Smoke, though—the smoke Tad had used to drive out insects had been
very dense and odoriferous, and she wondered if the rain had washed all of it
out of the air. If not—how common would smoke be in a forest that
experienced thunderstorms every day? Common enough, she would think.
Surely lightning started small fires all the time, and surely they burned long
enough to put a fair amount of smoke into the air before the rain extinguished
them.
Well, there wasn’t anything she could do about the smoke—or the shelter
itself—now. If there was anything looking for them, she could only hope that
she had done everything she needed to in order to cover their presence. Last
night it would have been difficult for their possible followers to find them; she
hoped tonight it would be impossible.
The rain turned from a torrent to a shower, and slowed from a shower to a
mere patter. Then it wasn’t rain at all, but simply the melodic drip of water
from the canopy above, and the sounds of the night resumed.
She breathed a sigh of relief, and checked the fire. No point in letting it burn
too high now; the inside of the shelter was at a good temperature, and with
two walls being the trunks of trees, it should sustain that level without too
much work. She rebuilt the fire, listening to the hoots and calls from above,
tenting the flames with sticks of green fuel and banking the coals to help
conceal the glow. This should let the fire burn through the night without
needing too much more fuel or tending. It would burn slowly now, producing a
bed of deep red, smokeless coals instead of flame. That was precisely the
way she wanted it.
With the level of light in the shelter down to the point where Tad was
nothing more than a large, dark shape, she turned her attention back to the
outside.
Nothing had changed; the creatures of the canopy continued to go about
their business with the accompanying noise, and now the luminescent insects
she had noted before began to flit about the foliage. She allowed herself to
relax a little further. It just might be that whatever had been following them
had decided to leave them alone.
But don’t count on it, she cautioned herself. Assume the worst. Assume
that they’re still—
Something moved out in the darkness.
Just a shape, a shifting of shadow, but she knew that there should not have
been a shadow in that place, much less a moving one. Instantly she was on
the alert.
Whatever it was, it was big. Bigger than the tame lion she’d seen in
Shalaman’s menagerie. She knew to within a thumb’s breadth just how wide a
distance lay between each bush, how tall a young tree was. The head of the
shadow would rise a little above hers, she thought, though she had the
impression of a very long, slender neck; the chest briefly obscured one bush
while its hindquarters still lay behind another. Altogether, that would make it
about the size of a horse, perhaps a little smaller. She couldn’t quite tell how
bulky it was, but the fluid way in which it moved and the fact that it melted in
with the other shadows so well suggested that it had a slender build.
Her view was a narrow one, limited to the wedge of forest between the two
long walls of log—yet in a moment, as she concentrated further, she knew
that there was more than one of those creatures out there. One shadow flitted
as another froze; further flickering in the distance suggested that either they
were incredibly fast, or there might be a third.
Two, at least, for certain. But they don’t seem to know we‘re here.
The first of the shadows darted suddenly out of sight; a heartbeat later, and
a bloodcurdling scream rang out into the night.
Blade’s heart leaped into her throat, and she felt as if she had been
plunged into ice water. Tad only wheezed in his sleep. It took all of her control
to remain frozen in place. She had an impression that those shadows
possessed extremely sharp senses, and that if she moved, even obscured by
branches as she was, they might spot the movement, or hear it.
Silence descended, as Blade tried to get her heartbeat started again. It was
a good thing that she had heard the death scream of a rabbit before, or she
would have thought that one of those somethings had just killed a child.
Now, as if the canopy dwellers had only just noticed the shadows’
presence, the silence extended up into the tree-tops. Only the insects and
frogs remained unaffected, chirping and trilling as calmly as they had a
moment before.
She blinked—and in the time it took her to do so, the shadows vanished, at
least from her view.
She did not breathe easier, however. From the silence, she knew that they
were still out there, and she had no intention of letting them know her location.
I can only hope that they haven’t had the bright idea to come take a walk
on top of the sheltering logs.
The very idea made her want to shiver. The back of her neck crawled as
she imagined one of those creatures sniffing around the brush piled above her
head. There was nothing between her and these hunters stronger than a layer
of canvas and a pile of flimsy branches and leaves. Surely if one of the
hunters got close, no amount of brush and herb juice would obscure their
scent. Surely the scent of the fire alone would tell the creature that they were
here—
But I’m assuming that the thing is intelligent, that it would associate a fire
with us. I’m assuming that it’s hunting us—it could simply be here, we could
have wandered into its territory. We haven’t seen any large predators nor any
sign of them; this could simply be the local equivalent of a lion.
And yet. . . something about the way it had moved had suggested
intelligence and purpose. That could be her imagination, but it might be the
truth. It was wary; it moved carefully, but when it did move, it was quick and
certain. That was an indication of something that either had incredible
reflexes, or something that decided very precisely what it was going to do
before it acted.
In any case, there was no reason to take any chances, and every reason to
be painfully cautious. No matter what else, these creatures were hunters,
predators. The behavior of the canopy dwellers showed that, and
demonstrated that the animals that lived in the treetops recognized these
beasts and feared them.
Even if those things are just the local equivalent of a lion, they’re still big,
they’re still carnivorous, and they’re hunting. There’s no reason to put myself
on their menu.
A new thought occurred to her; what if they were not dealing with one
enemy, but two? One that had brought them down, and a second that was
hunting them? In that case, there were two possibilities; the shadows were
either wild hunters that had nothing to do with what brought them down—or
they were allied with it. In the second case, the shadow shapes out there
could be the equivalent of a pack of hunting hounds, trailing them for some
unknown master.
It was not something that wa
s unheard of; that was the problem. Urtho
wasn’t the only mage that created living things. Ma‘ar did, and so did others
who never participated in the wars. The ability to create a new species was a
mark of prestige or a symbol of ability above and beyond the status of being
an Adept. Among the higher mages there were a handful that had created
new creatures for centuries before the war with Ma‘ar.
That gave her yet another possible scenario; a mage who hunted other
intelligent creatures, and had chosen them for his next prey. Their chasers
were his dog pack—
Ma’ar had been one such, and she’d heard tales of others, both from her
own people and from the Haighlei. That, in fact, was one of the reasons why
the Haighlei restricted magic use to the priests; they had a tale of a sadistic,
powerful mage who captured men and brought them to his estate to hunt
them like beasts. A brave young priest had suspected what was happening
and allowed himself to be taken, thus giving his fellows an agent within the
spell-protected walls through which they could channel their own power to
destroy the mage.
That was how the story went anyway.
She grew cold all over again, and restrained herself from running her hand
through her hair nervously. Her imagination went wild again, taking off all on
its own. She had never had any difficulty coming up with scenarios for trouble.
So—suppose that one of the neutral mages came down here to hide before
the Cataclysm. Even if he wasn’t Urtho’s equal, he could have guard-beasts
and birds to warn him when anything was in the area. The Haighlei never
travel through the wilderness in groups of less than ten, and that includes a
priest, but all he‘d have to do would be to stay quiet while they passed by.
Unless they actually stumbled over him, they wouldn ‘t find him. Then he
could hunt individuals at his leisure.
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
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