The Silver Gryphon

presence that might persist through the afternoon downpour. Like the hollow snag, there would be no room in this den for a fire tonight. As long as the den stayed dry, he didn’t think they’d need one.

Need and want, why are they so far apart sometimes?

By the time Blade was done tidying things, he was ready to eat; she took over, clumsily weaving the vines with one hand and both feet into a rough mat that they could pull over the hole. Last of all, she collected a lot of leaves from that peppery plant and tucked them into the mat to kill their scent.

As soon as the rain started, they would climb into this hole and pull the mat over the entrance. There they would remain until dawn. In his opinion, this was their most vulnerable camp yet, but he had an answer to that.

Although she couldn’t climb, he could, and since the den was barely big enough for the two of them without their packs, he had an idea.

“Help me with this,” he said, as soon as he’d finished gulping down his meal. “I want to make some decoys.” He dragged in some more vines and began making them into bundles that resembled a human and something with four feet. She was puzzled, but gave him a hand, as the clouds began to gather for the afternoon rain.

“What are you planning on doing with these?” she asked, as the bundles began to take shape. “They aren’t going to fool anything for long.”

“Not if they’re on the ground—but what if they’re up there?” He nodded up at the canopy. “I’m thinking of taking the packs and these up to a good branch and tying them there. Maybe our trackers will see ‘us’ up there, and decide we’re becoming too much work to pursue. Provided, of course, that they can’t climb.”

Somehow, I don’t think they can, even though the canopy creatures are afraid of them. I think they’re too big; there’s a maximum size that a tree-climbing predator can be and still hunt successfully, and I think they’re bigger than that maximum size.

“If you really want to, it’s worth trying.” She didn’t look convinced, but at least she wasn’t too negative. He was just as glad that she didn’t object to him taking the packs elsewhere to store; although the tree he had in mind was a dwarf by the standards of the ones around him, he was not looking forward to the climb, and that was giving him enough qualms without having to argue with her.

He accomplished the feat by clamping all four sets of talons into the bark and hitching himself up like an inchworm. This used an entirely new set of muscles, as well as awakening a new set of pains in his broken wing, and by the time he reached a suitable place to cache the packs and the two decoys, he wished with a strength beyond telling that he would have been able to glide down instead of climbing. He was not looking forward to retrieving the packs in the morning!

He had taken a rope with him, rather than the packs and the decoys themselves. Once he got himself securely in place, he dropped the end down, and Blade tied it to the first pack as best she could with one hand. When he had hauled that up and tied it successfully in place, he dropped the end back down. The second pack came up next, and following that, the two decoys.

And now, if there is a disaster, Blade will at least have a rope she can try to escape by. If there is any time to escape, I can come back up here and pull her up. Maybe.

It did not take long to secure the items in place, but this was not the best of perches, nor was it a place where he would have wanted to spend the night. The packs would remain dry through the storm, but not the decoys. If they had been up here instead of the decoys, it would have been a soggy and most uncomfortable night for them.

He lowered himself down, inching backward and no doubt giving Blade an interesting view all the while. He dropped off the trunk the moment he thought that he’d be able to land safely. “There!” he said, more briskly and brightly than he actually felt. “Now, we have just enough time to rig a deadfall and a couple of other traps before the rain starts!”

Blade groaned at the idea of so much work, but nodded. They both knew that the more distractions they could offer the hunters, the better.

And the more challenge we give to their intelligence, the more we‘II learn about them.

He let her lead, though, so that she wouldn’t see how tenderly he was walking. His fear was rising again.

By the time the rain started, their traps were in place and concealed, placed in hiding around the tree rather than around their real den, to lend verisimilitude to the decoys in the tree. He and Blade scrambled for their shelter as the first drops started falling, but as was her custom, she stayed outside long enough to get a good sluicing down by the rain before coming in.

She was soaking wet when she came in, but since he had lined the den with branches, they weren’t lying directly on the soil; the water she brought in dripped through their bedding and from there into the earth. There wasn’t a lot of room to move, and by the time he had snaked out a claw and pulled the mat of vines over the entrance, there was even less. By dint of much squirming, she managed to anoint both herself and him with her bruise-cum-bug-bite medicine. He squinted his eyes at the bitter scent, but decided that he could live with it. With