when she lurched back, she must have really jarred her bad shoulder.
“I’ll get wood,” he offered hastily, and crawled slowly out of the shelter,
trying not to disturb it any more.
Getting soaked was infinitely preferable to staying beside Blade when
several things had gone wrong at once. She was his partner and his best
friend—but he knew her and her temper very, very well.
And given the choice—I’d rather take a thunderstorm.
Five
“Wet gryphon,” Blade announced, wrinkling her nose, “is definitely not in
the same aromatic category as a bouquet of lilies.”
“Neither is medicine-slathered human,” Tad pointed out mildly. “I’ll dry—but
in the morning, you’ll still be covered with that smelly soup.”
Since he had just finished helping her wrap her limbs and torso in wet,
brown bandages, he thought he had as much right to his observation as she
had to hers.
In fact, he had shaken as much off his feathers as he could before he got
into the tent, and he was not wet anymore, just damp. “And it could be worse.
You could be sharing this shelter with a wet kyree,” he added.
She made a face. “I’ve been stuck in a small space with a wet kyree before,
and you are a bundle of fragrant herbs, if not a bouquet of lilies, compared to
that experience.”
Supper for her had been one of the pieces of travel-bread, which she had
gnawed on rather like a kyree with a bone. They had been unbelievably lucky;
Blade had spotted a curious climbing beast venturing down out of the canopy
to look them over, and she had gotten it with her sling. It made a respectable
meal, especially since Tad hadn’t done much to exert himself and burn off
breakfast.
He had gone out to get more wood, searching for windfall and dragging it
back to the camp. Then he had done the reverse, taking what wreckage they
were both certain was utterly useless and dropping it on the other side of their
brush-palisade where they wouldn’t always be falling over it.
Blade had gone out in the late afternoon to chop some of the wood Tad
had found, and bathe herself all over in the rain. He had been a gentleman
and kept his eyes averted, even though she wasn’t his species. She was
unusually body-shy for a Kaled’a’in—or perhaps it was simply that she
guarded every bit of her privacy that she had any control over.
At any rate, she had gathered up her courage and taken a cold rain bath,
dashing back in under the shelter to huddle in a blanket afterward. She
claimed that she felt much better, but he wondered how much of that was
bravado, or wishful thinking. She was a human and not built for forceful—or
bad—landings. Although the basket had given her some protection, he had no
real idea how badly hurt she was in comparison with him. Nor was she likely
to tell him if she was hurt deeper than the skin-obvious. To his growing worry,
he suspected that her silence might hide her emotional wounds as well.
After she was dry, she had asked his help with her bruise-medicines. There
was no doubt of how effective they were; after the treatment yesterday, the
bruises were fading, going from purple, dark blue, and black, to yellow, green
and purple. While this was not the most attractive color-combination, it did
indicate that she was healing faster than she would have without the
treatments.
He finished the last scrap of meat, and offered her the bones. “You could
put these in the fire and roast them,” he said, as she hesitated. “Then you
could eat the marrow. Marrow is rich in a lot of good things. This beast wasn’t
bad; the marrow has to have more taste than that chunk of bread you’ve been
chewing.”
“Straw would have more taste,” she replied, and accepted the larger bones.
“I can bite the bones open later, if they don’t split, and you can carve out
the cooked marrow. We can use the long bone splinters as stakes. They
might be useful,” Tad offered.
Blade nodded, while trying unsuccessfully to stretch her arms. “You try and
crunch up as much of those smaller bones as you can; they’ll help your wing
heal.” She buried the bones in the ashes and watched them carefully as he
obeyed her instructions and snapped off bits of the smaller bones to swallow.
She was right; every gryphon knew that it took bone to build bone.
When one of the roasting bones split with an audible crack, she fished it
quickly out of the fire. Scraping the soft, roasted marrow out of the bones with
the tip of her knife, she spread it on her bread and ate it that way.
“This is better. It’s almost good,” she said, around a mouthful. “Thanks,
Tad.”
“My pleasure,” he replied, pleased to see her mood slowly lifting. “Shall we
set the same watches as last night?” He yawned hugely. “It’s always easier
for me to sleep on a full stomach.”
“It’s impossible to keep you awake when your belly’s full, you mean,” she
retorted, but now she wore a ghost of a smile. “It’s the best plan we have.”
His wing did hurt less, or at least he thought it did. Gryphon bones tended
to knit very quickly, like the bones of the birds that they were modeled after.
Just at the moment, he was grateful that this was so; he preferred not to think
about the consequences if somehow Blade had set his wing badly. Not that
his days of fancy aerobatics would be over, but having his wing-bones
rebroken and reset would be very unpleasant.
He peered up at the tree canopy, and as usual, saw nothing more than
leaves. And rain, lots of it.
“I’m afraid we’re in for another long rain like last night,” he said ruefully. “So
much for putting out snares.”
“We can’t have everything our way.” She shrugged. “So far, we’re doing all
right. We could survive a week this way, with no problem—as long as nothing
changes.”
As long as nothing changes. Perhaps she had meant that to sound
encouraging, but as he willed himself to sleep, he couldn’t feel any
encouragement. Everything changes eventually. Only a fool would think
otherwise. We might think we know what we’re doing, but it only takes one
serious mistake out here and we’re dead. Even a minor mistake would mean
that everything changes.
The thought followed him down into his sleep, where it woke uneasy
echoes among his dreams.
He slept so lightly that Blade did not need to shake him awake. He roused
to the sound of water dripping steadily from the leaves above, the crackling
and popping of the fire, and the calls of insects and frogs. That was all. It was
very nearly silent out there, and it was a silence that was unnerving.
The forest that he knew fell silent in this way when a large and dangerous
predator—such as a gryphon—was aprowl. He doubted that the denizens of
this forest knew the two of them well enough to think that they were
dangerous. That could only mean that something the local creatures knew
was dangerous was out there.
Somewhere.
“Anything?” he whispered. She shook her head slightly without taking her
>
eyes off the forest, and he noticed that she had banked the fire down so that it
didn’t dazzle her eyes.
He strained both eyes and ears, testing the night even as she did, and
found nothing.
“It isn’t that everything went quiet, it was that nothing much started making
night-sounds after dark,” she whispered back. “I suppose we might have
driven all the local animals off—”
“Even the things that live up in the canopy? I doubt it,” he replied. “Why
would anything up there be afraid of us?”
She shrugged. “All I know is, I haven’t heard or seen anything, but I have
that unsettling feeling that something is watching us. Somewhere.”
And whatever it is, the local creatures don’t like it either. He had the same
feeling, a crawling sensation at the back of his neck, and an itch in his talons.
There were unfriendly eyes out there in the night, and Tad and Blade were at
a disadvantage. It knew where they were and what they were. They had no
idea what it was.
But if it hadn’t attacked while he was asleep, hopefully it wouldn’t while
Blade took her rest. “Get to sleep,” he told her. “If there’s anything out there
except our imaginations, it isn’t likely to do anything now that I’m on watch. I
look more formidable than you do, and I intend to reinforce that.”
Under the packs holding Blade’s clothing were his fighting-claws. He picked
up her packs with his beak and fished them out. The bright steel winked
cruelly in the subdued firelight, and he made a great show of fitting them on.
Once Blade had fastened the straps, he settled back in, but with a more
watchful stance than the previous night.
If there’s nothing out there, I’m going to feel awfully stupid in the morning,
for putting on all this show.
Well, better to feel stupid than be taken unaware by an attacker. Even if it
was just an animal watching them, body language was something an animal
could read very well. Hopefully, in the shiny claws and the alert stance, it
would read the fact that attacking them would be a big mistake.
Blade pulled blankets around herself as she had the night before, but he
noticed that she had a fighting-knife near at hand and her crossdraw knife
under her pillow.
I just hope she can make herself sleep, he fretted a little. She’s going to be
of no use if she’s exhausted in the morning. If there was the slightest chance
of convincing her to drink it, I’d offer her a sleeping tea.
He waited all night, but nothing happened. Drops of water continued to
splat down out of the trees, and frogs and insects sang, although nothing else
moved or made a sound. He began to wonder, toward dawn, if perhaps they
had frightened away everything but the bugs and reptiles.
It wasn’t likely, but it was possible. . . .
By the time the forest began to lighten with the coming of dawn, every
muscle in his body ached with tension. His eyes twitched and burned with
fatigue, and he could hardly wait for Blade to wake up. But he wouldn’t
awaken her himself. She needed her rest as much as he needed his.
Finally, when dawn had given way to full daylight, she stirred and came
awake, all at once.
“Nothing,” he said, answering her unspoken question. “Except that nothing
larger than a gamebird made a sound all night, either, near the camp.”
Now he moved, removing the fighting-claws, getting stiffly to his feet, and
prowling out into the rising fog. He wanted to see what he could before the fog
moved in and made it impossible to see again, shrouding in whiteness what
the night had shrouded in black.
He was looking for foot- or paw-prints, places where the leaves had been
pressed down by a body resting there for some time.
This was the area of which he was most proud. He wasn’t just a good
tracker, he was a great one. Blade was good, but he was a magnitude better
than she.
Why a gryphon, who spent his life furlongs above the ground, should prove
to be such a natural tracker was a total mystery to him. If Skandranon had
boasted a similar ability, no one had ever mentioned it. He only knew that he
had been the best in his group, and that he had impressed the best of the
Kaled’a’in scouts. That was no small feat, since it was said of them that they
could follow the track of the wind.
He suspected he would need every bit of that skill now.
He worked his way outward from the brush-fence, and found nothing, not
the least sign that there had been anything out in the darkness last night
except his imagination. He worked his way out far enough that he was certain
no one and nothing could have seen a bit of the camp. By this time, he was
laughing at himself.
I should have known better. Exhaustion, pain, and too many drugs. That’s a
combination guaranteed to make a person think he’s being watched when
he’s alone in his own aerie.
He debated turning and going back to the camp; the fog was thickening
with every moment, and he wouldn’t be able to see much anyway. In fact, he
had turned in his tracks, mentally rehearsing how he was going to make fun of
himself to Blade, when he happened to glance over to the side at the spot
where he had left the wreckage he had hauled out of the camp yesterday.
He froze in place, for that spot was not as he had left it. Nor did it look as if
scavengers had simply been rummaging through it.
Every bit of trash had been meticulously taken apart, examined, and set
aside in a series of piles. Here were the impressions he had looked for in vain,
the marks of something, several somethings, that had lain in the leaf mold and
pawed over every bit of useless debris.
His intuition, and Blade’s, had been correct. It had not been weariness,
pain, and the medicines. There had been something out here last night, and
before it had set to watch the camp it had been right here. Some of the larger
pieces of wreckage were missing, and there were no drag marks to show
where they had been taken. That meant that whatever had been here had
lifted the pieces and carried them off rather than dragging them.
And except for this one place, there was no trace of whatever had been
here. The creature or creatures that had done this had eeled their way
through the forest leaving nothing of themselves behind.
This couldn’t be coincidence. It had to be the work of whatever had brought
them crashing down out of the sky. Now their mysterious enemies, whatever
they were, had spent the night studying him, Blade, and as much of the things
belonging to them as had been left within their reach. They now had the
advantage, for he and Blade knew nothing of them, not even if they ran on
four legs, six, eight, two, or something else. All that he knew was that the
creature—or creatures—they faced were intelligent enough to examine things
minutely—and cunning enough to do so without clear detection.
He turned and ran back to the camp, despite the added pain it brought him.
It was not simple fear that galvanized him, it was abject terror, for nothing can
be worse to a gryphon tha
n an opponent who is completely unknown.
As Tad spoke, Blade shivered, although the sun was high enough now that
it had driven off the fog and replaced the cool damp with the usual heat and
humidity. The pain, weariness, the drugs—all of them were taking their toll on
her endurance. Her hands shook; her pale face told him that it wasn’t fear that
was making her shake, it was strain. This just might be the event that broke
her nerve.
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
Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 03 - The Silver Gryphon.txt Page 17