hands on him. . . .
“That wasn’t the only trap I built,” Tad continued proudly, oblivious to her
dark thoughts. “I have trip-tangles under the water that will throw them into the
stream, I balanced boulders to roll at a touch and trap feet and legs, and I put
up some more snares. Between all that and the rock barricade we have
across the front of the cave, I think we can feel a little safer.”
“Just as long as we can continue fishing from in here,” she corrected. “And
as long as you can stand to live on fish.”
“All I have to do is think about eating any more of that dried meat, and fish
takes on a whole new spectrum of delight,” he countered. “I’m learning to tell
the difference between one fish and another, raw. Some are sweeter, one has
more fat—”
And they all taste the same to me. “Fine, I believe you!” she interrupted
hastily. “Listen, I wonder if we could rig some kind of a net or something to
haul in driftwood as it comes down over the falls. There’s a lot of stuff getting
by us that we could really use.”
There was nothing that Tad liked better than trying to invent a new way to
do something, and the idea of a driftwood-net kept him happily occupied for
some time. And more importantly, it kept him restfully occupied; no matter
how cheerful and energetic he seemed—or tried to appear—he was tired, and
so was she. The ever-present roar of the falls would cover the sounds of
anything approaching them, and most especially would cover the sounds of
anything bold enough to try swimming across the river at this point. They both
knew that, and she suspected that he was staying half-awake even through
her watch, as she was staying through his. Not especially bright of either of
them, but neither of them were able to help themselves. Their imaginations
supplied the creatures out there with every kind of supernatural attribute,
especially in the dark of the night. It was easier to dismiss such fears by
daylight, except that she kept reminding herself that just because their hunters
hadn’t done something yet, that didn’t mean they weren’t capable of a
particular action. It was hard to strike a balance between seeing threats that
didn’t exist and not being wary enough, especially when you didn’t know
everything the enemy could do.
“Not long until dark,” Tad observed, after a long discussion of nets and
draglines and other ways of catching runaway driftwood. He pointed his beak
toward the river. She nodded; although it was difficult to keep track of time
without the sun being visible, the light did seem to be fading. Another one of
her lines went taut; this fish was a fighter, which probably meant that it was
one of the kinds Tad liked best. Any fish seemed pretty tasteless to her,
wrapped in wet clay to bake and without any herbs to season it with. She’d
thought about using some of the peppery leaves just to give her food some
spice, then thought better of the idea. Although they had not had any
deleterious effect rubbed on the skin, there was no telling if they were
poisonous if eaten. You could rub your skin all day with shadow-berries and
not get anything worse than a purple stain, but eat a few and you would find
yourself retching up your toenails. . . .
She fought the fish to exhaustion and reeled it in, hand over hand, taking
care not to tangle the line. That was enough for tonight; she pulled in the other
lines, and by the time she was done, there was no doubt; it was darker out on
the river.
She took the fish back behind the rock barrier to the fire, where Tad still
basked. Each day they added a few more rocks, but they were rapidly
approaching the point where they wouldn’t be able to use river clay as mortar
anymore. It just wasn’t strong enough.
There was another advantage to this cave; no bugs. Enough smoke hung
in the air from their signal-fire to discourage insects of all sorts. Her bites had
finally begun to heal and didn’t bother her too much anymore. In fact, if it
hadn’t been for those watchers out there, she would be feeling pretty pleased
with the state of things. They had fire, excellent shelter, and plenty to eat, and
sooner or later someone from White Gryphon or even Khimbata would see or
smell the signal-fire, and they could go home. And in the meantime, while they
were not comfortable, they were secure.
She took one of the big, sluggish bottom feeders from her string, gutted it,
wrapped it in wet clay, put it in the firepit and raked coals and ashes over it.
The rest she handed to Tad as they were.
No longer as famished as he was when they first got here, he ate them with
gusto. And if he lacked fine table manners, she was not going to complain
about the company. I can think of worse people to be stranded with.
“How’s the wing?” she asked, as she did at least once a day.
“It doesn’t hurt as much as it did yesterday, but I still don’t want to unwrap
it,” he replied. “Whenever I move in an unusual way, it hurts.”
In Tad-language, that meant “it hurts enough that my knees buckle and I
almost pass out.” She knew; she’d seen it happen. Tad was so stoic. He tried
very hard to be cheerful, and it was likely for her benefit alone. By moving
very carefully, she had managed to keep the same thing from happening to
her, but that meant a lot of restriction on her movement.
If only she had two good hands—or he had two good wings! If either of
them could manage to get to the top of the cliff, she was sure they could think
of a way to bring the other up afterward. Up there, they wouldn’t have to worry
about pursuit anymore; if the hunters couldn’t climb a tree, they sure as stars
couldn’t climb a cliff!
Might as well wish for three or four experienced Silvers with long-range
bows, she thought grimly. I have the feeling that there is something about all
of this that I’m missing completely, something that should be obvious, but
isn’t. I just wish I had a clue to what it is.
“Do you really think they’re going to try something tonight?” she asked,
more to fill the silence than because she thought he’d changed his mind.
For an answer, he nodded toward the cave entrance. “Rain’s slackening
early. The current isn’t bad in that one wide, shallow spot. Not that hard to
wade across, if you’ve got claws to hang onto the rock with. And we already
know they do have claws.”
She wondered if she ought to try opening herself up to them a second time,
then decided against it. They could be waiting for her to do exactly that.
Silence fell between them again, and she just didn’t feel right about
breaking it with small talk. She checked her fish instead, and found the clay
rock hard; that was a good indication that the fish inside was done, so she
went ahead, raked it out of the coals, and broke it open. The skin and scales
came away with the clay, leaving the steaming white flesh ready to eat without
all the labor of skinning or scaling. She made fairly short work of it. As usual, it
tasted like—not much of anything. Visceral memories of hot, fresh bread
<
br /> smothered in sweet butter, spicy meat and bean soup, and that incredible
garlic and onion-laced fish stew that Jewel made taunted her until she drove
them from her mind.
After that, they let the fire die down to coals and banked them with ashes to
reduce the amount of light in the cave. If the hunters were going to try
something tonight, there was no point in giving them the advantage of being
able to see their targets clearly silhouetted.
She moved toward the barricade by edging along the side of the cave to
keep herself in the shadows as much as possible. Tad did the same on the
other side. The rain had indeed slackened off early for once; instead of
illuminating a solid sheet of water in front of her nose, the intermittent flashes
of lightning showed the other side of the river, with the churning, rolling water
between.
There was no sign of anything on the other side of the river, and that wasn’t
good. Up until now, there had always been at least one lurking shadow in the
bushes over there; now there was nothing. That was just one more indication
that Tad’s instincts and her reading of the hunters’ impatience were both
correct. They were going to try something tonight.
She glanced over at Tad; when lightning flickered, she could see his head
and neck clearly, although he was so still he could have passed for a carving.
He kept his eyelids lowered, so that not even a flicker of reflection would
betray his presence to anything watching. His natural coloration blended
beautifully with the stone behind him, and the lines of his feathers passed for
rock-striations. It was amazing just how well camouflaged he was.
His ear-tufts lay flat along his head, but she knew better than to assume
that meant he wasn’t listening; the ear-tufts were largely decorative tufts of
feathers that had nothing to do with his hearing. No, he was listening, all right.
She wondered how much he could hear over the roar of the waterfall beside
them.
But when the noise of his trap coming down thundered across the river, it
was not at all subtle; in fact, it was loud enough that even the rock of the cave
mouth vibrated for a moment. She jumped, her nerves stretched so tight that
she went off-balance for a moment, and had to twist to catch herself with her
good hand. She regained her balance quickly and moved to go outside. He
shot out a claw, catching her good wrist and holding her where she was.
“Wait until morning,” he advised, in a voice just loud enough for her to hear
it over the roaring water. “That killed something. And they aren’t going to be
able to move the body.”
“How much rock did you pile up?” she asked incredulously. How had he
been able to pile up anything with only a pair of talons instead of hands, and
with one bad wing?
“Enough,” he replied, then chuckled with pardonable pride. “I didn’t want to
boast until I knew it had worked—but I used a little magic to undermine part of
the cliff-face that was ready to go. I honestly didn’t know how much was going
to come down, I only knew it would be more than I could manage by stacking
rocks.”
“From the sound of it, a lot came down,” she answered in awe. What a
brilliant application of a very tiny amount of magic! “Did you feel it through the
rock?”
He nodded. “There could be a problem, though,” he added. “I might have
given them a bridge, or half a bridge, across the river. There was that chance
that the rock would fall that way.”
But she shrugged philosophically. If he had, he had; it might well be worth it
to find out just what, precisely, had been stalking them all this time.
“And the cliff could have come down by itself, doing the same thing,” she
answered. “There’s no point in getting upset until we know. I doubt that we’re
going to see any further trouble out of them for tonight, anyway.”
She was quite right; the rest of the night was as quiet as anyone could
have wished, and with the first light, they both went out to see what, if
anything, Tad’s trap had caught.
When they got to the rock-fall, they both saw that it had indeed come
sliding down into the river, providing a bridge about halfway across, though
some of it had already washed farther downstream. But as they neared it, and
saw that the trap had caught a victim, Blade was just as puzzled by what was
trapped there as she had been by the shadows.
There had been some effort made to free the creature; that much showed
in the signs of digging and the obvious places where rubble and even large
stones had been moved off the carcass. But it was not a carcass of any
animal she recognized.
If a mage had taken a greyhound, crossed it with a serpent, and magnified
it up to the size of a horse, he would have had something like this creature. A
deep black in color, with shiny scaled skin just like a snake or a lizard, and a
long neck, it had teeth sharper and more daggerlike than a dog’s. Its head
and those of its limbs not crushed by the fallen rock were also doglike. They
couldn’t tell what color its eyes were; the exposed slit only showed an opaque
white. She stared at it, trying to think if there was anything in all of the stories
she’d heard that matched it.
But Tad had no such trouble putting a name to it.
“Wyrsa,” Tad muttered. “But the color’s all wrong. . . .”
She turned her head to see that he was staring
down at the thing, and he seemed certain of his identification. “What’s a
wyrsa?” she asked sharply.
He nudged the head with one cautious talon. “One of the old Adepts,
before Ma’ar, made things like this to mimic kyree and called them wyrsa. He
meant them for a more formidable guard dog or hunting pack. But they
couldn’t be controlled, and got loose from him — oh, a long time ago. Long
before Ma’ar and the War. Aubri told me about hunting them; said that they
ran wild in packs in some places.” His eyes narrowed as he concentrated.
“But the ones he talked about were smaller than this. They were white, and
they had poison fangs and poison talons.”
She bent down, carefully, and examined the mouth and the one exposed
foot for poison sacs, checking to see if either talons or teeth were hollow. She
finally got a couple of rocks and carefully broke off a long canine tooth and a
talon, to examine them more closely. Finally she stood up with a grunt.
“I don’t know what else is different on these beasts, but they aren’t carrying
anything poisonous,” she told him, as he watched her actions dubiously.
“Neither the teeth nor the claws are hollow, they have no channel to carry
venom, and no venom sacs at the root to produce poison in the first place.
Venom has to come from somewhere, Tad, and it has to get into the victim
somehow, so unless this creature has poisonous saliva. . . .”
“Aubri distinctly said that they were just like a poisonous snake,” Tad
insisted. “But the color is different on these things, and the size. Something
must have changed them.”
They exchanged a look. “A mage?” she as
ked. “Or the storms?” She might
know venom, but he knew magic.
“The mage-storms, if anything at all,” Tad said flatly. “If a mage had
changed wyrsa deliberately, he wouldn’t have taken out the venom, he’d have
made it worse. I’ll bet it was the mage-storms.”
“I wouldn’t bet against it.” Blade knelt again to examine the head in detail; it
was as long as her forearm, and most of it was jaw. “Tad, these things don’t
need venom to hurt you,” she pointed out. “Look at those canines! They’re as
long as my finger, and the rest of the teeth are in proportion. What else do you
know about wyrsa?”
He swallowed audibly. “Aubri said that the bigger the pack was, the smarter
they acted, as if part of their intelligence was shared with every other one in
the pack. He also said that they were unbelievably tenacious; if they got your
scent, they’d track you for days—and if you killed or hurt one, they would track
you forever. You’d never get rid of them until they killed you, or you killed
them all.”
“How comforting,” she said dryly, standing up again. “And we’ve hurt one
and killed one. I wish we’d known this before.”
Tad just shuffled his feet, looking sheepish. “They might not connect us
with the rockfall,” he offered tentatively.
“Well, it’s done and can’t be undone.” She caught something, a hint of
movement out of the corner of her eye, and turned her head.
And froze. As if, now that she and Tad knew what the things were and the
wyrsa saw no reason to hide, a group of six stood on the bank across from
them. Snarling silently. Tad let out his breath in a hiss of surprise and dismay.
Then, before she could even blink or draw a breath, they were gone. She
hadn’t even seen them move, but the only thing across from them now was a
stand of bushes, the branches still quivering as the only sign that something
had passed through them.
“I think we can safely assume that they do connect us with the rockfall,” she
replied, a chill climbing up her spine. “And I think we had better get back to
the cave before they decide to try to cross the river again.”
“Don’t run,” Tad cautioned, turning slowly and deliberately, and watching
where he placed his feet. “Aubri said that would make them chase you, even if
Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 03 - The Silver Gryphon.txt Page 32