The Silver Gryphon

If he hasn’t figured out what I’m doing, he will soon, she decided, moving on ahead.

She was worried about him; in spite of the fact that she was the one with the worse injury—as her shoulder reminded her sharply of just how badly hurt she was, every time she moved a bit too quickly—in some ways he was the more vulnerable of the two of them.

She knew, only too well, just how vulnerable he was. Trapped on the ground as he was, he had as many weaknesses as she did. Unless he could get his back up against something to protect it, he could not only be attacked from the rear, but from below. Most of what he had learned about fighting was meant for aerial combat, not ground fighting. Granted, he could improvise, and granted, he had four sets of very nasty “knives” on the end of each limb, not to mention the weapon in the middle of his face, but he was made for another element. Faced with the need to fight on terms and terrain he was not suited to, he was vulnerable in ways even he probably didn’t realize.

His other weakness was the sheer volume of food he had to consume in order to stay in decent physical shape. If she couldn’t get that into him—well, too many days of rain-soaked dried meat, and he wouldn’t be in good condition at all.

Too many days of that kind of ration, and we‘II have to find a permanent place to hole up, because he won’t even be able to travel.

Walking was much harder on him than flying; he wasn’t built for it. Intellectually, of course, she had known that; watching him try to move through the underbrush had driven it home to her in a more concrete form.

He was not clumsy; he was a great deal more graceful at this sort of travel than his classmates had ever been. He was, in fact, as adept at it as some humans—but he tired easily, and occasionally his wings got caught up on some obstacle or other. It would be some time before his legs strengthened and gained the endurance for steady walking, and until then, he was handicapped.

If they ever ran across a large browser like a deer, he should be able to bring it down so long as they surprised it, but until then she was the better ground hunter. He was going to be depending on her for something he was normally self-sufficient at.

She was just grateful that he was as good a tracker as he was. He’d done a fair amount to confuse their scent and backtrail, and that could only help right now.

That might be one of the reasons I’m spotting game today; that muck he had us rub all over ourselves is probably hiding our scent and confusing the tree dwellers. Scent rose, especially in this heat; a wary canopy beast would not come anywhere near the ground with the scent of a large predator coming up to meet his nose, but at the moment all that they smelled like was crushed plants.

And that might very well be the explanation of why they had been surrounded by silence until lately. Quite frankly, Tad was damp, and he smelled like—well—damp raptor, a combination of wet feathers and the heavy musk that was peculiar to gryphons and birds of prey. He hadn’t been able to dry out properly since the accident, and that made his scent more obvious. Could be that when we first camped, not only was he not as fragrant, but we simply weren‘t on the ground long enough for the scent to rise into the canopy. Now we are.

That speculation made her feel a little better; and the current state of affairs did seem to offer support for that speculation. Tad didn’t smell like raptor, wet or dry, at the moment. The juicy plant he had her rub all over both of them imparted a peculiar, sharp, mossy scent to their respective hides. It made a hideous mess of her clothing, streaking it a mottled green, but she wasn’t particularly worried about stains.

Besides, the stains make a fairly good impromptu camouflage.

She ought to start looking for a good place to go to ground for the night. As she kept an eye out, she tried to mentally reckon up the time it would take for them to be missed. They ought to start putting up some sort of signal if there was any chance that the White Gryphon people might be looking for it.

We should have made our rendezvous today or tomorrow, so by tomorrow or the day after, the Silvers we’re relieving will know there’s something wrong. They have a teleson; they ‘II let Judeth know, but it would take a team of rescuers coming at full speed another two or three days to reach here. So— what does that make it? Another two or three days before help will have a chance of being here at best. More likely a week.

So there’was no point in looking for a shelter and a place where they could set up a good signal fire. Shelter alone would do for today and tomorrow.

Nothing presented itself for another mark—except the first signs she had seen yet of large animals on the forest floor. She came across a place where a pig had clearly been rooting at the base of a tree, searching for underground fungi, and with regret she saw that the trail went off into the north and not the west. A pig would have been very welcome to both her and Tad.

But she was not going to risk going off in a different direction on just the chance that they might be able to bring one down.

The heat was oppressive; when the rains came again, she had every intention of soaking herself and her