hunters coming. We can look for a cave as soon as we‘re across.
For the first time in four days,, they should be able to find a safe and secure
place to wait for rescue, a place too difficult to dig them out of, with walls of
rock instead of flimsy canvas.
And they might be able to actually see the creatures that were following
them—assuming that the shadow-hunters were bold enough to go this far.
They might give up. She wasn’t going to count on it, but they might. This was
certainly more trouble than most predators wanted to go through for a meal.
Now she grinned, and it was heartfelt. “Let’s go get wet,” she said. “We
both need a bath anyway!”
Seven
Blade peered through the curtain of rain, looking a few lengths ahead to
see if there was anything like a cave in sight, then looking back down at her
feet to pick out her footing among the slippery mud and river rocks. Here, out
in the open, the rain came down in sheets, making footing doubly
treacherous. More rain sluiced down the cliff face, washing across the rocks
at her feet. This time, they hadn’t gone to ground when the rains came; they
didn’t even look for a shelter. Instead, they continued to make their way along
the cliff-side bank of the river. For one thing, the only shelter from the rain lay
back on the other side of the river, and she didn’t really want to take her
chances back there. For another, every moment they spent in huddling away
from the rain was a moment that they could not spend in looking for real
cover, the protection of a place from which they could not be extracted by
force.
By now poor Tad was a wet, sodden mess, and after this, she was certainly
going to have to figure out what they could spare to make him a new bandage
for his wing. The bandages he wore were soaked and coming loose, and
wouldn’t be any good until after they had been rinsed clean and dried.
Sacrifice some clothing, maybe, if we don’t have enough bandages. I could
shorten the legs of my trews for cloth, since they don’t seem to be much
protection against the bugs. That and some rope might make a decent sling.
She was going to have to get him dried out before they slept; allowing a
gryphon to go to sleep wet was a sure prescription for illness.
We need a cave, or at worst, a cleft. This rain is going to go on until
nightfall, and we won’t be able to see anything then.
The water level in the river didn’t seem to be rising much, if any, which
suggested that it was probably as high now as it ever got, except in the
occasional flood. And I hope we don’t happen to be in the midst of flood
season! There was evidence aplenty for a flood, in the form of flotsam, mostly
wood, washed up and wedged among the rocks. It would make admirable
firewood, if they could ever find a place where they could build a fire!
It would be just our luck to have pinned our hopes on finding this cliff only
to discover that there is less shelter here than there was in the forest. If they
didn’t find a place to hole up before dark, they might have to spend the night
exposed on this rocky shore, where they would have the grim choice of
lighting a fire and attracting attention or shivering, cold and damp, wrapped up
in wet blankets all night.
The gods, or fate, were not to be so unkind, however. After a few more
furlongs of picking their way across the rocks and sliding through the mud, the
cliff receded somewhat to her left and the river opened up before her. A white,
roaring wall loomed up out of the rain, as if someone had torn a hole in the
clouds and let all the water out at once. After a moment of blinking and trying
to get her dripping hair out of her eyes, she realized that she was not staring
at a torrent in the midst of the downpour, she was looking at a waterfall, and
just on their side of the waterfall, there was a series of darker holes in the cliff
wall that must be caves.
Tad spotted them at the same time, and shouted into her ear. “If any of
these are deep enough, this is where we should stop! We may not be able to
hear anything coming, but whatever tries to come at us from ahead won’t be
able to get past the falls! We’ll only have to guard in one direction!”
She winced at the bellowing, since she was right beside the excited
gryphon, but saw at once that he was right. That overcame her misgiving at
camping in a place where the sound of an enemy approaching would be
covered by the roar of the water. And as if to emphasize just what a good spot
this was, a stunned fish came floating to their very feet to lodge among the
rocks, flapping feebly. It had obviously been knocked silly by going over the
falls, and Tad, who was probably starving, was on it in a heartbeat. Two
gulps, and it was gone, and Tad had a very satisfied look on his face.
“See what else you can forage!” she shouted at him. “I’ll check out these
caves!”
“Wait a moment!” he shouted back. Picking up a milky-white, smooth
pebble from the rocks at his feet, Tad stared at it in concentration that she
found very familiar. Then he handed it to her, gryph-grinning with open beak.
The pebble glowed with mage-light.
She accepted it with relief; at least he had enough magic back now that he
could make a mage-light again!
She didn’t have to go far to find their new shelter; the very first cave she
entered proved to be perfect. It went back a long way, slanting upward all the
time. For a few lengths, the floor was covered with soft, dry sand. Then there
was a pile of driftwood marking the high-water line that past floods had also
left behind; that was where the sand ended and dirt and rock began. A thin
stream of water ran down the center of the cave, coming from somewhere
near the back, cutting a channel through the sand and rock alike.
She made her way past it, holding the blue-glowing rock over her head to
cast the best possible light ahead of her without dazzling her eyes. The cave
narrowed, the farther she went back, then abruptly made a ninety-degree turn
upward. This was where the stream of water originated. She put her head
inside the hole and looked up. Besides getting a faceful of rain, she clearly
saw the cloud-filled sky a great distance above. At one time, a real stream of
water, perhaps a branchlet of the river that tumbled down the cliff further on,
had cut a channel through here, forming the cave. Now, except perhaps
during rain, that channel was dry. But it formed precisely what they needed; a
natural chimney to carry the smoke away from their fire. Provided that nothing
acted to funnel more water down that ancient outlet, this would be a perfect
shelter. She could not have asked for anything better. Even the chimney was
too small for anything threatening to climb down it, except perhaps snakes
and the like. There were signs that other creatures had found this place just
as congenial, a collection of small bones from fish and other creatures, and a
cluster of bats toward the rear of the cave. She did not mind sharing this cave
with bats; after her constant battles with insects, she was altogether happy to
“Blade?” Tad called from behind her, and she realized that although the
sound of the waterfall did penetrate in here, it was much muted by the rock
walls.
“Coming!” she responded, turning her back on the chimney and climbing
back down to the driftwood pile. She smelled smoke, and indeed, a plume of
it, ghostlike in the blue light of the bespelled pebble, drifted toward her and the
chimney outlet. A warmer light up ahead greeted her; Tad had already started
a fire with the driftwood, and she joined him there.
“The fish around here must not be terribly bright,” he said cheerfully. “Quite
a lot of them ended up on the rocks a few moments ago. I got you some.” He
pointed with his beak at a pair of sleek shapes at his feet.
“After you ate your fill, I hope?” she admonished. “You need the food more
than I do; I manage quite well on that travel-bread.”
His nares flushed, and she judged by that and the bulging state of his crop
that he had been perfectly greedy. Not that she blamed him, especially not
after going on short rations for so many days. “You might as well put this
under something, so we can sleep,” she said, handing him the pebble and
shrugging painfully out of her pack. “If I’d ordered up a cave, I couldn’t have
gotten a better one than this. We can even make a really smoky fire back
there—” she pointed to the rear of the cave, “—there’s a natural chimney
that’ll send it up without smoking us out. The only thing we don’t have is a
nighttime signal. We need to talk about that.”
He ground his beak as he thought, his good wing half-spread in the firelight
to dry. “I can’t imagine them flying at night—” he began, then laughed. “Well,
on the other hand, since it’s me and you who are lost—”
“Skandranon will have night flights out if he has to fly them himself,” she
finished for him, with a wry chuckle. Then her humor faded. She could not
forget, even for a moment, that they were still being hunted. Until they knew
by what, and for what reason, they should not assume they would be here to
rescue when rescue came. Yes, they had good shelter now, and it would be
very difficult to dig them out of it. But not impossible; not for—say—a
renegade mage and his followers, human or created.
Tad, however, was going to take the moment as it came; he shrugged out
of his pack and nudged a fish over to her with one talon. “You eat,” he said.
“There’s enough wood in here already to easily last the night. While you cook
and eat that, I’ll go back out and see what I can see.”
She hesitated a moment, then gave a mental shrug and bent to pick up the
fish. I might as well eat and make myself comfortable. He’s right about that.
While the rain fell, it was unlikely that anything would try to find them. If the
creatures trailing them were semi-intelligent, they would assume that the two
castaways had followed their usual pattern, and had taken shelter before the
rain started. The hunters would probably be looking for them on the other side
of the river first, especially if the hunters had not traced them as far as the
river when the rain began. Any trail would end short of the river itself, and the
mud and rock of the riverbank would not hold any scent or footprint through
the rain. The trail on the other side of the river would be completely
obliterated, and if they could keep their fire out of sight, it was possible that
they could keep their presence in this cave a secret for a day or more. By the
time smoke got up the rock chimney and exited above them, it would be very
difficult for anything scenting it to tell where it originated.
After that, of course, it would become increasingly harder to stay hidden.
Every time they left the cave, which they would have to do to catch fish, wash,
and get firewood, they stood a chance of being seen. Watchers on the other
side of the river could spot them without being seen themselves.
But I’ll worry about that after I eat, when I can think better, she decided. It
was wonderful to be able to have enough space to properly open the packs
and spread everything out. Once again though, she found herself attempting a
task one-handed that was difficult enough using two; scaling and gutting a
fish. She wound up slipping off her boot and using a foot as a clumsy “hand”
on the tail to hold it down.
She saved the head and the guts for later use as bait; they could not count
on having the kind of luck that sent a harvest of fish down over the cliff to their
feet every day. That was all right; they had fishing line and hooks with them,
and if the fish guts didn’t work, she could try a bug, a bread-ball, or a bit of
dried meat. Once again, her shovel came into play as an impromptu grill; it
probably would have been better if she’d had something to grease it with, but
at the moment, she was too hungry for trifles like that.
The fish burned a little and stuck to the shovel, but that didn’t matter in the
least—she could scrape the fish meat off and eat, and some blackened fish
meat stuck to it wouldn’t adversely affect the use of the shovel as a shovel.
She was hungry enough, in fact, that she very nearly burned her fingers,
picking flaky bits of meat off the hot carcass before it had properly cooled.
She alternately swore softly and ate, making a happy pig of herself.
Tad reappeared, dripping wet again, and regarded her thoughtfully. “Clay,”
he said. “Next time, wrap it up in clay and bake the whole thing. When you
break the clay open, the skin comes off with it, but the rest of the fish is fine.”
“Where did you learn that one?” she asked, looking up at him in surprise.
“Mother. She loves fish, and even though she likes it best fresh, she’s been
known to accept baked fish if it wasn’t straight out of the sea.” He gryph-
grinned at her again, and cocked his head to one side. “You know how she
is—unlike father, she’ll wish for the ideal, but not complain when it isn’t given!
What do you want to do about the firelight? Move the fire back farther into the
cave? The cave bends enough that I think that will make it harder to see from
across the river. Or does it matter?”
So, he had been thinking about their stalkers. “I’m not sure it matters;
sooner or later they’re going to see us, or see signs of where we are. I’d
rather put some thought into defenses.”
“I’ve set up some simple line snares on the path, so watch out for them,” he
said. “Not much, there’s not much I can do in the rain, but some. It should
help, I would think. I can do better tomorrow.”
“So that’s why you’re wet!” She signed to him to sit beside the fire, as she
devoured the cooked fish. It didn’t taste like much, a bit bland, which in itself
made it an improvement over the dried meat, which tasted like old boots. It
was hot and satisfying and cooked, which made all the difference, and she ate
every scrap, using her knife to scrape the burned bits off the shovel and eat
them too. Then she settled back on her heels, sucking her slightly-burnt
; fingers to get the last of the juices, and gave him all of her attention.
“Right, then. Let’s settle the short-term first, then the long-term. First
watch?” she asked.
“Yours,” he said promptly. “As full as I am, I’m going to doze off no matter
what. I can’t help it; it’s the way I’m built. And I have marginally better night-
vision than you do. I also have better hearing,” he added, “but with that
waterfall out there, that isn’t going to matter. I can run our fishing line from one
of the snares into here, and stack some stones over the light pebble to make
a sort of alarm.”
Well, that seems pretty reasonable to me. “Good enough. If I see anything
tonight, should I take a shot at it? Across the river is in the range of my sling,
and with all these rocks around I can afford to miss now, and we won’t have to
go after my ammunition to get it back.” That was another source of easing
tensions. Now she was no longer limited to the pouches of lead shot for
ammunition. The rocks might not fly as true, but she could lob as many of
them around as she needed to.
“My vote is that we not provoke anything tonight,” he said instantly. “Let’s
not give them the answer to the question of where we went. If they can’t find
us tonight, we might get lucky and they’ll go away.”
“Probably not, but it’s worth giving ourselves the chance. Agreed. Do we
trap the other side of the river?” That was another good question. It might well
be worth it to try—or it might make them targets when they crossed the river
to check the traps. The river wasn’t all that deep even at its deepest; barely
chin-high on Blade. Anything energetic enough could cross it easily. After all,
they had, and neither of them was in the best of shape. A stealthy swimmer
could cross it and never betray himself by sound, what with the waterfall out
there pounding away.
He shook his head. “No; we trap this side of the river, but not the other.
We’d be too vulnerable on that side, and why bother? We really don’t want to
catch these things, do we?” He didn’t look as if he did, and she agreed with
him. After all, what could they do with one if they did catch it, alive or dead?
All that would do would be to tell them what the hunters looked like, and there
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