Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself and eat! he scolded himself. You aren’t going to get a chance at a better meal for a while, and starving yourself is hardly going to do any good. Whatever Blade fixed, it probably won’t keep past morning.
Slowly, to make them last, he ate the meat-and-vegetable cakes that Blade had concocted. They weren’t bad, considering how awful they could have been. Blade was not noted for being anything other than an indifferent cook, and these had actually been one of her best efforts. The two of them would probably joke about the incongruity of cooking a gourmet meal in the middle of a disaster, after they had escaped this stranding and healed. Of course, to hear the stories about Father, you would think he was so dashing that he would fight off two hundred makaar, seduce his wingleader, arrange a tryst, fight off another hundred makaar, and then pause for tea from a silver cup.
Blade had placed the odd cakes close enough to the fire that they kept warm without burning or drying out much. They would probably stay with him for a while, which was a good thing, since he wasn’t going to be doing much hunting for the next couple of days. And even then, in order to take down the size of prey he was used to, he’d have to somehow surprise it on the ground.
Father’s claims about being able to slip through enemy lines unseen might be true, but deer have keener noses and ears than human soldiers. I’m going to have to be very lucky to catch anything larger than a squirrel.
He was satisfied before finishing the cakes, so he covered the last four of them with a leaf followed by a layer of hot ashes, burying them next to the fire. He would leave them for breakfast; they should keep that long. Then he rested his chin on his foreclaws and resumed his interrupted thoughts.
The trouble is, I have no idea just what it was that knocked us out of the sky.
Obviously, he had several options. It could have been a purely natural phenomenon—or, if not natural, simply an anomalous and accidental creation of the mage-storms.
The trouble with that theory is that there have been a number of folk through here, Haighlei included. So that precludes it being stationary or ground bound. If it was something natural or accidental, it had to be stationary, it seemed, so why didn’t anyone discover it before this? The Haighlei in particular, suspicious as they were of anything magical that was not under the direct control of one of their Priest-Mages, made a point of looking for such “wild” magic, using broad, far-ranging sweeps. They had established the outpost; they would have come this way, though perhaps not this exact route. They should have found something this powerful.
Granted, we were a bit off the regular route. I wasn‘t watching the ground that closely for landmarks, I was watching the sky for weather. I think I was even veering off a bit to avoid the worst of the storm.
Still, a “bad spot,” even a null area, should show up to any skilled mage who was looking for it. It should be obvious to any mage looking for oddities.
I wasn’t looking; I have to think about using mage-sight in order to see things. I’m not like Snowstar, who has to remind himself not to use it.
That left the next possibility; it was something new, or else something that was outside his knowledge. He inexorably moved his thoughts toward the uneasy concept that something had brought them down intentionally, either in an attack or as a measure of preventive defense.
But if it was a defensive measure, how did they ever see us from the ground? The attack couldn’t have come from the air; there hadn’t been anything in the air except birds and themselves. It hadn’t come from the tree canopy, or he would have seen something directly below. It had to have come from ground level, below the tree canopy, so how had “they” seen the basket, Blade, and Tad?
Still, so far, whatever brought them down hadn’t come after them; that argued in favor of it being a defensive, perhaps even a reflexive, answer to a perceived threat.
But it happened so quickly! Unless “they” had a spell actually ready to do something like that, I can’t see how “they” could have done this before we got out of range!
That argued for an attack; argued for attackers who might actually have trailed them some time before they landed last night, and waited for them to get into the sky again before launching a spell that would send them crashing to the ground.
So why didn’t they come see if they’d killed us? Could they have been that sure of themselves? Could they simply not have cared?
Or could they be better at hiding themselves than he was at spotting them?
Could they be out there right now?
It was certainly possible that the attackers had struck from some distance away, and had not reached the site of the crash before he and Blade were up, alert, and able to defend themselves. The kind of attack certainly argued for a cowardly opponent, one who would want to wait until his prey was helpless or in an inescapable position before striking.
Unless, of course, he is simply a slow opponent; one who was making certain of every inch of ground between himself and us before he initiated a confrontation.
He sighed quietly. There was only one problem; this was all speculation. None of this gave him any hard evidence for or against anything. He just didn’t have any facts beyond the simplest—that they had been the victim of something that destroyed their holds on magic and brought them tumbling helplessly down out of the sky.
So, for the rest of the night, he continued to scan the forest and keep his ears wide open, starting at every tiny sound, and cursing his unending headache.
Dawn was heralded by nothing more obvious than a gradual lightening of the darkness under the trees. Tad knew that his partner was about to waken when her breathing speeded up and her heartrate increased—both of which he could hear quite easily. At his side, Blade yawned, stirred, started to stretch, and swore under her breath at the pain that movement caused her.
Tad hooked a talon around the strap of the medical supply bag and dragged it over to her so she could rummage in it without moving much. She heard him, and shoved her hand in and pulled out one of the little vials; without being asked, he pierced the wax seal with his talon, and she drank it down.
Blade lay quietly for many long moments before her painkillers took effect. “I assume nothing happened last night?” She made it an inquiry.
“Nothing worth talking about—except that I think there was some squabbling over the remains of the foodstuffs.” He hadn’t heard anything in particular except a few grunts and the sound of an impact, as if one of the scavengers had cuffed another. “We ought to consider putting out snares, especially whipsnares that would take a catch out of reach of the ground. It would be very frustrating to discover we’d trapped something, but a scavenger beat us to it.”
She sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes with her good hand. “I should have thought of that last night,” she said ruefully.
“They wouldn’t have worked last night,” he pointed out. “It was raining until well after dark. Chances are, the lines would have been ruined, or stakes pulled out of the mud. If it doesn’t rain that badly today, we can put them out after the afternoon rains are over.”