Redwater flew above the clouds over the mountain pass; a lone soul in a sea of emptiness. He hadn’t seen another griffon for 13 days; even a pony would be a welcome sight, even just for something civilized to talk to. But alas, all he had was his rations, a sack of live rats that squealed and wriggled in the temporary nest he built among the craggy peaks. His mission was simple: kill any pony that entered the mountain pass. That meant daily sweeps for enemies on the ground, and always a weather eye on the horizon for pegasi. His bow was never far from claw, and his wings were mighty from sustained flight. His lungs were like bellows in his chest, and at altitude, condensation erupted from his beak like dragonsbreath when he exhaled. Redwater was the picture of a griffon warrior.
There’s a beast in every bird, and it stirs when you give him gauntlets for his claws. When loaned metal to his already-deadly instruments of laceration, you make him an unstoppable killing machine. When you give a bird a bow, however... No such beast stirred in Redwater. He had never much liked gauntlets. His father, mother, brothers, and sisters all loved the feeling of tearing into something meaty, the sound of bones breaking under their claws, the shrieks of agony when entrails splattered onto the ground, still hanging from a pony’s belly... But Redwater had never much liked them. He didn’t like to kill up close. He, like so few eaglets his age, had chosen a bow. To rain bolts from aloft, he fancied himself a storm god in his own mind. Not that a storm god could be much more deadly. A griffon with a bow is a fierce thing; to fly twice as high as pegasi are able, and to aim with eagle eyes to hit targets farther away than ponies can see... More terrifying than a storm god, indeed.
Redwater was sent to guard the pass because he could see all of it. He could hit all of it. On the off chance that something appeared, he would be there in a flash, arrows flying ahead by a hundred meters. There were few days in the war where anything even tried to pass through, and when they did, Redwater scarcely had to lift a claw to stop them. Two pegasi had tried to make it over the mountain into the griffons’ Kingdom. Two pegasi had been blown away by mountain winds. Redwater had yet to fire a single shot. The war was on for reasons he didn’t know or understand; all he knew was that ponies were the enemy, and were they to come, they must be stopped. That was the life of a border guard during wartime.
His patrols done for the day, Redwater glided back to his makeshift nest by the light of the sinking sun. He bit the head off a rat in the dull orange glow, and watched the old dragon that guarded the pass by night take to the sky, sending a pillar of flame into the air to clear the clouds that had drifted in from the kingdom to the east. The dragon scarcely knew Redwater was there, but it meant 8 hours of the day that the griffon didn’t have to worry about. No pony would get by a dragon, least of all a grizzled red drake with fire like a volcano’s eruption and eyes like topaz in the light of the moon. Nothing escaped the eyes of the drake, save Redwater, who was silently grateful that griffons blended so well in the mountains. Dragons were known to eat griffons, before the time in history when griffons learned to make spears and gauntlets to fight back in force. Some dragons still at griffons, but most didn’t even try. Not that an adult dragon could be thwarted by a tribe of griffons, oh no, there wasn’t much that could best a dragon at all, but, being rational (and quite lazy) creatures, dragons decided that the tough, gamey griffons weren’t quite worth the effort, while soft, juicy ponies and gemstones tasted much better, anyway. Redwater had never tried either, and he didn’t mean to.
As he crunched down the rest of his rat, Redwater turned to lay down to sleep until morning, when his duties would resume. Through the air made sulfurous by the dragon’s flame, he heard a new sound join the wings of the drake. Redwater spotted a little wyrmling flying alongside the drake. The old dragon must be a father teaching his young to fly. No matter; two sets of eyes on the horizon tonight instead of one. The tired griffon drifted away to sleep amidst roars and flashes of flame, which he had long since learned to tune out.
Morning came quickly, yet softly. Redwater awoke to see the sun just starting to peek over the mountain. A few morning stretches and a rat later, the griffon took to the sky with his bow slung over his back. The air was crisp and thin, and it took him a bit of effort to get aloft without much under his wings. He perched on a cloud, scanning the horizon for anything that flew. He saw nothing, he heard nothing. He thought of his home in Rigstadt, where his friends and family had lived before most of them had come to fight the war as well. He lived in the shadow of the palace, so decorated was his father from prior wars. As he studied in school, and wrestled with his brothers and sister in the street, a war story always wafted in from somewhere.
Sometimes, the story belonged to his father, who had felled no less than thirty-one Pegasopolitan warriors in a single day. Sometimes the number was higher, and sometimes lower, depending on who the guest was, but Redwater had no doubts that his father was a fine warrior indeed. Sometimes the story was Captain Becker’s, whose band of “Butcher Birds” were feared all over Equestria and the Zebras’ Savannah as the fastest, most silent killers known to ponydom. Sometimes the stories were his mother’s, who once out-flew, out-wrestled, and out-drank the great “King Bull,” the biggest barrel-chested griffon in all of Rigstadt. King Bull could land a fully-grown white shark by himself, and eat it himself, too, while the next best fisherbird could hardly manage a small tuna.
Sometimes, though, the stories belonged to Redwater’s eldest brother, Ironwood. Those were his favorites. Redwater hatched only a few before after Ironwood went off to war for the first time. He returned with a Pegasopolitan spear for Redwater, and various other trinkets for all his siblings. Redwater sat with the rest of his siblings as he listened to tales of how unicorns hurling javelins had his whole battalion, darting from cloud to cloud, inching closer and closer to the ground, where the enemy was.
“Griffons can fly higher than pegasi. Your enemy with always be down. Always keep them beneath you,” Ironwood had said.
All of his brothers and sisters listened and learned from Ironwood, until they all grew up and went off to fight in wars of their own. But when Ironwood came home, Redwater, the youngest, was always there. He became his brother’s favorite, and they became quite close. So close were they that when Ironwood and his wife were deployed in the Sun Lands, Redwater was left in charge of their daughter, Porfira. Neither Ironwood nor his wife came back from their deployments. Sun land dragons have a notorious palate for griffons. Porfira grew and grew, Redwater’s father passed away, his siblings returned and started families of their own, and there were, for a short time, no wars to fight. Redwater tried to be the best father figure to Porfira as he could, but her will was unbendable. She had no give to her at all, and she was the most aggressive eaglet any of her tutors had ever seen, with a tongue like a rapier a mind to match. Everyone loved her.
It was of Porfira that Redwater thought, wondering how she had been, and how she was getting on with her tutors, and if she’d started to learn to use gauntlets yet, etc. His mind was elsewhere when he was doing a sweep of the ground, checking every nook and cranny, every cave, every crevasse, and every hillock that he had found over his months stationed at the pass. No intruders, but he found a nice fat squirrel. He shot it from a hundred meters away, drawing his yew bow hard, his chest muscles just as taut as the bowstring. The arrow flew, and struck the squirrel right in the skull. After retrieving the arrow and putting his prey in his quiver for safekeeping, Redwater took to the sky again, bow and bloody arrow in claw.
As he broke the treeline, he was face to face with a green pegasus mare. No armor, no weapons, just saddlebags. The mare looked at him, awed and terrified, her mouth hanging open slightly in shock. Redwater was equally shocked, but not frightened in the least. There was nothing that could best a griffon in the sky (save a dragon), and this mare had nowhere to go. Redwater heard a trickle of water, and noticed the mare had voided herself in fright. He regained his composure, as did the mare, who made no attempt to run away. Instead, she began to beg.
“This isn’t what you think it is, I’m—” she started, her voice quivering.
“Just go.” Redwater said curtly. “Go,” he repeated forcefully, gesturing towards the Kingdom to the east.
She simply nodded and started off towards the interior. Redwater flapped higher and higher. He wasn’t like most griffons; he didn’t feel it necessary to kill a pony by disemboweling it. The traditional way was to swipe at their soft stomachs and let them bleed out slowly. Redwater felt that method was cruel, enemy notwithstanding.
The pony flew away. Redwater pulled his bow taut, and let fly the bolt he’d used moments before. It struck her directly in the back of her head. He relaxed. A clean kill. He slung his bow over his back, pleased at his work for the morning.
“A squirrel and a pony with one arrow,” he said aloud to himself as he watched the mare’s corpse fall below the treeline. “That’ll make a nice war story.”