1.81

The Young Griffon

On the third day, we sent the sea dog home.

The lands of Thracia were an unmarked expanse of snow capped mountain ranges and lush river valleys, with civilized settlements slim to none. My own Scarlet City had nestled itself between two mountain ranges and straddled a river, but the monuments and workings of stone that a city state required had altered that landscape in a profound way. Made it difficult to truly compare the land of my birth to these northern wilds.

Fertile land was a luxury in the greater western colonies that the Scarlet City presided over. And the lush fields on the outward facing edge of the eastern mountain range were a key contributor to an otherwise lackluster agricultural profile. Coarse bush plains and gnarled groves of olive trees were the norm, and so when it came time to fill his stomach, a man’s focus was drawn most often to that crystalline Ionian and the bounty beneath her waves. We had our grazers and our fleet-foots of course, and natural treasures besides – sulfur and salt most prominent among them. The title of bread basket, however, was firmly out of reach for us.

What I had seen so far of Thracia could have grasped that lofty title, and in the future still could if finer hands refined it. Lush fields of green and earth that sank beneath your feet, mountain basins full and overflowing with crisp clear water from the region’s frequent rains. The tribal nations themselves were an unfortunate stain, with their roving vagrant cities of wagons and temporary constructions.

The region made up for them, though. For every gangly red haired Thracian in a ridiculous hat and pants, there were hundreds of timeless pine trees and fruit bearing junipers within shouting distance of the Ebros river’s winding banks. Wild boar abounded in the thickets of their forests along with burnt auburn foxes and golden orioles. The good existed in far greater number than the Thracians, almost enough to forget them entirely.

And it was still only winter. This far north, that meant something. Closer to the Aegean, on the southern coast where the Greek colonies within Thracia were clustered, the chill was mild enough that the vineyard we had offered our sacrifice in was only lightly frosted over. But the further we progressed, the more frigid it became. Brutal Boreas had hidden half the nation beneath his winter veil, and it was still a marvel of natural fertility.

By our third day all the world seemed painted white, and every breath emerged as steam. The woolen heat of my new Thracian cloak was a substantial barrier against the chill, though it wasn’t as if I needed it. A true son of scarlet mystery was never bothered by heat, or lack thereof. Still, it had been a nice gesture from a friendly foreigner, so I wore it anyway.

Scythas bore it with a Hero’s advanced constitution, taking by heart flame what nature denied him and whistling the occasional tune to disrupt the breezes that carried the worst of the cold. The girl, though never properly anointed in light of dawn or dusk, was equally unbothered. A product of Heroic flame or oracular inheritance, or more likely both. Sol suffered the chill as he did most things in his life – with stoic resignation.

The old sea dog we had brought along to help Scythas guide us seemed least affected of all, despite being the oldest and most frail by far. If anything, his expression grew brighter and his off-key singing warmer the further north we went.

Until we reached the reason for it, the humble frozen settlement among a hundred of its type that Khabur had once called home.

Even had I tried, I couldn’t have distinguished between the wandering city of tribals ahead of us and the ones we’d left behind us. The Korpiloi closest to the coast, or the Brenae above them. The distinction his eyes saw might have been in the patterns sewn into the cloaks and hanging tapestries that lined the tents and wagons of the nomad city, the blankets tucked around their children’s shoulders or over their horses’ backs. Maybe it was their silly hats.

More likely, he saw it in their faces.

Old Khabur slid off his horse with a young man’s haste, a whispering compression of snow beneath his odd fawnskin boots when he landed. He had wasted no time acquiring regional attire when we landed days ago, spending all that he had managed to earn while using Nikolas’ heroic vessel as a fishing skiff. He looked ridiculous, with his colorful hemp cloak and his phrygian fox cap, to say nothing of the variegated bags his people called pants. But donning them had visibly moved him, and now he looked right at home with the vagrant city just down the frozen hill we’d crested.

The old Thracian sea dog stared longingly at his nomad city, but he took only one step towards it.

“I don’t suppose this is our stop?” he asked Scythas, forcefully clearing his throat when his voice cracked partway through.

“No,” the Hero of the Scything Squall denied, though it pained him to do it. “I’m sorry. We’re not there yet.”

“Right,” Khabur rasped, licking frost-chapped lips. That weathered face turned to me, and Sol beside me, “I only ask because I’ve seen these flags before. That’s the Diobesi down there. Well known for their brews, you see-”

“And their ugly old men,” I ventured. Khabur flinched.

“… aye, them too,” he admitted ruefully. “Forget I mentioned it. I’ll just-”

“Go,” I said. The old sea dog stared at me.

“Zibute?” Unwilling to hope.

“We’ll find our way without you, and I’m tired of looking at that unfortunate face. Return to your fellow barbarians and enjoy what’s left of your life.”

Wide eyes, closer to the pale milk hue of the Broken Tide Oracle than the Aetos’ own bright sky blue, darted from my face to Sol’s. Searching for insincerity and finding none. The old man’s broad hands trembled.

“I… thank you, but I can’t. I still owe you boys a debt-”

“You paid your debt at the oar,” Sol informed him. “Every day until your chains were broken. What followed has been a voluntary labor.” Looking down from his towering dark horse while a holy young woman held him from behind, leaning sideways to measure the old man for herself with eyes of burning scarlet glory, the Roman cut a certain figure.

Khabur was an old man and a sailor, until recently a slave – and before all that, he was a Thracian. He felt the captain’s presence even so. He stood up straighter. His trembling hands clenched into fists.

“Is it enough?” he croaked.

I raised an eyebrow. “We said it was, didn’t we? Now and once before. You chose to be foolish when we offered you salvation in the Rosy Dawn’s gratitude. Learn from your mistake, and take this secondary consolation before it too is lost.”

“Rest now, traveler,” Selene said kindly, affected majesty in her voice and her bearing. I suppose she could have been worse. “The journey ends as it began.”

“Your odyssey is over,” Sol declared. “Son of Thrace, free sailor of the sunlit seas, I hereby retire you. Take your horse and go.”

“My horse?” Dazed and hopeful as he was, Khabur nonetheless had the presence of mind to protest one last time. “I can’t take her too. Please, boys, don’t curse me with that generosity. Not when the Hero-”

A hand of my violent intent covered his mouth. His eyes met mine, the pupils shivering.

“Begone,” I told him.

It was an ugly thing to see an old man weep.

“That was… Kind,” Scythas said to me sometime later, while our horses crept through high mountain passes and the fourth night descended.

“You sound surprised,” Sol observed. The Hero of the Scything Squall pursed his pouting lips.

“I’m not surprised you agreed to it,” he said to my Roman brother. “I’m surprised that he initiated it.”

I considered the brumal glory above. At this elevation, treading near the peaks of Thracia’s frozen mountain ranges, the snow fell often and it fell heavy. Streamers and blankets of pure white flakes clouded the skies above and coated the land below. If not for her black mane and tail, my pure white runner would be all but impossible to see. The opposite was true of Sol and his black stallion.

“What do you see when you look at me, Scythas?” I asked the Hero, reaching up to catch the flakes of frigid heaven in my hand.

“What do I see?” He gestured for me to give him more. “Physically? Spiritually? Now, or in general?”

“There are no wrong answers,” I informed him, peering closely at the fragments of glory I had caught in my hand. Just as my foundational mystery could call rosy heat to my palms, so too could it call heat away. The snowflakes did not melt in a palm that was colder than mountain stone.

You’re tempting the Fates, the hungry raven lurking in Sol’s shadow reached out to inform mine.

How so?

An invitation of current speculation is an implication of future explanation.

Such refined articulation, the raven in my shadow cawed mockingly. Roman minds must have trembled when you spoke.

Sol sneered. Scythas will expect you to elaborate if you tell him his read of you is wrong.

Then I will. What do I have to hide?

Arrogant, irreverent Greek. Next time you provoke an unnecessary fight, I’m going to join in on the opposing side.

Promises, promises.

Our joined shadows undulated slightly, distorted by the ravens within as they beat their wings challenging lay at one another.

Just don’t expect me to soothe your ego when he batters it, Sol’s raven said.

Ho? You think I’m that fragile-

Both of us flinched and jerked back from stabbing pain. The taste of the Rein-Holder’s starlight bone marrow flooded my mouth, blood from a wound that I had never taken before in my life. I looked left, and at the same moment Sol looked behind, both of us staring at the culprit.

The daughter of the Scarlet Oracle had a spear in her hand, drawn from a fold in her myriad silks and rags. It had a ceremonial look to it – the bone white wood of its pole was covered tip to tip in elaborate carvings, some of them etched so deeply that the pole couldn’t have been thicker than a finger’s width in some places. The spearhead was freshly polished bronze. Ruinously fragile, the whole thing. Common sense and wood label it an ornament.

Selene held the ceremonial spear out at her side. For all appearances, she had stabbed it down at the open air.

It was the shadow the ornament cast, the penumbra spear, that had skewered our chattering ravens.

Her lips moved silently.

“It’s rude to carry on two conversations at once.”

She mouthed the words, trusting us to read her lips. She had noticed our shadowed conversation, as Anastasia had, but she could not join in herself. And she knew that any other form of communication would be heard by the man who was beloved by the wind.

I smirked and nodded fractionally. “Fair enough.”

Scythas, riding ahead of us on the high mountain trail, glanced back curiously as the girl talked her spear away again. The moment its shadow pulled away, Sol and I drew back our own silhouettes to nurse wounds we hadn’t known we could suffer until a moment ago. Selene smiled and waved pleasantly at the Hero. Scythas hesitantly returned it.

Eyes of hazel flame and golden embers shifted to me.

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“When I look at you,” he mused. He looked me up and down, and I shifted and posed obligingly for him. Rather than annoy him, it seemed to cement the thought in his head. “When I look at you, I see a runaway flame.”

The snow fell freely.

“In what way?” I asked, relaxing from my artful pose and simply reaching up. Catching more snowflakes in my hands.

“On the night I met you, and every moment since, you’ve been doing everything in your power to disrupt the world around you,” Scythas explained. “Not once, not even for a moment, have you stopped.” He swiveled in his saddle to fully face us, comfortable enough with his mare and a Heroic cultivator’s poise to cross his legs ankle over ankle on her hind end and recline against her neck like she was a dining couch instead of a horse.

“Correct me if I’m wrong.” I added hands of pankration intent to my efforts, grasping skyward and catching snowflakes in their incorporeal palms. “But there was a distance of weeks separating our game of bone knuckles and our reunion in Bakkhos’ estate. You and I didn’t cross paths once during the intervening time.”

“We didn’t,” he admitted, “but I heard from those that did.”

“I only spent marginally more time with the Reaver than I did with you,” I pointed out.

“I’m not just talking about Jason. I’ve heard dozens of people speak about the twin ravens that hunger, hunting the hunters and terrorizing the terrors that keep junior mystikos up at night. I’ve heard rumors of the man that stalks the sanctuary city in the attire of a cult that he can’t possibly belong to – in silks that haven’t seen representation in Olympia since Damon Aetos swept the Olympic Games twenty years ago and spit in Old ‘Zalus’ eye.”

Sol’s shadow reached for mine. Selene laid her chin on his shoulder. The raven withdrew.

“It doesn’t help your case that they look like they belong to a mangled corpse,” Scythas said, flicking a finger distastefully at the ragged robes of scarlet and white that hung down from my waist. “Half the people that have seen you suspect you stole those from a grave, and the other half are convinced they are yours. And that you walked out of that grave yourself.”

Selene hummed. “Seems unlikely.”

“It does. But so do most things related to the Rosy Dawn.”

The Hero pulled a scarf of green silk from paradox logic and wrapped it loosely around his neck and jaw. With his faint stubble covered, he looked like no man at all. If anything, the crown of snowflakes on dark brown curls and the frost that clung to his eyelashes lent him an almost ethereal beauty.