15.6
Evren stared at the corpse, the body was still being stripped days after the beast had been slain, feathers as long as the wyrm’s whole body were being hacked free of the wing bones. The underlayer of down from the dead beast had already filled carts.
The lute and reeds sang as women and men chanted alongside the workers. They had been at it since the beast’s death, chaplains from the army moving between the chanters and musicians with burning offerings, waving smoke and adding blessings to the heavens as they passed.
The smell of the meat, too tough for men’s teeth to pierce raw, joined the herbal smoke, boiling in pots, drying in smoke houses. Every part of the animal was being prepared and harvested. Tendons and leather were being made alongside so many other craft goods Evren did not even know, but there had been reports written for him.
The wake of one of the Greater Griff’s executions was far more impressive than the act itself.
A dozen men had stood together at the head of the beast, silent, their faces drenched in tears looking onto the animal they had spent most of their lives caring for. They had been the ones to slay the great animal.
The blood from its slit throat had flowed like a river and like everything else had been saved, parceled, prepared. The war beast, the Greater Griff of Magarska, had died gently, calmly under the soothing of its handlers. Like any member of the Shepherd’s own flock did when the time for the knife came.
And then the mourning began.
The music gave voice to the grief before Evren, the shrill flutes almost standing in for the anguished voices he could smell the bird’s caretakers still held back in their throats as they stood vigil for the butchery.
Evren had done this.
He had this beast with individual wings longer than his entire body put to death, by his commands he had assured it either a merciful slaughter or a slow death by starvation. A single word had set in motion the mourning of entire cities, a solemn parade that filled each roosting city just like here in Dedeagach.
Yet it had to be done.
It was a monstrous expense to feed one of the Magarskan Kingdom’s Greater Griffs. Five tons of fish or other meat had to be procured every day for each of the animals, enough food to feed thousands disappearing into the gullets of a single animal.
Under Murad five adult greater griffs had been maintained under this incredible cost, An equal number of adolescents, bonded to potential riders ready to replace them if one should fall, dozens of fledgelings with their own caretakers spread across the Kingdom for each of those waiting for the chance to replace them, all destined for slaughter if their elders survived or failed to be elevated.
Enough meat went to these beasts and their offspring alone to feed a hundred thousand people or more every day, far less than that was recovered in the continual slaughter of the awaiting young.
And all that food that had to be in meat or fish!
The Principalities in the south that broke away before Evren took the throne sent their Greater Griffs and handlers north to Terminapolis rather than even attempt to feed or command the things during their rebellion.
Evren had looked upon the price that was being paid, the vows enforcing care and obedience of the keepers of the Greater Griffs at all ages of the animal’s lives, the suggestions his ‘advisors’ were making about increasing the price taken from the people in the coastal and river settlements. What the alternatives would be to maintain Magarska’s Greater Griffons at the number Murad had commanded.
The southern principalities that had broken away took half of the coasts of Magarska with them. Half of the ships and fishermen, half of the nets, half of the tonnage in fish that had formerly been spent feeding these beast’s prodigious appetites.
Without vows which would choke the people, without demanding that hundreds of thousands go hungry or possibly starve, there could no longer be five adult Greater Griffs in Magarska.
Evren had ordered that the number of adults maintained be dropped to two, a single male and female to maintain the clutches. His advisors and the vassals, free of the heaven’s vows, had somehow found their bravery when he had even given a hint he would order all of the vast birds put to death.
So two would have to remain.
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That still left three Greater Griff sentenced to death by Evren’s command. And he’d come to witness the execution and harvesting of each of the great animals. Despite their size the massive birds were incredibly docile, gentle and placid giants. Assured in their comfort and safety all their lives, raised from eggs with food always available. Hillocks of fish and meat waiting for them every night at their roosts for all their lives.
Their handlers had always been with them from hatching.
Every one of them had settled calmly and let men march up to their throats with the great scimitars of sharpest steel, all of them barely even stirred when the shining steel cut across their throats. Barely even rumbled in worry when the blood began to flow in a great fall from their necks.
The last of the three had died this morning at peace with his handlers stroking gently behind his ears.
Evren had watched the practiced way that Magarska’s soldiers executed each of the animals, he read the reports of all that would be done with the meat, bone, feathers and offal and felt the overwhelming nature of the harvest spill out of him. Every part of a Greater Griff was parceled and prepared with reverence. Every city (for the Greater Griff could only live with the care of entire cities) would be celebrating and mourning these deaths for days afterwards.
Both times before Evren had seen their birth city mourn the loss of their great bird like a loved one. More mourning was had in the cities for their Greater Griffs then Evren had seen for the princes in their capitals!
He’d ordered this, the grief of it was like a flood rising to his neck and yet it was less than he had originally wanted. The death of the monster that was Magarska was not going how he wished, it was not the single decapitating act he’d planned, but Evren had listened to his true advisors this time.
Fizzbunches and the trusted leaders that had stood against Magarska’s armies with him. Those that he had seen the hearts of on the battlefield and in the freeing of the enslaved oathsworn from the mines and other ‘works’ of the Vanaand.
And for all the fury that they shared with him the advice had held. Fizzbunche’s silenced ‘words’ echoed in his head even now.
“To slay the monster that is Magarska is the work of years, not moments, hours or days, we will make the swiftest cuts we can but a trap must be laid so that another head cannot rise. One cannot truly kill a king in a lasting way without first ending the throne, the palace and the courts which support him.”
So for now the two Greater Griffs would remain, for now vows would still hold those within the army. But the mines were all but emptied, the farms in all of Magarska that had remained ‘loyal’ to Terminapolis were now worked only by those that would labor by their own will.
To do that the law of Magarska had become what Fizzbunches warned that people would find brutal. Many men now died where they might have lived under vow enforced service.
And word was that the princes he had appointed to the east and west of the Dacian vault were struggling to maintain his commandments regarding the forbiddence of vows outside the service of the army.
“My High King?”
Evren turned to the man, the lord of the city, until this day holding the great esteem for being the home roost of one of Magarska’s precious Greater Griff.
He smelled of equal parts terror, desperation and anger. Evren held back the snarl that wanted to curl his lips, the hackles that desperately wished to raise on his back, the urge to flare his feathers as wide as possible.
This man was holding his tone and face respectful despite his feelings, free of vows. Could Evren do anything less? Still the repetitious request was grating.
“My word on the matter is final, until we can procure the means of feeding them without violating the freedom of men in a heavens’ vow there will be no Greater Griff in Dedeagach. Just as there will not be one in Rhaedestus or Aquae Calidae”
The man did not hold back the grimace from that. But even then he seemed even more terrified. Fidgeting like Evren had seen many times before, a man who was expecting the touch of a divine oath at his throat and back and not finding it.
“Of course your highest and most noble majesty, but the barracks of my guard are overflowing with criminals! The soldiers balk at the executions to men that have not been given the option to serve a lesser sentence, surely we can settle upon a few vows of servitude to see the least offenses spared? Out of mercy my king?”
Evren sought peace, calm, the lessons and knowledge of what Fizzbunches had said.
“You may release prisoners whose crimes are minor enough to serve labor in recompense, but only if they will labor to do so without a vow.”
The man scowled, almost said a word then held back, as if he was still collared by a divine chain. Then nodded hard and turned his attention to the procession of harvested meat, feather and sinew from the Greater Griff.
Evren had heard similar pleas in every city he visited to see the ending he had commanded.
So far only the Vanaand and Terminopolis had fully unavowed soldiers. The rest had different degrees of the generals, officers and captains free’d from the bondage of the stars. It was a piecemeal and slow dismantling of the horror that was Magarska. Filled with complaints and requests for Evren to give their shackles back to them just like this man had pleaded for using them.
But like the vast corpse slowly being cut down and parceled out to finally feed the people it had deprived, who even now he could hear mourn its loss Evren could see the horror of Magarska dying, dwindling.
Piece by piece, not in a single ruinous tumult, but gently bleeding out, like the Greater Griff had.