nearly squashing him, but he struggled out from beneath her and began to arrange her body, gently folding her legs in under her belly and curling her tail around her body. He pulled her wings over her like a shroud, and lifted her head in his hands. “Here,” he whispered to her. “You can sleep here, Eluna. You’re safe now.” He kissed her beak and pulled a feather from her neck. “I’ll come back. We’ll meet again, Eluna. I promise.”
Letting go of her was one of the hardest things he had ever done in his life. He climbed out of the hole, clutching the feather to his chest, and stood there for a time looking down at Eluna’s still form. She looked so peaceful. As if she were only sleeping.
Arren’s fingers curled around the feather, gripping it so tightly it threatened to snap. He tucked it into his tunic and began to fill in the hole.
Once he was done, he sat down on the mound of earth that marked Eluna’s last resting place, wrapped his arms around his legs and put his chin on his knees. Nearby the villagers had dragged some uncut fence posts into the field and were lashing them together into a crude cage around the black griffin. The creature was hissing helplessly at them, its tail thrashing like a headless snake. Arren watched it all through dull eyes, not really taking in what he was seeing. He felt numb and empty, as if reality had fled away from him, rendering him nothing but a mindless shell, unable to feel or think.
People came to him and tried to get him to return to the village, but he wouldn’t move or speak, or even look at them. When they gently tried to pull him away by force he shrugged them off, and after that he was alone, in the cold and the wet, listening to the rain drumming on the ground.
He huddled silently on the grave and closed his eyes, but the blackness only showed him a picture of Eluna. Eluna dying in front of him, her blood soaking into the ground and staining his hands. He opened his eyes again and stared blankly at his hands. The blood was still there, ingrained in the skin with the mud and sweat. He tried to wipe it away, but it wouldn’t come off. Arren shuddered again and buried his face in his hands.
The cage was nearly completed by now. People had fetched planks and were sliding them under the griffin to create a rough floor. The griffin had given up on its struggling and was lying still, eyes half-closed in a hopeless kind of way. Arren wondered if it had any notion of what awaited it.
He looked away. What did he care?
“Sir!”
Arren paid no attention.
“Sir, look! Sir, look up there!”
The words finally got through to him, and he looked up vaguely. The people building the cage had stopped their work and were chattering excitedly and pointing at the sky.
Arren looked up, the rain splattering onto his face, and saw three dark shapes circling against the grey cloud that had gathered. Winged shapes. Too big to be birds.
Arren looked away again. The three griffins landed in the field not far away, and their riders dismounted. Arren was woken from his stupor by their voices, and he allowed himself to be hauled to his feet and led out of the field.
They took him to one of the houses and made him lie down on a table, where they took off his tunic and began to clean the wound in his chest. It was deep and ragged and began to bleed again as they carefully removed the dirt. Arren winced and closed his eyes. A hand patted his shoulder. “It’s all right, just lie still, you’re going to be fine.”
Fine! Arren felt like laughing. He kept still as a herbal paste was applied to the wound, and sat up so they could wrap a bandage around his torso.
“There, all done. You’ll be all right.”
Arren looked up and saw the face of one of the senior griffiners from Eagleholm. “Deanne?”
She clasped his hand. “Arren Cardockson—my gods, you look terrible. Where is your griffin?”
Arren stared at the floor. “She’s dead,” he whispered.
The three griffiners glanced at each other. “Oh, Arren,” said Deanne. “I’m so sorry.”
“How did it happen?” one of the others asked.
Arren’s hands clenched. “She was . . . trying to protect me.”
“From that brute of a wild griffin,” the other griffiner finished.