The Silver Gryphon

Spears; the long ones, and the short, crude throwing-spears that Amberdrake was making, with points of sharpened, fire-hardened wood. Those were hers, those, and her fighting-knife, which was just a trifle shorter than a small sword. Amberdrake would take the bow, his own fighting-knife, and his throwing-knives. She still had her sling, and that could be useful at the right time.

There wasn’t much, but it was all useful enough. When she had divided it into two piles, hers and her father’s, she sat down beside him at the fire to help him with the spears. He made the points, she fire-hardened them, until the pile of straight wooden stakes was all used up. Then she took a single brand from the fire, and he put it out.

She went all the way to the back of the cave and started a huge new fire there, one of the objects being to make the wyrsa believe that they were farther back there than they actually were. She piled about half of their wood, the wettest lot, around it. This wood was going to have to dry out before it caught — and she thought she had that timed about right.

It’s too bad this cave is stable, she thought wistfully. It would be nice to arrange to get them inside, then drop the ceiling on them.

Well, in a way, they were going to do that anyway.

She helped her father drag all of the rest of the driftwood that they had collected to the front of the cave and arrange it along the barricade. There was quite a lot of it, more than she remembered. Tad had certainly been busy!

And this had better work, because we are using up all of our resources in one attempt. What was it that Judeth always told us? “Never throw your weapon at the enemy?” I hope we aren’t doing that now.

But being cautious certainly hadn’t gotten them anywhere.

Strange how it was the younger pair that was so cautious, and the older willing to bet everything on one blow.

Periodically, she or her father would stop, close their eyes, and open themselves to the wyrsa to check on their whereabouts. It was Amberdrake’ s turn to check when he cut his “search” short, and put his fingers to his mouth to utter the ear-piercing whistle they had agreed would be the “call in” signal. Skan came flying back low over the river, with Tad running on the trail a little behind him.

At that point, the gloom of daylight had begun to thicken to the darkness of night, and they were all ready to take their positions. Blade sent up a petition to the Star-Eyed One that this would all work. . . .

The Star-Eyed only helps those who help themselves, and those who have planned well don‘t need the Star-Eyed’s help. Always remember that, Blade. If you haven’t done your best, you have no reason to hope for the Star-Eyed’s help if it still goes bad.

She crouched down behind a screen of rock and dead brush, away from their safe haven of nights past and waited, her spear-thrower in one hand, three spears in the other. She hadn’t had time to practice, and she only hoped that she could hit somewhere in her targets, instead of off to one side of them. From where she crouched, she wouldn’t have to make a fatal hit, just a solid one, and they would probably go into the river. There was nowhere for them to hide, even in the darkness, because it wasn’t going to be dark, not completely. Skan had made a quick sortie across the river before they went off to set traps and had returned with rotten wood riddled with foxfire. Any time she saw one of the chunks of foxfire vanish, she was supposed to throw.

They had planned as well as they could. Now it was just a matter of waiting. . . .

And I never was very good at waiting!

She kept quiet, tried not to fidget, and listened for sounds up the trail.

Skan had an advantage over all of the others; he knew where each trap was, because he felt the mage- energy. And he would know as they were triggered, because he would sense that, too. Under any other circumstances, the tiny bits of energy he and Tad had invested in the triggers would have vanished in the overall flows of energies, but with nothing around to mask them, they “glowed” to him like tiny fires in the distance.

And he tensed, as he felt the first of them “go out.”

That was the strangling-noose. . . .

He wished he had Drake’s empathic ability as well. It would be nice to know if their trap had gotten anything.

They had been careful to set things that worked differently—though hopefully the pups would venture over here slowly, and would be so greedy to get at the bits of magic that none of them would realize that the magic-bits and the traps had anything to do with each other.

The next one is the set of javelins, and if there’s a group, it should take out several. And they’ll