The Silver Gryphon

That basically was all that he knew as a fact. This, of course, had nothing to do with what his own imagination could conjure up.

In his imagination, the sighting confirmed the fear that he’d had all along, that they were being followed for some specific purpose. The only question in his mind now was if the purpose was a simple one—kill and eat the prey—or something more complicated than that. If it was simple, then these creatures were simple predators, and relatively “easy” to deal with. If, however, there was a larger purpose in their minds—if his imagination was right, and in fact these creatures had something to do with their accident—then he and Blade were in very deep trouble.

Such extreme caution combined with curiosity as these “shadows” had exhibited was very unlike most predators he was familiar with. In general, large predators tended to shy completely away from anything that was not familiar, at the most watching it from a distance. Only if the unfamiliar object continued to remain in a predator’s territory would it gradually move in closer to investigate it.

Predators are very nervous, very jumpy. They have a lot of competition, and normally they can only take down large creatures if their prey is old, sick, very young, or wounded. Prey that fights back is to be avoided, because the predator can’t afford to be injured in the struggle. Being a carnivore is an expensive business, as I well know. When your dinner can run away from you, you’re going to spend a lot of energy hunting and killing it. Vegetarians have.it easy. Their dinner can’t move, and they don’t have to do anything other than walk up and open their mouths.

That meant that the predators following them were not following “normal” behavior; the gryphon and the human were strange, they might be dangerous, hence there was no reason to follow them. In fact, there was every reason to avoid them—unless he and Blade were giving off signals that fit the profile of “sick, old, very young, or wounded,” or had become familiar enough for their pursuers to investigate.

Either the territory these shadows claimed was so very large that he and Blade had been within its boundaries all along, or these creatures were something out of the ordinary.

The fact that one of them had killed and eaten a rabbit did not tend to make him believe that they would not attack him or Blade. Wolves made very good meals of mice, yet did not hesitate to pull down deer. For that matter, he was eating mice this very night! No, a predator’s prey on a given night did not necessarily define what it could take. Something as big as a horse could very easily consider something as big as a gryphon to be reasonable prey. Top predators often pulled down animals very much larger than they themselves were; the only exceptions were birds of prey, who would ideally not kill anything larger than they could fly off with—generally much less than half the bird’s own body weight. The only eagles that had ever carried off lambs were Kaled’a’in-bred bondbirds, who had the required wingspread and muscle mass, and carried them off at the behest of their bondmates.

I think we are going to have to set traps around our camps at night, he decided reluctantly. Even if these creatures manage to escape from a trap, there is a chance that we will make them hesitant to attack us by frightening or even injuring one or more. If they are nothing more than animals, the mere fact that one of them is hurt should make them give up on making us into dinner.

They would just have to also take the chance that in frightening or injuring one of those shadows, they would not make an attack more likely.

Well, if we anger them, at least we‘II know that they have the intelligence to connect a trap outside the camp with the people inside it—and the intelligence to want revenge for an injury.

There was one point on which he felt Blade was incorrect; he was fairly certain that the creatures she saw had been very well aware of the presence of the camp, and its precise location. They had also probably thought that they would not be seen where they were. They must have very keen senses to hunt at night, and their sense of smell, at least, had clearly not been deceived by his subterfuges with the plant juices. They must have been able to scent the fire. Where the fire was, there the camp would also be. And no matter how well-banked the fire had been, some hint of it was surely visible out there in the darkened forest. No, those creatures knew exactly where the camp was; the only encouraging part was that they had not felt it necessary to surround the camp and place it in a state of siege. Nor had they decided to rush the camp to try and take the occupants by surprise.

So they don‘t feel ready to try and confront us yet. I hope that their interest is only curiosity.

Noise was priceless; an indicator that the shadows had gone elsewhere to hunt for food.

At least, I hope that’s the case. I hope the canopy dwellers are better at spotting these creatures than we are.

All this was enough to give a gryphon a headache.

Wait until morning, and I’ll see to it that we’re more careful. And I’ll try and make the best time afoot that I can, since I’m the slower of the two of us. Maybe we can lose them. Maybe we’ll find a river and really be able to hide our scent and our trail. And tomorrow night, if they follow us again, maybe we can find a way to discourage them from continuing to do so.

And maybe horses would fly, and maybe they would stumble upon a lost enclave of amorous female gryphons, and maybe this was all just a bad dream.

Tad surveyed the remains of his snare—pulled up out of the ground, and left carelessly tangled, but all in a