Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 03 - The Silver Gryphon.txt

by The Silver Gryphon [lit]

  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.

  As he had predicted, their progress was measured in furlongs, not leagues,

  with no discernible differences in the territory that they crossed. He could only

  be certain that they were not walking in circles by virtue of the fact that Blade

  kept checking the north-needle every time they stopped moving. They

  stopped for a brief break and something to eat. The sun actually penetrated

  the canopy in a few places eventually, but it was not much help in showing

  them where they were. There wasn’t enough of it visible to help them get a

  bearing from it, either by using a measuring stick or by taking the angle of it.

  In fact, the sunlight proved to be something of a new hazard. The beams of

  sunlight lancing down through the dark green leaves were very pretty, very

  picturesque, but they were also to be avoided at all costs. Pinned even for a

  moment in such a bright light, they would be extremely obvious as something

  that didn’t belong there.

  There were still no signs of any watercourses, either, which probably meant

  that this forest depended on rain rather than ground water for the trees to

  thrive. That was not precisely a surprise, given the daily thunderstorms.

  But a creek or a small stream would have given them a path to a river, and

  a way to break their trail completely. If they were ever able to wade for some

  distance along the path of a creek bed, they would completely lose anything

  that hunted by scent. He had been hoping for a stream, in fact, for that very

  reason.

  That, and stream water would certainly be cooler than the water in my

  water skin. The tepid liquid he was carrying had not been particularly

  refreshing, although he had drunk his ration dutifully. And it would taste better.

  Much better.

  But there was no sign of any sort of a stream, and eventually the beams of

  sunlight faded, the light all about them dimmed, and a distant rumble heralded

  the afternoon storm approaching. At that point, despite their lack of progress,

  he was almost grateful to hear it. Now they would have to stop and rig a

  shelter for the night, because it wouldn’t be long before the rain started to fall

  and made it impossible to get anything constructed.

  Blade stopped, held up her hand, then motioned him up beside her.

  “We’ve got to stop and get our canvas up,” she said, weariness in every

  syllable. He felt instantly sorry for her; she sounded even more tired than he

  was.

  She pointed ahead, to one of the few distinctive places he’d seen in this

  forest. There was a break in the cover, through which the fat, gray bellies of

  the clouds were clearly visible; at some point in the past few years one of the

  forest giants had toppled here. They edged forward to a place where the

  hollowed-out carcass of an ancient snag stood, half-covered with vines, the

  remains of the rest of the tree lying on the ground beside it, smothered in

  vines and plants. “That snag is big enough to hold both of us. We’ll use that

  for the base of our shelter; it’s the closest thing I’ve seen today to something

  that we can count on to protect us overnight.”

  And she doesn‘t mean from the rain. He nodded. Abandoning any pretext

  at moving quietly, they thrashed their way through the undergrowth to the

  giant snag. It stood a little taller than Blade’s head, and as she had stated,

  was just large enough to hold both of them in its hollow interior. There was no

  room for a fire, but in confines that close, they would keep each other warm

  with the heat of their bodies.

  And I’m not certain that I want afire to advertise our presence tonight.

  They were going to need one initially, though— otherwise they were going

  to be sharing this shelter with a wide variety of multi-legged guests. Rotten

  wood meant insects, and some of them could be noxious or even poisonous.

  They didn’t have much time before the storm broke, though; perhaps not

  enough time for Blade to use the firestriker to start a fire in the hollow. But he

  was a mage, and the easiest spell in the lexicon was to call fire.

  Dare I? It could have been the mere presence of magic that got us

  attacked. . . . Well, if I don’t, she might not get a torch going before the rain

  comes. And the fire-spell is so very small, so limited in scope and duration—

  I’d better chance it. “Move back,” he ordered her; as soon as she had obeyed,

  he closed his eyes, concentrated—and called fire into the midst of the

  hollowed-out trunk.

  There was enough in the way of dry leaves and dry, half-rotted woodchips

  on the floor of the snag to start an enthusiastic and very smoky fire. The

  smoke had the immediate effect of driving out everything that could leap or fly;

  Blade bundled other burnables together into two torches and they lit both at

  the fire and proceeded to char the interior. Smoke rose all about them in a

  thick fog; he coughed and backed out to get a breath of cleaner air more than

  once. Half-rotten wood did not give off the kind of pleasant smoke that made

  sitting beside a campfire a pleasure. It was a pity they hadn’t come upon this

  place earlier; some of the grubs might have been very tasty, especially

  cooked. Now their only concern was to rid the tree of all other inhabitants

  before the rains came.

  He coughed again, as a new and more acrid set of odors joined the heavy

  smoke. We must have hit a nest of something nasty. Ugh. Or maybe we ‘ve

  just incinerated a crop of unpleasant fungi. He hoped that whatever they

  burned off didn’t give off poisonous fumes. A little late to worry about that

  now.

  They didn’t quite beat the downpour completely. They were in the process

  of roofing the snag with their canvas and tying it down when the first

  cloudburst descended, wetting them both to the skin.

  At that point, Blade gave in to the inevitable and stood in the downpour until

  she and her clothing had been flushed clean, and he let the rain wash all of

  the soot and dirt from his own feathers before shaking himself partially dry

  under the shelter of a nearby tree. It was too bad that Blade’s clothing didn’t

  sluice clean so easily, nor could she shake herself dry. He made a dash to the

  snag and squeezed himself into the downed tree with the supplies. She had

  already gotten out blankets and bread and dried meat. He tucked the packs

  up in a way that s
he could sleep on them, and put her blanket on top of the

  pile. He had to put the dried meat out into the stream of water pouring off the

  canvas and soak it until he could eat it. Meanwhile, Blade emptied and refilled

  their water skins, then joined him in their shelter.

  Their combined body heat did do something to warm the interior; with

  blankets over each of them, they weren’t completely miserable, and Blade’s

  clothing actually began to dry out. And the strong smell of smoke wasn’t too

  bad after a while—though they must not have gotten all of the bugs out of

  their shelter, since periodically he would feel a small one taking a trip-under

  his feathers, or Blade would slap at something. Once again, the rain persisted

  until after nightfall, though once it stopped, it was— again—uncannily silent

  beneath the trees. “Damn,” Blade whispered. “I was hoping. . . .”

  “That we’d left them behind?” Tad was altogether glad of the thick wood at

  his back, and of the deep shadow of the interior of their shelter. Not even an

  owl would be able to see them in here. “It might not be them that’s making

  everything so quiet. It might just be the smell of smoke; you know how most

  wild things fear fire.”

  “And I might be the Haighlei Emperor. No, they’re out there. They followed

  us, I’m sure of it.” She stared out into the darkness fiercely, as if willing her

  eyes to be better than they actually were.

  “Well, they can’t get us in here,” he said, and meant it. “It’s safe enough for

  you to sleep if you want to take second watch this time.”

  “You can’t sleep?” she asked. He shook his head.

  It was true, he wasn‘t going to be able to sleep for a while; he was horribly

  tired, but not sleepy. His muscles kept twitching and jumping with

  accumulated fatigue. His nerves all felt strung as tightly as a Kaled’a’in horse-

  bow, and every tiny sound out there had him peering into the darkness as

  fiercely as she. It was going to be some time before he relaxed enough to fall

  asleep.

  “Well, I think I’ve reached the limit on my nerves,” she replied, punctuating

  the sentence with a yawn. “Believe it or not, I’m going numb. Right now, I hurt

  so much that all I want to do is drink my medicine and drop off as soon as the

  pain stops. In fact, right now, they could come kill me as long as they did it

  while I was asleep; I just can’t get up the energy to care.”

  “I know how you feel.” Awkwardly, he managed to pat her leg in sympathy.

  “You go ahead. I’ll take the first watch as long as I can.”

  She sounded fatalistic; he wasn’t quite ready to share that emotion, but

  there was something else to consider. I’m not sure it would matter if we both

  fell asleep tonight. So far, we haven’t any evidence beyond the fact that

  something probably dangerous is probably following us. They haven’t actually

  done anything. Even assuming that they intend to attack us, as cautious as

  they have been, I don’t think they’re ready to try and pry us out of some place

  like this. “I think we’re as safe as we can be under the circumstances. Get

  some sleep while you can.”

  She didn’t need a second invitation. In an instant, she had downed her vial

  of medicine and curled up against his side in her blanket, propped up by the

  packs to save her shoulder. Provided she didn’t get a kink in her neck from

  sleeping this way, or stiff muscles from a chill, she ought to be more

  comfortable tonight than she had been since the accident.

  He stared out into the darkness until his eyes burned—and just as he was

  contemplating waking her to take her watch, the forest itself woke. But not

  with sounds of alarm—to his intense relief, these were normal night sounds,

  the same they had heard every other night of this journey.

  The whoop of something up above startled Blade awake. She came alive

  with a jerk and a thin gasp of pain. “What?” she demanded, then relaxed as

  she recognized the noises outside their shelter for what they were.

  The sudden onset of normal night sounds had been the trigger that let all of

  his own fatigue catch up with him. Suddenly, he could not keep his eyes open,

  no matter how hard he tried. He was actually nodding off even as he stared

  into the dark.

  “Can you take over?” he whispered, and felt her nod. That was all he

  needed; a moment later, not even the scream of a makaar would have

  awakened him.

  For the second time that morning, Blade motioned to Tad to freeze.

  Obedient to her hand gesture, he went rigid, and for something as huge as he

  was, he blended into the forest surprisingly well. His eyes were fixed on her,

  not on the forest around him; that was because she hadn’t used the gesture

  that meant danger, just the one that meant wait.

  In fact, there was no danger, only an opportunity. She had spotted another

  of the long-limbed tree dwellers climbing cautiously down out of the canopy, in

  pursuit of something it had dropped. This must be a young one; the elders

  never were so foolish as to risk coming down into the danger zone just

  because they wanted something they had lost. If she was lucky, this one

  would not survive a lesson in why they did not.

  Although this hunting was delaying them, it was a necessary delay.

  Her quarry dropped down off the tree trunk and took two cautious steps on

  the forest floor, reaching for the bright object it had lost. It had four long limbs,

  a pointed snout, and large eyes set on the sides of its head. If it had been up

  in the canopy, she would never have been able to spot it, for its brown fur

  blended in beautifully with the bark of the tree. Not that she could have

  reached it with her puny weapon, either. Nothing short of a very powerful bow

  would put a missile up into the canopy with force great enough to kill.

  She whirled her sling twice and let fly.

  The beast barely had time to register the movement and start to turn his

  head. Then the lead shot struck it squarely on the skull with a wet crack, and it

  dropped to the ground, instantly dead.

  Grinning with elation, she ran forward anyway, just to make certain of it with

  her knife; fresh meat was too precious a commodity for her to take any

  chances that it might simply be stunned. When she finished, she stood up and

  motioned Tad to come up and join her.

  She straightened and walked over to see what it had dropped. The brightly

  colored object that had exerted a fatal attraction for this tree dweller proved to

  be absolutely unidentifiable. It was bladderlike, and a bright blue and red. It

  could have been a flower, a seed pod, a fruit, even an insect carapace or a

  portion of some other unfortunate animal. She ignored it at that point; perhaps

  it was edible, but this was not the time nor the place to experiment.

  Tad, meanwhile, had made short work of her prey. It hadn’t been very

  large, and he had dismembered it and eaten it almost whole. This was the

  second such catch she’d made this morning for him, and he looked much the

  better for the fresh meat. The first had been a rodent, both rabbitlike and rat-

  like; bigger than a rat, but small for a rabbit
. This one was about the size of a

  large rabbit, though the long limbs had made it look bigger. If her luck kept up,

  she’d be able to keep him in fresh-killed prey, mouthful by mouthful. That

  would take one worry away from her; how to keep him from starving.

  Gryphons weren’t big eaters just by choice.

  Although the forest sounds had by no means returned to normal, there

  were more signs of other living things now, which made her feel a bit better.

  Maybe they were outdistancing their invisible trackers. Or maybe those

  trackers were just waiting until nightfall to move in on them.

  At least this meant that she could actually see some game to take down.

  I can probably get enough small animals and birds over the course of the

  day to keep Tad in good shape, she decided, retrieving the bit of lead shot

  and pocketing it before checking her north-needle. Tad had cautiously taken

  the downed creature into the shelter of a bush to eat it; she pressed herself

  against the bole of the tree and picked the next landmark they would head for.

  That was how she was navigating, in line-of-sight increments; checking her

  north-needle, picking a particular bit of distant cover that was farther west,

  and moving in toward it. Not only were they—hopefully—avoiding being

  spotted by their foe, they were not frightening the game.

  She made two more such moves when she spotted another one of the rat-

  rabbits, nosing about on the forest floor in search of something edible. She

  warned Tad to freeze and potted it, too. That made three pieces of small

  game in about three marks, or one piece per mark, and she was beginning to

  feel very proud of herself. That was not at all bad for someone hampered by a

  bad shoulder, with a primitive weapon, in unfamiliar territory. If I remember my

  gryphon-rations correctly, he should actually prosper on that amount of food.

  Granted, it’s like feeding a hawk by tidbitting it, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  If he isn’t exactly full at any one time, he isn‘t going hungry, either.

  He looked faintly annoyed at being asked to swallow another bit of game

  every mark or so, but he didn’t say anything. He was used to eating once

  lightly, and once hugely, then sleeping on that larger meal. He probably

  wondered why they were stopping so frequently just so he could eat.