ring of trees one angle at a time. Suddenly she gasped and hurried over to one, bird-quick and equally as silent, and ducked beneath its low-hanging branches to examine its trunk. Crouching, she looked back at Vidarian, one palm on the tree, a strange expression on her face. “My people have slept a very long time. What—year is it?”
A rustle announced Altair's return. He clacked his beak, a sound unsettlingly like bones cracking, and a backbite of coppery distaste colored his thoughts as he answered. // 1,652 in the Ascendancy, by western human reckoning. 5,008 gryphon reckoning since the First Crossing. // Then he wiped his beak on the grass. On the one hand, Vidarian was relieved his distaste seemed to be from wolf funk rather than mention of the Ascendancy, but on the other, how had none of the gryphons mentioned that there was any such thing as a “gryphon reckoning”? Much less one going back five thousand years? In his mind he ceded a little bit more credence to the creatures' long-suffering attitude toward humans.
When Calphille didn't answer, Vidarian turned back and found the color washed from her face. “What's wrong?”
“If friend gryphon is correct,” she said, barely above a whisper, “my people have slept for eight hundred years.”
* Those trees are pretty long-lived, * Ruby observed, “showing” Vidarian a page from an ancient book with a watercolored painting indeed similar to the spruce.
“How can that be—” Vidarian began.
A high-pitched yip from the nearby trees thrust them all into tense silence.
Altair stalked immediately toward the sound, waking in Vidarian an incredulous objection to a creature of his size moving so silently. Despite his fruitless denial, he felt worse, not better, when the gryphon quickly found himself blocked by fallen logs and a long, sprawling thicket two lengths into the forest.
// I can fly a circuit— //
“I'll go,” Vidarian said, drawing his sword. “With a yip like that, and in the thicket, it's a small one.” A whisper of thought, and the longsword's blade lit with water energy to his inner eye.
* Better, * Ruby said, so caustic he was sure she didn't mean it.
I'd appreciate some respect for risking my skin, he thought acidly at her.
* Somehow the sting of mortal threat has lost its bite, * she replied. * Can't imagine why. *
Vidarian sent a thin line of fire energy out beneath the water. The two energies snapped at each other, but the fire clung hungrily to the blade while the water was repelled by it, and so they achieved an uneasy balance. He slashed at the thicket, and the fire sprang ahead of his strokes to sear the vegetation away. Even without the blade physically touching the branches, it was slow going; it took three slices to clear a space tall and wide enough for his body, and with every lash the water and fire energies squabbled like jealous children.
The creature kept up a steady stream of eerie, high-pitched yips, helping him to cut straight to it—and when he finally broke through the last thicket wall, he saw why.
A terrified thornwolf pup, charcoal-furred with electric blue eyes, sat yipping in a small, low clearing. It yowled when it saw him and scrambled backwards, but was blocked from escaping down its den tunnel by a fallen log. It dug furiously—and ineffectually—in the mud around the log, whining.
* Kill it, * Ruby said.
“This is why they attacked us,” Vidarian said, letting his sword tip drop toward the ground. “We made camp right against their den.”
* Then we did the larger camp a favor, * Ruby said. * Now they won't have to deal with them. *
“Are you truly so cold? It's practically helpless, and we killed its parents.”
* Are you truly considering not killing it? It won't be helpless in a couple of months, and besides that, it won't survive out here alone. If you let it live now you're just punishing it with starvation. *
Vidarian didn't answer, but the longer the wolf scrabbled pathetically at the log, the guiltier he felt.
* Thornwolves are vicious, destructive predators, * Ruby insisted. * You want this one to grow up into what you just saw? *
“You're right, damn it. But you're not the one having to actually do this.”
He only realized that she'd been radiating anxiety at him when it melted into relief and sympathy. When they got back to the camp, he was going to have to talk to Isri about blocking at least some of her out.