The Silver Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon

Author:Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon
Language: eng
Format: epub

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.

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