The Silver Gryphon

omeone hampered by a bad shoulder, with a primitive weapon, in unfamiliar territory. If I remember my gryphon-rations correctly, he should actually prosper on that amount of food. Granted, it's like feeding a hawk by tidbitting it, but beggars can't be choosers. If he isn't exactly full at any one time, he isn't going hungry, either. He looked faintly annoyed at being asked to swallow another bit of game every mark or so, but he didn't say anything. He was used to eating once lightly, and once hugely, then sleeping on that larger meal. He probably wondered why they were stopping so frequently just so he could eat. But if she carried the game until they had enough for him to have that single large meal, she'd be weighing herself down for no good purpose. Let the game ride in the most efficient way possible; inside Tad. If he hasn't figured out what I'm doing, he will soon, she decided, moving on ahead. She was worried about him; in spite of the fact that she was the one with the worse injury-as her shoulder reminded her sharply of just how badly hurt she was, every time she moved a bit too quickly-in some ways he was the more vulnerable of the two of them. She knew, only too well, just how vulnerable he was. Trapped on the ground as he was, he had as many weaknesses as she did. Unless he could get his back up against something to protect it, he could not only be attacked from the rear, but from below. Most of what he had learned about fighting was meant for aerial combat, not ground fighting. Granted, he could improvise, and granted, he had four sets of very nasty "knives" on the end of each limb, not to mention the weapon in the middle of his face, but he was made for another element. Faced with the need to fight on terms and terrain he was not suited to, he was vulnerable in ways even he probably didn't realize. His other weakness was the sheer volume of food he had to consume in order to stay in decent physical shape. If she couldn't get that into him-well, too many days of rain-soaked dried meat, and he wouldn't be in good condition at all. Too many days of that kind of ration, and we'II have to find a permanent place to hole up, because he won't even be able to travel. Walking was much harder on him than flying; he wasn't built for it. Intellectually, of course, she had known that; watching him try to move through the underbrush had driven it home to her in a more concrete form. He was not clumsy; he was a great deal more graceful at this sort of travel than his classmates had ever been. He was, in fact, as adept at it as some humans-but he tired easily, and occasionally his wings got caught up on some obstacle or other. It would be some time before his legs strengthened and gained the endurance for steady walking, and until then, he was handicapped. If they ever ran across a large browser like a deer, he should be able to bring it down so long as they surprised it, but until then she was the better ground hunter. He was going to be depending on her for something he was normally self-sufficient at. She was just grateful that he was as good a tracker as he was. He'd done a fair amount to confuse their scent and backtrail, and that could only help right now. That might be one of the reasons I'm spotting game today; that muck he had us rub all over ourselves is probably hiding our scent and confusing the tree dwellers. Scent rose, especially in this heat; a wary canopy beast would not come anywhere near the ground with the scent of a large predator coming up to meet his nose, but at the moment all that they smelled like was crushed plants. And that might very well be the explanation of why they had been surrounded by silence until lately. Quite frankly, Tad was damp, and he smelled like-well-damp raptor, a combination of wet feathers and the heavy musk that was peculiar to gryphons and birds of prey. He hadn't been able to dry out properly since the accident, and that made his scent more obvious. Could be that when we first camped, not only was he not as fragrant, but we simply weren't on the ground long enough for the scent to rise into the canopy. Now we are. That speculation made her feel a little better; and the current state of affairs did seem to offer support for that speculation. Tad didn't smell like raptor, wet or dry, at the moment. The juicy plant he had her rub all over both of them imparted a peculiar, sharp, mossy scent to their respective hides. It made a hideous mess of her clothing, streaking it a mottled green, but she wasn't particularly worried about stains. Besides, the stains make a fairly good impromptu camouflage. She ought to start looking for a good place to go to ground for the night. As she kept an eye out, she tried to mentally reckon up the time it would take for them to be missed. They ought to start putting up some sort of signal if there was any chance that the White Gryphon people might be looking for it. We should have made our rendezvous today or tomorrow, so by tomorrow or the day after, the Silvers we're relieving will know there's something wrong. They have a teleson; they 'II let Judeth know, but it would take a team of rescuers coming at full speed another two or three days to reach here. So- what does that make it? Another two or three days before help will have a chance of being here at best. More likely a week. So there'was no point in looking for a shelter and a place where they could set up a good signal fire. Shelter alone would do for today and tomorrow. Nothing presented itself for another mark-except the first signs she had seen yet of large animals on the forest floor. She came across a place where a pig had clearly been rooting at the base of a tree, searching for underground fungi, and with regret she saw that the trail went off into the north and not the west. A pig would have been very welcome to both her and Tad. But she was not going to risk going off in a different direction on just the chance that they might be able to bring one down. The heat was oppressive; when the rains came again, she had every intention of soaking herself and her clothing. If she didn't, by tomorrow morning her tunic and trews would be able to stand by themselves, they were so saturated with sweat. She was grateful to Tad for his subterfuge with the plant scent for more reasons than the obvious; without the pungent aroma of crushed leaf hanging around her, she would be smelling herself by now. On the other hand, maybe if I smelled bad enough, our trackers would be offended and leave us alone. Hah! Sweat trickled steadily down the back of her neck, and her hair itched unbearably. For that matter, so did her feet, shins, armpits any number of tiny forest insects were finding her tasty fare, and she was covered with itching, red welts. Something she had forgotten was that their original tent not only set itself up and took itself down, the spells on it protected them from insects. Without that protection, she seemed to be the only source of food for every bloodsucker for furlongs about, except for the ones buzzing about poor Tad's eyes and ears. Her bruise-medicine eased the itching enough for her to sleep, but she would have given a great deal to discover a plant that rendered her inedible to bugs. Every time she paused, she found herself reaching inside her clothing to scratch at another itch. She kept reminding her herself to rub, not scratch. If she broke the skin, she opened herself up to infection-if she bled, she added a particularly tasty scent to her own, and one the plant juice would not cover. Something near her ear buzzed, landed, and bit. She slapped and swore, as Tad crept into cover beside her. We may not need stalking beasts to finish us off. The insects may nibble us to death. "Ants," Tad muttered in her ear. "Is that what just got me?" she asked without turning her head. "No. That had wings and a long nose. I am reminding myself to lie on an anthill, if we can find some of the small brown ones. It will be irritating, but they will rid me of any passengers I may be carrying. Their secretions, when the ants are angered, drive away mites and other small pests." She felt a twinge of raw envy; if only it could be that easy for her! But lying on an anthill would do her no good since most of the bugs that plagued her were winged, and the subsequent ant bites would be just as irritating as her current crop of bites and stings. She couldn't wait for the afternoon rain; sweat made the bites itch worse, and standing in the pouring cold water gave her the few moments of complete relief she got from the incessant itching. Time to move. Maybe we'll find a stream today, and I can go to sleep lying in it! Then again, given our current luck, if we found a stream it would be infested with leeches. Never mind. The one thing they had to do was keep moving, and cope with whatever came up. It couldn't be more than a week until help came. All they had to do was to survive that long. Six Ah, hells. This isn't easy, one-handed. A bit off-balance because of her injured shoulder, Blade threw her final bundle of branches over the canvas of tonight's shelter just as the first rumbles of thunder began in the distance. Ah, damn! That hurt! Blade doubled over despite herself. Her chest felt constricted, as if cinched tight with rope. Thunder rumbled again, nearer. She'd finished just in time, though not too soon so far as she was concerned; she was ready for the rain, more than ready by now. As she straightened up, she had no doubts that she was ready for rest as well. This shelter was both superior and inferior to the last one; like last night's, it was also based on the remains of a fallen tree, but this tree had fallen quite recently. The splintered wood of the trunk shone fresh and pale against the greenery, which was how she had spotted it in the first place. Although there were no hollow places in the trunk or snag to shelter in, the tree had taken down another right next to it in its fall, and there was an intersection of the two trunks, providing a triangular area with two man-high "walls" of wood. Stretching the canvas over the top of this place made a roof; piling branches on top of the canvas disguised their presence. A further barricade of brush hid the entrance, and they would even have the luxury of a small fire tonight, screened from view by the brush. More branchlets over a pile of big leaves made a springy floor, giving them more comfort tonight than they had enjoyed since the accident. Now if only she could find something in her medicines to numb these damned insect bites! Thunder rumbled again, overhead this time. In the course of gathering their branches, she had stirred up many tiny animals; mice, lizards, snakes, and frogs. She had caught and killed as many of those as she could, and tonight she and Tad would supplement their dinner with these tidbits. Individually, they weren't impressive, but she had collected an entire sack of them, enough to give Tad much-needed supplements. She'd probably appropriate a couple of snakes to roast and give some flavor to her flavorless bread, but the rest would go to Tad. She would be adding insects to her ration, for she had found grubs of a wood-borer that she recognized, ant pupae, and crickets, all of which she could choke down so long as they were toasted. When she had been going through survival training, she had never really pictured herself putting any of her training into practice! Well, I have this much revenge; if the bugs are eating me, I'm eating the bugs! Insects were really too small to do Tad any good, so by default they went to her. Tad was inside the shelter arranging things and getting the fire going, and she thanked the Star-Eyed that he had enough magic to light fires again. With the help of magic, even the greenest, wettest wood could be coaxed to burn. Without it-they'd have a poor fire, or none, and she could not bear the thought of eating untoasted bugs. I'd rather go hungry a bit. I might get hungry enough to consider it, but not now. Their shelter lay underneath a long slit of sky, cleared by the falling tree. It had shown gray when they first arrived here, gray with those fat, round-bellied clouds, and had been growing steadily darker ever since, as the inevitable afternoon storm gathered strength. Was it her imagination, or were those storms coming earlier every afternoon? She remained standing where she was, watching the clouds overhead, while the dark gray went bright white periodically and thunder followed the lightning. As the sky darkened steadily, the ambient light dimmed, stealing the color from the leaves, softening the edges of the shadows, and painting the clearing in shades of indigo blue. White light suddenly flooded the entire area, not just the clouds. Lightning lanced across the raw sky and thunder cracked right overhead, making her jump and yelp involuntarily-and jolting her shoulder again, which made her swear. She forced herself to hold still, to wait for the pain to ebb. I ought to be used to this by now- But she wasn't; every time she jerked her shoulder, the pain lanced down her arm and up her neck. It wasn't getting any better. She could only hope that she was just being impatient, and that this didn't mean that it wasn't healing. Two breaths after the lightning came the rain. As always, it poured down in a torrent. She held out her good arm and tilted her head up, letting the sweet, cool water wash away all the sweat and grime she had accumulated, opening her mouth and drinking the fresh, clean liquid. It actually eased her thirst and did not taste of warm leather. As sweat washed away and her skin cooled down, her insect bites stopped itching. With walls of trunk on either side of her, she felt secure enough to stand out in the open and indulge herself; the only thing that would have improved the situation would have been a bar of soap! But even with nothing but water, she was getting reasonably clean, and that always made her temper improve. She stood out in the downpour until the dark green stains on her tunic faded to match the others already there, until she was as chilled as she had been overheated the moment before, until the swollen welts of her insect bites stood out against her cold, pallid arms and the bites themselves no longer bothered her at all. There was something very exhilarating and elemental about standing out in a storm like this one; powerful storms back home had always been too cold and dangerous to "play" in, something that had disappointed her ever since she was a child. But here-there wasn't much chance that she would be struck by lightning when everything else around her was so very much taller than she, and to be able to stand out in rain so heavy that it literally stole the breath was an intoxicating experience. It was enough to make her forget her pain, almost enough to make her forget their danger. Is this what Tad feels when he flies? If so, I envy him. Is this the way it feels to not face people, not be in a building or cave, and be encompassed by the elements? To stand alone and alive as a living creature only, and not as Someone's Offspring? Is this the moment that makes all the pettiness of everyday living worthwhile? Only when she was so chilled she had begun to shiver did she duck her head and scuttle back to the heap of branches that covered their shelter. She pushed past the brush and almost went back out into the rain when she encountered a thick cloud of eye-watering smoke. "What-what is this?" she demanded as, coughing, she fanned her hand in front of her face and dropped to the ground where the air was marginally clearer. "Sorry," Tad said apologetically. "I'm trying to get rid of the bugs, both in here and on me. It's working; I certainly got rid of my little plague." "You almost got rid of me," she grumbled, crawling all the way inside to settle beside him. More thunder punctuated her statement. "I suppose it'll be worth it if this smoke-weapon of yours allows us to get a good night's sleep." Then she laughed. "But if I'd known that this was how you were going to interpret my wish for an herb to repel insects, I might have been more careful in what I asked for!" He gryph-grinned at her, his beak gaping wide. "You didn't remember Drake's favorite proverb- 'Be careful what you ask for'-" "I know, I know," she groaned. Tad had been snacking, and the bag was almost empty, but he had saved her two of the biggest snakes-though they weren't very big, being no longer than her forearm. One was brown, one was green, and both looked vaguely orange in the uncertain light. Tad carefully scraped some hot coals to one side with a stick, then added drier wood to the rest of the fire. She skinned out the snakes with Tad's help, then arranged her snakes, along with her harvest of crickets, grubs, and pupae, on the blade of their shovel and placed that on top of the glowing coals. There wasn't much aroma, but her bugs did toast quickly, and she was very hungry by now. She picked them gingerly off the hot metal and ate them, trying not to think too hard about what she was doing. They weren't too bad, though; she could almost imagine that she was eating toasted grain if she didn't pay too close attention to the shapes. The snake was better, and made it possible to finish her ration-bread. Tad, meanwhile, had placed his dried meat out in the rain to soak; he wolfed it down with no expression of pleasure when it was soft enough to eat. "Do you take first watch, or shall I?" he asked. She put a pan of water on the fire to steep her bruise-remedy in, then made up her potion with the addition of a couple of recognizable, foraged herbs known to numb sore throats. If they soothed a sore throat, perhaps they would make her bites stop bothering her. "I'd appreciate it if you would," she replied. "I'm hoping this stuff will let me fall asleep without clawing my skin off, but it's bound to wear off before daybreak. If I'm going to be itching, I might as well be awake so I can control myself." He nodded. "The smoke worked as well as an ant hill, and my passengers are no longer with me to bother either of us. At the moment, I'm feeling fairly lively. You might as well get to sleep while you still can." By now her clothing and her hair were both dry, though only her gryphon-badge was as pristine as it had been when they set out. Besides being stained, her tunic and trews were torn in several places, and the hems were beginning to fray. I look like a tramp, she thought ruefully. I hope Ikala is not with a search party oh, that's ridiculous. He would hardly expect me to look like a court lady, and I would be so happy to see a rescuer that the last thing I would be thinking of would be my clothing! Tad helped her wrap her herb-steeped bandages around the worst of her bruises, and to dab the remainder of the mixture on her insect bites, as best as his large, taloned hands would allow. At first, she thought she was going to be disappointed again in her attempt to heal her bites, but as the mixture dried, she noticed that her itching had ebbed, at least temporarily. The tenderness of her flesh was perhaps in some way eased by the tenderness of the gryphon's care of her, as well. Tad looked at her, disheveled feathers slightly spiked from the moisture, with inquiry in his expression. She sighed with relief. "It's working," she said. "I'll have to make more of this up and keep it with me in one of the waterskins. If I keep putting it on, I might find it easier to freeze in place without being driven mad." Tad chuckled. "Good. Now we just need to find something that will keep the bugs off us in the first place-without driving us crazy with the smell!" With her mind off her itching, she turned a critical eye on Tad, and without warning him what she was about to do, reached over to feel his keelbone, the prominent breastbone that both gryphon and bird anatomy shared. That was the first place that a bird showed health or illness, as muscle-mass was consumed by a gryphon or bird that was not eating enough. It was a bit sharper, the muscles on either side of it just a little shrunken. Not something an ordinary person would notice, but Tad was her partner, and it was her job to do as much for him as she could. "You've lost some weight," she said thoughtfully. "Not a lot, but it has to be either the short rations or the fact that you're using up energy in healing. Or both." "Or that I'm building leg-muscle and losing wing-muscle because I'm not using it," he pointed out. "I don't remember walking this much before in my life. Much more of this and I'm going to look more like a plowhorse than a hawk." She granted him a skeptical look, and crossed her legs and rested her chin on her good hand. "I wish we'd find the river," she replied fretfully. "No matter what is following us, if we just had the river, we could fish; I'd get some decent food into you. Even if there's something following us and scaring off the game, I doubt that fish would be frightened off by a land predator." The river, the promise of the river, it now seemed to embody the promise of everything-food, shelter and rescue as well. Perhaps she was placing too much hope on a strip of water, but at the moment it was a good goal to concentrate on. He heaved a huge sigh and scratched at one bug-bitten ear. "I really have no idea where we are in relation to the cliff and the river," he confessed. "And this kind of forest is very strange to me. If this place were more like home, I could probably find a river, but I can't see the sky and the ground cover is ten or twelve layers thick here" "I know, and I'm not blaming you," she assured him hastily. "How could you know anything about this kind of forest? We never trained here. We expected we'd be going to an established outpost, with shelter, a garden, food stores, and weapons." "Emphasis on the food stores," Tad said hoarsely, as if the momentary thought of all the food he was used to eating made him homesick. He rubbed at his throat a moment and then swallowed. He'd been gulping more air for days than was healthy for him. She frowned with frustration. "I'm sure there are plenty of things to eat growing all around us, if only I knew what they were! Roots, stalks, leaves-even some things you might be able to eat, too!" She waved her hand, helplessly. "We haven't the luxury of experimenting, since we don't dare make ourselves sick, so we're stuck. Only a native would know how to find his way around a place like this." "A native like Ikala?" Tad replied shrewdly, and chuckled when she blushed involuntarily. "Well, I wish he was with us." "I do, too-" she began, intending to change the subject, quickly. "And probably for more reasons than one!" he teased, not giving her a chance to change the subject, and sounding more like his old self than he had in days. "I can't blame you; he's a handsome fellow, and he certainly accounted well for himself in training. It wouldn't be a bad thing to get to know him better." "I suppose," she said, suddenly wary. There was nothing that Tad liked better than to meddle in other peoples' love lives. "If we'd had a chance to ask him more about forests like these, we might be faring better now." He saw what she was trying to do. "Oh, come on, Blade!" he coaxed. "Stop being coy with me! Am I your partner, or not? Shouldn't your partner know who you're attracted to?" He gave her a sly, sideways look. "I know he's attracted to you. It's obvious, if you're watching." "And you were watching, I suppose," she grumbled, giving up on her attempt to distract him to something more serious. He laughed. "I'm supposed to watch out for you, aren't I? You'd be happier with a male friend to share some- hmm-pleasant moments with, and I know it would be easier dealing with you if you were happier." He tilted his head comically to the side. "Oh, thank you," she said sarcastically. "Now you sound like both my parents. They can't wait to get me-attached." Into bed with someone, you mean, she thought sourly. And Tad knows it. He should know better than to echo them! He knows how I feel about that! 'They're obsessed with it, and have built much of their lives around pleasures of flesh. They think of it as a means to all happiness, even if it is by a strange, obscure path! Seeing you bedded with someone is not my goal. I simply want to see you content in all areas of your life," Tad said persuasively. "He's certainly a fine prospect. Good-looking, intelligent, and open-minded enough that you wouldn't get all tangled up in Haighlei custom with him. Good sense of humor, too, and that's important. And being trained as a prince, he knows that you have to be able to concentrate on your duty, you can't just devote yourself slavishly to a man. Hmm?" Blade fixed her partner with a stern and fierce gaze, neither agreeing nor denying any of it. "You're matchmaking," she accused. "Don't try to deny it; I've seen you matchmake before, you're as bad as an old woman about it! You want to see everyone paired off and living-well, if not happily ever after, at least having a good time while the affair lasts!" "Of course!" Tad replied smugly. "And why not?" She growled at him. "Because-because it's invasive, that's why not! I repeat-I get enough of that kind of nonsense from my parents! Why should I put up with it from you?" He only snorted. "I'm your partner, I have to know these things, and I have to try to help you get what you want and need, whether or not you know what it is! I'd tell you, and I'd expect you to help me. We both have to know if there's something that is going to have us emotionally off-balance, because that's going to affect how we do our job. Right? Admit it!" She growled again, but nodded with extreme reluctance. He was right, of course. A Silver's partnership was as close as many marriages, and partners were supposed to confide in each other, cooperate with each other, in and out of the duty times. And for some reason, what seemed so invasive from her parents didn't seem so bad, coming from Tad. Perhaps it was because Tad was a gryphon, and not human. Despite the gryphons' abilities to see things like a human did, Tad would always be one step removed from complete empathy with Blade, and that gave her a barrier of safety. "So tell your partner how you feel about it." He settled his head down on his foreclaws. "What do you think of Ikala, then?" Rain drummed down outside their shelter and pattered through the branches they had piled on the roof. Lightning made patterns of the branches screening the front of the shelter, reflecting whitely off Tad's eyes and the silver gryphon-badge on her tunic. As usual, rain and thunder were the only sounds that could be heard outside. Inside-the smoke had finally cleared away and the fire burned brightly. She was dry, full, and warm. Her shoulder didn't hurt too much, and she was in a well-camouflaged shelter with two very solid walls on either side of her and a cushioning of springy boughs between her and the cold, damp ground. In short, there was nothing to distract her from her thoughts, which were confused to say the least. "I suppose I don't really know," she said slowly, as Tad's dark eyes watched her with that intensity that only a raptor could display. "He is very handsome, he's very charming, he's quite intelligent but I just don't know. Part of the time I think I like him for himself, part of the time I think I'm attracted to him just because he's so exotic, and part of the time I think it's because he's the only person in White Gryphon that my father doesn't know everything about!" Tad chuckled heartlessly. "There is that. I've noticed that Ikala has never once had the occasion to patronize a kestra 'chern. Amberdrake should find him more of an enigma than you do." "That would certainly be an improvement," she said acidly. "It would be very nice for once to have a conversation with someone without the person wondering if Father was going to tell me all the things he'd really rather I didn't know." "And it would be very nice for you," Tad commented, "to talk to your father without wondering if he was going to tell you things you'd rather not know." Blade nodded, and Tad shrewdly added, "I don't go to kestra'chern, so you are doubly safe talking to me about how you feel; word will not reach your father. May I give up all my hedonism if I lie." Blade smiled despite herself. Depend upon a gryphon male to count that as the ultimate oath. "He's under control," she added. "He's a very controlled person. I like that." I like it a great deal more than unbridled passion, truth to tell Tad coughed. "Still," he prompted helpfully. "Some might say that argues for a certain coldness of spirit?" She snorted. "You know better than that, you've worked with him. He loses his temper about as often as anyone else, he just doesn't let it get away from him. And-so far as not visiting a kestra'chern-" "And?" Tad's eyes sparkled with humor. She blushed again. "And he hasn't exactly been- well-chaste. He's had female friends while he's been here. They just weren't kestra'chern. Even if they were casual. Recreational." And I could almost envy Karelee. I wish she hadn't been so enthusiastic about his bed abilities. "Oh?" Tad said archly. "He hasn't been chaste? I suppose you were interested enough to find out about this." She coughed and tried to adopt a casual tone. "Well, one does, you know. People talk. I didn't have to be interested, people gossip about that sort of thing all the time. I only had to be nearby and listen." She favored him with a raised eyebrow, grateful to feel her hot face cooling. "Winds know that you do enough talking, so you ought to know!" "Me? Gossip?" His beak parted in silent laughter and he squinted his eyes. "I prefer to call it the 'gathering of interpersonal information,' for 'management of sources and receivers of pleasure.' " "Well, I call it gossip, and you're as bad as any old woman," she retorted. "You are just as bad when it comes to matchmaking. And as for Ikala-he is attractive, and I don't deny it, but I think you're getting way ahead of yourself to tie the two of us together in any way. I don't even know how I feel, so how could I even speculate about how he feels? And anyway, you and I have our missions to run, and when we get out of here, we have a long tour of duty at a remote outpost to take care of. If we don't die of embarrassment at having to be rescued." If we are rescued, if we do get out of here The unspoken thought put a chill in the air of the tent that the fire could not drive away. All frivolous thoughts faded; this was the change in subject she had tried to make, but not the new subject she would have preferred. Reflexively she glanced out through the screening branches. It was getting darker out there, and it looked as if-once again-the rain was going to continue past nightfall. That might not be so bad, if it keeps our unseen "friends" away. "Well," she said, as lightly as possible, which was not very, "now you've got my brain going, and I'm never going to be able to get to sleep. I'll just lie awake thinking." He yawned hugely. "And I am warm and sleepy. I always get worn out listening to people's reasons why they won't be happy. Shall we switch watches?" He didn't wait for her to answer, settling his head back down on his foreclaws. She shrugged. "We might as well," she replied, and edged over until she was in a position where she could see through a gap between two of the branches hiding the front of their shelter. She memorized the positions of everything in sight while the light was still good enough to identify what was visible through the curtain of rain. The flashes of lightning helped; if she concentrated on a single spot, she could wait until the next lightning bolt hit to give her a quick, brightly-lit glimpse of what was there, and study the afterimage burned into her eyes. Tad hadn't been lying about his fatigue; within a few moments, she heard his breathing deepen and slow, and when she turned to look behind her, she saw that his eyes were closed. She turned back to her vigil, trying to mentally review what she had done when she constructed the shelter. She had tried not to take too many branches away from any one place. She had tried to pile the ones she brought to the shelter in such a way that they looked as if they were all from a single smaller tree brought down by the larger. With all this rain, every trace of our being here should have been washed away. No scent, no debris Smoke, though-the smoke Tad had used to drive out insects had been very dense and odoriferous, and she wondered if the rain had washed all of it out of the air. If not-how common would smoke be in a forest that experienced thunderstorms every day? Common enough, she would think. Surely lightning started small fires all the time, and surely they burned long enough to put a fair amount of smoke into the air before the rain extinguished them. Well, there wasn't anything she could do about the smoke-or the shelter itself-now. If there was anything looking for them, she could only hope that she had done everything she needed to in order to cover their presence. Last night it would have been difficult for their possible followers to find them; she hoped tonight it would be impossible. The rain turned from a torrent to a shower, and slowed from a shower to a mere patter. Then it wasn't rain at all, but simply the melodic drip of water from the canopy above, and the sounds of the night resumed. She breathed a sigh of relief, and checked the fire. No point in letting it burn too high now; the inside of the shelter was at a good temperature, and with two walls being the trunks of trees, it should sustain that level without too much work. She rebuilt the fire, listening to the hoots and calls from above, tenting the flames with sticks of green fuel and banking the coals to help conceal the glow. This should let the fire burn through the night without needing too much more fuel or tending. It would burn slowly now, producing a bed of deep red, smokeless coals instead of flame. That was precisely the way she wanted it. With the level of light in the shelter down to the point where Tad was nothing more than a large, dark shape, she turned her attention back to the outside. Nothing had changed; the creatures of the canopy continued to go about their business with the accompanying noise, and now the luminescent insects she had noted before began to flit about the foliage. She allowed herself to relax a little further. It just might be that whatever had been following them had decided to leave them alone. But don't count on it, she cautioned herself. Assume the worst. Assume that they're still- Something moved out in the darkness. Just a shape, a shifting of shadow, but she knew that there should not have been a shadow in that place, much less a moving one. Instantly she was on the alert. Whatever it was, it was big. Bigger than the tame lion she'd seen in Shalaman's menagerie. She knew to within a thumb's breadth just how wide a distance lay between each bush, how tall a young tree was. The head of the shadow would rise a little above hers, she thought, though she had the impression of a very long, slender neck; the chest briefly obscured one bush while its hindquarters still lay behind another. Altogether, that would make it about the size of a horse, perhaps a little smaller. She couldn't quite tell how bulky it was, but the fluid way in which it moved and the fact that it melted in with the other shadows so well suggested that it had a slender build. Her view was a narrow one, limited to the wedge of forest between the two long walls of log-yet in a moment, as she concentrated further, she knew that there was more than one of those creatures out there. One shadow flitted as another froze; further flickering in the distance suggested that either they were incredibly fast, or there might be a third. Two, at least, for certain. But they don't seem to know we're here. The first of the shadows darted suddenly out of sight; a heartbeat later, and a bloodcurdling scream rang out into the night. Blade's heart leaped into her throat, and she felt as if she had been plunged into ice water. Tad only wheezed in his sleep. It took all of her control to remain frozen in place. She had an impression that those shadows possessed extremely sharp senses, and that if she moved, even obscured by branches as she was, they might spot the movement, or hear it. Silence descended, as Blade tried to get her heartbeat started again. It was a good thing that she had heard the death scream of a rabbit before, or she would have thought that one of those somethings had just killed a child. Now, as if the canopy dwellers had only just noticed the shadows' presence, the silence extended up into the tree-tops. Only the insects and frogs remained unaffected, chirping and trilling as calmly as they had a moment before. She blinked-and in the time it took her to do so, the shadows vanished, at least from her view. She did not breathe easier, however. From the silence, she knew that they were still out there, and she had no intention of letting them know her location. I can only hope that they haven't had the bright idea to come take a walk on top of the sheltering logs. The very idea made her want to shiver. The back of her neck crawled as she imagined one of those creatures sniffing around the brush piled above her head. There was nothing between her and these hunters stronger than a layer of canvas and a pile of flimsy branches and leaves. Surely if one of the hunters got close, no amount of brush and herb juice would obscure their scent. Surely the scent of the fire alone would tell the creature that they were here- But I'm assuming that the thing is intelligent, that it would associate a fire with us. I'm assuming that it's hunting us-it could simply be here, we could have wandered into its territory. We haven't seen any large predators nor any sign of them; this could simply be the local equivalent of a lion. And yet something about the way it had moved had suggested intelligence and purpose. That could be her imagination, but it might be the truth. It was wary; it moved carefully, but when it did move, it was quick and certain. That was an indication of something that either had incredible reflexes, or something that decided very precisely what it was going to do before it acted. In any case, there was no reason to take any chances, and every reason to be painfully cautious. No matter what else, these creatures were hunters, predators. The behavior of the canopy dwellers showed that, and demonstrated that the animals that lived in the treetops recognized these beasts and feared them. Even if those things are just the local equivalent of a lion, they're still big, they're still carnivorous, and they're hunting. There's no reason to put myself on their menu. A new thought occurred to her; what if they were not dealing with one enemy, but two? One that had brought them down, and a second that was hunting them? In that case, there were two possibilities; the shadows were either wild hunters that had nothing to do with what brought them down-or they were allied with it. In the second case, the shadow shapes out there could be the equivalent of a pack of hunting hounds, trailing them for some unknown master. It was not something that was unheard of; that was the problem. Urtho wasn't the only mage that created living things. Ma'ar did, and so did others who never participated in the wars. The ability to create a new species was a mark of prestige or a symbol of ability above and beyond the status of being an Adept. Among the higher mages there were a handful that had created new creatures for centuries before the war with Ma'ar. That gave her yet another possible scenario; a mage who hunted other intelligent creatures, and had chosen them for his next prey. Their chasers were his dog pack- Ma'ar had been one such, and she'd heard tales of others, both from her own people and from the Haighlei. That, in fact, was one of the reasons why the Haighlei restricted magic use to the priests; they had a tale of a sadistic, powerful mage who captured men and brought them to his estate to hunt them like beasts. A brave young priest had suspected what was happening and allowed himself to be taken, thus giving his fellows an agent within the spell-protected walls through which they could channel their own power to destroy the mage. That was how the story went anyway. She grew cold all over again, and restrained herself from running her hand through her hair nervously. Her imagination went wild again, taking off all on its own. She had never had any difficulty coming up with scenarios for trouble. So-suppose that one of the neutral mages came down here to hide before the Cataclysm. Even if he wasn't Urtho's equal, he could have guard-beasts and birds to warn him when anything was in the area. The Haighlei never travel through the wilderness in groups of less than ten, and that includes a priest, but all he'd have to do would be to stay quiet while they passed by. Unless they actually stumbled over him, they wouldn 't find him. Then he could hunt individuals at his leisure. There was just one problem with that hypothesis; no one had ever been reported missing from here. Unless a Haighlei was so antisocial as to sever all familial and clan ties and go off wandering the wilderness, someone would have raised a fuss by now if anyone had vanished, wouldn't they? Woodcutters, explorers, trappers, hunters-they all told friends, neighbors, and fellow workers where they were going, what route they intended to take, and when they should be back. They did so especially ifthey were going off into poorly-explored lands; if something happened, they would want others to mount a rescue as soon as possible. Perhaps there had been a few Haighlei hermits who had wandered in here only to vanish-but not enough to provide sport for a maniacal manhunting mage. Well, all right, then-what if he came here to escape all the conflict. What if he wants to be left alone, and he brought us down to keep us from revealing his presence? But that didn't make any more sense than the first hypothesis. There had been others through here; they had all flown overhead on the same route. Why hadn't they been brought down? Because we were the only gryphon-human pair? But there had been Aubri and Judeth Oh, winds. I should be a storyteller. She gave it up as a bad notion. It was getting too complicated, and usually, the more complicated a hypothesis was, the more likely it was that it was incorrect. Stick to the two possibilities that work best. Simple answers work best and are more likely. First: we hit some kind of accidental-thing-that brought us down, and now we're having to guard ourselves from the local predators which are following us because we 're hurt and look like easy prey. Second: something down here brought us down for reasons of its own and now is hunting us. And the first is more likely than the second. That didn't mean they were in any less danger. Wolves and lions had been known to trail wounded prey for days, waiting for it to die. And if her guess about the size of the shadow-creatures was right, they were a match for Tad, which would make them formidable opponents indeed. If the shadows knew that she and Tad were hurt, that might well put them in the category of "wounded prey." A bird called; another answered. And as if that tentative call had been meant to test the safety of the area, or to tell other creatures that the menace had gone for the moment, the canopy above began to come to life again. She sighed, and let her shoulders relax. She cast a wry glance at her slumbering companion. Somehow, Tad had managed to sleep through it all. Tad yawned, and stretched as best he could, blinking in what passed for light in their shelter. When Blade woke him for his watch, she had looked tired, but that was to be expected. She also looked nervous, but how could she not be? He would be nervous on his watch, too. Nervous sentries remained living sentries; relaxed ones had short epitaphs. "I saw something out there that might account for the way everything goes silent every so often," she offered. "It was pretty big, and I think there were two or more of them. I didn't see anything more than a shadow, though. One of them caught a rabbit, and every bird and beast in the canopy shut up and stayed that way for a long time." Well, that accounts for the nerves, and for the fact that she looks tired. Nerves wear you out and she didn't have much of a reserve when she began her watch. "Huh." He glanced out into the darkness, but didn't see anything-and some of the local creatures were acting as if they were in the middle of a singing competition. "Well, if silence means that there's something out there we should be worried about, I'd say you can sleep in peace until dawn. I'm surprised I slept through it. I must have been more tired than I thought-or my medicine is stronger than I supposed." She managed a ghost of a chuckle. "It got my hackles up, I can tell you that much. It's quick, very quick, and I didn't hear a rustle of leaves or a single broken twig. I'd say the one I saw was about the size of a horse, which would make it a formidable predator in a fight. It might have been my imagination, but I thought that it acted fairly intelligent." "So do the big cats, hunting," he reminded her. "Everything acts intelligent in its own realm. Drink your painkillers, get some sleep. We'll see what's out there in the morning. I set some snares before the rain-" She chuckled again. "Don't count on there being anything left. I think you were robbed. That may have been where our shadows found their rabbit." He sighed. "Probably, but it was worth doing. And we'll know how intelligent they are by how the snares were robbed. If it was just snatch-and-eat, then they won't be any more intelligent than the average lion." "Good point." She settled herself down at the back of the shelter; he was certain she was going to get a good rest for the rest of the night, so long as things stayed noisy up in the canopy. The mattress of boughs and leaves he'd made was very comfortable, and she should be able to lie cradled in a way that permitted her to sleep soundly, rather than fitfully. With her shoulder supported so that pressure was off her collarbone, she should be in less pain. He had not wanted to mention it before this, but he had already seen signs on their backtrail that something was following them. It could have been anything, and he hadn't seen any signs that their follower was particularly intelligent-just alert and incredibly wary. The trouble with telling her now was that there was nothing to prove whether or not the shadowy creature that was following them was something they had just picked up today, or if it had been following them all along and only now was feeling bold enough to move in where he might catch a glimpse of it. It could certainly match the description that Blade had given him of the creature she saw tonight. That basically was all that he knew as a fact. This, of course, had nothing to do with what his own imagination could conjure up. In his imagination, the sighting confirmed the fear that he'd had all along, that they were being followed for some specific purpose. The only question in his mind now was if the purpose was a simple one-kill and eat the prey-or something more complicated than that. If it was simple, then these creatures were simple predators, and relatively "easy" to deal with. If, however, there was a larger purpose in their minds-if his imagination was right, and in fact these creatures had something to do with their accident-then he and Blade were in very deep trouble. Such extreme caution combined with curiosity as these "shadows" had exhibited was very unlike most predators he was familiar with. In general, large predators tended to shy completely away from anything that was not familiar, at the most watching it from a distance. Only if the unfamiliar object continued to remain in a predator's territory would it gradually move in closer to investigate it. Predators are very nervous, very jumpy. They have a lot of competition, and normally they can only take down large creatures if their prey is old, sick, very young, or wounded. Prey that fights back is to be avoided, because the predator can't afford to be injured in the struggle. Being a carnivore is an expensive business, as I well know. When your dinner can run away from you, you're going to spend a lot of energy hunting and killing it. Vegetarians have.it easy. Their dinner can't move, and they don't have to do anything other than walk up and open their mouths. That meant that the predators following them were not following "normal" behavior; the gryphon and the human were strange, they might be dangerous, hence there was no reason to follow them. In fact, there was every reason to avoid them-unless he and Blade were giving off signals that fit the profile of "sick, old, very young, or wounded," or had become familiar enough for their pursuers to investigate. Either the territory these shadows claimed was so very large that he and Blade had been within its boundaries all along, or these creatures were something out of the ordinary. The fact that one of them had killed and eaten a rabbit did not tend to make him believe that they would not attack him or Blade. Wolves made very good meals of mice, yet did not hesitate to pull down deer. For that matter, he was eating mice this very night! No, a predator's prey on a given night did not necessarily define what it could take. Something as big as a horse could very easily consider something as big as a gryphon to be reasonable prey. Top predators often pulled down animals very much larger than they themselves were; the only exceptions were birds of prey, who would ideally not kill anything larger than they could fly off with-generally much less than half the bird's own body weight. The only eagles that had ever carried off lambs were Kaled'a'in-bred bondbirds, who had the required wingspread and muscle mass, and carried them off at the behest of their bondmates. I think we are going to have to set traps around our camps at night, he decided reluctantly. Even if these creatures manage to escape from a trap, there is a chance that we will make them hesitant to attack us by frightening or even injuring one or more. If they are nothing more than animals, the mere fact that one of them is hurt should make them give up on making us into dinner. They would just have to also take the chance that in frightening or injuring one of those shadows, they would not make an attack more likely. Well, if we anger them, at least we'II know that they have the intelligence to connect a trap outside the camp with the people inside it-and the intelligence to want revenge for an injury. There was one point on which he felt Blade was incorrect; he was fairly certain that the creatures she saw had been very well aware of the presence of the camp, and its precise location. They had also probably thought that they would not be seen where they were. They must have very keen senses to hunt at night, and their sense of smell, at least, had clearly not been deceived by his subterfuges with the plant juices. They must have been able to scent the fire. Where the fire was, there the camp would also be. And no matter how well-banked the fire had been, some hint of it was surely visible out there in the darkened forest. No, those creatures knew exactly where the camp was; the only encouraging part was that they had not felt it necessary to surround the camp and place it in a state of siege. Nor had they decided to rush the camp to try and take the occupants by surprise. So they don't feel ready to try and confront us yet. I hope that their interest is only curiosity. Noise was priceless; an indicator that the shadows had gone elsewhere to hunt for food. At least, I hope that's the case. I hope the canopy dwellers are better at spotting these creatures than we are. All this was enough to give a gryphon a headache. Wait until morning, and I'll see to it that we're more careful. And I'll try and make the best time afoot that I can, since I'm the slower of the two of us. Maybe we can lose them. Maybe we'll find a river and really be able to hide our scent and our trail. And tomorrow night, if they follow us again, maybe we can find a way to discourage them from continuing to do so. And maybe horses would fly, and maybe they would stumble upon a lost enclave of amorous female gryphons, and maybe this was all just a bad dream. Tad surveyed the remains of his snare-pulled up out of the ground, and left carelessly tangled, but all in a heap, as if it had been examined closely, then dropped. It looked very much the same as the debris back at the crash site that had been so carefully examined. "Well, as I warned you, this is where our friends found their rabbit last night," Blade said with resignation. "See over there?" He'd already noticed the few bits of fur and the drops of blood on a dead leaf. "I should have known better than to expect that anything would leave a snared rabbit alone," he sighed. "It doesn't look as if they found any of the other snares-but neither did any rabbits. Then again, if any rabbits had, they'd probably have gone the way of this one." At least the shadows hadn't gone looking for other snares. Or had they? They'd examined this one that had been sprung; had they gone looking for others, found them, and left them alone once they saw how the snares were set? Or was he ascribing far too much in the way of intelligence to them? He regarded the scraps of fur ruefully. Hardly fair to stalk me and then eat my breakfast. He thought wistfully of how nice that rabbit would have tasted, and resigned himself to a tasteless meal of dried meat, but Blade had been out and prowling before he was, and had a surprise for him. "Maybe your snares didn't work, but my sling did," she said, with a tiny smile. She pulled a decent-sized rabbit out of the game bag at her side, and his mouth watered at the mere sight of it. "Thank you," he said, doing his best not to snatch it out of her hand. He took it politely, but his hunger was too great for more than that. Fortunately she was quite used to watching him eat, for his growling stomach made it impossible for him to wait long enough for her to go elsewhere while he dined. Nor was he able to do anything other than devour his meal in a few gulps. "What about you?" he asked belatedly, a moment later, when the rabbit was a mere memory and a comfortable feeling in his crop. At least I managed to resume civilized behavior without a rabbit leg still sticking out of my mouth. "I'm appropriating a bit of your dried meat," she replied. "And I can eat that as we move. Let's get the packs on and get out of here; I don't want to stay here a moment longer than we have to." "Agreed," he said firmly. "Especially after last night. Luck permitting, we should find the river today or tomorrow." The canopy dwellers had gone silent once more on his watch, although he had not seen anything. That had given him a very strange feeling; his hackles had come up, as he wondered if the shadowy hunters had decided to take a walk on the great tree trunk and come at them from the rear. He'd never know until the moment that they came crashing down through the branches and canvas But they hadn't, and the noises had resumed within a very short time, remaining at a constant level until dawn. Blade had made another batch of her herb concoction and had poured it into one of her waterskins after dabbing her itching bites liberally with it. He hoped it worked as well for her in the heat of the day as it had last night. He put some effort into confusing their backtrail, while Blade set the course. This time he laid some false, dead-end trails, even taking one up a tree. That made him think; if they had trouble finding a place to shelter tonight, perhaps they ought to go up a tree- Oh, no. Blade can't climb with only one hand. Well, so much for that good idea. I could perhaps pull her up by rope if it came to that, but the risk of hurting her further would be too great. Once again, however, they were in luck. This time, in late afternoon, they came upon another good site to hole up. It was another fallen tree, but this time it was one with a large den dug out underneath it. Whatever had dug it originally wasn't home, and from the look of things, hadn't been resident for some time. It did have some current occupants, far too small to have dug the den originally, and between them, he and Blade bagged the entire family of five. He wasn't certain quite what they were; something like a beaver with no tail, and about the same size. He didn't even know what species they were, and it really didn't matter. They had rodent teeth, and that was enough for him. Rodents were always edible. This bit of good fortune more than made up for the fact that Blade had not been as lucky with her sling; the rabbit she had gotten for his breakfast was the only kill she'd made all day. She'd had targets, but had missed her throws. She was so crestfallen about it that he had done his best to reassure her that it was all right. Well, tonight he would have a truly full stomach for the first time since the crash. The fresh meat had made a great deal of difference to him; he felt much more energetic and lively after having it. With his help she made a fire outside their den. While she built it up into something respectable, he excavated the den quite a bit more. His talons weren't well suited to digging, but he did have determination, and the earth was soft. When he finished, he knew that it would be a tight fit for both of them, but that they would manage. To keep them off the raw earth, he lined it with branches and packed the dirt he'd dug out into a little dam to prevent water from coming in during the rain. He took a torch and charred the underside of the log to prevent "visitors," then went out to collect a tangle of vines to conceal the entrance. Blade roasted her share of the catch, made up her medicine, then put out the fire and buried the ashes, doing her best to obliterate any traces of their presence that might persist through the afternoon downpour. Like the hollow snag, there would be no room in this den for a fire tonight. As long as the den stayed dry, he didn't think they'd need one. Need and want, why are they so far apart sometimes? By the time Blade was done tidying things, he was ready to eat; she took over, clumsily weaving the vines with one hand and both feet into a rough mat that they could pull over the hole. Last of all, she collected a lot of leaves from that peppery plant and tucked them into the mat to kill their scent. As soon as the rain started, they would climb into this hole and pull the mat over the entrance. There they would remain until dawn. In his opinion, this was their most vulnerable camp yet, but he had an answer to that. Although she couldn't climb, he could, and since the den was barely big enough for the two of them without their packs, he had an idea. "Help me with this," he said, as soon as he'd finished gulping down his meal. "I want to make some decoys." He dragged in some more vines and began making them into bundles that resembled a human and something with four feet. She was puzzled, but gave him a hand, as the clouds began to gather for the afternoon rain. "What are you planning on doing with these?" she asked, as the bundles began to take shape. "They aren't going to fool anything for long." "Not if they're on the ground-but what if they're up there?" He nodded up at the canopy. "I'm thinking of taking the packs and these up to a good branch and tying them there. Maybe our trackers will see 'us' up there, and decide we're becoming too much work to pursue. Provided, of course, that they can't climb." Somehow, I don't think they can, even though the canopy creatures are afraid of them. I think they're too big; there's a maximum size that a tree-climbing predator can be and still hunt successfully, and I think they're bigger than that maximum size. "If you really want to, it's worth trying." She didn't look convinced, but at least she wasn't too negative. He was just as glad that she didn't object to him taking the packs elsewhere to store; although the tree he had in mind was a dwarf by the standards of the ones around him, he was not looking forward to the climb, and that was giving him enough qualms without having to argue with her. He accomplished the feat by clamping all four sets of talons into the bark and hitching himself up like an inchworm. This used an entirely new set of muscles, as well as awakening a new set of pains in his broken wing, and by the time he reached a suitable place to cache the packs and the two decoys, he wished with a strength beyond telling that he would have been able to glide down instead of climbing. He was not looking forward to retrieving the packs in the morning! He had taken a rope with him, rather than the packs and the decoys themselves. Once he got himself securely in place, he dropped the end down, and Blade tied it to the first pack as best she could with one hand. When he had hauled that up and tied it successfully in place, he dropped the end back down. The second pack came up next, and following that, the two decoys. And now, if there is a disaster, Blade will at least have a rope she can try to escape by. If there is any time to escape, I can come back up here and pull her up. Maybe. It did not take long to secure the items in place, but this was not the best of perches, nor was it a place where he would have wanted to spend the night. The packs would remain dry through the storm, but not the decoys. If they had been up here instead of the decoys, it would have been a soggy and most uncomfortable night for them. He lowered himself down, inching backward and no doubt giving Blade an interesting view all the while. He dropped off the trunk the moment he thought that he'd be able to land safely. "There!" he said, more briskly and brightly than he actually felt. "Now, we have just enough time to rig a deadfall and a couple of other traps before the rain starts!" Blade groaned at the idea of so much work, but nodded. They both knew that the more distractions they could offer the hunters, the better. And the more challenge we give to their intelligence, the more we'II learn about them. He let her lead, though, so that she wouldn't see how tenderly he was walking. His fear was rising again. By the time the rain started, their traps were in place and concealed, placed in hiding around the tree rather than around their real den, to lend verisimilitude to the decoys in the tree. He and Blade scrambled for their shelter as the first drops started falling, but as was her custom, she stayed outside long enough to get a good sluicing down by the rain before coming in. She was soaking wet when she came in, but since he had lined the den with branches, they weren't lying directly on the soil; the water she brought in dripped through their bedding and from there into the earth. There wasn't a lot of room to move, and by the time he had snaked out a claw and pulled the mat of vines over the entrance, there was even less. By dint of much squirming, she managed to anoint both herself and him with her bruise-cum-bug-bite medicine. He squinted his eyes at the bitter scent, but decided that he could live with it. With any luck, they had to be getting near the river, and he could wash it all off rather than attempting to preen it off tomorrow. They had deliberately made the entrance as small as possible, just barely large enough for him to squeeze inside. That meant that there wasn't enough room for anyone to stand watch except Blade, because she was the one near the entrance, and he was crammed so far back that he really couldn't see anything. As thunder roared and the rain fell down mere hand-lengths away from their noses, they looked at one another in the semidarkness. "There's no point in really standing watch," he ventured. "I mean, one of us should try and stay awake, just in case one of us can hear something, but there's no point in trying to look out. We made that mat too well; I can't see anything from where I am." "I can't see that much," she admitted. "Are you sleepy? Your ears are better than mine; if you could take second shift, I can take first." "I have a full stomach, of course I'm sleepy," he retorted, forbearing to mention the fact that he was afraid that if he didn't try to sleep now, his stiffening muscles would make sleep impossible. In fact, he fully expected to wake up about the time she was ready to sleep. His sore legs and back would see to it that he didn't oversleep. That was precisely what happened. By that time, she was ready for sleep, warm and relatively cushioned, with him curled around her. She dropped off almost immediately, while he concentrated on keeping his muscles relaxed so that they didn't go into cramps. That was quite enough to keep him awake all by itself, but the position he was in did not agree with his broken wing either. It probably wasn't causing any damage, but the wing twinged persistently. He caught himself nearly whining in pain once, reducing it to a long wheeze and shiver. So he was fully awake and wary when the usual silence descended outside in the canopy, signaling the arrival of the shadowy hunters. Of all of the nights so far, this one was perhaps the most maddening and the most frightening. He was essentially blind, and he and Blade were curled in an all-too-accessible hole in the ground. If anything found them and really was determined to dig them out, it could. But as he strained his ears, he heard nothing in the way of movement outside the mat of vines. He hoped that if anything heard them, their breathing and tiny movements might be taken for those of small animals that were too much effort to dig out, and which might have a rear entrance to this den through which they could escape. I wish I'd thought of that and dug one. That might have been a smarter thing to do than rig those traps. As the moments stretched out unbearably, he became acutely sensitive to every sound, more so than he ever remembered being before. So when he heard the deadfall "go," it sounded as loud as a peal of thunder. And what was more, he clearly heard the very peculiar cry of pain that followed. It wasn't a yelp, and it certainly wasn't a shout. There were elements of both a hiss and a howl in it, and it was not a cry he had ever heard before in his life. It startled him, for he could not for a moment imagine what kind of animal could have made such a sound. It cut off rather quickly, so quickly that he wondered if he had managed to actually kill something with his trap. Possible, but not likely, not unless our "friend" out there was extraordinarily unlucky. Then he heard more sounds; another thud, tearing and breaking noises, something being dragged briefly, another hiss. Then nothing. His skin crawled under his feathers. More silence, while his beak ached from being held clamped shut so tightly that his jaw muscles locked, and then, when he least expected it, the canopy sounds returned. He waited, on fire with tension, as the faint light of dawn began to appear in the tiny gaps in their covering. When he couldn't bear it any longer, he nudged Blade with his beak. She came awake instantly, her good hand going to her knife. "I heard the deadfall go," he whispered. "I think we got something. Whether it was one of them, whether it's still there-I can't tell. If it is still there, I don't think it's still alive, though." She nodded, and cocked her head to listen to the sounds of the forest. "I'd say we're safe to come out," she said. "Are you ready?" "As ready as I'm likely to be." They'd discussed this last night; she was going to come out in a rushing attack, just in case there was something lying in wait for them, and he was supposed to follow. It had all seemed perfectly reasonable and appropriate last night. Now, with his muscles so sore, stiff, and cramped, he wasn't certain he was going to be able to crawl out, much less rush out. She drew her knife and wriggled around until she was crouched in place. With a yell, she threw off the mat and leaped out-inadvertently kicking him in the stomach as she did so. His attack-cry was considerably spoiled by this. Instead of a fierce scream of defiance, all he could emit was a pitiful grunt, remarkably similar to a belch. But he managed to follow her out, if not in a rush, at least in a hurry. There wasn't anything there, which, although an anticlimax, was also a relief. "Sorry," she said, apologetically. "My foot slipped.'1 What could he say? "It happens," he managed, as graciously as possible-not very, but he doubted that she blamed him at the moment for not speaking with an Ambassador's tact and dissimulation. "Let's go check that deadfall." When they got close to where the trap had been, it was quite clear that it was going to be empty, for the remains of the vegetation they had used to conceal it were scattered all over the area. The trap itself was quite empty-though there was a trace of blood on the bark of one of the logs. "We marked him," Blade said, squatting down beside it to examine it further. "How badly-well, probably not too badly. Maybe a scrape, or a minor cut. Possibly a broken bone. But we did hurt him a little." She stood up and looked toward the tree where the decoys were hidden. "We'd better go see how they reacted." When they reached the base of the tree, they finally saw something of what their trackers could do, and some clues as to their nature. Persistent. And possibly angry. But not foolishly persistent. There were scratches, deep ones, in the bark of the tree, about twice as high up on the trunk as Blade was tall. So the decoys had worked, at least for a while, and the hunters had been unable to resist trying to get at the quarry when it was openly in sight. Or else they were so angry when one of their number got caught in the deadfall that they tried to get to us no matter how difficult it was going to be. Now they knew this much: the hunters could leap respectable distances, but they couldn't climb the tree trunk, which at least meant that they were not great cats. The ground at the foot of the tree was torn by claws, either as the hunters tore at the ground in frustration, or when they tried to leap up to drag their prey down out of the tree. On the other hand, there wasn't a lot of damage to the tree trunk itself; the hunters had made several attempts, but it didn't look as if they had tried mindlessly, over and over, until they were exhausted. That meant that they were intelligent enough to know when their task was impossible. Or intelligent enough to recognize that the decoys were just that. In that case, they might well have reasoned that we would have to come back to get the packs before we left, no matter where we hid ourselves overnight. And if it had been anger that motivated their attack, their anger did not overcome them for long. Blade looked around, shivering, as if some of the same thoughts had occurred to her. "Let's get the packs and get out of here," she urged. "Fast. They haven't shown themselves by day before, but that doesn't mean they won't now. We might have given them a reason to." He swarmed up the tree far more quickly than he had thought possible a few moments before, and this time he didn't notice his sore muscles. There was no need to concern himself with ropes on the way up, which made things simpler. He untied the packs when he got there, and dropped them and the rope that held them in place down to the ground, leaving the decoys stuck in the forks of the branches. If the shadow-lurkers were still deceived by the decoys, they might linger, giving him and Blade that much more of a head start. He went down the tree twice as fast as he had gone up. Every nerve in his body jumped whenever an unexpected sound occurred, and the quicker they left, the happier he would be. There was just a moment more of delay during which they stowed the rope and donned the packs, and then they were on their way without even a pause for a meal. He wasn't hungry, and he suspected that Blade wasn't either. His insides were all knotted up with tension, and he kept hearing old gryphon proverbs in the back of his mind, about well-fed gryphons and the inability to fly out of danger. Not that I can fly out of danger now-but it's better to run or fight on an empty stomach than a full one! It was barely dawn by the light, and the morning fog had not yet lifted. The entire world was painted in dim grays and blues, vague gray shapes and columns appearing and vanishing in white mist. In a way, that was all to the good, for rather than using the trees as cover, they counted on the fog itself for primary concealment. They were able to make much better time that way, and since they were taking their bearings from the north-needle rather than the sun, it didn't matter that everything was obscured and enshrouded. The fog itself had an odd, bitter aftertaste to it, nothing at all like the sea mists Tad was used to. The air felt heavier and thicker, although that was probably his imagination. The fog condensed on his feathers, and he kept shaking himself so that it didn't soak in. Poor Blade had no such ability; her hair was damp, and she would probably be shivering if they weren't trotting along fast enough to stay warm from exertion. He found himself trying to think what kind of creature the hunters could be. Those stories about Ma'ar and all the creatures he made-what sort of things did he do? Father said that most of what he did was to make copies of the creatures that Urtho developed The makaar had been analogs of gryphons; had there been analogs of hertasi and kyree? The tervardi and dyheli were natural creatures, surely Ma'ar had not bothered to make analogous creatures to them; why would he? But then again, why not? Ma'ar had never hesitated to do or try anything he considered might give him an edge. He made cold-drakes and basilisks, but those weren't analogs of anything Urtho made, so there goes Father's theory. There were smaller creatures, but I can't remember anything that might correspond in size to the hunters. Did he do flightless makaar? But why would he, when a makaar on the ground would be more helpless than I am? The shadow-hunters can't be analogs of hertasi, because I'm certain that what we've been seeing is four-footed, not two-footed. Had anyone else involved in the Mage Wars made a four-footed hunter the size of a horse? I just can't remember anyone ever going into a lot of detail about the mage-made creatures. Maybe Snowstar would know, but he's rather effectively out of reach at the moment. He kept his ears trained on the trail behind them, and his eyes on Blade's back. She was a ghost in the fog, and it was up to him to keep track of her and not lose her. Her pale beige clothing blended in beautifully with the fog-but so would his own gray plumage. For once, it would probably be harder for the hunters to see them than vice versa. Whatever is behind us is clever, very clever. They weren't deceived by my false trails, and they either gave up on the decoys or recognized them as false, and if they gave up temporarily, there's no guarantee that they won't realize what's going on when they come back. They didn't find us, but they might not have bothered to look. Or they might have needed to hunt and feed, and they couldn't take the extra time to figure out where we were. Why should they? They knew we'd come out in the morning, and all they have to do is wait for us to come out and get on our way and they could trail us again. They could even be hoping we will stay put in that campsite, since it has been proven to protect us once. He wanted rock walls around him; a secure place that these shadow-hunters couldn't dig into. He wanted a steady food source that the shadows couldn't frighten away. Once they had both, they could figure out ways to signal the help that must be coming. And he wanted to see them. He wanted to know exactly what was hunting them. Traps might give him more of a chance to see one, provided that any injured or dead hunters remained in the trap. And there was no guarantee of that, either. They freed the injured one from the deadfall. That was what I heard last night; they were freeing him.