danger coming up behind him; his soul was torn with claws of agony for what that silence might mean.
Ahead!' called Vree, shooting under the tree branches like a winged arrow, turning faster than the eye could follow, and shooting away again.
'Here!.
The bird was too excited and angry to manage anything more coherent than that. Darkwind plunged after him, his lungs burning, his side pierced with a lance of pure pain. Just when he thought that he could not possibly run any farther, he literally stumbled into a tangle of broken branches, then over a fur-covered leg, and fell into a mass of broken brush before he could regain his balance.
The leg belonged to Hydona, who was sprawled in an unconscious tangle, bleeding from one torn and wounded wing.
'Come on, Treyvan,' Darkwind crooned, cradling the gryphon's head in his hands, and slapping his beak lightly. 'Come on, old boy. Wake up. Come on, Hydona needs your help; I can't move her without You.' Treyvan lay in the middle of a half-crushed bush. It had obviously saved him worse injury when he hit the ground, but Darkwind couldn't free him from the snarl of broken branches unless he could revive the male gryphon and get some help from him.
The eyelids fluttered, the beak opened a fraction, and closed again.
The head stirred in Darkwind's hands and Treyvan protested his treatment wordlessly. 'Arrwk-rrrr-Daaa- Daaarrrwk-'
'That's right, it's Darkwind. Come on.' Darkwind slapped the beak a little harder, pulled at Treyvan's crest- feathers. 'Come on. Say something with some sense in it. Wake up, old friend.'
'Rrrrrrr.' The eyelids fluttered and stayed open this time; the weight of the gryphon's head left Darkwind's hands as Treyvan raised it a trifle. 'Hydona-' the gryphon croaked, whining wordlessly with pain, as he tried to turn his head. 'Hydona-' t She's hurt,' Darkwind told him, 'but I think she'll be all right.Her wing's hurt, I don't think she's broken anything, and she's kind of half-conscious, but I can't get her out. I need to get you out of this tangle, so you can help me get her out of hers.'
' Can't-move-' the gryphon said, starting to thrash weakly in alarm.
It was obvious then to Darkwind that Treyvan wasn't really hearing him-that, in fact, he was only half- conscious.
He opened his shields to the gryphon, and touched him directly, mind to mind. 'Don't move till I tell you. You're caught. Hydona is all right, but she's hurt and tangled up in some brush, and I'm going to need your help to move her.' He glanced back over his shoulder to the right, where the female gryphon lay, eyes half-closed, one wing folded awkwardly beneath her, the other oozing blood from a wound. Vree sat right beside her head, his eyes closed in concentration. He was in complete mental contact with her, helping to keep her calm and unmoving. He'd done this before, with wounded bondbirds, and he was remarkably good at it-in fact, if there were such a thing as a Healer among the bondbirds, Vree might well qualify. He might not have been able to hold Hydona if she had been completely awake and aware enough to fight him, or if she'd been delirious and raving, but like Treyvan, she had been-at best halfconscious when the two of them arrived.
The mental contact seemed to steady Treyvan; he stopped thrashing, and held still. Satisfied that the gryphon wasn't going to lose control, panic, and disembowel his rescuer (a very real possibility with a predator as large and strong as a gryphon), Darkwind moved over to his side.
All right, old friend. I'm going to start with your left wing. Lift it just a little-that's it-' It took them much longer than Darkwind wanted to get Treyvan free; by the time they finished, Hydona had slipped a little farther away from consciousness. It took all three of them, Vree included, to rouse her and all three of them to get her on her feet.
'What happened?' Darkwind asked, glancing sideways at what appeared to be fresh human remains- shredded-as they finally got Hydona, swaying, into a standing position.
'I-don't rrrremember,' Treyvan said unhappily. 'We completed the flight-yesss-and-'
'Aahhh,' said Hydona. She shook her head, and gave a faint cry of pain. 'There wasss-a man. Below. Usss. With a weapon. A crosssbow. ' 'Yesss, a man-' Treyvan nodded, as he put his shoulder to Hydona's to support her. 'He sssshot Hydona-that isss all I remember-'
'Can you hold her up a moment by yourself?' Darkwind asked. 'I think I see something, and I didn't get a chance to look over there.' Treyvan nodded and winced as if his head hurt. That gave Darkwind another little piece of information, confirming one of his suspicions. The male gryphon had been the one receiving the blast of magic that Darkwind had felt smash into his own shields, as if it had been non-specific, and unfocused. Magic was a poor way to render someone unconscious-rather like taking a boulder to smash a fly. The amount of sheer power required to overwhelm was ridiculous-in fact, it was far easier to shape a bit of energy into a dart and shoot them with it. Better far to use a true mind-blast, if one had the Gift, or a physical weapon like the crossbow.
A magic blast to the mind had certain side effects-and a headache was only one. It was not the weapon-of- choice, even against a flighted target.
