Kel could catch a deer in a tail-chase, it just wasn’t his favorite form of pursuit - though the injuries that often resulted from tail-chases gave him plenty of extra attention. He’d much rather make a clean kill, and a quick one; chases were a waste of energy.
Faintly, from behind him, came the noise of something large crashing through the branches, and Kuari’s excited hoots. Kuari loved watching Kel hunt; all bondbirds were far more social than their raptor ancestors, and took pleasure in each others’ company and successes. Breeding that trait into them had been imperative, since without it, Kuari would have happily made a meal off of any of the other birds in the company. Kuari’s talons could easily pierce a cow’s skull; he’d make short work of another bird.
:Two! Two!: Kuari projected excitedly into Darian’s mind. :He got two!:
:Two?: Tyrsell chimed in, impressed. :By the horns of the Moon-Doe, that’s amazing!:
If Kelvren had managed to kill two deer at once, there was no point in letting them go to waste. “Snowfire!” he called ahead. “I sent Kel on the backtrail after a deer, and it seems he’s gotten two instead of one.”
Snowfire turned, stared at him to see if he was serious, then broke into astonished laughter. “I had no idea he was that hungry!” He called ahead to the rest of the team. “Wintersky! Raindance! Peel off and go back until you find Kel, he’s made a kill too big for him to carry.”
A short time later, two of the team rode past Darian with a wave, their mounts at a brisk trot, two riderless does from the herd trotting beside them. While Kelvren stood guard, and their own birds circled above as extra protection, they’d field-dress the two deer, strap each to a rough travois, then rejoin the rest. To make it easier for them to catch up, Snowfire slowed the team to an amble. This wasn’t the first time that Kel had made kills too large to eat at once or carry, but it was the first time he’d made a double-kill.
Nightwind is going to be very proud of him, Darian thought warmly. He’s going to be just as proud of himself! Gryphons, after all, were praise-driven, and what they didn’t receive from others they often enough filled in for themselves.
Roughly a candlemark later Raindance and Wintersky came trotting back, the riderless dyheli now each dragging a travois with the somewhat-mangled carcass of a fine young buck strapped on it. That would slow them all down, of course, but it wasn’t that long until they were going to make camp, so the prospect of fresh meat would more than make up for it. Kel would dine tonight on one deer, the team would have part of the other, then Kel would get the remains for his breakfast. It took a lot of meat to feed a gryphon, though fortunately he usually managed to supply it himself. In lean times, breads were used to supplement the meat, mostly to provide mass, and luckily for everyone who would have had to hear his complaining, Kelvren had acquired a taste for bread anyway. Hungry gryphons were grouchy gryphons.
There were no more breaks in the routine of travel until the light beneath the trees had begun to redden and grow dimmer, a sure sign that the sun was about to set. By then, the advance scouts had found a suitable camping spot and those with lighter burdens and the unburdened dyheli had gone on ahead to prepare the camp, leaving the rest to come in at their own pace.
That, or so Darian thought, was one of the advantages of being the rearguard. By the time he reached camp, it was a camp; the tents were all set up, a latrine pit had been dug, water fetched, and Ayshen, the chief hertasi, had everything ready to make dinner for the entire team. Since the job of rearguard was to make a circuit of the camp before coming in himself, the rearguard never had to do any of the camp chores.
Some nights, in the winter, for instance, when he was frozen from his nose to his toes, or in the pouring rain, that was a hardship. Being the one who had to make certain that all the territory within their perimeter was clear under those circumstances, with dinner scents on the breeze, was assuredly a hardship. Not tonight, though.
He dismounted and let Tyrsell go on into camp, to put himself into the capable hands of the hertasi to have his minimal tack removed. No dyheli would ever subject himself to the indignity of a bit and bridle; however, they did allow a modified hackamore, similar to that worn by Companions, and a saddle-pad to cover their protruding backbones. As Darian knew from painful personal experience, riding a dyheli without that saddle-pad was much like sliding naked down a cliff, but not nearly as comfortable.
He and Kuari made the circuit of the camp without incident, marking good places for sentries with something unobtrusive, natural, but unmistakable to any of the Tayledras - feathers, usually wedged into the bark of a tree.
When he got back into camp, the first set of sentries had eaten a light snack and were ready to go out. They’d get a second meal when they came back in, but, no Tayledras would stand sentry with a full stomach; it was too easy to doze off.
Ayshen had his dinner ready and waiting for him: a savory butterflied venison steak and journey-bread, with some mixed, unidentified shoots and greens. Ayshen and the other hertasi knew the forest and what it could provide as well as they knew the patterns of their own scales; they foraged as the team traveled every day, and Darian never knew what they would come up with. They always had something green and growing in addition to meat and bread, even in the dead of winter, for Ayshen took great care with the diet and health of his “charges.”
Darian knew better than to leave so much as a scrap of that green stuff on his plate, too. Ayshen would show no mercy to anyone who didn’t eat what was given him.
Darian sat down to eat in the blue dusk beneath the trees; he polished off the last scrap in full dark. He was the last to eat, and brought Ayshen his empty plate just as the hertasi cleaned the last of the pans.
“We are not far from the Vale now,” Ayshen told him with a toothy grin. “One day, two at the most. Then you will see! Nothing we passed through in Valdemar compares!”
“Nothing we passed through in Valdemar was bigger than two or three villages put together,” Darian reminded him. “We were not exactly traversing through the height of Valdemaran civilization, you know.”
“Oh, indeed.” Ayshen chuckled. “You will see.”
Darian laughed, and slapped the little lizard-creature on the back. “I’m certain that I will,” he agreed. “But for tonight, all I want to see is my bed.”
He wouldn’t have thought, back when he was Justyn’s apprentice, that simply riding all day long would be tiring. After all, it was your mount that did most of the work, right?
Well, that turned out to be only partially true; riding was more work than Darian would have imagined four years ago. Riding literally from dawn until dusk was enough to tire anyone out - riding as tail-guard was exhausting mentally as well as physically.