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 best.
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 particula
rly 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
Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 03 - The Silver Gryphon.txt Page 18