The Mage Wars

by Mercedes Lackey

  They would just have to also take the chance that in frightening or injuring one of those shadows, they would not make an attack more likely.

  Well, if we anger them at least we’ll know that they have the intelligence to connect a trap outside the camp with the people inside it—and the intelligence to want revenge for an injury.

  There was one point on which he felt Blade was incorrect; he was fairly certain that the creatures she saw had been very well aware of the presence of the camp, and its precise location. They had also probably thought that they would not be seen where they were. They must have very keen senses to hunt at night, and their sense of smell, at least, had clearly not been deceived by his subterfuges with the plant juices. They must have been able to scent the fire. Where the fire was, there the camp would also be. And no matter how well-banked the fire had been, some hint of it was surely visible out there in the darkened forest. No, those creatures knew exactly where the camp was; the only encouraging part was that they had not felt it necessary to surround the camp and place it in a state of siege. Nor had they decided to rush the camp to try and take the occupants by surprise.

  So they don’t feel ready to try and confront us yet. I hope that their interest is only curiosity.

  Noise was priceless; an indicator that the shadows had gone elsewhere to hunt for food.

  At least, I hope that’s the case. I hope the canopy dwellers are better at spotting these creatures than we are.

  All this was enough to give a gryphon a headache.

  Wait until morning, and I’ll see to it that we’re more careful. And I’ll try and make the best time afoot that I can, since I’m the slower of the two of us. Maybe we can lose them. Maybe, we’ll find a river and really be able to hide our scent and our trail. And tomorrow night, if they follow us again, maybe we can find a way to discourage them from continuing to do so.

  And maybe horses would fly, and maybe they would stumble upon a lost enclave of amorous female gryphons, and maybe this was all just a bad dream.

  * * *

  Tad surveyed the remains of his snare—pulled up out of the ground, and left carelessly tangled, but all in a heap, as if it had been examined closely, then dropped. It looked very much the same as the debris back at the crash site that had been so carefully examined.

  “Well, as I warned you, this is where our friends found their rabbit last night,” Blade said with resignation. “See over there?”

  He’d already noticed the few bits of fur and the drops of blood on a dead leaf. “I should have known better than to expect that anything would leave a snared rabbit alone,” he sighed. “It doesn’t look as if they found any of the other snares—but neither did any rabbits. Then again, if any rabbits had, they’d probably have gone the way of this one.”

  At least the shadows hadn’t gone looking for other snares. Or had they? They’d examined this one that had been sprung; had they gone looking for others, found them, and left them alone once they saw how the snares were set?

  Or was he ascribing far too much in the way of intelligence to them?

  He regarded the scraps of fur ruefully. Hardly fair to stalk me and then eat my breakfast. He thought wistfully of how nice that rabbit would have tasted, and resigned himself to a tasteless meal of dried meat, but Blade had been out and prowling before he was, and had a surprise for him.

  “Maybe your snares didn’t work, but my sling did,” she said, with a tiny smile. She pulled a decent-sized rabbit out of the game bag at her side, and his mouth watered at the mere sight of it.

  “Thank you,” he said, doing his best not to snatch it out of her hand. He took it politely, but his hunger was too great for more than that. Fortunately she was quite used to watching him eat, for his growling stomach made it impossible for him to wait long enough for her to go elsewhere while he dined. Nor was he able to do anything other than devour his meal in a few gulps.

  “What about you?” he asked belatedly, a moment later, when the rabbit was a mere memory and a comfortable feeling in his crop.

  At least I managed to resume civilized behavior without a rabbit leg still sticking out of my mouth.

  “I’m appropriating a bit of your dried meat,” she replied, “And I can eat that as we move. Let’s get the packs on and get out of here; I don’t want to stay here a moment longer than we have to.”

  “Agreed,” he said firmly. “Especially after last night. Luck permitting, we should find the river today or tomorrow.”

  The canopy dwellers had gone silent once more on his watch, although he had not seen anything. That had given him a very strange feeling; his hackles had come up, as he wondered if the shadowy hunters had decided to take a walk on the great tree trunk and come at them from the rear. He’d never know until the moment that they came crashing down through the branches and canvas…

  But they hadn’t, and the noises had resumed within a very short time, remaining at a constant level until dawn. Blade had made another batch of her herb concoction and had poured it into one of her waterskins after dabbing her itching bites liberally with it. He hoped it worked as well for her in the heat, of the day as it had last night.

  He put some effort into confusing their backtrail, while Blade set the course. This time he laid some false, dead-end trails, even taking one up a tree. That made him think; if they had trouble finding a place to shelter tonight, perhaps they ought to go up a tree—

  Oh, no. Blade can’t climb with only one hand. Well, so much for that good idea. I could perhaps pull her up by rope, if it came to that, but the risk of hurting her further would be too great.

  Once again, however, they were in luck. This time, in late afternoon, they came upon another good site to hole up. It was another fallen tree, but this time it was one with a large den dug out underneath it. Whatever had dug it originally wasn’t home, and from the look of things, hadn’t been resident for some time. It did have some current occupants, far too small to have dug the den originally, and between them, he and Blade bagged the entire family of five. He wasn’t certain quite what they were; something like a beaver with no tail, and about the same size. He didn’t even know what species they were, and it really didn’t matter. They had rodent teeth, and that was enough for him. Rodents were always edible.

  This bit of good fortune more than made up for the fact that Blade had not been as lucky with her sling; the rabbit she had gotten for his breakfast was the only kill she’d made all day. She’d had targets, but had missed her throws. She was so crestfallen about it that he had done his best to reassure her that it was all right.

  Well, tonight he would have a truly full stomach for the first time since the crash. The fresh meat had made a great deal of difference to him; he felt much more energetic and lively after having it.

  With his help she made a fire outside their den. While she built it up into something respectable, he excavated the den quite a bit more. His talons weren’t well suited to digging, but he did have determination, and the earth was soft. When he finished, he knew that it would be a tight fit for both of them, but that they would manage. To keep them off the raw earth, he lined it with branches and packed the dirt he’d dug out into a little dam to prevent water from coming in during the rain. He took a torch and charred the underside of the log to prevent “visitors,” then went out to collect a tangle of vines to conceal the entrance. Blade roasted her share of the catch, made up her medicine, then put out the fire and buried the ashes, doing her best to obliterate any traces of their presence that might persist through the afternoon downpour. Like the hollow snag, there would be no room in this den for a fire tonight. As long as the den stayed dry, he didn’t think they’d need one.

  Need and want, why are they so far apart sometimes!

  By the time Blade was done tidying things, he was ready to eat; she took over, clumsily weaving the vines with one hand and both feet into a rough mat that they could pull over the hole. Last of all, she collected a lot of leaves from that peppery plant and tu
cked them into the mat to kill their scent.

  As soon as the rain started, they would climb into this hole and pull the mat over the entrance. There they would remain until dawn. In his opinion, this was their most vulnerable camp yet, but he had an answer to that.

  Although she couldn’t climb, he could, and since the den was barely big enough for the two of them without their packs, he had an idea.

  “Help me with this,” he said, as soon as he’d finished gulping down his meal. “I want to make some decoys.” He dragged in some more vines and began making them into bundles that resembled a human and something with four feet. She was puzzled, but gave him a hand, as the clouds began to gather for the afternoon rain.

  “What are you planning on doing with these?” she asked, as the bundles began to take shape. “They aren’t going to fool anything for long.”

  “Not if they’re on the ground—but what if they’re up there?” He nodded up at the canopy. “I’m thinking of taking the packs and these up to a good branch and tying them there. Maybe our trackers will see ‘us’ up there, and decide we’re becoming too much work to pursue. Provided, of course, that they can’t climb.”

  Somehow, I don’t think they can, even though the canopy creatures are afraid of them. I think they’re too big; there’s a maximum size that a tree-climbing predator can be and still hunt successfully, and I think they’re bigger than that maximum size.

  “If you really want to, it’s worth trying.” She didn’t look convinced, but at least she wasn’t too negative. He was just as glad that she didn’t object to him taking the packs elsewhere to store; although the tree he had in mind was a dwarf by the standards of the ones around him, he was not looking forward to the climb, and that was giving him enough qualms without having to argue with her.

  He accomplished the feat by clamping all four sets of talons into the bark and hitching himself up like an inch-worm. This used an entirely new set of muscles, as well as awakening a new set of pains in his broken wing, and by the time he reached a suitable place to cache the packs and the two decoys, he wished with a strength beyond telling that. he would have been able to glide down instead of climbing. He was not looking forward to retrieving the packs in the morning!

  He had taken a rope with him, rather than the packs and the decoys themselves. Once he got himself securely in place, he dropped the end down, and Blade tied it to the first pack as best she could with one hand. When he had hauled that up and tied it successfully in place, he dropped the end back down. The second pack came up next, and following that, the two decoys.

  And now, if there is a disaster, Blade will at least have a rope she can try to escape by. If there is any time to escape, I can come back up here and pull her up. Maybe.

  It did not take long to secure the items in place, but this was not the best of perches, nor was it a place where he would have wanted to spend the night. The packs would remain dry through the storm, but not the decoys. If they had been up here instead of the decoys, it would have been a soggy and most uncomfortable night for them.

  He lowered himself down, inching backward and no doubt giving Blade an interesting view all the while. He dropped off the trunk the moment he thought that he’d be able to land safely. “There!” he said, more briskly and brightly than he actually felt. “Now, we have just enough time to rig a deadfall and a couple of other traps before the rain starts!”

  Blade groaned at the idea of so much work, but nodded: They both knew that the more distractions they could offer the hunters, the better.

  And the more challenge we give to their intelligence, the more we’ll learn about them.

  He let her lead, though, so that she wouldn’t see how tenderly he was walking. His fear was rising again.

  By the time the rain started, their traps were in place and concealed, placed in hiding around the tree rather than around their real den, to lend verisimilitude to the decoys in the tree. He and Blade scrambled for their shelter as the first drops started falling, but as was her custom, she stayed outside long enough to get a good sluicing down by the rain before coming in.

  She was soaking wet when she came in, but since he had lined the den with branches, they weren’t lying directly on the soil; the water she brought in dripped through their bedding and from there into the earth. There wasn’t a lot of room to move, and by the time he had snaked out a claw and pulled the mat of vines over the entrance, there was even less. By dint of much squirming, she managed to anoint both herself and him with her bruise-cum-bug-bite medicine. He squinted his eyes at the bitter scent, but decided that he could live with it. With any luck, they had to be getting near the river, and he could wash it all off rather than attempting to preen it off tomorrow.

  They had deliberately made the entrance as small as possible, just barely large enough for him to squeeze inside. That meant that there wasn’t enough room for anyone to stand watch except Blade, because she was the one near the entrance, and he was crammed so far back that he really couldn’t see anything. As thunder roared and the rain fell down mere hand-lengths away from their noses, they looked at one another in the semidarkness.

  “There’s no point in really standing watch,” he ventured. “I mean, one of us should try and stay awake, just in case one of us can hear something, but there’s no point in trying to look out. We made that mat too well; I can’t see anything from where I am.”

  “I can’t see that much,” she admitted. “Are you sleepy? Your ears are better than mine; if you could take second shift, I can take first.”

  “I have a full stomach, of course I’m sleepy,” he retorted, forbearing to mention the fact that he was afraid that if he didn’t try to sleep now, his stiffening muscles would make sleep impossible. In fact, he fully expected to wake up about the time she was ready to sleep. His sore legs and back would see to it that he didn’t oversleep.

  That was precisely what happened. By that time, she was ready for sleep, warm and relatively cushioned, with him curled around her. She dropped off almost immediately, while he concentrated on keeping his muscles relaxed so that they didn’t go into cramps. That was quite enough to keep him awake all by itself, but the position he was in did not agree with his broken wing either. It probably wasn’t, causing any damage, but the wing twinged persistently. He caught himself nearly whining in pain once, reducing it to a long wheeze and shiver.

  So he was fully awake and wary when the usual silence descended outside in the canopy, signaling the arrival of the shadowy hunters.

  Of all of the nights so far, this one was perhaps the most maddening and the most frightening. He was essentially blind, and he and Blade were curled in an all-too-accessible hole in the ground. If anything found them and really was determined to dig them out, it could.

  But as he strained his ears, he heard nothing in the way of movement outside the mat of vines. He hoped that if anything heard them, their breathing and tiny movements might be taken for those of small animals that were too much effort to dig out, and which might have a rear entrance to this den through which they could escape.

  I wish I’d thought of that and dug one. That might have been a smarter thing to do than rig those traps.

  As the moments stretched out unbearably, he became acutely sensitive to every sound, more so than he ever remembered being before. So when he heard the deadfall “go,” it sounded as loud as a peal of thunder.

  And what was more, he clearly heard the very peculiar cry of pain that followed.

  It wasn’t a yelp, and it certainly wasn’t a shout. There were elements of both a hiss and a howl in it, and it was not a cry he had ever heard before in his life. It startled him, for he could not for a moment imagine what kind of animal could have made such a sound. It cut off rather quickly, so quickly that he wondered if he had managed to actually kill something with his trap.

  Possible, but not likely, not unless our “friend” out there was extraordinarily unlucky.

  Then he heard more sounds; another thud, t
earing and breaking noises, something being dragged briefly, another hiss. Then nothing. His skin crawled under his feathers.

  More silence, while his beak ached from being held clamped shut so tightly that his jaw muscles locked, and then, when he least expected it, the canopy sounds returned.

  He waited, on fire with tension, as the faint light of dawn began to appear in the tiny gaps in their covering. When he couldn’t bear it any longer, he nudged Blade with his beak.

  She came awake instantly, her good hand going to her knife.

  “I heard the deadfall go,” he whispered. “I think we got something. Whether it was one of them, whether it’s still there—I can’t tell. If it is still there, I don’t think it’s still alive, though.”

  She nodded, and cocked her head to listen to the sounds of the forest. “I’d say we’re safe to come out,” she said. “Are you ready?”

  “As ready as I’m likely to be.” They’d discussed this last night; she was going to come out in a rushing attack, just in case there was something lying in wait for them, and he was supposed to follow. It had all seemed perfectly reasonable and appropriate last night. Now, with his muscles so sore, stiff, and cramped, he wasn’t certain he was going to be able to crawl out, much less rush out.

  She drew her knife and wriggled around until she was crouched in place. With a yell, she threw off the mat and leaped out—inadvertently kicking him in the stomach as she did so.

  His attack-cry was considerably spoiled by this. Instead of a fierce scream of defiance, all he could emit was a pitiful grunt, remarkably similar to a belch. But he managed to follow her out, if not in a rush, at least in a hurry.

  There wasn’t anything there, which, although an anticlimax, was also a relief. “Sorry,” she said, apologetically. “My foot slipped.”