Tremane uttered a scornful little cough. "Darkwind, at times your insistence on hedging is maddening. Tell us! Don't keep saying it's only your opinion."
Darkwind chuckled, not at all offended. "Certainly. I think that the citizens of Iftel are descended from some of the forces that were cut off when the Mage of Silence's stronghold was overrun. There were gryphon-wings with several of the armies, and since female gryphons by and large are a bit larger and heavier than the males, females always fought alongside males, often their mates, so there would have been a breeding population."
"You mean some of these gryphons are female?" one of the generals blurted, looking completely taken aback.
Darkwind laughed. "You didn't even look between their haunches, eh? Yes, some are female. Probably half; males also spend as much time tending the young as females, since they feed their young the way young hawks are fed." He raised an eyebrow at the general's stunned expression. "Oh, come now—you didn't think anything with a beak like that could suckle milk, did you? I wouldn't want to see the result if one tried!"
The general winced, and Tremane himself made an expression of sympathetic pain.
"As for the concept of females being poor fighters, I would not venture that opinion around Herald Captain Kerowyn of the Skybolts if I were you," Elspeth added crisply. "She is likely to invite you to have a practice session with a few of her ladies—or worse, with her!"
Darkwind watched the general in question as he took a second and third glance at Elspeth, finally saw the calluses and muscles, and realized that Elspeth was not the pampered princess he had thought. "So much for physiology; I am assuming that they must have come from Urtho's people, because gryphons are created creatures, and I can't imagine where else they could have originated. We know from Kaled'a'in stories that some of Urtho's people were cut off from their own forces—they knew what was going to happen when the enemy overran the last stronghold," Darkwind continued. "I guess that they threw up hasty Gates—Portals, to you—and just tried to get as far away as possible. They succeeded, and ended up in fairly hostile country and then the Cataclysm happened and the Storms began. At some point, something put up the Barrier; Tashiketh isn't being very forthcoming about that either. The problem with putting a wall around you, though, is that it walls you in as well as other people out. So, in order to keep from killing each other or losing such self-defensive abilities altogether, the Peoples of Iftel organized their aggressions."
Tremane looked troubled. "Organized? How?"
Darkwind sighed, for he was of two minds about what he had learned. He understood why, and sympathized, but he wasn't happy about what they had chosen to do. "Games, but games that verge on being blood-sport. If Tashiketh is telling the truth, no one has to participate, but in the highest and most competitive levels, there is real possibility of serious injury and even death. Serious wargames; Tashiketh says that in his part of Iftel there are several deaths among participants in every round of competition. That was how his wing was formed; every single one of these gryphons is the winner of contests in his district that pitted him against opponents of his own and other races, coming at him singly and in a group, and using weapons that were merely blunted, not rendered harmless."
Tremane blinked. "Oh, he said, thoughtfully. "Interesting. They aren't as inexperienced as I assumed."
"That isn't all, of course," Darkwind went on. "Each preliminary winner was required to participate in intellectual contests as well; what those were, I don't know for certain, but they probably included memory tests and logic puzzles. Tashiketh was the overall winner of everything. And the reason that the delegation is made up entirely of gryphons is that only gryphons would have been able to get here before the Storms started again. Now you know the gist of everything that I have learned or guessed."
Tremane and the others seemed somewhat taken aback by the fact that the right to be an ambassador had been determined by a series of often-deathly-violent contests, but Darkwind privately thought that was a more logical means of choosing someone for an important post than some other methods he had heard of from supposedly "civilized" lands. Picking someone to whom you owed a favor, or someone whose family was important, or worst of all, giving the job to whoever paid the most for the honor—all those were recipes for sheer disaster, and whoever used such means probably got the disasters he deserved. Granted, most ambassadors didn't have to compete in highly dangerous war games, but then, most ambassadors weren't also authorized to participate in their allies' real conflicts, either. He just wished that the contests weren't so lethal.
"Are you confident in their ability as a fighting unit?" Tremane asked him bluntly. Darkwind nodded.
"I know my gryphons, and I know that these are well-trained," he replied. "I also know they aren't stupid. I don't think they would have been nearly so eager to volunteer if they thought your opponents had working magic."
"Ah!" Tremane exclaimed, and chuckled. "I see. They don't expect to come within range of a normal distance-weapon, is that it?"
"Probably not; they can stay out of range of arrows and drop large, heavy objects down on the enemy." Another of the generals started to chuckle, as if he found the idea vastly amusing. "Or spears, or firepots—"
"Or any number of things that are inconvenient when crashing through one's roof," Elspeth interrupted, before the good gentleman could wax eloquent. "But telling you that they were going to do that would not have sounded nearly as heroic as they wanted to appear."
"So, we will let them believe that we are still cherishing the illusion that they flew off to battle talon-to-sword with our foes," Tremane said firmly. "If they choose to tell us what their tactics are, we will then praise their cleverness. Otherwise, we will be effusive in our praises of their bravery. In either case, they will succeed in making it clear to troublemakers that we have a formidable ally that they do not; they will accomplish what they set out to do, which is to win this single scrimmage, and that may be all we need. I would rather have a bloodless victory than any other kind."
"I've taken the liberty of ordering a congratulatory feast of wild game, sir," the Seneschal said diffidently. "I was afraid that if we left it too long, we would never get the meat thawed in time."
Tremane nodded his agreement absently, which relieved the poor lad, who was still afraid to order anything on his own that might have a serious impact later. In this case, ordering a feast might lead to a shortage later. Darkwind privately doubted that, having seen the stores of frozen meat himself, but it was a possibility. Perhaps more than a possibility, when he recalled the sheer mass of food that Treyvan and Hydona could put away without hesitation. But now that Tremane had given his approval, the young Seneschal clearly felt much easier in his mind.
I do miss Treyvan and Hydona, and their two little feathered fighters. I miss tumbling and playing with the little ones, and feeling Hydona preen my hair, and watching Vree dive after Treyvan's crest-feathers. And I miss their deep voices, their affection, and advice.
"Now, gentlemen and ladies," Tremane said, his tone turning somber, "Let us consider what we must do if our allies fail."