Eyrie by K Vale Nagle

Author:K Vale Nagle [Nagle, K Vale]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781643920016
Publisher: STET Publishing, LLC
Published: 2019-03-30T22:00:00+00:00

Zeph and Hatzel arrived at the medicine cave to find two grumpy opinici and many exasperated apprentice medicine gryphons. Having spent every waking hour of the past few days together, Orlea and Cherine were both becoming friends and tiring of each other’s company.

Orlea described Cherine as a “bloated, stuck-up opinicus with his head so far in the sky the clouds were obscuring his vision of the eyrie.” Cherine thought of Orlea as a “narrow-minded poacher with no sense of the greater good.” Their favorite topic of conversation was the conversion of the land around the eyrie, once full of ocellated turkeys, to only allow hunting by the rangers. Even the aneda forests of the nearby mountains were ranger-exclusive now, and about half of the grasslands had been taken over by farming or capybara efforts.

Cherine’s view was that the non-ranger hunters were killing too many animals, which hurt the overall production of meat for the eyrie. By carefully managing the reeve’s hunting grounds, they could produce the optimal amount of food.

Orlea’s view was that Cherine was an idiot. Just how much of that meat did he think found its way down to the poorer opinici? They required the forest to get enough food to survive. They’d always lived off the land. Locking it away under arbitrary rules and ranger enforcement just made criminals out of hungry opinici.

Cherine wanted to know why Orlea didn’t just earn money some other way and buy the food.

Orlea wanted to know just how a hunter was supposed to get paid when the hunting grounds were closed off.

Hatzel wanted to know if they were interrupting, because she and Zeph could come back at a better time.

“Ah, my ress-cuer!” Cherine cheered. He had a bit more trill with the bandage on his beak.

“How’re you recovering?” Hatzel asked.

“It’s not so bad,” he managed. “Whatever they gave me keeps me drowsy. When that doesn’t work, I just talk to Orlea over there.”

Orlea clicked her beak in annoyance. He clicked his beak back, causing the nearby apprentices to frown. Obviously, they’d given up on trying to get him to rest his beak until it healed. It had been a fool’s errand from the start.

“How’s your wing doing?” Zeph asked Orlea.

“It’s not as bad as I thought. The net just stretched it in the wrong ways. I’m not sure what they did to it, but it’s just about as good as new. I’ve already flown a little, when the apprentices let me out to empty my bladder.”

“If you’re up for it, we need your help,” he said.

“Oh? Need something poached?” Orlea asked with a look to Cherine.

Zeph shook his head. “We need an expert on the lower levels of the eyrie who can help us in case there needs to be an evacuation.”

“What’re they going to be evacuating from?” she asked.

“Probably us,” Hatzel replied.

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