Chương 410: 12.7

Jonathan the Third of House Rochford, Lord Baron of Rochford rode his steed Zephyrvam, bound tightly by leather straps into a harness that was cinched snug, but not constricting, over his Gryphon's shoulders and chest. Pulling him tightly into a place just behind the root of the wings. He barely had to look or guide his partner in flight. The air was a welcoming home for them both, even in war. Although it had been many years since they needed to do more than hunt, the air in war was as familiar as ever.

But this war brought both of them back to the terror and fury of their first. Again it was against Magarska, again it was the fury of ever more endless flocks of the lesser Gryphons threatening to overwhelm him, again it was the hunt to slay the Magarskan captains. Decapitating strikes turned the terrible red and green masses of armored troops into confused snarls. From the air he would never mistake a Magarskan army for any other, they moved not as men, but greater metal skinned beasts.

Unified things, like singular animals of war, they shed sacrificial limbs around their edges so the harder inner cores could strike and exploit. If you fought a Magarskan army, you could learn to identify and distinguish their units even from a distance that made the banners and heraldry blur together. The character of a Magarskan Captain could color the motions of the greater armored beast of men around him.

He'd seen it before in the war, the terrifying truth of men made to be mere parts in the charges and manuveres. It was a knack he honed in his youth, and with the strength to pull the Rochford bow and its blessings it was why he was first among Gryphon Riders in the Ridgetail Vault despite being too heavy to climb faster than most of his peers. He pulled back on the draw, Zephyrvam turned, he released the arrow, and watched it sail to its mark as they climbed to a greater position.

The garrison had rallied out to meet them this morning, fearing the sorcery that every other war with Cantor Reborn had brought forth. Those forces joined the movements of three other neighboring cities. So the scouts in the air reported to him. Young Kliatbatrn was honoring his family with success on the southern flank. Breaking a confused and stalling Magarskan line with a charge his Father would have boasted about, but a battle was always chaos!

The shrill cry of the lesser gryphons caught his ear, and Jonathan was tucking in against Zephyrvam's back well before his steed and companion was wheeling and tilting over. He felt his friend, the charge he had raised from the egg tumble, with practice the Gryphon Lord of Rochford clenched his neck and limbs hard to stay awake. There was a deep pleased rumble and feeling of impact, then they were unfurling from the roll.

Zephyrvam's relaxed back and calm chortling rising up through his chest was enough sign of safety for Jonathan to raise his head up and away and confirm the falling carcass of the enemy Gryphon that had tried to make a dive for them from above. One was an insulting distraction, even five of the lesser beasts were at best a match for Zephyrvam's talons, beak and wings. Especially with the greater strength his steed bore from bearing the oversized rider's weight for decades.

He spotted three more shapes wheeling with one of the other riders, but held back with his bow. Trading an arrow for a lesser Gryphon was a losing proposition. Even another Gryphon Rider in Magarska was not a prize, unless it was a full Lord. No, he needed to focus on beheading the hundred handed beasts made of men that crawled over the battlefield in regiments. Or one of the ogres which could wade through an army of levies before being felled.

He spotted one of the towering creatures, but another of his fellow riders was already taking aim, no point to waste an arrow. He saw the strike being true, but the blow was to a shoulder instead of the head or chest. The shock still felled the ogre, and unlike with a man of more reasonable size, the fall was definitely lethal. More so, it took out a dozen men under him as well!

The Gryphon Lord of Rochford swept his eyes over the battlefield, even with the garrison matching them this had been poor ground to engage them on. A blunder by whatever lord or general commanded the city's forces. He could not speak to the thoughts of the General on Land, but as the General in Air of the greater Army of the Realm it seemed they were making slow but steady work of the Magarskans. That was the other brutality of fighting Viznove's ancestral enemies that had not changed in half a lifetime.

He'd been spared from the last war due to his responsibilities in raising Jewel, but he remembered the grueling work that fighting Magarska had been. Even if you took down every Captain, Lord and General, sometimes their armies would form up in pockets and fight you to a last. No, far better was to cut the heads of the beasts on the march, if at all possible. If you could catch their soldiers before they met you on the field of battle, they would often lock in and hold.

Although not all of those beheaded clumps would be so obstinate either. Sometimes, simply cutting down one or two captains was enough to spark a hundred men to route at once. But you were never sure which it would be, that was the bloody work of the General on Land fighting Magarska. Jonathan of Rochford turned his attention to the other fliers, to the sparse wheeling shapes and the numerous clumps that swept and moved in scattered dozens harassing them.

The coordination and fury of the army in the air that Jewel had stayed behind to face was lacking here. Whatever lords or captains commanded the maneuvers of these lesser Gryphons in the air failed to act in concert. They split their forces and called the flocks into retreats and ascents at cross purposes to one another. Even without the sky-smothering numbers there were enough Magarskan Gryphons to threaten them. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Still he saw Blizzardwrath, and, by proxy, Alexander allowing too many of the beasts to ascend over him, he saw the danger to his son and heir growing without sign that the young rider was aware of what was soon going to descend upon him. Too focused on lining up a shot and his steed still too young to act in his stead. Jonathan shifted his legs, squeezed at his ankles then knees, then shifted his posture more overtly.

Zephyrvam knew his will, looked and saw the dappled white of Blizzard Wrath and as his rider had understood the danger so did the Gryphon. Together they pushed hard, their wake filling the air around them, the weight of his body growing as they ascended hard. The booming, bone rattling call of a proper Gryphon echoed out from under Jonathan. The warning cry caused a momentary jerk in Jonathan's son to turn away from his quarry on the ground and glance towards his father.

A wide and sharp gesture of Flight Cant, mirrored and expanded by Zephyrvam's own wings. Which finally got the boy to swivel his head and realize the trap that was brewing ahead and over him, then dip down close to his steed before the two of them were diving low and away, moving out of the clumsy trap that had been attempted. Good, another disaster averted.

With a sweep of his gaze The General in Air of Cantor Reborn's western army surveyed the land and air, his riders were good fliers, they had been well bloodied and rallied into shape from the far harsher skies of the earlier battles. It made this garrison's clumsy direction of Gryphon an easy force to counter, despite the numerical superiority. The flocks were governed by calls and whistles from the ground, their movements shackled and put at cross purposes.

But some of the inexperienced riders still grew over confident, which had cost poor old Fiebron his youngest son in the first clash with the greater Magarskan army. Jonathan had only met the boy during his choosing in the Eyrie, but he and his dead steed had been burned with honor all the same. It might break poor Fiebron's heart to know that it would have to fall to his grandchildren now to continue his line's valor among the Gryphon Riders.

Jonathan swept the skies again, watching the formations of Lesser Gryphon, like mirrors of the land bound units, working in concert. He strained his vision, guiding Zephyrvam towards the sky behind enemy lines. Making sure to clip another growing ambush in the air with Zephyrvam's superior wake as they passed. The disruption scattering the runtish man sized Gryphons for a moment longer. They were beasts, perhaps as intelligent as a proper Gryphon if they were given the care needed.

But they swept and moved in flock regiments just like the Magarskan troops on the ground beneath them. When a great general or other lord of the air commanded them, such discipline was a terror, able to fill the sky with deadly talons and beaks. The garrison did not have such a commander of the air.

He could see it in how they moved, each flock flew under the command of one man's eyes, and those eyes were definitely held to the ground, the way they swept back around and then was loosed like arrows to scattered and uncertain heights as a land bound man accustomed to fighting on the ground would order. There! He leaned and Zephyrvam turned with his will, preparing the shot for the target that Jonathan had spotted.

A general or something close enough to it, there among a cluster of men, all in magarskan green and red. There was no heraldry, no shining indicators of who was the leader. But the target was obvious to an eye trained on flight cant between riders in the air. That the man gestured, pointed, directed, ordered, was enough to secure his doom. Jonathan pulled back on the Rochford bow, the ancient wyrm bone core flexing, the string that had never broken in generations of Rochford wielders humming with tension.

He pulled the string and felt the resistance that could break lesser men, the way it drank in every straining fiber of his arm's strength. He released at the apex, the limit of his own body, no matter how many years he had trained and fired he could only draw so deeply. The Rochford bow could have taken more power from his arms and body but he had no more to give. The gryphon arrow was away, a missile fit for a spear sailing at a speed that only grew as it arced down, and then the kill!

The leader of the lesser Gryphon Handlers was thrown from his feet, his chest almost certainly carved through by Jonathan's shot. He tucked against Zephyrvam, felt them wheel up and away, a strong climb, then a spin and the sharp impacts of claws cutting against the inevitable counter attack. A guttural buzz of discomfort from his steed and long time friend. But soon followed by a soothing thrum to assure him that it was not yet a concern.

They spun and twisted left and right, they dived and then swept up and at last the signal and even flying to signal to Jonathan that the skies were clear and safe enough for him to uncurl. He surveyed the back of his steed first, spotted missing feathers, the red of blood along the right flank where a lesser Gryphon's talon or beak must have caught them.

Jonathan twisted around and ran a hand along the wound, felt the tremble in Zephyrvam's skin and the flex of feathers at his touch, but not the subtle warble of pain to indicate his steed felt a deeper injury. It would have to keep then. He swept his gaze over the skies now and was satisfied to see that one of the flocks was being called back to the ground and their handlers. Diving without heed of reprisal, directly towards the band of Magarskans Jonathan had beheaded.

He tapped lightly at Zephyrvam's neck signaling to his friend the need to give a booming signal call. Answering signs came in across the skies and Gryphon Riders of Viznove wheeled around and matched him to his left and right. As General in Air Lord Rochford of Viznove gestured, signed and commanded to the waiting eyes of the closest fliers. There were signs and booming Gryphon calls of understanding as each flank confirmed and then carried his orders to either wing." Strike Off The Heads of the Beast Keepers!"

The ground forces were well in hand with the combined forces of the Realm's levies and Kliatbatrn's cavalry. Now he just needed too- He was tumbling back, a great force having thrown Zephyrvam even while in the air, he tried to tuck up close but the wild spin was far stronger than his friend would ever have willingly made.

The sky and ground spun over Jonathan's head, he glanced to the right where there should have been lift and saw the shattered socket and exposed shards of bone where his steed's wing should have been. Jonathan the Third of House Rochford, Lord Baron of Rochford, felt a jolt of clarity! He did the last thing he could. He embraced Zephyrvam.