There was just one problem with that hypothesis; no one had ever been reported missing from here. Unless a Haighlei was so antisocial as to sever all familial and clan ties and go off wandering the wilderness, someone would have raised a fuss by now if anyone had vanished, wouldn’t they? Woodcutters, explorers, trappers, hunters—they all told friends, neighbors, and fellow workers where they were going, what route they intended to take, and when they should be back. They did so especially if« they were going off into poorly-explored lands; if something happened, they would want others to mount a rescue as soon as possible.
Perhaps there had been a few Haighlei hermits who had wandered in here only to vanish—but not enough to provide sport for a maniacal manhunting mage.
Well, all right, then—what if he came here to escape all the conflict. What if he wants to be left alone, and he brought us down to keep us from revealing his presence?
But that didn’t make any more sense than the first hypothesis. There had been others through here; they had all flown overhead on the same route. Why hadn’t they been brought down?
Because we were the only gryphon-human pair?
But there had been Aubri and Judeth. . . .
Oh, winds. I should be a storyteller.
She gave it up as a bad notion. It was getting too complicated, and usually, the more complicated a hypothesis was, the more likely it was that it was incorrect.
Stick to the two possibilities that work best. Simple answers work best and are more likely. First: we hit some kind of accidental—thing—that brought us down, and now we’re having to guard ourselves from the local predators which are following us because we ‘re hurt and look like easy prey. Second: something down here brought us down for reasons of its own and now is hunting us. And the first is more likely than the second.
That didn’t mean they were in any less danger. Wolves and lions had been known to trail wounded prey for days, waiting for it to die. And if her guess about the size of the shadow-creatures was right, they were a match for Tad, which would make them formidable opponents indeed. If the shadows knew that she and Tad were hurt, that might well put them in the category of “wounded prey.”
A bird called; another answered. And as if that tentative call had been meant to test the safety of the area, or to tell other creatures that the menace had gone for the moment, the canopy above began to come to life again.
She sighed, and let her shoulders relax. She cast a wry glance at her slumbering companion.
Somehow, Tad had managed to sleep through it all.
Tad yawned, and stretched as best he could, blinking in what passed for light in their shelter. When
Blade woke him for his watch, she had looked tired, but that was to be expected. She also looked nervous, but how could she not be? He would be nervous on his watch, too. Nervous sentries remained living sentries; relaxed ones had short epitaphs.
“I saw something out there that might account for the way everything goes silent every so often,” she offered. “It was pretty big, and I think there were two or more of them. I didn’t see anything more than a shadow, though. One of them caught a rabbit, and every bird and beast in the canopy shut up and stayed that way for a long time.”
Well, that accounts for the nerves, and for the fact that she looks tired. Nerves wear you out and she didn‘t have much of a reserve when she began her watch.
“Huh.” He glanced out into the darkness, but didn’t see anything—and some of the local creatures were acting as if they were in the middle of a singing competition. “Well, if silence means that there’s something out there we should be worried about, I’d say you can sleep in peace until dawn. I’m surprised I slept through it. I must have been more tired than I thought—or my medicine is stronger than I supposed.”
She managed a ghost of a chuckle. “It got my hackles up, I can tell you that much. It’s quick, very quick, and I didn’t hear a rustle of leaves or a single broken twig. I’d say the one I saw was about the size of a horse, which would make it a formidable predator in a fight. It might have been my imagination, but I thought that it acted fairly intelligent.”
“So do the big cats, hunting,” he reminded her. “Everything acts intelligent in its own realm. Drink your painkillers, get some sleep. We’ll see what’s out there in the morning. I set some snares before the rain—”
She chuckled again. “Don’t count on there being anything left. I think you were robbed. That may have been where our shadows found their rabbit.”
He sighed. “Probably, but it was worth doing. And we’ll know how intelligent they are by how the snares were robbed. If it was just snatch-and-eat, then they won’t be any more intelligent than the average lion.”
“Good point.” She settled herself down at the back of the shelter; he was certain she was going to get a good rest for the rest of the night, so long as things stayed noisy up in the canopy. The mattress of boughs and leaves he’d made was very comfortable, and she should be able to lie cradled in a way that permitted her to sleep soundly, rather than fitfully. With her shoulder supported so that pressure was off her collarbone, she should be in less pain.
He had not wanted to mention it before this, but he had already seen signs on their backtrail that something was following them. It could have been anything, and he hadn’t seen any signs that their follower was particularly intelligent—just alert and incredibly wary. The trouble with telling her now was that there was nothing to prove whether or not the shadowy creature that was following them was something they had just picked up today, or if it had been following them all along and only now was feeling bold enough to move in where he might catch a glimpse of it. It could certainly match the description that Blade had given him of the creature she saw tonight.
That basically was all that he knew as a fact. This, of course, had nothing to do with what his own imagination could conjure up.
In his imagination, the sighting confirmed the fear that he’d had all along, that they were being followed for some specific purpose. The only question in his mind now was if the purpose was a simple one—kill and eat the prey—or something more complicated than that. If it was simple, then these creatures were simple predators, and relatively “easy” to deal with. If, however, there was a larger purpose in their minds—if his imagination was right, and in fact these creatures had something to do with their accident—then he and Blade were in very deep trouble.
Such extreme caution combined with curiosity as these “shadows” had exhibited was very unlike most predators he was familiar with. In general, large predators tended to shy completely away from anything that was not familiar, at the most watching it from a distance. Only if the unfamiliar object continued to remain in a predator’s territory would it gradually move in closer to investigate it.
Predators are very nervous, very jumpy. They have a lot of competition, and normally they can only take down large creatures if their prey is old, sick, very young, or wounded. Prey that fights back is to be avoided, because the predator can’t afford to be injured in the struggle. Being a carnivore is an expensive business, as I well know. When your dinner can run away from you, you’re going to spend a lot of energy hunting and killing it. Vegetarians have.it easy. Their dinner can’t move, and they don’t have to do anything other than walk up and open their mouths.
That meant that the predators following them were not following “normal” behavior; the gryphon and the human were strange, they might be dangerous, hence there was no reason to follow them. In fact, there was every reason to avoid them—unless he and Blade were giving off signals that fit the profile of “sick, old, very young, or wounded,” or had become familiar enough for their pursuers to investigate.
Either the territory these shadows claimed was so very large that he and Blade had been within its boundaries all along, or these creatures were something out of the ordinary.
The fact that one of them had killed and eaten a rabbit did not tend to make him believe that they
would not attack him or Blade. Wolves made very good meals of mice, yet did not hesitate to pull down deer. For that matter, he was eating mice this very night! No, a predator’s prey on a given night did not necessarily define what it could take. Something as big as a horse could very easily consider something as big as a gryphon to be reasonable prey. Top predators often pulled down animals very much larger than they themselves were; the only exceptions were birds of prey, who would ideally not kill anything larger than they could fly off with—generally much less than half the bird’s own body weight. The only eagles that had ever carried off lambs were Kaled’a’in-bred bondbirds, who had the required wingspread and muscle mass, and carried them off at the behest of their bondmates.
I think we are going to have to set traps around our camps at night, he decided reluctantly. Even if these creatures manage to escape from a trap, there is a chance that we will make them hesitant to attack us by frightening or even injuring one or more. If they are nothing more than animals, the mere fact that one of them is hurt should make them give up on making us into dinner.
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‘II 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 tucked 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.
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