Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  “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.

  That meant cooperation, which meant more intelligence. Wolves might sniff around a trapped fellow, might even try to help him gnaw himself loose, but they would not have been able to remove parts of a deadfall trap except by purest accident, and then only after a great deal of trial and error effort.

  He had heard them last night. It had not taken them long at all to free the trapped one. And they had done so without too many missteps, if there were any at all.

  The snare—they didn‘t just chew the leg or head off the rabbit it caught and then eat the rest. The noose of the snare was opened. They killed the rabbit, pulled the snare open and removed it, then pulled up the snare and looked it over.

  That was evidence of more intelligence, and certainly the ability to manipulate objects. What that evidence meant to their survival, he couldn’t yet tell.

  But he had his fears, and plenty of them. He could only wonder right now if Blade shared those fears. Maybe it was time to stop trying to shelter her and start discussing things. Maybe it had been time to do that a couple of days ago.

  Blade stopped in the shelter of a vine-covered bush.

  Is that what I think it is?

  She frowned with concentration, and motioned to Tad to remain where he was so she could hear without distraction. There was something in the distance, underneath the chatter of the four-legged canopy creatures, and the steady patter of debris from a tree where some of the birds were eating green fruit—a sound—