The Silver Gryphon

them could take on the wyrsa pack, as ill-equipped as they were, but he nodded. “Are you listening to this, Drake?” he called back into the cave.

“To every word, and I agree,” came the reply. “It’s insane, of course, to think that we can do that, but we’re used to handling insanely risky business, aren’t we, old bird?”

“We are!” Skan had actually mustered up a grin.

But Amberdrake wasn’t finished yet. “And what’s more, I’m afraid that trait runs in both families. Right, Tad?”

A gusty sigh answered his question. “I’m afraid so,” the young gryphon replied with resignation. “Like father, like son.”

Skan winked at her. “The basic point is, we have four excellent minds and four bodies to work on this. Well, between your broken bones and our aching ones, we probably have the equivalent of two healthy bodies, rather than four, but that’s not so bad! It could be worse!”

Blade thought about just a few of the many, many ways in which it could be worse, and nodded agreement. Of course, there are many, many ways in which it could be better, too. . . .

“So, while those two are back there involved in patching and mending, let me get my sneaky old mind together with your resilient young one, and let’s see if we can’t produce some more, cleverer tactics.” He gryph- grinned at her, and to her surprise, she found herself grinning back.

“That’s it, sir,” Tad said, from back in the cave. “That’s all the weapons we have.”

“Blade?” There was surprise in her father’s voice. “I thought you said that you didn’t have a bow.”

“I did!” She left Skan for a moment and trotted back to the fire, to stare at the short bow and quiver of arrows in surprise. “Where did that come from?”

“I brought it in my pack,” Tad said sheepishly. “I know you said not to bring one because you couldn’t use it, but—I don’t know, I thought maybe you might be able to pull it with your feet or something, and if nothing else, you could start a fire with it.”

“Well, she still can’t use it, but I can,” Amberdrake said, appropriating it. He looked up at Skan and his son. “You two get out there and start setting those traps before the sun goes down; we’ll get ready for the siege.”

There would be a siege; Blade only hoped that the traps that the other two were about to set would whittle down the numbers so that the inevitable siege would be survivable. If the mother wyrsa had been angry over the loss of a single young, what would she be like when she lost several?

Tad and Skan were going out to set some very special single traps—and do it now, while the wyrsa were at a distance. They knew that the wyrsa had withdrawn—probably to hunt—because Blade and her father had used their empathic abilities to locate the creatures.

It had been gut-wrenching to do so, but it had at least worked. They hoped that the wyrsa would be out of sensing range of small magics, because that was what they intended to use.

The bait and the trigger both would be a tiny bit of magic holding the whole thing together. That was why it needed Skan and Tad to do the work; they were physically stronger than Blade and her father. When the wyrsa “ate” the magic holding everything in place—

Deadfalls would crush them, sharpened wooden stakes would plunge through them, nooses would snap around their legs and the rocks poised at the edge of the torrent would tumble in, pulling them under the water. And for the really charming trap, another huge rockfall would obliterate the path and anything that was on it.

They would have to be very, very clever; the magic had to be so small that the wyrsa would have to be on top of it to sense it. Otherwise it would “eat” the magic from a distance, triggering the trap without its killing anything.

Meanwhile, Blade and her father gathered together every weapon in their limited arsenal for a last stand.

It has to be now, she kept telling herself. The wyrsa are nibbling away at Tad and they’ll do the same to Skan. The more they eat, the stronger they get. We have to goad them into attacking before they’re ready, and keep them so angry that they rely on their instincts and hunting skills instead of thinking things over. If we wait, there’s a chance the next party will bumble right into them. . . .

That would be Ikala and Keenath — and the idea that either of those two could be in danger made a fierce rage rise inside her, along with determination to see that nothing of the kind happened.