37. Bait #2
He dropped into bed and found he couldn't sleep. It put him in mind of his early years on the job.
The night before a hard contract, or a fight he knew was coming, he had never been able to rest. He had lain awake watching and waiting through the long hours of the dark. Later, once he had years of the work behind him, he had learned to sleep sound even the night before a bad one.
Now his mind went to the gryphon, and he was working the thing over the way he used to work a job, running it through, turning the angles of it. How was he going to take it.
It wasn't a man, and a monster had never been his line of work, which left him more questions than he liked. He had the poison in it. He had the snares on its trails.
He had Sarah's bow and the eastern arrows. He went over all of it, again and again, in the dark.
He didn't know when sleep finally took him, but his eyes came open all at once on a morning sun already climbing.
He rolled out of bed, straightened himself, and went out into the farmyard. Roan was gone, which came as no great surprise.
Kain thought about waiting to see if the horse turned up, or riding up to town, and decided against both. Roan had most likely gone back to the Martinson farm. They would bring him around in time, and until then there was work to do.
The poison would take about a day to come to its full strength. Kain looked up toward the ridge, then went back inside and took down Darien's notes.
"And how long does it stay in the body," he said.
Some poisons were quick, taking hold in minutes, and if a body lived through them they wore off just as fast. Others were slow to set and slow to leave, and he found the page and read it.
"Poison is slow to act. It settles in the upper gut and stays there some days. The target will be impaired five days in all, past the first day's wait. Note that it begins to mend after two days, so the last three days will show less and less of the work."
So past that first day's wait, he had about two days when the gryphon would be at its weakest, and three more after that when it would still be weaker than it should. He would have to make that do.
He ate a quick breakfast, and a big one, not having eaten since the morning before. Then he belted on his sword, slung the bow and the arrows across his back, and set off.
He had no intention of facing the thing yet, but he meant to be ready all the same. A poisoned animal was an unpredictable one, apt to do the thing you hadn't planned for.
He set off across the hills toward the ridge he knew so well now. His sword hung at his side and his face was set.
As he came up on the trees he heard a long, mournful wail off ahead, and wondered if it was the gryphon. It sounded sick. It was working.
He reached the edge of the trees and slipped in toward the nest. He only wanted a look at what it was doing, how the poison was taking it, how far down it would drag the beast. That was a thing he needed to know before he went out against it.
He had gone partway up the hill when he came on one of the snares. It had been torn loose and mangled, ripped clean off the tree Sasha had fixed it to so carefully, and the cable lay twisted and bloodied a good fifty feet from where it had started.
Kain knelt and lifted it, and found golden-brown fur snarled in the wire. It had been caught, and it had torn its way out.
If it was coming through on the ground, then it couldn't fly the way it wanted to, and that was something. It had got free, but the blood said it was hurt now, on top of the poison. All good things.
He looked the ground over a while longer. There was a wide smear of blood on a rock not far off, and more on a tree beyond that.
It was as much as he could have asked for. He crept on up toward the nest, meaning only to get a look from a distance and see what was happening.
He went around the back of the ridge, moving slow. He could hear it up ahead, letting out a pained screech every little while.
It knew something was wrong with it, even if it couldn't have said what.
When he came around and pressed up close, he found a gap in the trees that let him see the nest. He crouched as the gryphon put its head out and twisted it one way, then the other.
It blinked and looked about, plainly muddled, and then it rose and stood at the lip of the nest and stretched out its wings.
One wing reached out farther than the other, and its fur had gone matted. Kain figured it hadn't slept much, if at all.
It leapt from the nest and dropped into a dive, but the dive came out ungainly, the wings not setting right, and it slewed off to the side and crashed down through the canopy.
It wasn't grounded yet, not all the way. But it was moving slower than it had any right to.
The gryphon was hurting, and the poison had done just what he wanted it to do. Kain watched a moment longer, listening to it snuffle and crash about on the forest floor, then turned and slipped away.
If it caught his scent and came after him now, things would get ugly fast, and he had come to look, not to fight.
He was soon out of the forest and back across the hills, and the gryphon didn't come after him. He slowed when he was about halfway home.
There was no reason to push. The beast was poisoned, and all he had to do now was wait.
Back at the farm, to his surprise, he found Roan cantering around his pen. Carol knelt in the garden, working at the weeds that had come up thick while he was busy elsewhere.
Kain came over, set down his sword and bow and arrows, and knelt beside her.
"Your garden's suffered, these last weeks," Carol said. "I'm sorry for it."
"You don't have to do this." Kain set to pulling a pokeberry that had taken root, then a snarl of bindweed.
"You're helping the whole town. Seems a shame more of them aren't helping you." Carol shrugged. "Besides, if you can't pay my dad, we'll have to take Roan back, and I'd not want that. You're doing us a real kindness."
"Haven't done anything yet."
"Sasha and Royce both say you went out to poison the thing." She glanced over at him, and he could see how badly she wanted to ask. "Did it work?"
Kain weighed it, then nodded. "It did. Got a good dose in it. I don't know yet what that buys me when it comes to the fight. But yes."
"Good." Carol sat back on her heels. "Then go and sit yourself up on the porch. I'll see to this."
"I'm not letting you take over my garden."
"Would you have worked it today if I hadn't been here?" Carol asked. "You wouldn't. You're worn clean through. You walked back from a long scout with no horse, and it's getting on toward evening. Go and sit. When I'm done we'll eat."
Kain stood. He was worn down to the bone, and he knew he had to keep what strength he had for the gryphon. He went to the house and sat down against the wall.
Carol worked fast and clean, and he watched her hands go. They were quick, taking each weed right at the base, tearing it up and tossing it aside.
She never stopped to look at what she was doing. She just did it. It was what Kain hoped he might be himself, given time enough.
Before long she rose and went to the well. Kain hauled the bucket up for her, and she washed her hands and went up into the house.
To his surprise, the table was already laid, a basket of food waiting on it. She nodded him into a seat, and he took it, and she set out the meal, plain but good.
There was homemade bread, cut thick, and jams and butters to go on it, and cold meat on the side, with cheese and a few pickles to finish. There was no sweet to follow.
"Why do I feel like I'm being fed a last meal?"
Carol's mouth twitched. "If I'd known you'd take it that way, I'd have made a worse one." That got a short laugh out of him, the first in days, and her along with it. Then it faded, and she looked at him straight. "You don't have to go through with this, you know."
"Yeah, I do," Kain said.
Carol said nothing for a long moment. Then she nodded. "I know. I just wanted to say it."
Kain went back to his food. After a while Carol spoke again. "When are you heading out?"
"I've got about two days to kill it, starting at dusk tonight." Kain reached for the bread. "I'll head out first thing in the morning."
"You know the festival's tomorrow?"
The question caught him off guard. "The summer festival? That's tomorrow?"
"It is. You wouldn't know it to look at the town, but they mean to hold it all the same. Tillamore doesn't cancel a festival." She tipped her head at him. "You should come up to it."
"I'll be hunting a gryphon." Kain shook his head. "Two days, like I said. If something broke wrong, I'd lose my chance at it."
"Then come for a few hours. Let us send you off proper." Carol shrugged. "I think it'd do everyone some good."
Kain nodded. "All right," he said. "I'll come."
Neither of them said another word until Carol had packed up and gone. The quiet sat over the table the whole time, and both of them knew what was riding on the next two days.