He coughed again, as a new and more acrid set of odors joined the heavy smoke. We must have hit a nest of something nasty. Ugh. Or maybe we ‘ve just incinerated a crop of unpleasant fungi. He hoped that whatever they burned off didn’t give off poisonous fumes. A little late to worry about that now.
They didn’t quite beat the downpour completely. They were in the process of roofing the snag with their canvas and tying it down when the first cloudburst descended, wetting them both to the skin.
At that point, Blade gave in to the inevitable and stood in the downpour until she and her clothing had been flushed clean, and he let the rain wash all of the soot and dirt from his own feathers before shaking himself partially dry under the shelter of a nearby tree. It was too bad that Blade’s clothing didn’t sluice clean so easily, nor could she shake herself dry. He made a dash to the snag and squeezed himself into the downed tree with the supplies. She had already gotten out blankets and bread and dried meat. He tucked the packs up in a way that she could sleep on them, and put her blanket on top of the pile. He had to put the dried meat out into the stream of water pouring off the canvas and soak it until he could eat it. Meanwhile, Blade emptied and refilled their water skins, then joined him in their shelter.
Their combined body heat did do something to warm the interior; with blankets over each of them, they weren’t completely miserable, and Blade’s clothing actually began to dry out. And the strong smell of smoke wasn’t too bad after a while—though they must not have gotten all of the bugs out of their shelter, since periodically he would feel a small one taking a trip-under his feathers, or Blade would slap at something. Once again, the rain persisted until after nightfall, though once it stopped, it was— again—uncannily silent beneath the trees. “Damn,” Blade whispered. “I was hoping. . . .”
“That we’d left them behind?” Tad was altogether glad of the thick wood at his back, and of the deep shadow of the interior of their shelter. Not even an owl would be able to see them in here. “It might not be them that’s making everything so quiet. It might just be the smell of smoke; you know how most wild things fear fire.”
“And I might be the Haighlei Emperor. No, they’re out there. They followed us, I’m sure of it.” She stared out into the darkness fiercely, as if willing her eyes to be better than they actually were.
“Well, they can’t get us in here,” he said, and meant it. “It’s safe enough for you to sleep if you want to take second watch this time.”
“You can’t sleep?” she asked. He shook his head.
It was true, he wasn‘t going to be able to sleep for a while; he was horribly tired, but not sleepy. His muscles kept twitching and jumping with accumulated fatigue. His nerves all felt strung as tightly as a Kaled’a’in horse-bow, and every tiny sound out there had him peering into the darkness as fiercely as she. It was going to be some time before he relaxed enough to fall asleep.
“Well, I think I’ve reached the limit on my nerves,” she replied, punctuating the sentence with a yawn. “Believe it or not, I’m going numb. Right now, I hurt so much that all I want to do is drink my medicine and drop off as soon as the pain stops. In fact, right now, they could come kill me as long as they did it while I was asleep; I just can’t get up the energy to care.”
“I know how you feel.” Awkwardly, he managed to pat her leg in sympathy. “You go ahead. I’ll take the first watch as long as I can.”
She sounded fatalistic; he wasn’t quite ready to share that emotion, but there was something else to consider. I’m not sure it would matter if we both fell asleep tonight. So far, we haven’t any evidence beyond the fact that something probably dangerous is probably following us. They haven’t actually done anything. Even assuming that they intend to attack us, as cautious as they have been, I don’t think they’re ready to try and pry us out of some place like this. “I think we’re as safe as we can be under the circumstances. Get some sleep while you can.”
She didn’t need a second invitation. In an instant, she had downed her vial of medicine and curled up against his side in her blanket, propped up by the packs to save her shoulder. Provided she didn’t get a kink in her neck from sleeping this way, or stiff muscles from a chill, she ought to be more comfortable tonight than she had been since the accident.
He stared out into the darkness until his eyes burned—and just as he was contemplating waking her to take her watch, the forest itself woke. But not with sounds of alarm—to his intense relief, these were normal night sounds, the same they had heard every other night of this journey.
The whoop of something up above startled Blade awake. She came alive with a jerk and a thin gasp of pain. “What?” she demanded, then relaxed as she recognized the noises outside their shelter for what they were.
The sudden onset of normal night sounds had been the trigger that let all of his own fatigue catch up with him. Suddenly, he could not keep his eyes open, no matter how hard he tried. He was actually nodding off even as he stared into the dark.
“Can you take over?” he whispered, and felt her nod. That was all he needed; a moment later, not even the scream of a makaar would have awakened him.
For the second time that morning, Blade motioned to Tad to freeze. Obedient to her hand gesture, he went rigid, and for something as huge as he was, he blended into the forest surprisingly well. His eyes were fixed on her, not on the forest around him; that was because she hadn’t used the gesture that meant danger, just the one that meant wait.
In fact, there was no danger, only an opportunity. She had spotted another of the long-limbed tree dwellers climbing cautiously down out of the canopy, in pursuit of something it had dropped. This must be a young one; the elders never were so foolish as to risk coming down into the danger zone just because they wanted something they had lost. If she was lucky, this one would not survive a lesson in why they did not.
Although this hunting was delaying them, it was a necessary delay.
Her quarry dropped down off the tree trunk and took two cautious steps on the forest floor, reaching for the bright object it had lost. It had four long limbs, a pointed snout, and large eyes set on the sides of its head. If it had been up in the canopy, she would never have been able to spot it, for its brown fur blended in beautifully with the bark of the tree. Not that she could have reached it with her puny weapon, either. Nothing short of a very powerful bow would put a missile up into the canopy with force great enough to kill.
She whirled her sling twice and let fly.
The beast barely had time to register the movement and start to turn his head. Then the lead shot struck it squarely on the skull with a wet crack, and it dropped to the ground, instantly dead.
Grinning with elation, she ran forward anyway, just to make certain of it with her knife; fresh meat was too precious a commodity for her to take any chances that it might simply be stunned. When she finished, she stood up and motioned Tad to come up and join her.