The Mage Wars

by Mercedes Lackey

  The mage-light in the lantern was no longer glowing. The tent—well, she couldn’t test that herself, she couldn’t even unfold it herself, but the canvas felt oddly limp under her hand, without a hint of the resistance it used to possess. The teleson—

  That, she carried back to Tad, and placed it wordlessly before him. It wasn’t much to look at, but then, it never had been; just a contoured headband of plain silver metal, with a couple of coils of copper that could be adjusted to fit over the temples of any of the varied inhabitants of White Gryphon. It was used to magically amplify the range of those even marginally equipped with mind-magic. All the gryphons, kyree, and heitasi had that power, and most of the tervardi as well.

  Tad should have been able to use it to call for help. A shiver ran down her body and she suppressed the urge to babble, cry, or curl up in a ball and give up. She realized that she had been unconsciously counting on that fact. If they couldn’t call for help—

  He touched one talon to the device, and shook his head. “I don’t even have to put it on,” he said, his voice shaking. “It’s—empty. It’s useless.” Unspoken words passed between them as he looked up mutely at her. We’re in trouble.

  “It wasn’t just the basket, then,” she said, sitting down hard, her own voice trembling as well. How could this happen! Why now! Why us! “Everything that had any spells on it is inert. The mage-lights, the firestarter, the tent, probably the weather-proof shelter-cloaks—”

  “And the teleson.” He looked up at her, his eyes wide and frightened, pupils contracted to pinpoints. “We can’t call for help.”

  We’re out here, on our own. We’re both hurt. No one at White Gryphon knows where we are; they won’t even know we’re missing until we don’t show up at the rendezvous point where we were supposed to meet the last team that manned the outpost. That’ll be days from now.

  “It’s a long way to walk,” he faltered. “Longer, since we’re hurt.”

  And there’s something nearby that eats magic. Is it a natural effect, or a creature? If it eats magic, would it care to snack on us! It might; it might seek out Tad, at least. Gryphons were, by their very nature, magical creatures.

  Don’t think about it! Over and over, the Silvers had been taught that in an emergency, the first thing to think about was the problem at hand and not to get themselves tied into knots of helplessness by trying to think of too many things at once. Deal with what we can handle; solve the immediate problems, then worry about the next thing. She got unsteadily to her feet. “There’s a storm coming. That’s our first problem. We have to get shelter, then—water, warmth, and weapons. I think we’d better salvage what we can while we can before the rain comes and ruins it.”

  He got shakily to his feet, nodding. “Right. The tent—even if we could cut poles for it, I’m not sure we could get it up properly with both of us hurt. I don’t think the basket will be good for much in the way of shelter—”

  “Not by itself, but two of the sides and part of the bottom are still intact,” she pointed out. “We can spread the canvas of the tent out over that by hand, and use the remains to start a fire.” She stared at it for a moment. So did he.

  “It looks as if it’s supported fairly well by those two saplings,” he pointed out. “The open side isn’t facing the direction I’d prefer, but maybe this is better than trying to wrestle it around?”

  She nodded. “We’ll leave it where it is, maybe reinforce the supports. Then we’ll clear away the wreckage and the supplies, cut away what’s broken and tie in more support for the foundation by tying in those saplings—”

  She pointed with her good hand, and he nodded.

  “Look there, and there,” he said, pointing himself. “If we pile up enough stuff, we’ll have a three-sided shelter instead of just a lean-to.”

  That, she agreed, would be much better than her original idea. In a moment, the two of them were laboring as best they could, her with one hand, and him with one wing encased and a sprained hind-leg, both of them a mass of bruises.

  He did most of the work of spreading out the canvas over the remaining sound walls of the basket; he had more reach than she did. She improvised tent stakes, or used ones she uncovered in the course of moving supplies, and tied the canvas down as securely as she could manage with only one hand. One thing about growing up in the household of a kestra’chein; she had already known more kinds of knots and lashings than even her survival instructor.

  She wasn’t certain how Tad felt, but every movement made her shoulder ache viciously. There’s no choice, she told herself each time she caught her breath with pain. Rest once it starts to rain; work now.

  She wasn’t sure what time it was. They hadn’t gone very far before they had come crashing down, and they hadn’t been unconscious for long, or else they would have awakened to find insects trying to see if they were dead yet. Scavengers didn’t wait long in this kind of forest. That meant it was probably still early morning. If the rain threatened by those clouds held off, they had until late afternoon before the inevitable afternoon thunderstorm struck. If our luck hasn’t gone totally sour, that is…

  Eventually, they had their three-sided shelter; the limp tent canvas stretched tightly over the remains of the basket and the three young trees that had caught it. There were some loose flaps of canvas that she didn’t quite know what to do with yet; she might think of something later, but this was the best they could do for now.

  They both turned to the tumbled heaps of supplies; sorting out what was ruined, what could still be useful even though it was broken, and what was still all right. Eventually, they might have to sort out a version of what could be carried away in two packs, but that would be later. She would fight to remain here, and so would Tad. Walking off should not become an option until they were certain no one was going to come looking for them.

  Always stay with a wreck, if you can. That much she also remembered very well from their survival course. The wreck makes the best target for searchers to find and the first place they’ll look for you when they spot it.

  If they could stay here, they had a shelter they could improve more each day, plus what was left of the supplies. Even things that were ruined might be useful, if they had long enough to think of a use for them. If they were forced to leave, there was a lot of potentially useful and immediately useful gear they would be forced to leave behind.

  If. That was the trick. She could not for a moment forget that something out there had drained away their magic without any warning at all. If the wreck made a good target for searchers to find, it also made a good target for other things to find—including whatever knocked them out of the sky. Assume it’s an enemy, and assume he attacked. That was the wisest course of reasoning and the one she had to begin planning for.

  For that matter, there was no telling what prowled the forest floor. Just because they hadn’t yet run into any major predators, that didn’t mean there weren’t any. The longer they stayed in one place, the easier it would be for predators to locate them.

  “Thank goodness for Aubri,” came a muffled sigh from her right, and Tad came up out of his pile of seeming-rubbish at the same moment. He held in his talon a nonmagical fire-striker, and Blade put aside the pile she’d been sorting to take it from him. Now she could make a fire with the dry, shellac-coated splinters of the basket and pile damp, green wood around that fire so that it could dry out enough to burn.

  Tad remained with his pile; evidently he’d found the box that had held all of the nonmagical gear that Aubri had insisted they take with them. She eyed the improvised shelter for a moment. Think first, plan, then move. If you ruin something, there’s no one around to help with repairs. And not much to make repairs with.

  She wanted a way to shelter the fire from the rain, without getting too much smoke into the shelter. And she didn’t want to take a chance on ruining the shelter they already had.

  Right. There’s the tent flap. I bend those two saplings over and tie them to the basket
, then unfold the tent flap and tie it down—there. And I think I can do that with one hand. Then maybe we can create a wind barrier with long branches and some of those big leaves. Plan now firmly in mind, she one-arm manhandled the saplings into place, then pulled the flap of canvas out over the arch they formed to protect the area where she wanted to put the fire. Carefully she tied the end of the tent flap to another broken tree, fumbling the knot several times; if it wasn’t caught by a big gust of wind, it would hold. At least they wouldn’t be lacking in wood, even though it was very green. They’d brought down a two or three days’ supply with them when they fell and they also had spare clothing to use for kindling. Build the fire first, then see about that barrier.

  She scraped the leaf-litter away from the ground until she had a patch of bare earth, then carefully laid a fire of basket-bits, broken boxes, and some of the leaves she found that were actually dry. With the striker came a supply of tinder in the form of a roll of bone-dry lint lightly pressed together with tiny paper-scraps. She pulled off a generous pinch and put the rest carefully away, resealing the tinder box. The firestriker was a pure nuisance to operate, especially one-handed. She finally wound up squatting down and bracing the box with one foot, and finally she got a spark to catch in the tinder and coaxed the glowing ember into a tiny flame. Frowning with concentration, she bent over her fragile creation and fed the flame carefully, building it up, little by little, until at long last she had a respectable fire, with the smoke channeling nicely away from the shelter. At that point, everything ached with strain.

  Breathing a painful sigh, she straightened, and looked over at Tad to see what he’d found. The thing that caught her eye first was the ax. That, she was incredibly glad to see! It was small enough to use one-handed, sharp enough to hack through just about anything. And right now, they needed firewood.

  She got painfully to her feet and helped herself to the implement, then began reducing the debris around their improvised camp into something a bit more useful to them.

  She tossed branches too small to be useful as firewood into a pile at one side. If they had time before darkness fell or the rain came—whichever was first—she’d make a brush-palisade around the camp with them. It wouldn’t actually keep anything out that really wanted to get at them, but animals were usually wary of anything new, and they might be deterred by this strange “fence” in their path.

  And anything pushing through it is going to make noise, which should give us some warning. Now just as long as nothing jumps over it. When Tad needs to urinate, we’ll collect it and spread it around the perimeter, the scent of any large predator should scare most foragers and nuisance animals away. And other than that, it is a perfect day, my lord.

  The branches holding huge leaves she treated differently, carefully separating the leaves from the fibrous, pithy branches and setting them aside. When she had enough of them, and some straight poles, she’d put up that sheltering wall.

  Every time she swung the ax, her body protested, but it wasn’t bad enough to stop her now that she had some momentum going. If I stop, I won’t be able to move for hours, so I’d better get everything I can done while I’m still mobile.

  Evidently Tad had the same idea; he was sorting through the supplies with the same single-minded determination she was feeling. He’d found her two packs of personal supplies, and his own as well and put all of them in the shelter; laid out next to them was the primitive “Aubri gear.” In between swings of the ax she made out candles and a candle-lantern, a tiny folded cook-stove, canteens, two shovels, and three leather water bottles. Two enormous knives good for hacking one’s way through a jungle lay beside that, also a neat packet of insect netting, fishing line and hooks, and a compass. He’d gotten to the weapons they’d carried with them as a matter of course, and she grimaced to look at them. They were largely useless in their present circumstances. Her favorite bow was broken; the smaller one was intact, but she couldn’t pull it now. Nor could she use the sword Tad was placing beside the oiled-canvas quivers of arrows. Beside that he laid his set of fighting-claws—which might be useful, except that he couldn’t walk while wearing them.

  And what are we going to do if we’re driven away from here and something attacks us on the trail. Ask it politely to wait while he gets his claws on!

  But her heart rose in the next moment, because he had found a sling! He placed it beside his claws, and two full pouches of heavy lead shot beside it. Now that she could use, and use it well, even with only one hand!

  That gave her a little more energy to swing, and his next find added to that energy, for it was a short spear with a crosspiece on it, like a boar-spear. It had broken, but mostly lengthwise with the grain of the haft, and what remained was short enough to use one-handed. I can keep us fed with the sling; with the knife and the spear I can fight things off. He has his beak and talons, which are not exactly petty weapons. And he has some magic.

  All gryphons had at least a small command of magic; Tad didn’t have a lot, not compared to his father, but it might be useful…

  But she shivered again, thinking about what Tad’s magic might attract, and decided that she had chopped enough wood. She ringed the fire with the green logs, stacked the rest at the back of the lean-to, and piled the remains of the basket that she had chopped up wherever she could under shelter. I don’t think I want him using any magic until we know for certain that whatever sucked the magic out of the basket isn’t going to bother us.

  She joined Tad in his sorting, sadly putting aside some once-magical weapons that were now so much scrap. Unfortunately, they were shaped too oddly to be of any immediate use. The best purpose they could be put to now was as weights to hold pieces of canvas down to protect more useful items—like wood—from the rain.

  She found the bedding at the bottom of the spill and took it all into the lean-to to spread on the ground, over mattresses of leaves and springy boughs. She made another trip with more assorted items and the weapons and gear she could actually use now. The rest, including some broken items, she laid under a piece of canvas; she might think of something to do with them later.

  Most of the equipment was just plain ruined, and so was a great part of their food. The rations that survived the smash were, predictably, the kind a mercenary army normally carried; dried meat and a hard ten-grain ration-biscuit made with dried vegetables and fruit. This was not exactly a feast, but the dried meat would sustain Tad, and the hard ration-bread was something that a person could actually live on for one or two months at a time.

  He wouldn’t enjoy living on it, but it was possible to do so without suffering any ill consequences.

  She paused, and took a closer look at the smashed and ruined food. At the moment, some of it was still edible, though it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

  Better save the rations for tonight, and eat what we can of this. She gathered together enough of the food to make a very hearty meal, and placed it by the fire, then laboriously took the rest out into the forest and deposited it a goodly way away from the camp. Better not let the local fauna associate the camp with food. They could set snares another time, for the curious, to supplement the dried-meat ration.

  Time for that windbreak-wall beside the fire. She stuck the ends of four of the long, whippy branches into the soil and tied the tops to whatever she could reach along the supported tent flap, using her teeth and her one good hand. Then she threaded the leaves on another of the long branches, overlapping them like shingles. When she came to the end of the branch, she tied that along the base of the four wall supports, about a hand’s length from the ground, once again using teeth as well as her hand. Then she went back to threading leaves on another branch, and tied that one so that it overlapped the one below it. It didn’t take very long, and when she finished, she thought that the result, like the shelter, would hold up fairly well as long as no violent winds came up, which wasn’t too likely under the canopy.

  When she left her completed wall, Tad was alrea
dy sticking brush into the soft loam of the forest floor to make that brush-fence she had considered. She joined him, just as thunder rumbled threateningly in the distance. She took a quick glance over her shoulder, saw that everything worth saving was under some form of shelter and that the fire still burned well. It’ll survive, I hope. We’ll just have to hope our luck has turned. She joined Tad in constructing the “fence.” Their new home wasn’t much of one, but it was, after all, better than nothing. The work went quickly; the earth was so soft here that it didn’t take much effort to thrust the thin branches down well enough to anchor them securely.

  Thunder rumbled right above them; she glanced up just in time to catch one of the first fat drops right in her eye.

  A heartbeat later, as they were scrambling back to the shelter of the tent, the sky opened up. Together they huddled under the canvas, it was a very close fit, but no closer than it had been when the tent was still a tent.

  Water poured out of the sky at a fantastic rate. Now she was glad that she had brought everything under the lean-to that she could, as she found it; she’d seen waterfalls with less water cascading down them! It all came straight down, too, without a sign of any wind to blow it sideways. There must have been some high winds at treetop level, though; the trunks of trees nearest her swayed a little as she watched them. The trees acted as a buffer between them and whatever wind the storm brought with it.

  There was no moment when lightning was not illuminating some part of the sky, and there were times when she saw the fat raindrops seemingly hanging in the air due to a trick of the flickering light.

  The rain knocked loose what branches hadn’t come down with them, one or two thudded against the shelter, and she was glad that there was canvas and the basket between them and the debris. Canvas alone would have caved in or torn.

  She wondered if she should clear the fallen branches away later. If it isn’t hurting anything, I’ll leave it. If we look like a pile of debris to animals, they might leave us alone. No—what am I thinking! The native animals will know what is right or wrong for their own area. I must be delirious.