In the east, a waning gibbous moon, just two days past full, was rising.
“Th—they’ll kill it if th—they f-find it.” Tears slipped from Iso’s chin to wet the back of Alain’s hand.
“Hush now.” Alain signed to the hounds and they sat obediently, although they didn’t like it. Cautiously, he stepped forward to part the brush.
The creature lying under the shadow of sedge flicked its head around, and where its amber gaze touched him, torpor gripped his limbs. Iso whimpered. Sorrow yipped. The creature was as big as a pony, with a sheeny glamour. It scrabbled at the earth with its taloned feet. Leaves sprayed everywhere. It had the head of an eagle with the body of a dragon, and a whiplike tail that thrashed against the bole of the sedge behind it. Awkwardly, it heaved itself backward. It was meant to fly, but its wings were still down, not yet true feathers.
“What i-i-is it?” whispered Iso. “M-my feet feel so slow.”
“It’s a guivre.” Its hideous shape should have frightened him. “It’s a hatchling.” The torpor wore off. It hadn’t the full force of an adult’s stare, that would pin a man to the ground. The nestling stabbed forward with a stubborn “awk” but couldn’t reach him because it dragged one leg under its body. It feared him more than he feared it and what it would become. “It can’t even fly yet. Do you see the wings? They don’t have their feathers yet. It should still be in the nest.”
“I—it’s a m-monster. Th-they’ll kill it if they f-find it.”
“So they will.”
Maybe they should. One shout would bring an army and with staves, shovels, and hoes they could hammer it to death, staving in its skull. But it was so young, and it was free, not chained and brutalized like the one that had killed Agius. In its own way it was beautiful, gleaming along its scaly skin where the last glow of sunlight and the silvery spill of moonlight mingled to dapple its flanks. Only God knew how it had come to be here.
Then he saw the wound that had crippled it, opening the left thigh clean to the bone.
“Iso, get me combed flax and a scrap of linen soaked in cinquefoil. Do it quickly, friend. Don’t let anyone see you.”
Iso mumbled the words back to himself, repeating them. He had a hard time remembering things. He lurched away with a rolling gait, for on top of everything else, he had one leg shorter than the other.
Alain eased into the brush and crouched as the hatchling hissed at him to no avail. It couldn’t reach him, nor could it retreat. Leaves spun in an eddy of wind, fluttering to the ground as the breeze faltered. Distantly, voices raised in the service of Compline, the last prayer of the day. The monks’ song wound in counterpoint to his own voice as he spoke softly to the hatchling. He spoke to it of Adica, of the marvels he had seen when he walked as one dead in the land where she lived. He spoke to it of dragons rising majestically into the heavens and of the lion queens on whose tawny backs he and his companions had ridden. He spoke of creatures glimpsed in dark ravines and deep grottos and of the merfolk and their glorious undersea city.
Guivres were unthinking beasts, of course, but the hatchling listened in that way in which half-wild creatures allow themselves to be soothed by a peaceful voice. The hounds lay in perfect silence, heads resting on their forelegs and eyes bright.
Iso returned with his hands full. The young guivre kept its amber gaze fixed on Alain but remained still as he pulled the lips of the wound together, pressing linen over the cut, and bound it with flax tightly enough to hold but not so tight that it cut into flesh.
“Harm none of humankind,” he said to it, “but take what you must to survive among the beasts of the forest, for they are your rightful prey. May God watch over you.”
As he backed into the spreading arch of a hazel, the hatchling came to life. It spread its wings and, beating them, rattled branches as though calling thunder. Sorrow and Rage barked, and the creature lurched away into the forest, using its wings to help power it along since it couldn’t rise into the air. With a great deal of noise, it vanished from sight.
Behind, the last hymn reached its final cadence. Services were over. This was the time of day when the worshipers returned to their final tasks before making ready for bed.
Iso hopped anxiously from foot to foot. “Th-they’ll hear and th-they’ll come.” He wasn’t frightened of the beast but of what Brother Lallo might do to him for missing Compline.
A stone’s throw away, the stables remained oddly quiet, although now was the usual time for laborers who had no cot in the dormitory to make a final check on any animals stabled within before finding themselves a place to sleep in the hayloft. For a long time Alain couldn’t bring himself to move away from the forest’s edge, although he knew he ought to get Iso back to the dormitory. Instead, he listened to the progress of the beast and after a while couldn’t hear any least tremor of its passing. Would it grow into a fearsome adult, preying on humankind? Had he spared it only to doom his own kind to its hunger?