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

by The Silver Gryphon [lit]

  But if she carried the game until they had enough for him to have that

  single large meal, she’d be weighing herself down for no good purpose. Let

  the game ride in the most efficient way possible; inside Tad.

  If he hasn’t figured out what I’m doing, he will soon, she decided, moving

  on ahead.

  She was worried about him; in spite of the fact that she was the one with

  the worse injury—as her shoulder reminded her sharply of just how badly hurt

  she was, every time she moved a bit too quickly—in some ways he was the

  more vulnerable of the two of them.

  She knew, only too well, just how vulnerable he was. Trapped on the

  ground as he was, he had as many weaknesses as she did. Unless he could

  get his back up against something to protect it, he could not only be attacked

  from the rear, but from below. Most of what he had learned about fighting was

  meant for aerial combat, not ground fighting. Granted, he could improvise,

  and granted, he had four sets of very nasty “knives” on the end of each limb,

  not to mention the weapon in the middle of his face, but he was made for

  another element. Faced with the need to fight on terms and terrain he was not

  suited to, he was vulnerable in ways even he probably didn’t realize.

  His other weakness was the sheer volume of food he had to consume in

  order to stay in decent physical shape. If she couldn’t get that into him—well,

  too many days of rain-soaked dried meat, and he wouldn’t be in good

  condition at all.

  Too many days of that kind of ration, and we‘II have to find a permanent

  place to hole up, because he won’t even be able to travel.

  Walking was much harder on him than flying; he wasn’t built for it.

  Intellectually, of course, she had known that; watching him try to move

  through the underbrush had driven it home to her in a more concrete form.

  He was not clumsy; he was a great deal more graceful at this sort of travel

  than his classmates had ever been. He was, in fact, as adept at it as some

  humans—but he tired easily, and occasionally his wings got caught up on

  some obstacle or other. It would be some time before his legs strengthened

  and gained the endurance for steady walking, and until then, he was

  handicapped.

  If they ever ran across a large browser like a deer, he should be able to

  bring it down so long as they surprised it, but until then she was the better

  ground hunter. He was going to be depending on her for something he was

  normally self-sufficient at.

  She was just grateful that he was as good a tracker as he was. He’d done a

  fair amount to confuse their scent and backtrail, and that could only help right

  now.

  That might be one of the reasons I’m spotting game today; that muck he

  had us rub all over ourselves is probably hiding our scent and confusing the

  tree dwellers. Scent rose, especially in this heat; a wary canopy beast would

  not come anywhere near the ground with the scent of a large predator coming

  up to meet his nose, but at the moment all that they smelled like was crushed

  plants.

  And that might very well be the explanation of why they had been

  surrounded by silence until lately. Quite frankly, Tad was damp, and he

  smelled like—well—damp raptor, a combination of wet feathers and the heavy

  musk that was peculiar to gryphons and birds of prey. He hadn’t been able to

  dry out properly since the accident, and that made his scent more obvious.

  Could be that when we first camped, not only was he not as fragrant, but we

  simply weren‘t on the ground long enough for the scent to rise into the

  canopy. Now we are.

  That speculation made her feel a little better; and the current state of affairs

  did seem to offer support for that speculation. Tad didn’t smell like raptor, wet

  or dry, at the moment. The juicy plant he had her rub all over both of them

  imparted a peculiar, sharp, mossy scent to their respective hides. It made a

  hideous mess of her clothing, streaking it a mottled green, but she wasn’t

  particularly worried about stains.

  Besides, the stains make a fairly good impromptu camouflage.

  She ought to start looking for a good place to go to ground for the night. As

  she kept an eye out, she tried to mentally reckon up the time it would take for

  them to be missed. They ought to start putting up some sort of signal if there

  was any chance that the White Gryphon people might be looking for it.

  We should have made our rendezvous today or tomorrow, so by tomorrow

  or the day after, the Silvers we’re relieving will know there’s something wrong.

  They have a teleson; they ‘II let Judeth know, but it would take a team of

  rescuers coming at full speed another two or three days to reach here. So—

  what does that make it? Another two or three days before help will have a

  chance of being here at best. More likely a week.

  So there’was no point in looking for a shelter and a place where they could

  set up a good signal fire. Shelter alone would do for today and tomorrow.

  Nothing presented itself for another mark—except the first signs she had

  seen yet of large animals on the forest floor. She came across a place where

  a pig had clearly been rooting at the base of a tree, searching for underground

  fungi, and with regret she saw that the trail went off into the north and not the

  west. A pig would have been very welcome to both her and Tad.

  But she was not going to risk going off in a different direction on just the

  chance that they might be able to bring one down.

  The heat was oppressive; when the rains came again, she had every

  intention of soaking herself and her clothing. If she didn’t, by tomorrow

  morning her tunic and trews would be able to stand by themselves, they were

  so saturated with sweat. She was grateful to Tad for his subterfuge with the

  plant scent for more reasons than the obvious; without the pungent aroma of

  crushed leaf hanging around her, she would be smelling herself by now.

  On the other hand, maybe if I smelled bad enough, our trackers would be

  offended and leave us alone. Hah!

  Sweat trickled steadily down the back of her neck, and her hair itched

  unbearably. For that matter, so did her feet, shins, armpits . . . any number of

  tiny forest insects were finding her tasty fare, and she was covered with

  itching, red welts. Something she had forgotten was that their original tent not

  only set itself up and took itself down, the spells on it protected them from

  insects. Without that protection, she seemed to be the only source of food for

  every bloodsucker for furlongs about, except for the ones buzzing about poor

  Tad’s eyes and ears. Her bruise-medicine eased the itching enough for her to

  sleep, but she would have given a great deal to discover a plant that rendered

  her inedible to bugs. Every time she paused, she found herself reaching

  inside her clothing to scratch at another itch.

  She kept reminding her herself to rub, not scratch. If she broke the skin,

  she opened herself up to infection—if she bled, she added a particularly tasty

  scent to her own, and one the plant juice would not cover.

  Something near h
er ear buzzed, landed, and bit. She slapped and swore,

  as Tad crept into cover beside her.

  We may not need stalking beasts to finish us off. The insects may nibble us

  to death.

  “Ants,” Tad muttered in her ear.

  “Is that what just got me?” she asked without turning her head.

  “No. That had wings and a long nose. I am reminding myself to lie on an

  anthill, if we can find some of the small brown ones. It will be irritating, but

  they will rid me of any passengers I may be carrying. Their secretions, when

  the ants are angered, drive away mites and other small pests.”

  She felt a twinge of raw envy; if only it could be that easy for her! But lying

  on an anthill would do her no good since most of the bugs that plagued her

  were winged, and the subsequent ant bites would be just as irritating as her

  current crop of bites and stings.

  She couldn’t wait for the afternoon rain; sweat made the bites itch worse,

  and standing in the pouring cold water gave her the few moments of complete

  relief she got from the incessant itching.

  Time to move. Maybe we’ll find a stream today, and I can go to sleep lying

  in it! Then again, given our current luck, if we found a stream it would be

  infested with leeches.

  Never mind. The one thing they had to do was keep moving, and cope with

  whatever came up. It couldn’t be more than a week until help came.

  All they had to do was to survive that long.

  Six

  Ah, hells. This isn’t easy, one-handed. A bit off-balance because of her

  injured shoulder, Blade threw her final bundle of branches over the canvas of

  tonight’s shelter just as the first rumbles of thunder began in the distance.

  Ah, damn! That hurt!

  Blade doubled over despite herself. Her chest felt constricted, as if cinched

  tight with rope. Thunder rumbled again, nearer. She’d finished just in time,

  though not too soon so far as she was concerned; she was ready for the rain,

  more than ready by now. As she straightened up, she had no doubts that she

  was ready for rest as well.

  This shelter was both superior and inferior to the last one; like last night’s, it

  was also based on the remains of a fallen tree, but this tree had fallen quite

  recently. The splintered wood of the trunk shone fresh and pale against the

  greenery, which was how she had spotted it in the first place. Although there

  were no hollow places in the trunk or snag to shelter in, the tree had taken

  down another right next to it in its fall, and there was an intersection of the two

  trunks, providing a triangular area with two man-high “walls” of wood.

  Stretching the canvas over the top of this place made a roof; piling branches

  on top of the canvas disguised their presence. A further barricade of brush hid

  the entrance, and they would even have the luxury of a small fire tonight,

  screened from view by the brush. More branchlets over a pile of big leaves

  made a springy floor, giving them more comfort tonight than they had enjoyed

  since the accident.

  Now if only she could find something in her medicines to numb these

  damned insect bites!

  Thunder rumbled again, overhead this time. In the course of gathering their

  branches, she had stirred up many tiny animals; mice, lizards, snakes, and

  frogs. She had caught and killed as many of those as she could, and tonight

  she and Tad would supplement their dinner with these tidbits. Individually,

  they weren’t impressive, but she had collected an entire sack of them, enough

  to give Tad much-needed supplements. She’d probably appropriate a couple

  of snakes to roast and give some flavor to her flavorless bread, but the rest

  would go to Tad.

  She would be adding insects to her ration, for she had found grubs of a

  wood-borer that she recognized, ant pupae, and crickets, all of which she

  could choke down so long as they were toasted. When she had been going

  through survival training, she had never really pictured herself putting any of

  her training into practice!

  Well, I have this much revenge; if the bugs are eating me, I’m eating the

  bugs! Insects were really too small to do Tad any good, so by default they

  went to her.

  Tad was inside the shelter arranging things and getting the fire going, and

  she thanked the Star-Eyed that he had enough magic to light fires again. With

  the help of magic, even the greenest, wettest wood could be coaxed to burn.

  Without it—they’d have a poor fire, or none, and she could not bear the

  thought of eating untoasted bugs.

  I’d rather go hungry a bit. I might get hungry enough to consider it, but not

  now.

  Their shelter lay underneath a long slit of sky, cleared by the falling tree. It

  had shown gray when they first arrived here, gray with those fat, round-bellied

  clouds, and had been growing steadily darker ever since, as the inevitable

  afternoon storm gathered strength. Was it her imagination, or were those

  storms coming earlier every afternoon?

  She remained standing where she was, watching the clouds overhead,

  while the dark gray went bright white periodically and thunder followed the

  lightning. As the sky darkened steadily, the ambient light dimmed, stealing the

  color from the leaves, softening the edges of the shadows, and painting the

  clearing in shades of indigo blue. White light suddenly flooded the entire area,

  not just the clouds. Lightning lanced across the raw sky and thunder cracked

  right overhead, making her jump and yelp involuntarily—and jolting her

  shoulder again, which made her swear.

  She forced herself to hold still, to wait for the pain to ebb. I ought to be

  used to this by now— But she wasn’t; every time she jerked her shoulder, the

  pain lanced down her arm and up her neck. It wasn’t getting any better. She

  could only hope that she was just being impatient, and that this didn’t mean

  that it wasn’t healing.

  Two breaths after the lightning came the rain. As always, it poured down in

  a torrent. She held out her good arm and tilted her head up, letting the sweet,

  cool water wash away all the sweat and grime she had accumulated, opening

  her mouth and drinking the fresh, clean liquid. It actually eased her thirst and

  did not taste of warm leather. As sweat washed away and her skin cooled

  down, her insect bites stopped itching.

  With walls of trunk on either side of her, she felt secure enough to stand out

  in the open and indulge herself; the only thing that would have improved the

  situation would have been a bar of soap! But even with nothing but water, she

  was getting reasonably clean, and that always made her temper improve. She

  stood out in the downpour until the dark green stains on her tunic faded to

  match the others already there, until she was as chilled as she had been

  overheated the moment before, until the swollen welts of her insect bites

  stood out against her cold, pallid arms and the bites themselves no longer

  bothered her at all. There was something very exhilarating and elemental

  about standing out in a storm like this one; powerful storms back home had

  always been too cold and dangerous to “play” in, some
thing that had

  disappointed her ever since she was a child. But here—there wasn’t much

  chance that she would be struck by lightning when everything else around her

  was so very much taller than she, and to be able to stand out in rain so heavy

  that it literally stole the breath was an intoxicating experience. It was enough

  to make her forget her pain, almost enough to make her forget their danger.

  Is this what Tad feels when he flies? If so, I envy him. Is this the way it feels

  to not face people, not be in a building or cave, and be encompassed by the

  elements? To stand alone and alive as a living creature only, and not as

  Someone’s Offspring? Is this the moment that makes all the pettiness of

  everyday living worthwhile?

  Only when she was so chilled she had begun to shiver did she duck her

  head and scuttle back to the heap of branches that covered their shelter.

  She pushed past the brush and almost went back out into the rain when

  she encountered a thick cloud of eye-watering smoke.

  “What—what is this?” she demanded as, coughing, she fanned her hand in

  front of her face and dropped to the ground where the air was marginally

  clearer.

  “Sorry,” Tad said apologetically. “I’m trying to get rid of the bugs, both in

  here and on me. It’s working; I certainly got rid of my little plague.”

  “You almost got rid of me,” she grumbled, crawling all the way inside to

  settle beside him. More thunder punctuated her statement. “I suppose it’ll be

  worth it if this smoke-weapon of yours allows us to get a good night’s sleep.”

  Then she laughed. “But if I’d known that this was how you were going to

  interpret my wish for an herb to repel insects, I might have been more careful

  in what I asked for!”

  He gryph-grinned at her, his beak gaping wide. “You didn’t remember

  Drake’s favorite proverb— ‘Be careful what you ask for’—”

  “I know, I know,” she groaned. Tad had been snacking, and the bag was

  almost empty, but he had saved her two of the biggest snakes—though they

  weren’t very big, being no longer than her forearm. One was brown, one was

  green, and both looked vaguely orange in the uncertain light. Tad carefully

  scraped some hot coals to one side with a stick, then added drier wood to the

  rest of the fire.