We’d expected to find a lot of wildlife along the river, coming to drink, and we did. There were all the familiar critters — bison and silverhooves, terror birds and prairie wolves, mixed prides of saber cats and Columbian sphinxes, flocks of whooping cranes, piebald geese, and at least six kinds of ducks — but there were unfamiliar ones, too. Dr. Lefevre found a chameleon tortoise on the third day, and at the start of the second week, Wash caught a creature that looked for all the world like a horse that only stood waist-high, with long hair like a mammoth’s. After that, new creatures started turning up at a great rate.
What we hadn’t expected was how many of the new creatures would be magical, or that there would be more of them that absorbed magic, like the mirror bugs and medusa lizards. We found out about the first one almost by accident, when Greasy Pierre brought in a white ground squirrel, alive in one of the specimen cages.
Dr. Lefevre frowned at it. “White?”
“Animals go white in winter up here, don’t they?” one of the soldiers suggested. “Maybe it just hasn’t shed its winter coat yet.”
“By June?” Greasy Pierre said derisively. “Also, it’s larger than a normal ground squirrel.”
“Maybe it’s a sport, then. Albino, or some such.”
“Nonsense,” Dr. Lefevre put in firmly. “Look at the eyes.” He glanced at Mr. Melby, his assistant, and gave him a brief nod of approval when he saw that the man was ready with his recording notebook and pencil. He set the cage on the ground and motioned to Greasy Pierre to stand back so he’d have room to do a sleeping spell. We only did that with the smaller creatures, so that we could examine them without getting bitten or pecked. As soon as everyone was far enough from the cage to suit him, Dr. Lefevre cast the spell.
The squirrel squeaked and turned brown and stripy. It didn’t fall asleep at all.
Mr. Melby scribbled madly in his notebook. “What in —” Dr. Lefevre bit off his exclamation, and cast another spell. The squirrel squeaked again and turned white. It still didn’t fall asleep.
“Mr. Melby!” Dr. Lefevre snapped. “Do me the favor of monitoring the next cast.”
“Dr. Lefevre?” I said. “If you’re trying to find out whether it’s absorbing the spell, I can tell you it is.”
“You were monitoring the spell casting?”
“Aphrikan world-sensing,” I said. “It soaked up the first spell, right enough, but I think there was some left over the second time.”
“You think.” He looked annoyed, and he certainly sounded cross, but I got the feeling that underneath it, he was pleased. “And if I want exact numbers, I will still require the monitoring spell, won’t I? Mr. Melby!”
I stepped back and let them get on with it. Sure enough, the squirrel was soaking up any magic that was thrown at it. A bit more experimenting showed that it didn’t absorb magic that wasn’t cast directly at it. That was a relief, at first, because it meant that the ground squirrels were no threat to our travel protection spells — Dr. Lefevre checked that as soon as he was sure the critter was eating magic. But then someone pointed out that the ground squirrel probably wouldn’t have developed a knack like that unless there was something that threw magic at it in the first place. That got everyone worrying again.
We found the critter that was throwing magic at the squirrels about two weeks later. It was a kind of small hawk that nobody’d heard of before, with wings that were cloud-white on the bottom side and a pale, speckled brown on top. When it dove down to catch something, it sent a burst of magic ahead of it that stunned whatever it was trying to catch. Mr. Gensier saw it first, so he got to name it. He called it a Priscilla hawk, after his wife back home. Everyone was pleased, because we’d already found two completely new magical animals, even though we hadn’t passed the Lewis and Clark or the McNeil Expeditions yet.
Getting farther than the earlier expeditions was important to everybody, but especially to Mr. Corvales. For the first month, he kept us moving as fast as he could without stinting on the work or wearing down the horses. Near the middle of July, we finally passed Wintering Island. We had another celebration that night, though it almost felt more like we were trying to cheer each other up than like a party. Wintering Island was the very last point in the Far West that anyone knew anything about at all. From there on, we were truly on our own.
Once we’d passed Wintering Island, Mr. Corvales didn’t push us to move quite so fast. “And that’s a relief,” Lan said. Then he added hastily, “Not that I’m not pleased to have finally beaten every other exploratory expedition that’s gone up the Grand Bow.”
“We may not actually have beaten them,” William pointed out. “We don’t know how far Lewis and Clark got after they passed Wintering Island. Or Turnbull’s men, either.”
“I don’t think it counts until we get home,” I put it. “Like the McNeil Expedition.”
That sobered everyone up, but Lan was still grumpy about it for the rest of the day.
Around mid-August, Mr. Corvales started looking for a good place for us to winter over. The easiest and safest spot would have been an island in the middle of the river. There weren’t many kinds of wildlife that would swim out to attack an island, not with all the regular animals that lived on the plains, and even when the river froze over, the flowing water underneath the ice would add power to the protection spells.
Unfortunately, we hadn’t seen anything but sandbars since we’d passed Wintering Island. That left us with two choices: We could push on and hope that we ran across an island before we had to stop, and then throw together as much in the way of walls and buildings as we could in whatever time we had left, or we could find a good spot along the riverbank and make a proper job of building winter quarters.
It wasn’t really a hard choice, not if we wanted to be sure of making it through the winter, but there was some grumbling when Mr. Corvales announced that we’d gone as far west as we were going to go for the year. He picked a spot where a smaller river joined up with the Grand Bow, so that we had water along two sides of our camp. Big cottonwoods grew all along the banks of both rivers, with a few oaks and birches and shredbarks mixed in, so we wouldn’t have to go far to cut wood. In addition, the riverbanks rose a steep ten feet above the water where the two rivers came together, which meant that even if the river froze all the way over, any wildlife would have a hard time getting up to us on those sides.
We spent the next month and a half building a storage area, temporary quarters for ourselves and the horses, an outhouse, and a log wall with two sentry platforms. As soon as each part was finished, the magicians cast the strongest protection spells they had over it. The mammoth was especially useful for hauling logs, as it was large enough to move even the biggest trees, and we needed so many that even with all the growth along the river, we still had to move a lot of them a fair distance.
The wall and a medium-sized corral outside it were the only things we used logs for; there weren’t enough trees to build more and still have firewood for the winter. We made the storage area and living quarters by digging out part of the rise inside the log wall and piling up squares of sod to make short walls around the edge of the hole. We roofed it over with small branches and more squares of sod. The inside was dark and cramped, but it would be warm, and that was the main thing.
As soon as the storage area was finished, Mr. Corvales and Captain Velasquez sent half the soldiers and explorers out every day to cut hay and hunt. We built a smokehouse next to the river, to smoke the bison and deer and silverhooves that the hunters brought in. Everyone who wasn’t hunting or building walls spent at least part of every day gathering plants that would keep for a few months in a root cellar — cattail roots, late prairie turnips, sunflower and needlepoint seeds, elderberries, and so on.
Dr. Visser’s lists came in real handy; there were a lot more things that we could eat than anyone had expected, and he found a slough a ways north that was full of a tall, reddish-purple grass, which he said would be particularly good feed for the horses. We spent three weeks cutting it and filling the wagons, over and over.
In mid-September, two of the soldiers left, along with Mr. Gensier, his assistant, and Greasy Pierre. They took copies of all the important notes and maps and discoveries the expedition had made so far, particularly including the things like the don’t-notice-it spells that worked especially well on medusa lizards. Everyone sent letters, too, though there wasn’t room in the saddlebags for more than two per person. Since the returning party knew where they were going and what to expect, and since they didn’t have wagons to slow them down, they had plenty of time to make it to St. Jacques du Fleuve before travel got difficult, even if there was an early snowstorm in October.
Everyone was a little solemn for a few days after the small group left. It wasn’t just because the expedition had been suddenly reduced by five people. We all knew that they’d been sent back so that we’d have a better chance of getting through the winter, with fewer men and horses to feed, and so that the things we’d learned so far would get back to people who could make use of them, even if we never did.
Right after the return party left, Mr. Corvales and Captain Velasquez had a big argument with Adept Alikaket over the mammoth, right in the middle of the compound.
“We’re going to have enough trouble keeping the horses fed all winter,” Captain Velasquez told him. “If we try to keep that creature around, we’ll end up starving the lot of them.”
“It has been of much use,” Adept Alikaket pointed out.
“Yes, yes,” Mr. Corvales said testily. “I admit the creature has been useful, but it’s also caused us plenty of problems.”
“None of which have been serious,” the adept said, “and all of which were easy to deal with.”
Captain Velasquez snorted. “Not serious? The day of that fire outside St. Jacques, we’d have been away at least half an hour earlier if it hadn’t been for that thing. It was just luck that the fire went east instead of south. It could have been us burning up instead of that settlement, if the wind had shifted.”
“But it was not.”
“No,” Mr. Corvales said. “But it could have been, and next time we may not be so lucky. And the captain here is right about the feed.”
Adept Alikaket frowned slightly. “Mammoths live wild here, yes? There should be plenty of things for it to eat.”
Right about then, Captain Velasquez caught sight of Professor Torgeson crossing the compound, and he called to her to come and explain things to the adept. “You’re partly right,” she said after Mr. Corvales and Captain Velasquez told her what the problem was. “The mammoth has been grazing all summer; we couldn’t have brought enough feed along with us for it. Or for the horses, for that matter.”
“Then —”
“There’s a reason mammoths migrate south for the winter,” Professor Torgeson went on. “Food. You won’t find wild mammoths this far north much after mid-October. And if the past five years are anything to go by, we’ll have trouble keeping this one here. It’s always tried to break out of its pen during migration season, even back in Mill City.”
“If we gather more food —” the adept started.
“Weren’t you listening?” Professor Torgeson snapped. “Food or no food, it’s going to try to take off after its free brethren, starting in about two weeks, and if there’s a spell to stop it, we haven’t learned it in all the years it’s been in the menagerie.”
“And we haven’t the time to gather enough to feed it all winter, nor space to store it if we could gather it,” Captain Velasquez added.
“And the thing is more trouble than it’s worth.” Mr. Corvales held up a hand to stop the adept’s objection. “Yes, it’s been useful, but it hasn’t been useful enough. I don’t understand why you insisted on bringing it along in the first place.”
Adept Alikaket glared at the three of them. “I will think about this,” he said at last. “If any of you have any other ideas, I hope you will let me know.”
“Personally, I think we should shoot it now, smoke the meat, and tan the hide,” Professor Torgeson muttered.
I could understand her saying that. Though it wasn’t quite full-grown, the mammoth was large enough to provide meat for half the camp for a good part of the winter, and a mammoth-hide blanket would keep several people warmer than just about anything else. I hoped it wouldn’t come to shooting it, though. I’d been working with the mammoth since my first year in upper school, and I’d much rather turn it loose to take its chances than kill it outright.
The argument continued, off and on, for several days, and pretty much everyone had an opinion. Most of the soldiers were with Professor Torgeson, and thought we should shoot it, at least until Mr. Zarbeliev told everyone that he’d had mammoth a time or two and it was stringy and rank and nothing you’d want to eat unless you were a good way beyond desperate. There were a few folks among the scientists and magicians who thought we should try to keep it — Dr. Lefevre was the most outspoken of those — but most everyone else thought we should let it go, and the sooner the better.
Professor Torgeson’s remark about the mammoth getting ornery during migration put me in mind of how hard it had been to keep it contained, even when it was small. It had gone right through a rail fence once, early on when it was still a baby, and Professor Jeffries had had to improve the fence nearly every year after that. Finally, he got a bunch of his students together to build a stone wall, ten feet high and three feet thick, and after that we hadn’t worried so much about the mammoth escaping. Now, though, I didn’t think our log wall would be enough to hold the critter, and even if it was, the mammoth could do a lot of damage to it trying to get out.
I mentioned as much to Professor Torgeson, though I didn’t expect much to come of it. She frowned and told me that I’d spent more time caring for the mammoth than anybody except Professor Jeffries, and therefore if anybody was an expert on it, I was. Then she marched me off to talk to Adept Alikaket and Captain Velasquez. Adept Alikaket didn’t look happy, but he had to admit that keeping the mammoth inside the log wall was dangerous as well as crowded. Eventually, he agreed to staking the mammoth in the corral outside the wall whenever we weren’t using it. The corral had just as many protection spells on it as the compound, and if the mammoth did get restless and try to get out, we wouldn’t have as much trouble fixing up the damage.
In the last week of September, just about sunrise, we woke to loud snarls, and the shouts of the sentries, and something slamming into the log wall around the compound. Everyone scrambled to grab a rifle and get out of the tents to find out what was happening.
I wasn’t the first one out, but I wasn’t the last, either. The first thing I saw was the front end of something hanging on to the top of the log wall. It had large, upstanding, triangular ears and a pointed muzzle like a fox’s, full of teeth, but it looked to be almost as big as a saber cat. It was making noises like a cat, too. Its fur was dark brown, streaked with lighter brown in places. It clawed at the logs, leaving long gouges in the wood. Its hindquarters were still outside, and it didn’t seem to have enough purchase to haul itself over and in.
As I rolled away from the tent, I heard two shots almost together, then another. The creature on the wall snarled and fell backward, disappearing behind the wall. A second later, something large and heavy crashed into the wall from outside. The timbers creaked and cracked, and there was a yowl.
“Three more outside!” the sentry shouted down from the platform.
Wash swung himself up to the narrow walkway that ran just below the top of the wall. “Concealing magic, too,” he reported a second later. “Anybody have a neutralizing spell?”
“Me,” Professor Torgeson said, climbing up beside him. I was right behind her, and the minute my feet were firm on the walkway, I looked around for something to shoot.
Right on the other side of the log wall, three of the giant fox-things were attacking the mammoth. The body of a fourth one lay at the foot of the log wall, twisted and unmoving. Now that I got a good look at the whole of them, they looked even more like giant foxes; they were tall and built for speed, and their tails were long and bushy.
Outside the corral, I spotted a ripple in the air, like a heat haze in high summer; if Wash hadn’t said something, I’d never have noticed. I figured there were others, but I didn’t look for them right then. I could only shoot one at a time.
I raised my rifle, keeping my eyes on the shimmer. Beside me, Professor Torgeson started muttering rapidly, her hands weaving an invisible pattern in the air. A rifle cracked, and one of the critters on the ground by the mammoth yelped and rolled head over tail as the bullet hit.
The mammoth lowered its head and made a sideways swipe faster than anything that large ought to have been able to move. When its head came up, the tips of its tusks were red and another one of the fox-things lay still.
Professor Torgeson finished her spell on a shout, and magic ripped outward from her in a great circle. The heat-shimmer in the air that I was watching blinked into another of the fox-things. I squeezed the trigger and chambered the second round without even thinking.
The giant fox-thing yowled and went down, injured but not dead. I looked for another target. Several more of the creatures had appeared out of nowhere when Professor Torgeson neutralized their concealing magic. They were moving too fast for me to get a good shot. I picked one and tracked it, waiting for it to pause long enough for me to be sure of hitting it.
One of the fox-things leaped onto the mammoth’s back, digging in with its long, curved claws. The mammoth bellowed and shook itself. The thing on its back clung to its place, barely. Two of the creatures that had been concealed streaked toward the log wall; they seemed to know that their concealing magic was gone … and who to blame for it. I fired at one of them, but I missed.
More shots rang out, and more of the fox-things dropped. One of them made it to the log wall and leaped, but it fell short of the top. The mammoth moved again, dodging and shaking, and swept the fox-creature from his back at last. Then he swiped his tusks at the fox by the log wall, knocking the critter halfway across the corral. I shot a third time, and so did nearly everyone else.
And then it was over. We all stayed on the wall for a while, ready and waiting, until we were positive that there were no more of the fox-things, while the mammoth did his own check, stomping and snorting all around the edges of the corral. When we were finally sure it was safe, Captain Velasquez ordered a double watch along the wall, and the rest of us set about cleaning up.