She fought the fish to exhaustion and reeled it in, hand over hand, taking care not to tangle the line. That was enough for tonight; she pulled in the other lines, and by the time she was done, there was no doubt; it was darker out on the river.
She took the fish back behind the rock barrier to the fire, where Tad still basked. Each day they added a few more rocks, but they were rapidly approaching the point where they wouldn’t be able to use river clay as mortar anymore. It just wasn’t strong enough.
There was another advantage to this cave; no bugs. Enough smoke hung in the air from their signal-fire to discourage insects of all sorts. Her bites had finally begun to heal and didn’t bother her too much anymore. In fact, if it hadn’t been for those watchers out there, she would be feeling pretty pleased with the state of things. They had fire, excellent shelter, and plenty to eat, and sooner or later someone from White Gryphon or even Khimbata would see or smell the signal-fire, and they could go home. And in the meantime, while they were not comfortable, they were secure.
She took one of the big, sluggish bottom feeders from her string, gutted it, wrapped it in wet clay, put it in the firepit and raked coals and ashes over it. The rest she handed to Tad as they were.
No longer as famished as he was when they first got here, he ate them with gusto. And if he lacked fine table manners, she was not going to complain about the company. I can think of worse people to be stranded with.
“How’s the wing?” she asked, as she did at least once a day.
“It doesn’t hurt as much as it did yesterday, but I still don’t want to unwrap it,” he replied. “Whenever I move in an unusual way, it hurts.”
In Tad-language, that meant “it hurts enough that my knees buckle and I almost pass out.” She knew; she’d seen it happen. Tad was so stoic. He tried very hard to be cheerful, and it was likely for her benefit alone. By moving very carefully, she had managed to keep the same thing from happening to her, but that meant a lot of restriction on her movement.
If only she had two good hands—or he had two good wings! If either of them could manage to get to the top of the cliff, she was sure they could think of a way to bring the other up afterward. Up there, they wouldn’t have to worry about pursuit anymore; if the hunters couldn’t climb a tree, they sure as stars couldn’t climb a cliff!
Might as well wish for three or four experienced Silvers with long-range bows, she thought grimly. I have the feeling that there is something about all of this that I’m missing completely, something that should be obvious, but isn’t. I just wish I had a clue to what it is.
“Do you really think they’re going to try something tonight?” she asked, more to fill the silence than because she thought he’d changed his mind.
For an answer, he nodded toward the cave entrance. “Rain’s slackening early. The current isn’t bad in that one wide, shallow spot. Not that hard to wade across, if you’ve got claws to hang onto the rock with. And we already know they do have claws.”
She wondered if she ought to try opening herself up to them a second time, then decided against it. They could be waiting for her to do exactly that.
Silence fell between them again, and she just didn’t feel right about breaking it with small talk. She checked her fish instead, and found the clay rock hard; that was a good indication that the fish inside was done, so she went ahead, raked it out of the coals, and broke it open. The skin and scales came away with the clay, leaving the steaming white flesh ready to eat without all the labor of skinning or scaling. She made fairly short work of it. As usual, it tasted like—not much of anything. Visceral memories of hot, fresh bread smothered in sweet butter, spicy meat and bean soup, and that incredible garlic and onion-laced fish stew that Jewel made taunted her until she drove them from her mind.
After that, they let the fire die down to coals and banked them with ashes to reduce the amount of light in the cave. If the hunters were going to try something tonight, there was no point in giving them the advantage of being able to see their targets clearly silhouetted.
She moved toward the barricade by edging along the side of the cave to keep herself in the shadows as much as possible. Tad did the same on the other side. The rain had indeed slackened off early for once; instead of illuminating a solid sheet of water in front of her nose, the intermittent flashes of lightning showed the other side of the river, with the churning, rolling water between.
There was no sign of anything on the other side of the river, and that wasn’t good. Up until now, there had always been at least one lurking shadow in the bushes over there; now there was nothing. That was just one more indication that Tad’s instincts and her reading of the hunters’ impatience were both correct. They were going to try something tonight.
She glanced over at Tad; when lightning flickered, she could see his head and neck clearly, although he was so still he could have passed for a carving. He kept his eyelids lowered, so that not even a flicker of reflection would betray his presence to anything watching. His natural coloration blended beautifully with the stone behind him, and the lines of his feathers passed for rock-striations. It was amazing just how well camouflaged he was.
His ear-tufts lay flat along his head, but she knew better than to assume that meant he wasn’t listening; the ear-tufts were largely decorative tufts of feathers that had nothing to do with his hearing. No, he was listening, all right. She wondered how much he could hear over the roar of the waterfall beside them.
But when the noise of his trap coming down thundered across the river, it was not at all subtle; in fact, it was loud enough that even the rock of the cave mouth vibrated for a moment. She jumped, her nerves stretched so tight that she went off-balance for a moment, and had to twist to catch herself with her good hand. She regained her balance quickly and moved to go outside. He shot out a claw, catching her good wrist and holding her where she was.
“Wait until morning,” he advised, in a voice just loud enough for her to hear it over the roaring water. “That killed something. And they aren’t going to be able to move the body.”
“How much rock did you pile up?” she asked incredulously. How had he been able to pile up anything with only a pair of talons instead of hands, and with one bad wing?
“Enough,” he replied, then chuckled with pardonable pride. “I didn’t want to boast until I knew it had worked—but I used a little magic to undermine part of the cliff-face that was ready to go. I honestly didn’t know how much was going to come down, I only knew it would be more than I could manage by stacking rocks.”
“From the sound of it, a lot came down,” she answered in awe. What a brilliant application of a very tiny amount of magic! “Did you feel it through the rock?”
He nodded. “There could be a problem, though,” he added. “I might have given them a bridge, or half a bridge, across the river. There was that chance that the rock would fall that way.”
But she shrugged philosophically. If he had, he had; it might well be worth it to find out just what, precisely, had been stalking them all this time.