The Stone God Awakens Page 5

  Their bloodlust was so high that they dared to argue with him. He announced that they would do what he said, or he would destroy them. Fortunately, nobody thought of calling his bluff, or if they did, no one dared voice the thought.

  Ulysses, looking at the Alkunquib, was struck with an idea. He needed all the carriers he could get for the return journey, and here were at least a hundred more juveniles.

  He arranged through Ghlikh for a conference with the enemy’s warchief. There was an intense but brief dispute, and then the chief, faced with the extinction of his tribe, gave in. Two days later, the Alkunquib juveniles marched with the war party as hostages and as carriers-to-be. This village, in the meanwhile, had sent messages to the other Alkunquib tribes to lay off the party. Two tribes paid no attention and attacked, and these in turn were ambushed and decimated. And Ulysses ended up with a hundred and fifty more carriers and hostages. He did burn the two villages as an object lesson, but he would not permit the villagers to be massacred.

  Ulysses was anything but exhilarated at his conquests. The bloodshed depressed him. Millions of years of sentiency had passed, perhaps four hundred thousand or more generations, perhaps twice that many. Yet the sentients, the users of speech, the lords of the beasts, had learned nothing. Or was that their lesson, that fighting and bloodshed were inevitable and would last as long as life lasted?

  The big party went much more slowly now. So many people could not travel swiftly, and the estimated ten days’ march took twenty. But they were not attacked again by any great force. Some tribes skulked on the outskirts and tried to pick off warriors here and there. These were only small nuisances. The big problem was feeding his army. The presence of so many men frightened off the game, and small bands had to go out and scour for miles around ahead and on both sides. And these bands became targets for the locals. But, one day, Ulysses organized a hunt at the suggestion of Awina, and a herd of horses was run over a cliff. They ate well for many days, though they had to delay their journey to smoke much meat.

  They came finally to Ulysses’ goal: the volcanoes and hot springs. Here he found the sulfur which he had hoped for. This was a greenish translucent form which could be mined with the stone tools of his “men.” Inside two weeks, he had all he could carry, and the party started back.

  At the Alkunquib villages, Ulysses arranged that the juvenile carriers should be sent back, with gifts, after they had dropped off their loads at the Wufea village.

  By the time the party got back to the original starting point, Ulysses found that there was a large supply of potassium nitrate. The Wufea had followed his instructions, which included special treatment to force the decomposition of the excrement at a swift rate. A few days later, after the celebrations and ceremonies, Ulysses set his warriors, and the women who could be spared from the fields, to work on the preparation of the black gunpowder. The result was a proper mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur. The first demonstration startled, panicked and awed the Wufea, Wagarondit and Alkunquib. It was a five-pound bomb which he set off inside a hut built for the demonstration.

  Ulysses had lectured everybody on the dangers of the new weapon, including the instability of the powder. He also forbade them to use it except with his permission and under his supervision. If he had not applied limits, he would have found his whole supply gone inside a day for their amusement.

  The sixth day, he touched off a rocket with a two-pound warhead in a wooden case. It blew up against the face of a stone cliff and provided a fine spectacle.

  After this, Ulysses instructed Ghlikh on the carrying and touching off of the fuse of a one-pound bomb. Ghlikh flew above a great dummy made out of wood and straw and modeled after descriptions of The Old Being. He swooped down and then up, almost stalling, and inserted the end of his fuse into a hole in a small tinder box. Then he quickly released the bomb which fell onto the back of the dummy, but it rolled off and exploded ten feet away. After four tries, Ghlikh was able to estimate the time properly, and the bomb blew the dummy apart.

  “Very good,” Ulysses said when Ghlikh, grinning like a demon, landed before him. “You did well. Now, the next step will be to locate The Old Being. You should be able to do that.”

  “He may be many marches north of here! Or east!” Ghlikh said.

  “You’ll find him,” Ulysses said.

  The bat-man waddled off sullenly to eat. Awina said, “I wonder why we did not think about using him to find The Old Being. We should have done so. But then we are not gods.”

  “I wonder why he is so reluctant to do this for me,” Ulysses said. “There isn’t much danger for him, except for miscalculating the time for the fuse to burn. But he was reluctant before he knew anything about the bombs.”

  “I do not know,” Awina said slowly, as if she did not want to make any accusations—as yet.

  He tried to get her to express any suspicions she might have, but she denied having any, He gave up on her; she could be as evasive as any feline when she chose. But he determined to watch Ghlikh even more closely. However, if Ghlikh did not wish to track down The Old Being, he could just fly away. Or he could just not find the colossus.

  Three weeks later, they were in the country of the Alkunquib again. A week before, The Old Being had raided the fields of the most northerly of the Wagarondit. A relay of runners had brought the news to Ulysses, who had roused his force and gotten them to marching northward within an hour. His force consisted of twenty warriors, twenty carriers, Awina and himself. They proceeded at a wolf trot, a hundred paces running and a hundred walking. They ate up the miles from dawn to dusk. Ulysses fell into his sleeping bag every night and rocketed into sleep. He awoke in the morning with every muscle protesting. Not until the fourth day did he wake up without pain. By then he had lost even more weight than on the first expedition. Unlike the smaller, lighter and wiry nonhumans, he could not run all day without extending himself. He was too big and too heavily muscled. But he could not let them see their god poop out, so he kept up the pace.

  He had worn out the shoes he was wearing when de-petrified and now was wearing moccasins. This made his feet hurt for a long time, but he eventually got used to them.

  He estimated that he had lost about twenty pounds since the day he awoke. But the exercise was good for him. He had no fat, and his wind was superb. Still, there wasn’t a Wufea, including Awina, who could not run him into blind staggers.

  Deep into Alkunquib land, the party stopped one morning when Ghlikh appeared in front of them. He was flying swiftly, skimming above the treetops, and even at a distance his expression told them that he had found The Old Being With The Long Hand.

  A moment later he sideslipped into the glade and landed alongside them.

  Panting, he said, “He’s up ahead! On the other side of that big hill!”

  “What is he doing?” Ulysses said.

  “Feeding! Stripping a tree of all its leaves!”

  Ulysses had not really expected Ghlikh to locate the beast. But he could have wrongly interpreted the bat-man’s reactions. Or, maybe something had caused the bat-man to change his attitude. If so, who or what could have done that?

  Ghlikh had some difficulty getting off the ground. The open space was not long enough for him to get a proper run even if he was unburdened. Carrying the five-pound bomb, he had no chance at all. Nor was there any possibility of using a steep hillside as a launching place. Trees covered the hills everywhere.

  Ulysses hesitated. He could have Ghlikh carried to a point two miles behind them where there was an area for him to take off. Ghlikh could fly back and rendezvous with them. He did not want to wait around for him but he had to do so if Ghlikh’s function was not to be wasted. Besides, he had plenty of time. Why worry about wasting it when he had just put in many millennia with no anxiety whatsoever?

  He ordered two Wagarondit to carry Ghlikh between them to the open strip. He then ordered the party to proceed slowly and quietly. Ten of the warriors were ready with their bow
s and arrows, and the other ten, with the carriers, had prepared their rockets and bombs.

  They went up the steep hillside through the huge evergreens that leaned out at a slight angle, and then they crawled on hands and knees over the brow of the hill. Down below was a valley with many trees but with a number of open spaces. About fifty of the trees looked as if winter had struck them. The eater of their leaves was a beast, not a season. He was so huge that Ulysses found trouble crediting his senses. He stood higher than some of the young trees. He was as gray as any elephant, but he had an enormous white spot on his right shoulder. His long yellow tusks looked so heavy that Ulysses wondered that the beast could raise his head. His trunk, relatively longer than those of the elephants of Ulysses’ day, moved sinuously through the trees, plucking off whole branches, dragging them into the enormous mouth and then snaking out again. Even at this distance, the rumblings of his brobdingnagian belly reached the hunters.

  The wind was from the north, so the beast would not he able to smell or hear them, if they were careful. His eyesight might not be as weak as others of the elephantine clan, so Ulysses cautioned them again that they should use every bit of cover they could.

  It took the whole party an hour to work down the hillside and among the trees at the bottom of the valley. By then, Ulysses was beginning to worry about Ghlikh. He should have shown up long ago. What could have happened? Maybe some Alkunquib renegades or members of other tribes to the north were scouting around and had killed Ghlikh and his bearers. Maybe… why worry about it? If Ghlikh did not show, there was nothing to be done about it. The attack would proceed without him.

  Ulysses motioned to the others to stay where they were, which was mainly behind trees. He took the wooden bazooka into which he had loaded the wooden rocket and crept forward. Behind was Awina, holding a small torch she had just lit. Other torches were being lit from boxes of smoldering punk blown into red heat just before shavings were placed on them. Then the torches were applied to the boxes to catch fire. This was the crucial moment as far as Ulysses was concerned. The smoke, even if downwind, might be smelled by the animal or his eyes, even if weak, might see the thick black clouds.

  The thunderous belly rumblings, the tearing off of branches, the dragging through the mouth and stripping off of leaves, and the crash of branches thrown aside continued. The whale-like gray bulk shifted back and forth in a continual little dance. The trunk worked busily, and all must have seemed at peace in the world of The Old Being With The Long Hand.

  A shadow fell on Ulysses. He looked up. The dark winged form of Ghlikh was flapping over him. Ulysses waved at him to veer off to the right. If his shadow fell on the beast, who was probably as skittish as any African elephant, it would panic or at least alert him.

  Ghlikh either did not see him or else misinterpreted his gesture. He flew straight ahead toward the animal at an altitude of about fifty feet. He held the bomb clutched to his belly with one hand and the small torch with the other. The thick smoke roiled out behind him as if he were a demon on fire.

  Ulysses swore and ran toward The Old Being. On both sides of him the warriors and carriers, forgetting their caution in their excitement and fear, crashed toward the beast. Their childhood had been filled with scary stories of this monster, and some had even seen him at a distance or in action. The fathers of two of them had been smashed beneath those enormous pads. But they would not hang back because they would be thought cowards, and it was better to be dead than disgraced. However, they had become overbold, too competitive, and so they were betraying themselves.

  And betraying me, too, Ulysses thought.

  It was too late to do anything but attack and hope for the best. If only Ghlikh didn’t get buck fever and miscalculate, miss that animal, though how anybody could miss anything so big would be a wonder.

  But Ghlikh did. Apparently, he had gone on by and then banked, intending to make his run downwind to come up from behind the beast. This was not very intelligent. In the first place, he had gone directly over the beast and so cast his shadow on it. But the animal had not noticed. Now, however, the smoke from the torch came to the beast even though Ghlikh was fifty feet up.

  The beast stopped tearing at the branches, raised his proboscis, sniffed here and there, and then began to trumpet.

  Ghlikh dropped the bomb and then screamed with frustration.

  The colossus answered with a scream of his own and a sudden shift from motionlessness into a charge that picked up speed unbelievably fast. The animal may not have seen anything as yet; he may have been just startled and so was running away blindly. Whatever his motive or state, he was turning toward Ulysses, and, suddenly, the rocket seemed very inadequate.

  Despite which, he placed the bazooka and its load on his shoulder and yelled at Awina to light the fuse. He could not see her, but she told him calmly what she was doing.

  At that moment, Ghlikh’s bomb went off about thirty yards behind the gray juggernaut. The Old Being increased his shrillness of trumpeting and his speed. He also changed his direction so that he was not approaching Ulysses and Awina directly. Unless he veered again, he would miss them by about four feet. But he should be able to see them before then and so would likely head toward them.

  Heat fanned by Ulysses’ cheek; smoke filled his eyes; the rocket hissed as it raced out of the tube and by his head. It flew in a flat arc toward the creature, which was now charging them, having seen them two seconds before. His trunk was coiled high, and his reddish eyes were on them. The dark blur of the rocket struck the juggernaut’s left shoulder, and the explosion deafened Ulysses. Smoke billowed out so that he could not even see the beast. He did not wait to notice the effects of the hit but ran off to one side with Awina close behind him. A carrier was running up to him with another rocket, and then other missiles went over him, one went by him, and something struck him in the back.

  He fell forward on his face while smoke arranged itself like a tent around him. He coughed and then got up from his all-fours position. He was too stunned for several minutes to realize what had happened. Some rocketeer had gotten excited and directed the missile at too low an elevation. It was this rocket that had almost hit him and had struck a tree near him.

  Ulysses got to his feet. His clothes were ripped and he was dirty with black smoke. He looked around for Awina, and then gave a cry of relief. She was standing near him and looking dazed and red-eyed and her fur was black with smoke. But she did not seem to have any wounds.

  He turned back to The Old Being. He could hear nothing; for all he knew he was right behind him.

  The beast was not. He lay on the ground, kicking his columnar legs while blood poured out like springs from several huge holes. One leg, though moving, was half blown off at the shoulder.

  And then, as the warriors and the carriers, shouting and screaming triumphantly, moved in on him, he struggled to his feet, and, hobbling, charged again. The bipeds scattered, screaming with terror, and then the beast caught one with his trunk and lifted him up and hurled him spinning over and over into the branches of a tree.

  After that, The Old Being collapsed again and died in a lake of mud and blood.

  Miraculously, the Wufea thrown into the tree survived with only a few cuts and bruises.

  It took Ulysses a long time to recover his hearing and his nerves. When he quit shaking, he examined the beast. He was, as Awina said, a mountain that walked. Just cutting off the tusks and transporting them back to the Wufea village would be a great labor. But he knew that when the Wufea, Wagarondit and Alkunquib made their pilgrimage to the village and saw those gargantuan tusks set upright into the ground before the temple, they would feel that their stone god was truly a god. They would also, he hoped, feel a stronger sense of union. All three of the hereditary foes had participated in this hunt for their ancient enemy. And all three could share in the glory.

  There was one irritant in his triumph. That was Ghlikh.

  He asked the bat-man what had happened.


  “Lord, forgive me!” the bat-man piped. “I was sweating with excitement! My hand slipped, and I dropped the bomb! I am sorry indeed, but I could not help it!”

  “Did your excitement also make you scream and so warn The Old Being?”

  “Truly, Lord! My only excuse is that, that giant monster strikes terror and panic into the hearts of every mortal! Look at how close a rocket came to hitting you!”

  Ulysses said, “No harm was done.”

  “Now that The Old Being is dead, may I go?” Ghlikh said. “I would like to return home.”

  “Which is where?” Ulysses said, hoping to catch him off guard.

  “As I have said, Lord, to the south. Many many marches.”

  “You may go,” Ulysses said, wondering what Ghlikh had up his nonexistent sleeve. It seemed to him that Ghlikh would be reporting on him, but to whom he could not even begin to guess. There was no sense in trying to keep him.

  “Will I see you again soon?”

  “I do not know, my Lord,” Ghlikh said with that sidelong look that irritated Ulysses. “But you may see others of my kind.”

  “I will see you sooner than you think,” Ulysses said.

  Ghlikh seemed startled. He said, “What do you mean by that, my Lord?”

  “Farewell,” Ulysses said. “And my thanks for what you did.”

  Ghlikh hesitated and then said, “Farewell, my Lord. This has been a most profitable experience for me and the most exciting of all my life.”

  He left to say goodbye to the chiefs of each of the three bands and Awina. Ulysses watched him until he flapped away and disappeared beyond a high hill.

  He said to Awina, “I think he has gone to tell somebody about the results of his spying.”