Creative Commons – The Plainsrunner – Chapter Four

Announcement

I have decided to release The Plainsrunner under a Creative Commons license – Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA). To celebrate that, I am going to publish it here serially, one chapter at a time.

rjb

Chapter Four – The Scarp

In the morning Sage broke camp and headed for the Scarp. She thought about keeping the campsite. It was a good spot. It had shelter in the trees and easy access to flowing water. It was easy to defend and there were plenty of resources close to hand. It would be convenient to set up a permanent camp and work from there. And, she admitted to herself, it was close to the village. That’s why she broke camp finally. She knew in her logical mind, even though her emotional mind still didn’t see it, that she was never going back. Even though she couldn’t let go yet, she knew that she would have to eventually. So she packed up her camp as a gesture to herself.

It was a stern gesture and she had a stern look on her face when she set out. Her head was up proudly and her eyes looked ahead with sharp anticipation. Her front eyes, anyway. Her side eyes ceaselessly scanned about her, behind her and above, sensitive to the smallest sign of danger. They were her subconscious safety system, for the prey half of her, while her forward looking eyes served the seeking part. The predator side of her. That side was looking stern, but also eager. All her life she’d been looking for adventure and now, as bad as it was, this would certainly be an adventure. So her stern eyes also gleamed with anticipation.

It took an hour at an easy canter to get to the base of the Scarp, and another hour of climbing to get to the top. As she climbed she listened for the rattle in her right pannier. It was only occasional now, but during the canter it was persistent. She thought she knew what it was and she had a pretty good idea what it would take to fix it. She certainly wasn’t going to put up with this forever and she was planning to repack it when she stopped at the top.

She snapped out of her musing and stood still halfway up. She thought she’d caught something in her peripheral vision and she stopped to make a complete scan. She scoured the grass all around her for hundreds of meters and saw nothing. No telltale shape of a day runner’s head peering through the grass. Nothing moving where it shouldn’t be moving, and nothing still where it shouldn’t be still. But that was just precautionary. It was something she did regularly anyway. The real purpose of this scan was to search the sky. She hadn’t been able to identify whatever it was that caught her attention, but she knew it had been in the sky.

She did the usual: pick a spot and take it in, then pick another spot, and so on. It didn’t take long before she found it. Less than a thousand meters up, circling in a thermal, was a day flier, its four meter wings spread to catch the updraft. She felt a chill in the scales over her ribs, where its talons would grip her as it carried her away.

It must have just started its ascent, catching the first thermals of the day. That was just about right, she thought. With the time she’d spent packing and then traveling, the eastward facing Scarp should be heating up nicely by now. The day flier would have spread its wings in its aerie to absorb the Sun’s heat, then leapt into the rising air when the time was right. It was still close enough that she could make out some details on it. The gleam of its scales as it banked and wheeled in the sunlight. The heavy talons hanging below it. The big hooked beak for ripping the flesh from its prey.

Sage kept an eye on it as she returned to her climb. She was wary but not too worried. Even though it had enough height to swoop on her now, she didn’t think it would. Day fliers were creatures of habit and they liked to ride a thermal as high as it would take them before beginning to hunt. If it came after her now, and missed, it would have to go back to the cliff and start over. It might even have to walk if it lost lift and had to land. They couldn’t launch themselves into the air from the ground. They needed to be able to soar to carry their weight. So it would have had to walk, and they hated to walk. They were awkward and ungainly on the ground, and vulnerable. On the ground they could be attacked by day runners, or even a Plainsrunner with a spear.

The slope continued up all the way to the edge. As Sage thought about it, she imagined the earth tearing loose and heaving upward. She thought that the land might have been flat here, unbroken like the rest of the prairie, and then this piece thrust up at an angle for some reason. She couldn’t imagine the reason. Why would the land, which was to her the very essence of permanence, break like this?

She was thinking about that when she reached the edge. She had stayed near the left side on the way up and now she was standing on the highest part of the Scarp. In addition to the long, gradual slope behind her, the surface descended gently to her right. Stretching her neck out over the edge, she could see tumbled rock piled at the bottom of the cliff, almost three hundred meters down. She knew those blocks of broken cliff were bigger than the huts in her village, but they looked small from up here.

She wasn’t afraid of falling since most of her weight was planted on four sturdy hooves well behind, but it was still a thrill. Her healthy imagination had no trouble seeing the edge crumble and those broken rocks far below rushing toward her. She snorted and shook her head, then backed away.

As she removed her panniers and blanket, the skin on her face and neck remembered the warm wind they’d felt coming up the cliff face. She knew this was the same wind that blew the day fliers high up into the sky, and she thought about the one she’d seen earlier. She took the time for a thorough scan, but saw nothing on the ground or in the air.

The glider was lashed to her right pannier. She untied it and lifted it free, still a little surprised at its heft. She trotted back a ways, then turned and galloped for the edge. When she got close she planted her feet and threw the glider as hard as she could out over the prairie far below. It caught the air and its front end pitched up. Then the thermal caught it and pushed it upward. She could see when it fell off the rising air not far above her. It completed one and a half turns before skidding on the grass not twenty meters away. She trotted over to retrieve it.

When she threw it again she gave it a downward trajectory. This time when it pitched up it only made it level out. It immediately went into its turn, which brought it back toward the cliff, but it veered away before striking it. In her mind’s eye Sage pictured how the updraft, or any wind, would push on things. She remembered the feeling of wind in her face as she ran across the plain. She recalled seeing the waves in the grass after someone ran by. Something clicked as she realized that the glider was pushing air before it and that’s what turned it away from the cliff. The air pushed on it, but it also pushed on the air.

With her mind joyously reveling in its discovery, she watched the glider rise slowly on the thermal, all the while circling downward. Then it fell off the rising air and began a slow, measured descent. It wasn’t like a day flier that could sense where the updrafts were and stay on them.

Something caught her eye. Some vague change in the light. And her ears picked up the faintest rushing sound. She didn’t turn to look, and that saved her life. Instead, she hunkered down and backed up as quickly as she could. The day flier screamed as it passed over her, but all its grasping talons caught was one of her ears, which it tore. She rushed back to the edge, while rapidly scanning for a second flier. It was rare, but sometimes they hunted in pairs.

She was in time to see the flier swoop heavily and grab her glider. It dropped it quickly and Sage thought it must be too slippery to hold. Its slight weight would also be disappointing to a ravenous raptor. The flier let loose its horrible, grating scream again and wheeled away to find another thermal.

Sage’s eyes went back to the glider, which was again circling serenely toward the ground. She watched it all the way down, marked its location, and went to get her blanket and panniers.