Tad remained with his pile; evidently he’d found the box that had held all of the nonmagical gear that Aubri had insisted they take with them. She eyed the improvised shelter for a moment. Think first, plan, then move. If you ruin something, there’s no one around to help with repairs. And not much to make repairs with.
She wanted a way to shelter the fire from the rain, without getting too much smoke into the shelter. And she didn’t want to take a chance on ruining the shelter they already had.
Right. There’s the tent flap. I bend those two saplings over and tie them to the basket, then unfold the tent flap and tie it down—there. And I think I can do that with one hand. Then maybe we can create a wind barrier with long branches and some of those big leaves. Plan now firmly in mind, she one-arm manhandled the saplings into place, then pulled the flap of canvas out over the arch they formed to protect the area where she wanted to put the fire. Carefully she tied the end of the tent flap to another broken tree, fumbling the knot several times; if it wasn’t caught by a big gust of wind, it would hold. At least they wouldn’t be lacking in wood, even though it was very green. They’d brought down a two or three days’ supply with them when they fell and they also had spare clothing to use for kindling. Build the fire first, then see about that barrier.
She scraped the leaf-litter away from the ground until she had a patch of bare earth, then carefully laid a fire of basket-bits, broken boxes, and some of the leaves she found that were actually dry. With the striker came a supply of tinder in the form of a roll of bone-dry lint lightly pressed together with tiny paper-scraps. She pulled off a generous pinch and put the rest carefully away, resealing the tinder box.
The firestriker was a pure nuisance to operate, especially one-handed. She finally wound up squatting down and bracing the box with one foot, and finally she got a spark to catch in the tinder and coaxed the glowing ember into a tiny flame. Frowning with concentration, she bent over her fragile creation and fed the flame carefully, building it up, little by little, until at long last she had a respectable fire, with the smoke channeling nicely away from the shelter. At that point, everything ached with strain.
Breathing a painful sigh, she straightened, and looked over at Tad to see what he’d found. The thing that caught her eye first was the ax. That, she was incredibly glad to see! It was small enough to use one-handed, sharp enough to hack through just about anything. And right now, they needed firewood.
She got painfully to her feet and helped herself to the implement, then began reducing the debris around their improvised camp into something a bit more useful to them.
She tossed branches too small to be useful as firewood into a pile at one side. If they had time before darkness fell or the rain came—whichever was first—she’d make a brush-palisade around the camp with them. It wouldn’t actually keep anything out that really wanted to get at them, but animals were usually wary of anything new, and they might be deterred by this strange “fence” in their path.
And anything pushing through it is going to make noise, which should give us some warning. Now just as long as nothing jumps over it. When Tad needs to urinate, we’ll collect it and spread it around the perimeter, the scent of any large predator should scare most foragers and nuisance animals away. And other than that, it is a perfect day, my lord.
The branches holding huge leaves she treated differently, carefully separating the leaves from the fibrous, pithy branches and setting them aside. When she had enough of them, and some straight poles, she’d put up that sheltering wall.
Every time she swung the ax, her body protested, but it wasn’t bad enough to stop her now that she had some momentum going. If I stop, I won’t be able to move for hours, so I’d better get everything I can done while I’m still mobile.
Evidently Tad had the same idea; he was sorting through the supplies with the same single-minded determination she was feeling. He’d found her two packs of personal supplies, and his own as well and put all of them in the shelter; laid out next to them was the primitive “Aubri gear.” In between swings of the ax she made out candles and a candle-lantern, a tiny folded cook-stove, canteens, two shovels, and three leather water bottles. Two enormous knives good for hacking one’s way through a jungle lay beside that, also a neat packet of insect netting, fishing line and hooks, and a compass. He’d gotten to the weapons they’d carried with them as a matter of course, and she grimaced to look at them. They were largely useless in their present circumstances. Her favorite bow was broken; the smaller one was intact, but she couldn’t pull it now. Nor could she use the sword Tad was placing beside the oiled-canvas quivers of arrows. Beside that he laid his set of fighting-claws—which might be useful, except that he couldn’t walk while wearing them.
And what are we going to do if we ‘re driven away from here and something attacks us on the trail? Ask it politely to wait while he gets his claws on ?
But her heart rose in the next moment, because he had found a sling! He placed it beside his claws, and two full pouches of heavy lead shot beside it. Now that she could use, and use it well, even with only one hand!
That gave her a little more energy to swing, and his next find added to that energy, for it was a short spear with a crosspiece on it, like a boar-spear. It had broken, but mostly lengthwise with the grain of the haft, and what remained was short enough to use one-handed. I can keep us fed with the sling; with the knife and the spear I can fight things off. He has his beak and talons, which are not exactly petty weapons. And he has some magic.
All gryphons had at least a small command of magic; Tad didn’t have a lot, not compared to his father, but it might be useful. . . .
But she shivered again, thinking about what Tad’s magic might attract, and decided that she had chopped enough wood. She ringed the fire with the green logs, stacked the rest at the back of the lean-to, and piled the remains of the basket that she had chopped up wherever she could under shelter. I don’t think I want him using any magic until we know for certain that whatever sucked the magic out of the basket isn’t going to bother us.
She joined Tad in his sorting, sadly putting aside some once-magical weapons that were now so much scrap. Unfortunately, they were shaped too oddly to be of any immediate use. The best purpose they could be put to now was as weights to hold pieces of canvas down to protect more useful items—like wood—from the rain.
She found the bedding at the bottom of the spill and took it all into the lean-to to spread on the ground, over mattresses of leaves and springy boughs. She made another trip with more assorted items and the weapons and gear she could actually use now. The rest, including some broken items, she laid under a piece of canvas; she might think of something to do with them later.
Most of the equipment was just plain ruined, and so was a great part of their food. The rations that survived the smash were, predictably, the kind a mercenary army normally carried; dried meat and a hard ten-grain ration-biscuit made with dried vegetables and fruit. This was not exactly a feast, but the dried meat would sustain Tad, and the hard ration-bread was something that a person could actually live on for one or two months at a time.