Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Tad had tried to be completely objective; he had tried only to report what he had seen, not what he had felt. Out there, faced with the evidence of their watchers, he had sensed a malignant purpose behind it all that he had no rational way of justifying. But Blade evidently felt the same way that he did, and rather than break, this new stress made her rally her resources. Her face remained pale, but her hands steadied, and so did her voice.

  “We haven’t a choice now,” she said flatly. “We have to get out of here. We can’t defend this place against creatures that can come and go without a sign that they were there. If we’re lucky, they’re territorial, and if we get far enough out of their territory, they’ll be satisfied.”

  Once again, the wildlife of this place was mysteriously absent from their immediate vicinity; only a few birds called and cried in the canopy. Did they know something that the two below them did not?

  “And if we’re not, we’ll be on the run with no secure place to hole up,” he argued. His focus sharpened, and he felt the feathers along his cheeks and jaws ripple. “If they can come and go without our seeing them, they can track us without our knowing they’re behind us! I don’t want some unseen enemy crawling up my tail. I want to see whoever I am against.” That unnerved him, and he was not ashamed to show it. The idea that something could follow them, or get ahead of them and set an ambush, and he would never know it until it was too late. . . . It just made his guts bind and crawl.

  Blade was quiet for a moment, chewing on her lower lip. All around them, water dripped slowly from the leaves, making the long fall to splash into puddles below, and the air was thick with the perfumes of strange flowers. “Look,” she said, finally. “We didn’t fly all that far before we were brought down. Twenty, maybe thirty leagues at most. We can go back in the direction of our previous campsite. That was defensible; remember, there was a cliff nearby? And remember the river that ran alongside it?”

  Nervously, Tad flexed his talons into the loam. New scents rose to his nostrils, of earth and old leaves, dampness and the sharp aroma of a torn fungus. “You have a point.” He thought about her suggestion, mentally trying to figure out how long it would take two injured people to walk the distance that two uninjured people had flown. It isn‘t so much the distance, as what we have to cross to get there. “It might take us as much as four days,” he pointed out. “We don’t have any real way of getting good directions other than the north-needle, and we’re going to be crawling through leagues of this—” He waved his claw at the tangled undergrowth. “We’re going to be carrying packs, we’ll have to guard our backtrail and watch ahead for ambushes, and we’re both injured. All of that will delay us; in fact, we probably ought to assume that we’re going to be creeping through the forest, not hiking through it.”

  If we’re going to do this, I want to creep. I want to go from bit of cover to bit of cover; I want to walk so that we leave no sign and little scent. I want to leave traps behind.

  “But when we get there—we’ll be at a cliff face, Tad. That means caves, probably at least one waterfall; even if we don’t find the river at first, we can work our way along the cliff until we do find the river. We’ll at least have someting we can put our backs against!” She looked unbelievably tense, and Tad didn’t blame her. Of the two of them, she was the most vulnerable, physically, and the least able to defend herself, knife skill or not.

  Not that either of us will be particularly good at it. In terrain like this, I’m at a distinct disadvantage. If anything gets in front of me, I can probably shred it, but at my sides and rear I’m badly vulnerable at close quarters.

  If they left this camp, their choice of how to proceed was simple; pack out what they could, or try to live off the land with very little to aid them. Take the chance that they could improvise, or—

  Or find out that we can’t. We’re hurt; we are going to need every edge we can get. That means tools, weapons, food, protection.

  “The one advantage that we have is that whatever these creatures are, they don’t know us, so they can’t predict us,” she persisted. “If we move now, we may confuse them. They may linger to look over what we left. We aren’t going to lose them unless they lose interest in us, but we may leave them far enough behind that it will take them a while to catch up.”

  If only they had some idea of what kind of creature they were up against! The very fact that they would be trying to slip quietly through the forest rather than running might confuse their foes.

  Or it might tempt them into an attack. They might read that as an admission of weakness. There was just no way of knowing.

  He nodded, grinding his beak a bit. “Meanwhile, if we stay, they can study us at their leisure,” he admitted. “And that makes us easy targets.”

  Go or stay? Remain where they were or try to find some place easier to defend?

  Either way, they were targets. The only question was whether they made themselves moving targets or entrenched targets.

  Aubri and Father always agreed on that; it’s better to be a moving target than a stationary one. “All right, I agree,” he conceded. “Let’s make up two packs and get out of here. You might as well load me down; it isn’t going to make a great deal of difference since I can’t fly anyway.”

  She nodded, and wordlessly turned to rummage through the supplies cached in the tent. In a few moments, she handed him a pack to fill.

  He joined her in picking through all the supplies they had salvaged. It was obvious what they were going to leave behind; just about everything they had saved. They would have to abandon everything that wasn’t absolutely essential.

  Their discards went everywhere, now that there was no point in sheltering them. If their foes did come to rummage through what they left behind, the confusion of belongings might gain them a little more time.

  Clothing, personal items, those joined the rejected items; it was easier to decide what to leave than what to take. The piles of discards grew larger, with very few items making it into the packs. The medicine kit had to come along; so did the weapons, even though the pouches of lead shot were heavy. So far, there hadn’t been anything around that Blade could use in the sling instead of lead shot. This was the wrong time of the year for fallen nuts; the soil here wasn’t particularly rocky, and they couldn’t count on a cairn of pebbles turning up at a convenient moment.

  The only distance-weapon she could use one-handed was the sling, so the shot had to come, too.

  The food had to come with them, and some of the tools, and just enough bedding and canvas to keep them warm and dry at night. All of that cloth was bulky and heavy, but if they got soaked, they could easily die of cold-shock, even with a fire to keep them warm and dry them out. Then again—if they got soaked in another long rainstorm and they were caught without shelter, there would be no way to build a fire to warm them. No, the canvas half-shelter and a blanket apiece had to come along.

  They were leaving a great deal for their opponents to look over, and Tad hoped that it would keep them very, very busy. And if only I knew something, anything about “them,” I’d be able to think of a way to keep them even busier.’

  Part of their training included this sort of selection process, and they had learned just what was truly essential to survive. It didn’t take long before they had two packs put together, one large, and one small. Blade would carry two spears and use them as walking sticks; that way she would have both aid and weapon in one. It had taken some ingenuity to rig her pack so that it would stay on with a minimum of pain—there couldn’t have been a worse injury than a broken collarbone when it came to carrying a pack. Much of the weight was going to fall on her hips, now, and would probably cause bruises and abrasions. Both Tad and Blade had come to accept that pain was going to be an omnipresent part of their immediate future, and their concern regarding it was more a case of figuring out ways to lessen its immediate impact, since eliminating it was impossible, “endure now, heal later” was the philosophy that would serve them be
st.

  The morning fog was just beginning to lift when they took a bearing with the north-needle and headed into the west. Blade led in more open areas. She was small—they both had the feeling that if an attack came, it would come from the rear. He was better suited to bearing the brunt of an attack from the front than she, and in open areas he could turn around quickly to help Blade. In close quarters, he led, with Blade guarding his tail. They were still vulnerable from the sides, but it was better than a completely unguarded rear. They had discussed booby-trapping the camp, but decided against it. If their foes were kept nicely busy with what remained, that was good, but if one of their number was hurt or killed by a booby-trap, it might make them angry and send them hot on the trail, after revenge. Also, discovery of one trap might make whatever it was give up on a search of the camp entirely and go straight into tracking them, which would lose them valuable distance.

  As they left the area, Tad paused once for a look back at the camp, wondering if they were making a dreadful mistake. They were leaving so much behind, so much that they might need desperately in the next few days! But their pathetic little shelter looked even more vulnerable now, and rationally, he knew that it couldn’t withstand a single determined blow, much less a coordinated attack by several creatures at once. In fact, with its canvas-over-wicker construction, it could become a trap for both of them. It wouldn’t take much to drive the supporting saplings through the wicker-work. . . .

  A shiver ran along his spine at that thought, for it was all too easy to picture something slamming the cup of wicker down on top of them, trapping them inside, where they would be helpless to defend themselves. . . .

  With a shudder, he turned away, and followed after Blade as she picked her way through the tangled growth of the forest floor.

  There was still fog in the treetops, just high enough that there was no real way for them to tell precisely where the sun was. In a little while, the last of the fog would burn off completely, and then they might be able to cross-check their bearings with the angle of the sun—although so far, they hadn’t been able to manage that yet.

  We’ll know where we are exactly, but only if we can find a hole big enough to see the sun through. And then it will only be possible if the sun is high enough to shine down through the hole at the time we find it.

  Living in this forest was like living inside an enormous, thick-aired cave. How could anything that lived here know where it was? It was very disorienting for Tad not to be able to see the sky, and somewhat claustrophobic; he wondered if Blade felt the same as he.

  She seemed determined to concentrate on the forest ahead, slipping carefully through the underbrush in such a way that she disturbed as little as possible. The kind of leaf litter that served as the forest floor didn’t hold tracks very well, and if their enemies could just hold off following until the afternoon rains started, it wouldn’t hold a scent very well either. If she found their surroundings claustrophobic, she wasn’t letting the feeling interfere with what she was doing.

  But he kept swiveling his head in all directions every time they paused to pick a good route. Those frequent pauses as she pondered her route to the next bit of cover gave him ample opportunity to feel the forest closing in on him. His nerves were afire with tension; he couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t feel the same.

  But maybe she doesn‘t; maybe this doesn‘t bother her. Maybe she doesn’t even need to feel sky and wind. He had always known that humans weren’t like gryphons, and that thought made her seem positively alien for a moment.

  But, then again, she lived in a veritable burrow back in White Gryphon, so maybe this landscape felt cozy to her, rather than constricting. But oh, how he longed for enough room to spread his wings wide, even if that longing reminded him pointedly that he couldn’t spread them at the moment!

  As Blade eeled her way between two bushes that were barely far enough apart to let him through, he realized something else that was very strange. There weren’t any game trails here.

  That realization was just as disconcerting to him as not being able to see the sky. He knew there were some large animals that lived down here on the forest floor, so why didn’t they leave regular trails? There should be deer trails, going to and from water. Deer couldn’t collect rainwater in vessels to drink, obviously; they had to have a water source. He had never in all of his life encountered a deer herd that didn’t make paths through their territory just by virtue of the fact that there were a lot of them going in the same direction.

  Was there something living down here that was so dangerous that it was suicidal to have a regular trail, foolhardy to move in groups large enough to make one?

  Could that something be what had brought them down, and what had been examining their ruined belongings?

  That’s altogether too logical, and is not a comforting thought. I know there are large cats like lions here, and bears, because the Haighlei told us there were—yet I have never seen deer and wild pigs afraid to make game trails in lion or bear country. If there is something else living here that makes creatures who regularly face lions afraid to leave a game trail. . . .

  The answer could be that whatever this putative creature was happened to be so fierce, so bloodthirsty, that it wasn’t safe for herbivores to travel in herds. That it was the kind of creature that slaughtered everything within its reach, whether or not it was hungry. He swallowed, his throat feeling tight and dry.

  But he might be overreacting again. He didn’t like this place; perhaps his imagination was getting the better of him. Maybe we just are in a bad place in the forest. Maybe there’s nothing here worth foraging for to bring deer and other browsers into this area. There certainly doesn’t seem to be anything tasty for a plant eater to feed on; all these bushes are extraordinarily tough and we’ve seen precious little grass. Maybe that’s why there aren’t any trails through here; it simply isn’t worth a deer’s time to come here.

  And perhaps that was the reason for the unnatural silence all about them.

  There might be an even better explanation for the silence—they were dreadfully obvious to anything watching and listening. Despite the fact that they were trying very hard to be quiet, the inevitable sounds they were making were an unholy racket in contrast with the silence surrounding them. Try as they might, as they passed from one spot of cover to the next, they rattled vines and rustled bushes, and none of those noises sounded natural.

  And anything living up in the trees is going to have a fine view of us down below. I doubt that Blade looks harmless to what’s up there, and I know I don’t. I look like a very large, if oddly shaped, eagle.

  Tree dwellers might not recognize Blade as a predator, but they would certainly recognize Tad. There were eagles here, they knew that for a fact, for he had seen them flying below him, hunting in and above the forest canopy. Anything that looked like an eagle was going make a canopy dweller nervous.

  And yet. . . there hadn’t been a silence this wary and profound since they had felt as if they were being watched. For that matter, the tree dwellers hadn’t been particularly quiet in any of the other places that they had camped before they had crashed.

  This is exactly like the silence that falls when an eagle-owl is hunting, and everything stays absolutely quiet and motionless until the moment it makes a kill, hoping that whatever it is hunting, it will not find one of them.

  There weren’t even the sounds made when other animals hunted . . . but when a greater predator prowls, the lesser remains silent and hidden. Are we the greater predators, or is something else?

  Perhaps he should put his mind to thinking of ways to delay pursuit.

  If whatever-it-is does come after us, it wouldn’t matter now if I laid booby-traps behind us. Would it? How much worse could I make things, if I hurt something that was following us?

  Well, the answer to that could well be—much worse. Why anger something that was following only out of curiosity?

  Perhaps not booby-traps then, at least
not yet. Perhaps just things to confuse the trail. The first thing to confuse would be scent, because that was of primary importance to a ground-dwelling predator in an environment like this one. There wasn’t much of a line-of-sight, but scent would hold and cling until the next rain washed it away. And by then, a trail would more than likely be too cold to follow anyway.

  He began watching for a vine with leaves veined with purple and red; it had a pungent, peppery smell. He’d noticed that they were fairly common, and when he finally spotted one, he hissed at Blade to stop for a moment.

  When they next moved on, it was with the thick juice from those leaves rubbed all over their feet and hands—and they were going to have to remember not to rub their eyes until they washed it off, for it burned just like real pepper! There were other plants, less common, that had equally distinctive odors, and as he came across them he intended to gather generous samples. Every time the current scent was about to wear off, he’d change it. If anything came hunting them depending on its nose, he’d have handed it a surprise. And maybe one of these plants would have the effect of numbing a sensitive nose.

  He had to hope this ploy would work, for they were certainly proceeding at a crawl to begin with, and their progress only slowed as the day progressed. His pack was awkward, heavy, and made his bad wing and all his bruises ache; he wasn’t suited to walking in the first place, and his injuries combined with the pack only made it worse. Fortunately for his own feelings, Blade wasn’t doing any better, so he wasn’t in the position of knowing that he was the one impeding their progress.

  The longer they walked, the worse it got. Eventually the fog burned off, and the temperature rose, so that he was overheated as well as in pain. Blade’s shirt stuck to her, dark with sweat. He couldn’t sweat, so he panted. Neither sweating nor panting brought any relief in the humid air; it must have been nearly as sultry as a Kaled’a’in steambath. There wasn’t a breath of breeze down here to stir the heavy air. If he had been left to his own devices, he’d have called a halt and flung himself to the ground for a rest.