with something soft enough not to damage it. Or perhaps to use as pillows for people sleeping up there.

“Those are canvas flies that can be unrolled to provide a lot of rain shelter. With that, we won’t need rigid tents for you and the others if there are storms.” Kel tilted his head to the side. While he liked the idea that some provision was being made for him—obviously he wouldn’t fit inside those living quarters—and he definitely had had enough of tents, it was “the others” that caught his attention the most.

“How many others?” he asked, warily.

“Four kyree and two tervardi, which Silverfox should be learning about soon. Plus the Hawkbrothers and I think that human you like, Hallock Stavern, is coming.” Hallock! What a strange coincidence that of all the people who could—wait, featherhead. How much of your life so far has been actual coincidence? Someone has to have arranged that. Kel had assumed that once his Healing took, Hallock would recover just fine, but it was good to hear he might be fit enough for this undertaking. Not undertaking in the dead-body sense, if we’re lucky. The hertasi should have conditioned me to it by now, but it still feels odd to be the center of—how to put the feeling—benevolent conspiracies. People cared about him in ways that made the shock and dismay in his life bearable. They nudged things toward his happiness, and he had to admit, at times it made him doubt his worthiness of that much good will. We gryphons tend to act like we’re superior and privileged, above others, but we know that’s a joke. We would die sad, lonely, and ineffective without others. The best I can do is stay appreciative and keep succeeding, so they haven’t wasted their heart on me. I couldn’t bear that.

I have to stay worth it for them.

“And the bondbirds, of course. But the tervardi will sleep in the barges, and so will the bondbirds in a storm. Plus, we’re expanding the superstructure to basically add another deck. Then there is the well stowage, which can be kept comfortably dark. And the kyree, if there’s room, can sleep in the well.” Ayshen seemed very pleased. “Oh, and half a dozen hertasi, of course.”

“How many people do these barges sleep?” This was sounding more and more like a circus to Kel, and less and less like the kind of lean, fast-traveling group he had hoped for.

“Eight each,” Ayshen said brightly. “Maybe ten. Mostly hotbunking. Plenty of room for everybody!”

“Ayshen. ‘Plenty of room’ may mean something very different to a compact, burrowing person like yourself. You sleep stacked on ledges.” Also conspicuous by its absence in Ayshen’s replay was just how many Hawkbrothers were coming. There would be Firesong and Silverfox, of course, and trondi’irn Nightwind, and Nightwind’s partner Snowfire. That was four. Plus two tervardi. Plus Hallock. But how many more Hawkbrothers?

I have to resign myself. This is going to be a circus. And why are tervardi coming along? Kel didn’t know much about tervardi; there weren’t any at Silver Gryphon, and the only encounters he’d had with them at k’Valdemar Vale were when they’d sung for entertainment. Their music was highly valued among the Hawkbrothers. What they were supposed to do on this journey, he had no idea. The tervardi ancestors were songbirds; the tervardi themselves had lost their wings, and now the only signs of that ancestry were the feathers they sported instead of hair, a sort of beak in place of lips, and stubby, bird-like feet that were still useful for perching in trees. Like the gryphons, they had been created by Urtho, the Mage of Silence. Some said he had been looking for a non-raptorial version of a bondbird and had created the human-sized and human-smart tervardi by accident. Kel didn’t believe that. Urtho never created anything by accident.

But tervardi were very fragile, and it didn’t seem to Kel that they belonged on a trip that was likely to run into danger.

But he wasn’t running this. Ayshen was. And after Ayshen, Firesong. Which, realistically, meant Silverfox. I am just so much possibly-will-explode baggage, he grumped a little. It was very, very clear that even though the expedition was ostensibly because of him, he wasn’t going to have any say in it.

“In good weather, you and the tervardi at least will probably want to sleep on the roofs,” Ayshen went on, as if he hadn’t noticed Kel’s silence. “It should be rather nice. I can arrange for weatherproof cushions, or anything else you’d like. We’ll probably set the barges down on the ground when we camp, just to conserve power. There should be more than enough space under the rain-flies for even you to avoid bumping your head.”

Well, that was a generous assessment, seeing as his head would be a good bit higher than the roof-line of the barge on the ground. Still. It would be much, much better than that tent had been. And he’d have dyheli and probably kyree piled around him to keep him company.

Make the best of this, Kelvren, he told himself. Maybe we’ll be so big and strange a group that things will run away from us, rather than being attracted to us.

He prowled around the barge, which, under the direction of a Hawkbrother mage named Sunstone, was slowly dropping into place on the ground. Why tether it, then—oh, of course. So they don’t have to tether and retether it when they want to raise it up. If something caused a loaded barge to start moving, it could hurt someone before they got it stopped again. They’d want to do that at least to practice deploying those rain-flies. Probably they’d practice balancing the load as well. Kel prowled around it, but from a distance. He didn’t want to suck the power out of it, and until it had completely settled down on the ground and everything was made “safe,” there was a very real chance he would do just that if he got too close.

On closer inspection, this thing looked old. And whatever it was made of did not resemble anything in his experience except, perhaps, ceramic—but unladen, it was so light a single Hawkbrother could easily maneuver it around. “Where did these barges come from?” he asked, curiously.

It was Sunstone who answered him. “Would you believe, the ancient Valdemarans? Our records say that they arrived at the Vale that we would turn over to them—a Vale that became the city of Haven—in a huge string of these barges. They didn’t need the things after they arrived here, so we traded for some.”

“But—” Kelvren was about to object that he had never, ever seen an object like this in Valdemar. Sunstone held up his free hand.

“The making of them was a specialty in Kordas Valdemar’s duchy back in the Empire they escaped from,” the Hawkbrother said. He finished pounding in the stake and attaching his tether, and straightened up, giving Kel a nod. “I build boats myself, so I was interested enough to research these barges in our archives. I wish they still made these things. The records say that the Valdemarans told them the hulls were made from some kind of fungus, and that their samples of it didn’t survive the trip. A shame, really.” He knocked his knuckles against the side of the barge; it made a much more “hollow” sound than the same boat made of wood would have. “Weighs almost nothing, takes incredible abuse, and I really hope that fellow that took over Hardorn brought the secret with him, because it would save a lot of time and trees.”

“But wouldn’t that mean that the Valdemarans brought . . . thousands of those barges?” Kel asked, trying to wrap his mind around the idea. “What happened to them all?”