The Silver Gryphon

normal night sounds, the same they had heard every other night of this journey.

The whoop of something up above startled Blade awake. She came alive with a jerk and a thin gasp of pain. “What?” she demanded, then relaxed as she recognized the noises outside their shelter for what they were.

The sudden onset of normal night sounds had been the trigger that let all of his own fatigue catch up with him. Suddenly, he could not keep his eyes open, no matter how hard he tried. He was actually nodding off even as he stared into the dark.

“Can you take over?” he whispered, and felt her nod. That was all he needed; a moment later, not even the scream of a makaar would have awakened him.

For the second time that morning, Blade motioned to Tad to freeze. Obedient to her hand gesture, he went rigid, and for something as huge as he was, he blended into the forest surprisingly well. His eyes were fixed on her, not on the forest around him; that was because she hadn’t used the gesture that meant danger, just the one that meant wait.

In fact, there was no danger, only an opportunity. She had spotted another of the long-limbed tree dwellers climbing cautiously down out of the canopy, in pursuit of something it had dropped. This must be a young one; the elders never were so foolish as to risk coming down into the danger zone just because they wanted something they had lost. If she was lucky, this one would not survive a lesson in why they did not.

Although this hunting was delaying them, it was a necessary delay.

Her quarry dropped down off the tree trunk and took two cautious steps on the forest floor, reaching for the bright object it had lost. It had four long limbs, a pointed snout, and large eyes set on the sides of its head. If it had been up in the canopy, she would never have been able to spot it, for its brown fur blended in beautifully with the bark of the tree. Not that she could have reached it with her puny weapon, either. Nothing short of a very powerful bow would put a missile up into the canopy with force great enough to kill.

She whirled her sling twice and let fly.

The beast barely had time to register the movement and start to turn his head. Then the lead shot struck it squarely on the skull with a wet crack, and it dropped to the ground, instantly dead.

Grinning with elation, she ran forward anyway, just to make certain of it with her knife; fresh meat was too precious a commodity for her to take any chances that it might simply be stunned. When she finished, she stood up and motioned Tad to come up and join her.

She straightened and walked over to see what it had dropped. The brightly colored object that had exerted a fatal attraction for this tree dweller proved to be absolutely unidentifiable. It was bladderlike, and a bright blue and red. It could have been a flower, a seed pod, a fruit, even an insect carapace or a portion of some other unfortunate animal. She ignored it at that point; perhaps it was edible, but this was not the time nor the place to experiment.

Tad, meanwhile, had made short work of her prey. It hadn’t been very large, and he had dismembered it and eaten it almost whole. This was the second such catch she’d made this morning for him, and he looked much the better for the fresh meat. The first had been a rodent, both rabbitlike and rat-like; bigger than a rat, but small for a rabbit. This one was about the size of a large rabbit, though the long limbs had made it look bigger. If her luck kept up, she’d be able to keep him in fresh-killed prey, mouthful by mouthful. That would take one worry away from her; how to keep him from starving. Gryphons weren’t big eaters just by choice.

Although the forest sounds had by no means returned to normal, there were more signs of other living things now, which made her feel a bit better. Maybe they were outdistancing their invisible trackers. Or maybe those trackers were just waiting until nightfall to move in on them.

At least this meant that she could actually see some game to take down.

I can probably get enough small animals and birds over the course of the day to keep Tad in good shape, she decided, retrieving the bit of lead shot and pocketing it before checking her north- needle. Tad had cautiously taken the downed creature into the shelter of a bush to eat it; she pressed herself against the bole of the tree and picked the next landmark they would head for. That was how she was navigating, in line-of-sight increments; checking her north-needle, picking a particular bit of distant cover that was farther west, and moving in toward it. Not only were they—hopefully—avoiding being spotted by their foe, they were not frightening the game.

She made two more such moves when she spotted another one of the rat-rabbits, nosing about on the forest floor in search of something edible. She warned Tad to freeze and potted it, too. That made three pieces of small game in about three marks, or one piece per mark, and she was beginning to feel very proud of herself. That was not at all bad for someone hampered by a bad shoulder, with a primitive weapon, in unfamiliar territory. If I remember my gryphon-rations correctly, he should actually prosper on that amount of food. Granted, it’s like feeding a hawk by tidbitting it, but beggars can’t be choosers. If he isn’t exactly full at any one time, he isn‘t going hungry, either.

He looked faintly annoyed at being asked to swallow another bit of game every mark or so, but he didn’t say anything. He was used to eating once lightly, and once hugely, then sleeping on that larger meal. He probably wondered why they were stopping so frequently just so he could eat.

But if she carried the game until they had enough for him to have that single large meal, she’d be weighing herself down for no good purpose. Let the game ride in the most efficient way possible; inside Tad.