Faroka coughed her way to consciousness. Her lungs burned, but air, not water, filled them.
She opened her eyes upon darkness. She felt a hard, gritty surface beneath her paws. She heard the echoing drip of water, as in a still-forming cave. A large drop spattered on her beak. She smelled damp clay and rancid meat.
The young gryphon heard a scrape of talon and a whisk of feathers.
"Erbek?"
"Faroka?"
Erbek hacked as Faroka had. The Sun Clanner rose and stretched her wings. Her flight limbs met hard surfaces only a claw-span from her body.
"Faroka! What happened?"
Faroka stepped forward. Her beak thumped against a hard object. She lifted a foreclaw and felt one vertical shaft, then another. Metal bars.
"We sank into the stream bed," said Faroka. "Now we are in a dark, wet place. And I, at least, am caged."
"What?"
Faroka heard bangs and scrapes of talon on metal.
"I am caged, too!"
Faroka raised her head and bumped a low roof of bars. Several drops, up until then clinging to the metal, splattered on the stone floor.
"Water drips from above," mused the Sun Clanner.
"So? Water drips in most caverns, Faroka," Erbek pointed out.
"True," said Faroka. She backed up carefully, switching her leonine tail. The bushy tip scraped a solid panel, presumably a door. "However, I am put in mind of our earlier predicament. I think we are below the stream."
Erbek hissed.
"How could we pass from the stream bed into a cavern? The rest of the water should still be pouring in."
"Magic, I suppose," said Faroka. "You realize, of course, that the stream was a trap, baited with gold."
The Bear Clanner did not speak for a moment.
"So the nuggets did not have to be actual nuggets," Erbek finally said, "as long as they glinted authentically in the water."
Faroka sighed.
"I am sorry, Erbek. You were right about the Perimeter."
Erbek's wings brushed metal.
"Believe me, flight-sister, I would love to hang all blame around your neck, but I all but seized you like a cony and dragged you to that damned stream."
The Bear Clanner shut her beak as guttural syllables echoed down some unseen corridor. Faroka did not recognize the words, but the voices were as familiar as the howl of a wolf or the screech of a hawk.
"Arimaspi," whispered Erbek.
"Yes. I had hoped for anyone or anything else, but who else would set such a trap?"
The lion-birds waited tensely until the voices faded.
"A subtle trap," remarked Faroka. "I saw no living thing in or around the brook. And with gold for bait, the One-Eyes will catch more than us."
Erbek rattled her cage.
"We must warn the Eyrie!"
Faroka clorped.
"To do that, friend Erbek, we must first escape."
Time passed. Faroka smelled hay and urine and dung. Some sort of large beast grunted and stamped far away in the darkness. Faroka could see Erbek's body-heat as an orange blur, but all else was hidden.
The gryphons could not turn around in the narrow cages. "Stuck like horses in humans' stables," as Erbek put it.
Faroka lifted her head until her pointed ears brushed the iron ceiling.
"We are not horses," whispered the Sun Clanner. "We are of the supple feline and the wise eagle. The entrances of these prisons lie behind us, so. . ."
The gryphon rolled up like a sleepy cub, pressing her wings close to her body. She touched the top of her head to the damp floor, hooked her foreclaws around the bars closest to the door, and somersaulted.
Faroka's hindquarters jammed against the roof-bars halfway through her roll. Her tail hung by her head. The Sun Clanner growled and wriggled. She thought of her spine as a serpent, a boneless worm. She worked her legs and swatted herself in the beak with her own paws. She twisted left and right.
"Faroka?"
Her hips finally scraped along the bars and plopped down at the front of the cage. She lay for a moment on her back, wings spread up the walls like rumpled curtains.
"Well, now I am back-to-front," she whispered. "Let us refrain from speaking, Erbek, while I examine the door. I hate to think what our hosts would do if they decided we did not enjoy their hospitality."
Faroka scraped beak and claw carefully over the door. All she could find in the utter darkness was the rectangular outline of wood where it fit into a frame.
"Blank on this side," she hissed aloud. "There must be hinges -- bolts --"
She worked her eagle's leg of an arm between the bars. She reached around to the outer side of the door and scraped her claws over the wood.
"We could tear through the doors, given time," she whispered, "but we would make a racket like a forest of beaver."
The Sun Clanner's talons clicked against metal. A bolt, and hanging beneath that --
"Hssst! A lock!"
Faroka withdrew her right forearm and worked her left through the bars on the other side. She raked her talons audibly over metal plates.
"Ah! Hinges!"
"Try to be quiet about it, Faroka," warned Erbek.
From far off came the low echoes of the grunting beast. A crack as of timbers hit by a battering ram reached them.
"Tell him that," suggested the Sun Clanner.
Faroka concentrated on the unseen hinges, but a gryphon's talons interfered with close work.
Think, Faroka! How do hinges work?
There would be loops of metal attached to the frame, and others attached to the door. A linchpin would run through them all.
She picked at one hinge with the needle-sharp tip of a claw. Her claw slipped off without resistance once, twice, three times. Finally, however, it caught in a seam.
She inhaled and picked again. She hooked the seam for longer and longer moments. Eventually the tip of her claw lay well into the gap between the head of the pin and the hinge.
Now -- tug upwards, she told herself.
It was an awkward angle in which to apply pressure, but Faroka pushed steadily.
I am a glacier, creeping slowly down the mountain. I am a tiny tree root, splitting granite. I am power, quiet but inexorable.
The holding pin slowly crept up. It relinquished the last inch in a single jump, and the pin clattered on the floor. Faroka hissed, both in triumph and because of the sharpness of the sound. She waited, but no heavy footsteps clumped their way.
The grunting thing crashed against wood.
"I think our neighbor makes so much noise, the One-Eyes pay it no mind," whispered Faroka.
The Sun Clanner clawed at the second hinge.
Pop. The door jumped out of its frame. The sliding bolt prevented it from dropping to the floor. Faroka worked her talons between the door and frame and twisted. Eventually brads ripped from boards, and the door hung out of the gryphon's way.
Faroka hopped onto the damp floor. She stared in Erbek's direction, eyes wide as an owl's. The orange outline of a gryphon glowed in the darkness.
"This part should fly more swiftly, Erbek," she said.
The Sun Clanner found the hinges of Erbek's prison and hooked the linchpins with her beak. She worked them loose in moments, and Erbek backed out of the narrow cage.
"What now?" asked Erbek. "We are virtually blind, and we are lost in the One-Eyes' tunnels."
She glanced up and winced as a drop hit her beak.
"We will not leave the same way we arrived."
Faroka clorped.
"The One-Eyes emerge onto the surface at night, so there must be corridors leading out."
The grunting thing's angry noises faded. Faroka perked her ears.
"I grow curious about our neighbor," she said.
The gryphons crept like stalking cats, heads low and ears folded. Faroka's half-spread wings brushed the damp walls, and her beak thunked on unexpected turns.
The grunting sounds grew louder. Faroka smelled more hay, sweet with decay. Sharper was the stink of urine and droppings, something like a horse's and something like a mammoth's. The grunting thing's powerful smell spilled like a flood out of an opening ahead.
Faroka tapped her scaly phalanges against the wall. The limestone vanished, replaced by heavy timbers.
"A gate," whispered Faroka as Erbek brushed past. "Our neighbor languishes within."
A gap of two or three inches separated the horizontal beams of the gate. Faroka peered through.
Something milled around idly in the cave-pen beyond. Its body heat outlined it for the gryphons. The beast had the pillar-legs and stringy hair of a mammoth. It was as long as a mammoth as well, but only half as high. It lacked the familiar flapping ears and serpent snout; instead, its boulder-like skull supported two curved horns above the nose, the larger one as long as Faroka's foreleg. It rooted through vegetable matter strewn across the floor.
"A Nose-Horn," muttered Faroka.
"Why would One-Eyes keep a Nose-Horn?" asked Erbek.
"I do not know. Unless. . . It is said that One-Eyes have tried to raise horses and sheep and other beasts, in the manner of humans."
Erbek clorped.
"How well could herd-beasts thrive in lightless, grassless caves?"
"Precisely," said Faroka. "They do not."
Erbek glanced nervously around.
"I still do not understand. Why drag a Nose-Horn down here, if they have trouble keeping sheep? It carries more meat, I'll grant, but --"
Faroka drew away from the gate.
"Erbek, is it not said that Nose-Horns have terrible eyesight? They rely on scent like a hound -- possibly more so. Perhaps the transition to a dark cavern would disturb it less."
Erbek's reply, if any, was drowned out by a yell. A spectral, humanlike image wavered a few wingspreads away, Arctic blue compared to the gryphons' orange. The Arimaspi carried a long rod, invisible where it was not backlit by its body heat, presumably a spear. The gryphons sprang at the creature, regardless.
The cyclopean being vanished into blackness, its bellows still quite audible. Faroka skidded to a halt and called to her companion.
"A One-Eye will flee a gryphon -- but we will not cow a whole warren of them."
"What are we to do?" demanded Erbek. "We cannot even see the tunnels down which we might flee!"
Apelike voices answered the first Arimaspi's cries. Faroka looked back at the orange glimmer of the Nose-Horn. She returned to the gate and felt over its surface.
"Help me free the Nose-Horn!"
Erbek reared up at the other end of the wooden barrier. Faroka found sliding bolts on a greater scale than those of her cage: thick bronze bars around which she could barely close her talons. She pulled on one set, then another. Metallic scrapes told her Erbek did the same.
The shaggy pachyderm snorted and stamped. The voices of the One-Eyes blended in an echoing babble.
"There must be a thousand One-Eyes!" cried Erbek.
"The Nose-Horn should plow a furrow through them," Faroka observed.
"Suppose it doesn't wish to?" asked the Bear Clanner.
"We'll give it incentive!" yelled Faroka.
The gate toppled. The Nose-Horn lifted its head and grunted in puzzlement.
The gryphons scuttled along the edge of the circular pen, one to the left and one to the right. The hairy beast shifted toward Erbek. Faroka leapt on its hindquarters.
"Hai!"
The Sun Clanner sank eagle talons and lion claws through tangled hair. The Nose-Horn bellowed and charged. Erbek sprang aside with a flap of wings. The heavy quadruped pounded out the open gateway.
Faroka dropped from the rhinoceros like a cat.
"Erbek!" she called. "If the beast's nose is more important than its eyes, it might smell its way to the surface!"
The Bear Clanner slapped her wings shut and loped past.
"If we can keep it moving!" she said.
"Hah! Be sure of that!"
Faroka bounded lion fashion beside her companion. She shrieked and sprang and raked her talons down the Nose-Horn's flank. The rhinoceros charged across the invisible cavity beyond its pen. Faroka could judge the size of the grotto only by sound.
Speaking of sound, all the One-Eyes in Sakria must be here!
Blue specters spilled into view on either side of the Nose-Horn. The orange blur of the pachyderm vanished around a corner.
"Keep close to the beast!" cried the Sun Clanner.
By the echoes, Faroka judged that the Nose-Horn had entered a corridor. The One-Eyes threw themselves against the walls to avoid the creature.
One inattentive Arimaspi flew over the Nose-Horn's head and bounced off its withers. The rhinoceros dropped to a trot.
"This is no time to be mud-footed," said Faroka, leaping again on the beast.
The pachyderm jumped forward. It swung its head as if to turn on its tormentors; its huge horn scraped the limestone wall. It galloped on.
Faroka glimpsed a blue glow out of the corner of her eye. She felt the broad pain of a cudgel across her shoulders.
"Yak!" she cried.
"We have to fight, Faroka!" yelled Erbek.
The ghostly forms flowed together behind them like foam in the wake of a ship. The One-Eyes charged.
"Fight in flight, then!" cried Faroka.
The rhinoceros parted another knot of Arimaspi. The cyclopean creatures gaped as it and the gryphons passed, but they gathered their wits quickly and followed.
"Arrgh!" barked Erbek.
A spear hung from the Bear Clanner's side, its handle clattering on the floor. Faroka seized the spear in her beak. She yanked it loose even as they ran.
"Only a sting," cried Erbek. "Keep on!"
The rhinoceros paused at an apparent intersection. It snorted and stamped, finally charging to the right.
From the left a One-Eye materialized, an unseen weapon in its raised hands. Erbek spread her wing and knocked its feet out from under it.
"So much for two-legged walking!" she cried.
Faroka felt a distinct upward slope.
"It does know the way!"
Something flopped over her like a snake from a tree. Her claws snagged a tangle of cords, and she crashed to the floor. Erbek scraped around, fluttering her wings to brake herself.
"A net!" the Bear Clanner reported.
Faroka did not struggle as her friend seized the cords. The Bear Clanner hopped backwards on her hind feet, and the net slid off, plucking a wing covert or two as it passed over Faroka. The Sun Clanner spotted blue auras above.
"There are ledges over us!"
Erbek clacked her beak.
"Good! I like ledges!"
Erect on her haunches, wings spread for balance, Erbek flipped the net at the oncoming One-Eyes. Faroka sprang up at the barely visible ledge.
"Yes!" the Sun Clanner cried as she clambered onto a stony shelf. "Let us rise above this chaos!"
Erbek jumped, a double snap of wings extending her leap. She dropped onto the ledge beside Faroka.
The Sun Clanner trotted off again. The shelf ran for many paces; she could tell by the blue ghosts of One-Eyes, some of which were quite distant.
A not-so-distant Arimaspi held up a net as if it were a shield.
"Not as easy to snare flying fish, eh?" called Faroka.
The One-Eye glanced from side to side. It finally jumped down to the tunnel floor.
Stone met stone with a sharp clat, then a hard missile hit Faroka's neck. She hissed in pain. At least it was not an arrow, but One-Eyes, she knew, commonly bludgeoned gryphons with rocks or clubs, hoping to take them alive. The fate of those so taken -- it did not bear thinking about.
The Sun Clanner perked her ears at the sound of pounding hooves. She shot a glance to the left just in time to see an orange haze recede into the distance.
"Erbek! That way!"
The gryphon launched herself from the overhang. Her primaries brushed the walls of a new tunnel branching from the first. Her wings snapped shut as her feet touched the stone floor. Erbek's claws clacked behind her.
Faroka wheezed through her gaping beak. Gryphons were not built for long runs.
From somewhere ahead came a splintering crack, as if a pine tree had snapped in a gale. Arimaspi voices rose as if in argument. Faroka stretched out in long feline strides.
Over a crest like a hill's ran the gryphons. The marsh-gas glow of the Nose-Horn appeared again, paled by bright streaks from beyond.
The beast smashed into a wooden wall, thought the Sun Clanner. That's daylight out there!
The Nose-Horn had apparently rammed its whole head through the wooden barrier; it snorted and stamped and switched its rope of a tail. Two Arimaspi -- sentries, perhaps -- prodded it with spears.
The barrier stood a wingspread high and wide. The now-loosened planks and beams were obvious over the Nose Horn's shoulders. Faroka narrowed her eyes.
"Perhaps we can take another lesson from the hairy one!" she called. "Follow me!"
She charged the tail end of the rhinoceros. The Arimaspi guards shifted attention from the Nose-Horn to her. One lofted his spear. Faroka dodged it, and a buffet of wing knocked it out of Erbek's way.
Faroka jumped on the back of the immobilized Nose-Horn. She faced the slightly skewed wall of thick planks. One gap was wide enough to admit her long talons. She hooked her claws through.
"Faroka! Beware!"
She looked back to see the second sentry's spear frighteningly near. Erbek's talons closed on the shaft and yanked it and its wielder away.
Faroka pushed with her left foreclaw and pulled with her right.
"Asshur! Lend me your strength!"
The heavy board cracked, and she pushed it away. The light beyond proved to be the wan glow of sunset, but Faroka winced as she might at the brightest lightning flash.
The rectangular opening gave her room to assault a second plank. She pried it from a support beam and clucked at the iron spikes that held it. Angry voices washed like rain over her back.
"Faroka!" cried Erbek.
"Yes, I hear them!"
She caught a third plank and ripped with all her might. She scrambled through the opening, using the rhinoceros' head as a step. She lit on an apron of crumbled scree. She turned as Erbek clambered from the tunnel.
The wall lay in the side of a rocky hill, surrounded by pine trees, brush, and scree. It might have been the sealed entrance of an abandoned mine.
Erbek fluttered down from the Nose-Horn. The pachyderm jerked its head forward and back. Erbek's bronze eyes met Faroka's.
"Faroka -- it cannot break free."
The Sun Clanner clucked her tongue.
"You are not suggesting --?"
Erbek's eyes narrowed.
"We would have gone nowhere without it."
"Very well."
The gryphons flanked the Nose-Horn. The creature bellowed as the One-Eyes took out their anger on it.
Faroka seized a vertical beam. A pale Arimaspi clambered into view on the rhinoceros' back; the gryphon screeched and slashed its arm with her beak. The One-Eye disappeared like a gopher.
Faroka held one support; Erbek, on the other side of the horned beast, grabbed a second. The Sun Clanner set her lion paws on the side of the rhinoceros' head. A black pearl of an eye glared at her.
"Sorry," she said.
She pulled, calling again on Asshur, and mentioning Karuta and Ziz just to be safe. The timber in her claws cracked and splintered. It fell away; she almost fell with it, her talons stuck in the beam like nails.
Erbek ripped loose the support on her side. A kick from the pachyderm's forehoof sent boards flying. The gryphons hopped and fluttered like ravens.
"Enough!" yelled Faroka.
The gryphons beat their wings as the Nose-Horn avalanched out of the hillside. They rose over the hummock as the first of the One-Eyes braved the surface world. The axes and clubs lofted at them missed by laughable margins.
The two gryphons sailed over the frost aspen. The Great Eyrie lay ahead, atop mist-shrouded Mount Lattipor.
"You know, Faroka," remarked Erbek, "we are not terribly overdue. We could simply refrain from mentioning our transgression."
Faroka clorped.
"We must warn the Folk of the gold-baited stream."
"We will be put on Disposal Duty until the next Cataclysm," argued Erbek, snapping her wings in irritation. "And without an ounce of gold salvaged for our troubles."
Faroka hissed.
"Erbek, the Little Bird already tells me to forget the stream and the One-Eyes. I don't need a chorus. We can say that you tried to stop me, but that I sailed beyond the frost aspen while you fretted lawfully at the perimeter."
Erbek clacked her beak.
"Do not try for martyrdom, Faroka. You are not the type. We both transgressed; if you own up, so shall I."
The young gryphons sailed over the bushy tops of a thousand pines.
"I will point out, however, that it was your idea," finished Erbek.