Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  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 remai
ned 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.”