39. What He Carried #2
Ghost went wide around it and struck up the hill the faster for it.
He followed. They passed from the trees into scrub, and then into the pines that covered the slopes of the ridge, and when they came to the wall he had found scraped before, it was covered in a great many more scrapes than there had been.
The new marks ran up and down, not across. Kain stood a moment.
It had been trying to climb. Trying, and failing.
The ground had been worked over here too, and there was a good deal more dried blood than before. After the snare, the wounded thing had tried to go straight up the rock.
It wasn't made for the ground, only for flight. Flight ran in straight lines. The cliff didn't.
He looked at the ground. The trail of the gryphon ran off to the right, toward the way Ghost had found on their last trip up the ridge.
Kain followed it, keeping a hand on the hilt of his sword. He came to the slope soon enough and went up it, quiet, light on his feet. They were close to the nest now.
He came around the southern end of the ridge and onto the eastern face, where the shadow was thickening as the sun went down on the other side. He pressed himself to the cliff and moved slow, and silent, and before long he came around into view of the nest.
The nest was where it had been. The bulk of the gryphon sat hunched inside it, and that was the most he could tell from this distance, only that the thing was there.
Ghost raised the hair along its neck and growled, low. Kain made no move at all.
"So how did you get up there?" Kain said, soft. "Come on, Ghost."
He turned and went back around the ridge the way he had come, but when he reached the path down he stayed on the first line of cliffs and passed back around the other side. Before long he came on a place where the cliff ran lower.
Claw marks stood out on the limestone there, and the leaves about the base had been blown around in a way that told its own story. The gryphon had used wings and claws together to drag itself up to the top, and from there staggered the rest of the way to the nest.
Had it been resting there ever since? Likely so. That meant it could still fly, at least some.
Not well.
With that he went back through the trees, drawing off a way.
He went to a small group of boulders Sasha had marked for him on their way up through the trees. There he slung off his extra gear, the climbing kit, the food, the fire-things, and more.
The weight came off him in pieces.
He didn't mean to camp, properly speaking. He wanted a place to fall back to if the thing went badly.
He laid the new block of poison out and turned back the paper on it, so it could be reached quick, and set the bowie knife next to it. The rope went on the other side of the camp, by the climbing kit.
He put the fire-starter and a bit of the food in the middle, where he heaped some sticks above a pile of dry leaves. He didn't know what he would want a fire for. Only that with a big creature, a fire was sometimes worth having.
He went out and brought back a few stout sticks for torches, and wrapped each in the oily strips of cloth he had brought along. He set them by the rest.
Last of all, he drew out his arrows and dipped each one in Sasha's compound. He didn't know if doubling the dose would make it twice the work on the gryphon. He could hope.
He looked the camp over, nodded once, and slipped back out.
He was as ready as he was going to be. From the boulders he went back up the slope to the cliff, then along the face, soft and slow, and before long he was in view of the nest again.
The hind leg of the gryphon hung over the edge of the nest now. Ghost growled, soft, and raised its hackles again.
Kain drew an arrow from the quiver, an untreated one, kept for the ranging. He fitted it to the string of Sarah's bow and put a bit of weight on it.
"Whatever happens," Kain said, quiet. "Stay safe."
He had fought alongside Ghost once. This was something else. Wolves didn't fly. Gryphons did.
And a gryphon was a hundred times tougher to bring down than any wolf, in the size of it and in what it took to put down. He didn't know if the wolf would throw itself in, or hold its distance.
Kain drew back the string and lifted the arrow. The wind was still coming out of the north. Ghost flattened its ears against its head and slipped off, low and fast, and Kain watched while it ran ahead, found a cluster of small boulders, and went flat behind them.
It was nearly out of sight in a moment, its one good eye fixed on the gryphon up the cliff.
He fired.
「Bowshot: Range, 90 yards」
◇ ◆ ◇
The arrow rose. Kain had meant to put it into the lip of the nest, low and short, just to read the carry of the wind.
「Bowshot: Read, Wind East 3」
He was already reaching for a bamboo arrow as the first one flew.
The gryphon's head was down over the edge of the nest. Watching, maybe. Looking for what had moved below. The ranging arrow took it through one eye.
「Archery: C → C+ (↑)」
「Detail: 90-yard ranging shot, moving B-rank target, eye-strike.」
The sound that came out of the cliff face was nothing like a bird's call, or a cat's. It was a tearing sound. Kain set the bamboo arrow to the string.
The gryphon heaved itself up. Its head jerked left and right, the broken shaft jutting from the side of its face, and then it froze. The one eye it had left locked on him.
It screeched again, both wings snapped open, and it threw itself out of the nest.
Kain fired the second arrow as the gryphon launched. He could read in the flight that the thing wasn't right. One wing reached out past the other, dragging it slightly off true.
「Bowshot: Strike, Wing」
「Status: Target Wounded」
The bamboo arrow caught it in the right leg as it came down, and it folded its wings and plunged.
Before it hit the ground he had a third arrow on the string. His hands knew the work. The years came back into his hands before they came back into his head.
The gryphon struck the ground hard, twenty feet out. Kain fired.
The arrow took it in the right shoulder, just under the wing. It howled and stumbled back, and Kain saw all of it at once.
The thing in front of him was lion-bodied, six feet of dense muscle through the shoulders and back, the wings folded long down its back. Within one bound. Two bamboo shafts in it on top of the ranging arrow, not enough yet to slow it down. Wings still half-open, ready to lift.
It leaned to its left, the side where the eye was gone, where the poison must have caught the hardest. Weaker on its left, then. The rear leg on that side showed a long gash from the snare, healed over enough to be cosmetic.
Talons gouged the soil and pulled long pale ribbons of limestone up with them. Ghost was already moving from the boulders, low and silent, working around to the wounded side.
Its head swung back and forth. It couldn't pick him out fast. Half a head of vision, and the world running blurry on top of that.
It lunged.
Kain went sideways off his front foot, and the talons came down where he had been. Stone cracked. He hit and rolled, and came back up close to the wall.
No time for the sword. The gryphon flashed forward again, and Kain dropped sideways. The beast smashed into the limestone, and the cliff face cracked, and rubble came down in chunks.
Kain went out from under the rubble. The gryphon spun, snorting, and started to stalk him slower. Not used to missing, was the read he got from that.
Ghost shot out of the underbrush low to the ground and bit deep into the wounded back leg. The gryphon howled and spun, beak snapping at empty air. The wolf was already back into the trees. The thing screeched at the place where it had been.
Kain drew his sword.
The blade he had wiped with the concentrated stuff back at the camp. He didn't like to do it, normally. Putting his own poison on his own steel.
For this he had made the exception.
The gryphon faced him, beak open, snapping. Kain set his stance, bow over his shoulder, sword up. He took a step back, then another.
His best play was the second snare. He had a fair mental picture of where it sat. He kept stepping back.
The gryphon followed, dragging a little to the left. Then it charged.
Kain went sideways off the slope, hit pine needles, and gravity finished the thought for him. He slid. He hadn't meant to slide. He took what the hill gave him.
Above, the gryphon snarled. For one beat he thought it might leave him there. Then there came a crash through the brush, and another, and the gryphon came barreling down the slope after him, heedless of what was in its way.
Kain caught a sapling and swung himself off to one side. The gryphon exploded past him through the trees, inches off. It tried to cut, hit a bush at speed, and went tumbling on down the slope.
Kain pushed back to his feet and made his way off through the woods.
He ran. Leaping logs, ducking branches, hauling himself between trees by the trunks. He could hear the crashing of it off to his right, and if his ears were doing right, the thing had found him again and was coming.
He caught sight of it through the pines. Fifty feet back, eye wide. Eye, singular. The other side of its face was a dark mess and a snapped stub of shaft.
He leapt a log and made for the snare. He could hear the feet hammering behind him. He set his teeth.
It came on.
Kain waited until the sound of it filled his whole head and he could feel the puff of its breath at the back of his neck, and then he went sideways, hard, left. The gryphon stumbled, tried to cut, and overshot. It plowed into an elm and stopped.
Kain went down behind a bush and stilled.
The thing snorted and screeched. It stamped its feet and turned, hunting for him. Once it looked right at him and took a step, then swooned back.
Half-blind. Half-stunned. The cobwebs of the poison in its head.
It turned away, fully away, and Kain rose and broke into a run again. The gryphon spun at the sound, but its bulk took a moment to gather, and Kain had the barest lead.
He went between two trees that stood close together, just wide enough for a man. The gryphon hit them at speed. Both trees groaned and leaned, but neither came down. The hit dropped its pace.
Through the pines ahead, the boulders where the second snare sat. He put on what he had left and ran for them.
The gryphon caught back up. Kain dove right. It went past, staggering as it tried to cut, and came around again. This time he didn't stop.
He cut for the crick Sasha had pointed out on their way up through the trees.
Not a river. The locals called it a crick. Ten feet wide at its widest, deeper in some places and shallow in others.
The bank dropped five feet down to the water at the spot he reached, and Kain gathered himself and jumped.
He sailed over the water and hit the far bank low and rolled. Behind him, the gryphon was at the edge before it understood the gap. Its front talons went out into nothing, and it pitched face-first down into the crick.
The water exploded, then thrashed, then exploded again. Wings beat the surface. The beak came up and clattered. Claws shot up out of the muddy water searching for purchase.
Kain didn't wait. He turned upstream and ran.
A hundred yards up he found another place where the crick narrowed and the banks lined up, and he jumped back across. By the time he had crossed, the gryphon had hauled itself out on the wrong side.
It was sodden and furious. It raked the air with its talons, raked at its face where the broken shaft still sat, and roared.
"This way," Kain said.
The gryphon spun, screeched, and leapt. It opened its wings and sailed across the crick. This time it cleared the water, but slammed into the near bank and slipped, hindquarters falling back down into the creek. It didn't go all the way in.
That was enough.
Kain ran for the boulders. With the lead he had, he hit the gap between two of them with fifty feet of room to spare, and he didn't look back. He heard the click and rasp of talons on stone behind him.
Then the sound that came next was the one he had wanted. The taut snap of the cable. The thud of the gryphon coming up short on the end of the line.
Kain came around and saw the snare had caught it square around the rear right leg. It was hauling against the tree the cable was tethered to. The tree was thick. Old. It would hold a while.
「Snare: Caught, Right Rear Leg」
「Trapping: D+ → C+ (↑)」
「Detail: Choke-point line held B-rank target on first strike. Tree-anchor verified.」
The thing twisted its head and put its one eye on him.
It threw itself left, then right, then left, the cable singing each time.
Kain drew the sword and went in.
Ghost came from the wolf's direction at full speed, ran past Kain, and bit deep into the same hind leg the snare was holding. The gryphon snarled and kicked. Its talons caught the wolf across the side.
Ghost went flying. It hit a tree with a sound Kain didn't like, and lay there on its side, breathing hard, but its head was still up.
Kain was at the gryphon a second later. He went past it, around its near side, and brought the blade down on the wounded hind leg the snare had taken.
The edge bit deep. The poison Sasha had given him went in with it.
The thing howled and lurched sideways, into the boulder to its right. Stone cracked. It smashed itself the other way, into the second boulder. Rock came loose.
A piece of stone the size of a fist took Kain in the shoulder, and he went down. He came back up just as the gryphon's talons came down on the ground where his head had been.
The beak followed. He rolled. The beak slammed into the dirt where he had been lying and snapped at him sideways.
He slashed at the side of its head, the side that didn't have the broken shaft in it. The blade scored along the face, opened the cheek and ran past the ear.
Not a killing strike. A painful one. The gryphon recoiled.
They held there a beat. Watching. Waiting.
It lunged forward. The snare went taut. The tree behind it cracked.
It pulled again, and he saw the cable beginning to fray. Moments. He had moments.
Ghost came up from where it had fallen and went at the gryphon again. The thing wheeled at it. Kain took the opening, stepped in, slashed across the shoulder, and drew blood that came out dark.
Then he turned and ran.
The gryphon howled. He heard the claws grind stone into powder. Then there came a clean snap as the tree behind it broke through.
Feet on the ground behind him. Closer now. Faster.
It was no longer a hunt. He was the prey.
「Status: Dormant → Active」