As they left the area, Tad paused once for a look back at the camp, wondering if they were making a dreadful mistake. They were leaving so much behind, so much that they might need desperately in the next few days! But their pathetic little shelter looked even more vulnerable now, and rationally, he knew that it couldn’t withstand a single determined blow, much less a coordinated attack by several creatures at once. In fact, with its canvas-over-wicker construction, it could become a trap for both of them. It wouldn’t take much to drive the supporting saplings through the wicker-work. . . .
A shiver ran along his spine at that thought, for it was all too easy to picture something slamming the cup of wicker down on top of them, trapping them inside, where they would be helpless to defend themselves. . . .
With a shudder, he turned away, and followed after Blade as she picked her way through the tangled growth of the forest floor.
There was still fog in the treetops, just high enough that there was no real way for them to tell precisely where the sun was. In a little while, the last of the fog would burn off completely, and then they might be able to cross-check their bearings with the angle of the sun—although so far, they hadn’t been able to manage that yet.
We’ll know where we are exactly, but only if we can find a hole big enough to see the sun through. And then it will only be possible if the sun is high enough to shine down through the hole at the time we find it.
Living in this forest was like living inside an enormous, thick-aired cave. How could anything that lived here know where it was? It was very disorienting for Tad not to be able to see the sky, and somewhat claustrophobic; he wondered if Blade felt the same as he.
She seemed determined to concentrate on the forest ahead, slipping carefully through the underbrush in such a way that she disturbed as little as possible. The kind of leaf litter that served as the forest floor didn’t hold tracks very well, and if their enemies could just hold off following until the afternoon rains started, it wouldn’t hold a scent very well either. If she found their surroundings claustrophobic, she wasn’t letting the feeling interfere with what she was doing.
But he kept swiveling his head in all directions every time they paused to pick a good route. Those frequent pauses as she pondered her route to the next bit of cover gave him ample opportunity to feel the forest closing in on him. His nerves were afire with tension; he couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t feel the same.
But maybe she doesn‘t; maybe this doesn‘t bother her. Maybe she doesn’t even need to feel sky and wind. He had always known that humans weren’t like gryphons, and that thought made her seem positively alien for a moment.
But, then again, she lived in a veritable burrow back in White Gryphon, so maybe this landscape felt cozy to her, rather than constricting. But oh, how he longed for enough room to spread his wings wide, even if that longing reminded him pointedly that he couldn’t spread them at the moment!
As Blade eeled her way between two bushes that were barely far enough apart to let him through, he realized something else that was very strange. There weren’t any game trails here.
That realization was just as disconcerting to him as not being able to see the sky. He knew there were some large animals that lived down here on the forest floor, so why didn’t they leave regular trails? There should be deer trails, going to and from water. Deer couldn’t collect rainwater in vessels to drink, obviously; they had to have a water source. He had never in all of his life encountered a deer herd that didn’t make paths through their territory just by virtue of the fact that there were a lot of them going in the same direction.
Was there something living down here that was so dangerous that it was suicidal to have a regular trail, foolhardy to move in groups large enough to make one?
Could that something be what had brought them down, and what had been examining their ruined belongings?
That’s altogether too logical, and is not a comforting thought. I know there are large cats like lions here, and bears, because the Haighlei told us there were—yet I have never seen deer and wild pigs afraid to make game trails in lion or bear country. If there is something else living here that makes creatures who regularly face lions afraid to leave a game trail. . . .
The answer could be that whatever this putative creature was happened to be so fierce, so bloodthirsty, that it wasn’t safe for herbivores to travel in herds. That it was the kind of creature that slaughtered everything within its reach, whether or not it was hungry. He swallowed, his throat feeling tight and dry.
But he might be overreacting again. He didn’t like this place; perhaps his imagination was getting the better of him. Maybe we just are in a bad place in the forest. Maybe there’s nothing here worth foraging for to bring deer and other browsers into this area. There certainly doesn’t seem to be anything tasty for a plant eater to feed on; all these bushes are extraordinarily tough and we’ve seen precious little grass. Maybe that’s why there aren’t any trails through here; it simply isn’t worth a deer’s time to come here.
And perhaps that was the reason for the unnatural silence all about them.
There might be an even better explanation for the silence—they were dreadfully obvious to anything watching and listening. Despite the fact that they were trying very hard to be quiet, the inevitable sounds they were making were an unholy racket in contrast with the silence surrounding them. Try as they might, as they passed from one spot of cover to the next, they rattled vines and rustled bushes, and none of those noises sounded natural.
And anything living up in the trees is going to have a fine view of us down below. I doubt that Blade looks harmless to what’s up there, and I know I don’t. I look like a very large, if oddly shaped, eagle.
Tree dwellers might not recognize Blade as a predator, but they would certainly recognize Tad. There were eagles here, they knew that for a fact, for he had seen them flying below him, hunting in and above the forest canopy. Anything that looked like an eagle was going make a canopy dweller nervous.
And yet. . . there hadn’t been a silence this wary and profound since they had felt as if they were being watched. For that matter, the tree dwellers hadn’t been particularly quiet in any of the other places that they had camped before they had crashed.
This is exactly like the silence that falls when an eagle-owl is hunting, and everything stays absolutely quiet and motionless until the moment it makes a kill, hoping that whatever it is hunting, it will not find one of them.
There weren’t even the sounds made when other animals hunted . . . but when a greater predator prowls, the lesser remains silent and hidden. Are we the greater predators, or is something else?