Another came at Seqiro. It smacked into the frame of Colene’s bicycle, which was one of the many things tied to the horse’s harness, and dropped to the ground, stunned.
The third went for Burgess—who fired a small rock at it, and a blast of sand. The rock missed, but the sand bathed it, and the shear fled.
Colene pounced on the fallen creature, pinning it to the ground with a forked stick. Now they could see it clearly. The shear was about the size of a robin, but there the resemblance ended. It had small overlapping scales which flared at the back to serve as a rudder, the two propeller-paddles toward the front, and a head consisting of several recessed, armored eyes and the scissor beak. Each blade of that beak was knife-sharp, and stout muscles around it suggested the power of its shearing action. Taken as a whole, it was an odd and ugly thing.
But more were coming. “Shield me, Nona!” Colene cried, still pinning the fallen creature. Nona brought her expanded chip and held it before the two of them.
Darius, seeing that his hand injury wasn’t serious, still recognized that gloves alone were not sufficient. But he lacked a shield. So he scrambled for stones and sand, scraping them into the range of Burgess’ trunk. “I’ll try to keep you supplied; you shoot them down,” he told the floater.
This time a larger swarm of shears came down. Several banged off Nona’s growing shield and spun away. Several more tried for Seqiro, and there was a mental flash of pain as one scored on the horse’s flank. But at the moment Darius had to focus on the ones coming at Burgess and himself.
There were about five of them, each a buzzing blip looming rapidly closer. Their motions were erratic, as their alternate paddle strokes jerked them around in an irregular spiral flight pattern. That made them almost impossible to shoot down at a distance. But a scattershot approach might do it. “Sand,” he told Burgess, touching a contact point. “Fire a wall of sand at them.” He concentrated his scooping on that, getting just as much sand into the floater as he could.
Burgess obliged. He blew out a spreading jet of sand, moving it around so that a fair-sized region between them and the shears became a cloud of it. The shears sheered away from it, perhaps having had prior experience with this tactic. Probably it was what a defensive contingent of hivers used. There was security in number, certainly!
But then they veered back in, from the sides. Darius grabbed at the bodies, trying to catch them from behind, but his reactions were too slow. Then he got smart and grabbed at where they were heading, which was Burgess’ eye stalks. This time he managed to catch one. He threw it down and stamped on it as he grabbed for another.
Then the swarm was gone, and the party was left to tend its injuries. Darius went to see what he could do for Seqiro and himself. The horse’s gouge was painful but not serious, as was his own; salve and bandages helped both.
Meanwhile Colene and Nona were busy. “Here’s your next familiar,” Colene said. “Tame it, and we’ll have a flying spy.”
“That’s wonderful!” Nona agreed.
But more clouds of shears were appearing in the distance. “This place is too exposed,” Darius said. “We have to get some natural cover.”
Colene looked up, seeing the threat. “That’s for sure! At least we can get in among the trees.”
Hurriedly they extended Burgess’ path so that it went into the forest. They found a place under a spreading tree, so that there was a network of branches and leaves walling off the sky. The trunk served as a backstop, so that they could cluster around it, having only one direction to defend. Darius took the wood shield Nona had grown; Nona was busy taming the shear, which she now held in her hand. It no longer looked so ugly, now that it was going to be their ally.
The shears did attack again, but now they had to come in along Burgess’ path, and Burgess was able to shoot them down with stones. They couldn’t stray from that narrow way without running afoul of the tree branches. Soon they gave it up.
“I guess now we know why we can’t camp on the shore,” Colene said regretfully. “If we try to hide from the shears in the water, Anomaly will get us, and if we don’t, we’ll get sliced up.”
“They do not like the forest,” Nona agreed. “I am receiving that from this one’s mind.”
“Oops—does that mean it won’t fly for you in the forest?” Colene asked.
“No, as my familiar it will do what I wish, and feel no fear. But when I release it, it will flee the forest.”
“Then let’s have it explore nearby, so we can find the best place for our camp.”
Soon Nona did just that. The shear flew up from her hand and navigated between the trunks of the trees, flying low. Then it angled up into the sky, so that it could see over the forest.
The creature’s impressions came to Nona, because of her magic, and Nona’s impressions came to the rest of them, because of Seqiro’s telepathy. Thus Darius was able to close his eyes and see the world through the beady eyes of the shear. It was an interesting experience.
He (Darius) seemed to be flying just over the trees, feeling the comforting beat of his props. He saw the region where the lake cut through the forest, and the region where a slope led up to a higher level. He followed that slope, and saw that above it was a mesa: a flat and almost treeless expanse, covered by short grass.
“Say, I think that’s our camping site!” Colene exclaimed. “If the shears don’t go there.”
“They don’t,” Nona agreed. “Because there’s no game there. At least, not now.”
Nona focused, and the others did with her. A picture of something huge and serpentine formed. But it was not a serpent. It was something that slid across the plain and ate the grass. It was armored on top, so that the shears were unable to cut much flesh. Once the grass was gone, the grazer slid off the mesa and moved to another mesa. In the course of a season the grass grew back, and then a grazer would come again. Part of this Darius worked out for himself, as the shear did not think in this manner. It merely had an impression of the big grazer, and of absence of grass.
“That should be a pretty safe place,” Colene said. “And ideal for Burgess, because it’s flat and firm.”
“But mere’s nothing to eat there,” Darius pointed out. “Nothing to drink.”
“Nona can magnify a fruit, and a cup of water.”
They hadn’t occurred to him. “You can do this, Nona?”
“I suppose I can,” Nona agreed, surprised. “I would not try it with living things, but perhaps a fruit would work.”
“So all we have to do is get up there. That’s apt to be a problem for Burgess, because he doesn’t float well on a tilt.”
Darius considered the practical aspects. The mesa did seem to be a good place. How could they make a path Burgess could travel, if it had to be almost level? Then he had a better notion. “A sledge,” he said. “Seqiro could haul a sledge with Burgess on it.”
“Say, yes!” Colene agreed so enthusiastically that Darius had a suspicion that she had planted that notion in his mind. She seemed to want him to be the leader, and when he faltered, she nudged him with ideas. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but this was not the time to protest.
They went to work making the sledge. This was easier than it might have been; Darius simply carved Nona’s shield chip of wood into a platform with two runners below and a surrounding ridge above, and then she expanded it magically until it was large enough to support Burgess. Meanwhile Colene explored to find the best route for the sledge, accompanied by Seqiro, who kept a mental lookout for any possible predators. There were, indeed, no big crabs here, which was a relief. In due course they had a route marked to the slope; that was about as far as seemed feasible for this day.