In fact, he had shaken as much off his feathers as he could before he got into the tent, and he was not wet anymore, just damp. “And it could be worse. You could be sharing this shelter with a wet kyree,” he added.
She made a face. “I’ve been stuck in a small space with a wet kyree before, and you are a bundle of fragrant herbs, if not a bouquet of lilies, compared to that experience.”
Supper for her had been one of the pieces of travel-bread, which she had gnawed on rather like a kyree with a bone. They had been unbelievably lucky; Blade had spotted a curious climbing beast venturing down out of the canopy to look them over, and she had gotten it with her sling. It made a respectable meal, especially since Tad hadn’t done much to exert himself and burn off breakfast.
He had gone out to get more wood, searching for windfall and dragging it back to the camp. Then he had done the reverse, taking what wreckage they were both certain was utterly useless and dropping it on the other side of their brush-palisade where they wouldn’t always be falling over it.
Blade had gone out in the late afternoon to chop some of the wood Tad had found, and bathe herself all over in the rain. He had been a gentleman and kept his eyes averted, even though she wasn’t his species. She was unusually body-shy for a Kaled’a’in—or perhaps it was simply that she guarded every bit of her privacy that she had any control over.
At any rate, she had gathered up her courage and taken a cold rain bath, dashing back in under the shelter to huddle in a blanket afterward. She claimed that she felt much better, but he wondered how much of that was bravado, or wishful thinking. She was a human and not built for forceful—or bad—landings. Although the basket had given her some protection, he had no real idea how badly hurt she was in comparison with him. Nor was she likely to tell him if she was hurt deeper than the skin-obvious. To his growing worry, he suspected that her silence might hide her emotional wounds as well.
After she was dry, she had asked his help with her bruise-medicines. There was no doubt of how effective they were; after the treatment yesterday, the bruises were fading, going from purple, dark blue, and black, to yellow, green and purple. While this was not the most attractive color-combination, it did indicate that she was healing faster than she would have without the treatments.
He finished the last scrap of meat, and offered her the bones. “You could put these in the fire and roast them,” he said, as she hesitated. “Then you could eat the marrow. Marrow is rich in a lot of good things. This beast wasn’t bad; the marrow has to have more taste than that chunk of bread you’ve been chewing.”
“Straw would have more taste,” she replied, and accepted the larger bones.
“I can bite the bones open later, if they don’t split, and you can carve out the cooked marrow. We can use the long bone splinters as stakes. They might be useful,” Tad offered.
Blade nodded, while trying unsuccessfully to stretch her arms. “You try and crunch up as much of those smaller bones as you can; they’ll help your wing heal.” She buried the bones in the ashes and watched them carefully as he obeyed her instructions and snapped off bits of the smaller bones to swallow. She was right; every gryphon knew that it took bone to build bone.
When one of the roasting bones split with an audible crack, she fished it quickly out of the fire. Scraping the soft, roasted marrow out of the bones with the tip of her knife, she spread it on her bread and ate it that way.
“This is better. It’s almost good,” she said, around a mouthful. “Thanks, Tad.”
“My pleasure,” he replied, pleased to see her mood slowly lifting. “Shall we set the same watches as last night?” He yawned hugely. “It’s always easier for me to sleep on a full stomach.”
“It’s impossible to keep you awake when your belly’s full, you mean,” she retorted, but now she wore a ghost of a smile. “It’s the best plan we have.”
His wing did hurt less, or at least he thought it did. Gryphon bones tended to knit very quickly, like the bones of the birds that they were modeled after. Just at the moment, he was grateful that this was so; he preferred not to think about the consequences if somehow Blade had set his wing badly. Not that his days of fancy aerobatics would be over, but having his wing-bones rebroken and reset would be very unpleasant.
He peered up at the tree canopy, and as usual, saw nothing more than leaves. And rain, lots of it.
“I’m afraid we’re in for another long rain like last night,” he said ruefully. “So much for putting out snares.”
“We can’t have everything our way.” She shrugged. “So far, we’re doing all right. We could survive a week this way, with no problem—as long as nothing changes.”
As long as nothing changes. Perhaps she had meant that to sound encouraging, but as he willed himself to sleep, he couldn’t feel any encouragement. Everything changes eventually. Only a fool would think otherwise. We might think we know what we’re doing, but it only takes one serious mistake out here and we’re dead. Even a minor mistake would mean that everything changes.
The thought followed him down into his sleep, where it woke uneasy echoes among his dreams.
He slept so lightly that Blade did not need to shake him awake. He roused to the sound of water dripping steadily from the leaves above, the crackling and popping of the fire, and the calls of insects and frogs. That was all. It was very nearly silent out there, and it was a silence that was unnerving.
The forest that he knew fell silent in this way when a large and dangerous predator—such as a gryphon—was aprowl. He doubted that the denizens of this forest knew the two of them well enough to think that they were dangerous. That could only mean that something the local creatures knew was dangerous was out there.
Somewhere.
“Anything?” he whispered. She shook her head slightly without taking her eyes off the forest, and he noticed that she had banked the fire down so that it didn’t dazzle her eyes.
He strained both eyes and ears, testing the night even as she did, and found nothing.
“It isn’t that everything went quiet, it was that nothing much started making night-sounds after dark,” she whispered back. “I suppose we might have driven all the local animals off—”
“Even the things that live up in the canopy? I doubt it,” he replied. “Why would anything up there be afraid of us?”
She shrugged. “All I know is, I haven’t heard or seen anything, but I have that unsettling feeling that something is watching us. Somewhere.”
And whatever it is, the local creatures don’t like it either. He had the same feeling, a crawling sensation at the back of his neck, and an itch in his talons. There were unfriendly eyes out there in the night, and Tad and Blade were at a disadvantage. It knew where they were and what they were. They had no idea what it was.
But if it hadn’t attacked while he was asleep, hopefully it wouldn’t while Blade took her rest. “Get to sleep,” he told her. “If there’s anything out there except our imaginations, it isn’t likely to do anything now that I’m on watch. I look more formidable than you do, and I intend to reinforce that.”
Under the packs holding Blade’s clothing were his fighting-claws. He picked up her packs with his beak and fished them out. The bright steel winked cruelly in the subdued firelight, and he made a great show of fitting them on. Once Blade had fastened the straps, he settled back in, but with a more watchful stance than the previous night.