The Stone God Awakens Page 8

  While waiting, Ulysses had his people use their stone axes to build six large rafts. In about an hour the bat-man swooped down and made a landing on another liana complex. He crawled onto the branch and reported that he had seen a number of the leopard-men but no sign of their village.

  Ulysses then told the bat-man that he wanted him to fly on down the riverlet and scout. He did not want to be ambushed while they were on the rafts; they were especially vulnerable on these. Ghuakh would remain with him. Ghlikh did not comment. He took off and was gone a half hour. He had seen nothing in the dense vegetation.

  The plant life was not the only plentiful life here. There were scores of butterflies of many colors, bearing intricate designs on their wings and backs. A dragonfly with a four-foot wingspread zoomed over the water, dipping now and then to seize large waterspiders that skated on pontoon feet on the surface. Sometimes, a leaf rustled, and Ulysses glimpsed cockroaches as big as his hand. A flying lizard coasted by; its ribs extended far out on either side and a thin membrane grew between the ribs. Once, on the opposite bank, an otter dashed out and dived into the water. This time, it was not hunting, it was escaping a hunter. A bird about three feet high, a smaller variety of the giant plains roadrunner, came after the otter. It dived in after the animal, and neither appeared again.

  Ulysses sat for a while, thinking, while the others either stood guard or sprawled on the mossy vegetation that overgrew much of the branch. The source of the riverlet was a large hole at the juncture of the trunk and the branch. According to Ghlikh, the tree pumped up water and poured it out at various spots like this. The water either ran through the channel, which inclined imperceptibly until it cascaded when the branch took an abrupt declination, or, often, when the branch ran horizontally, additional springs on the way kept the water flowing, sometimes even up slight inclines.

  This riverlet apparently ran for many many miles. Ghlikh estimated about thirty-five miles, though he was not sure. The branch, like so many, zigzagged. There were even branches that looped in on themselves.

  At last, Ulysses rose to his feet. Awina, who had been lying by him, also stood up. He gave the order, and he stepped onto the first raft. Some Wufea got onto the raft with him, and they shoved off with long poles they had cut from a bamboo-like plant.

  The current ran at a sluggish five miles an hour at this point. The water was about twenty feet deep at the center of the channel and was clear for the first six feet. After that, it became murky. Ghlikh said that that was due to plants which grew from the bottom and released a brown liquid from time to time. He did not know what purpose the brown liquid served, but it doubtless had its use in the ecology of The Tree. Nor did he know why the liquid did not rise to the top and so discolor the entire stream.

  There were fish in this stream. There were several varieties and sizes, but the largest was about two and a half feet long and looked like a red-and-black-spotted jew-fish. They seemed to be plant eaters. A smaller, much more active fish with a pike’s long underjaw fed off the water-skating spiders and also dashed after the frogs. But these usually escaped or else turned and gave battle. They had no teeth, but they clung to the side of the fish and scraped at the eyes. Once, a pike sheared off a frog’s hind leg, and then the others closed in and tore the wounded animal to bits.

  The raftmen kept the rafts close enough to the banks so that they could reach the bottom or even the banks and shove with their poles. They worked together at the low commands of the chiefs, shoving with a grunt as the chiefs counted. Others stood with bows and arrows ready.

  The water level was almost up to the top of the banks, and the plants grew thickly along the banks. Sometimes, they reached out and into the waters. And there were trees which had grown at a slant over the stream. These were alive with birds and monkeys and other creatures. The monkeys had thicker fur than their fellows at a lower altitude.

  If it were not for the threat of the leopardpeople, Ulysses would have enjoyed this trip. It would have been nice to have sat down and just drifted, like Huck Finn in a stream, that Mark Twain would not have imagined.

  But this was not to be. Everyone had to be alert, ready to go into action on a moment’s notice. And all, he supposed, expected a spear to fly out from behind the dense green and scarlet plants at any moment.

  Two tense hours went by and then the rafts came out onto a widening of the stream almost large enough to be called a lake. Ulysses had seen other branches which sometimes spread out, but he had never been on one before. The water also became deeper, and the lakelet was four hundred feet wide. To get across, the rafts could either be pushed by the current, which had become very sluggish, or they could stay close to the banks, where the bottom was shallow enough for the poles to be used. Ulysses elected to stay in the middle where, at least, they could relax for a moment, since they would be beyond the reach of Khrauszmiddum javelins.

  A moment later, he regretted his choice. A herd of beasts that looked from a distance like hippos waddled from the vegetation on shore and plunged into the water. Snorting and blowing, they cavorted around, coming closer to the rafts but seemingly not on purpose.

  Ten yards away, they could be seen to be giant rodents which had apparently adapted to aquatic life. Their nostrils and eyes were on top of their heads, and their ears were provided with flaps of skin. They had lost all their hair except for a brush like a horse’s mane on the back of their massive necks.

  At this moment, on cue as if they were in a jungle movie, three large canoes appeared in the lake. Two came from behind them and one from the exit to the lake. Both canoes were of painted wood with snake heads projecting from the bow, and each held nineteen leopard-men, eighteen paddlers and a chief in the bow.

  A few seconds later, Ulysses saw several huge creatures slither out of the plants on the bank and into the water. They looked like short-snouted, legless crocodiles.

  Ulysses opened a waterproofed leather bag on the floor of his raft and took out a bomb. Piaumiiwu, a warrior whose duty it was to keep a lighted cigar in his mouth at all times, except when a fire was handy, handed him the cigar. Ulysses puffed on it until its end was a glow and then touched it to the fuse. It sputtered and then began to emit a thick black smoke which the wind took toward the two pursuing canoes. He held it until the fuse was about ready to disappear, and then tossed it in the middle of the hipporats.

  The bomb exploded just before it struck the water. The beasts dived, and most of them did not come up at once, but one emerged just on the other side of Ulysses’ raft. Its body, boiling out of the lake, sent water washing around the ankles of those on the raft. It snorted and dived again, and this time came up under the last raft, which tipped over. Yelling, a number of Wagarondit slid into the water, and some bags of supplies and bombs went into the lake, too. Then the behemoth dived once more, and Ulysses’ second bomb blew up in the air just as it came up once again.

  The leopard-men had been yelling at their quarry, but with the first bomb they fell silent. They also quit paddling and did not resume immediately, even though their chiefs screamed orders at them. By then, Awina had passed out several more bombs, and the best throwers had lit up their bombs. Four went out at the same time, one landing near three great hipporats. Three fell short of the two war canoes, but the explosions scared the Khrauszmiddum. They began to veer away, probably intending to stay out of range of the bombs but hoping to be close enough to cast spears.

  The archers got into action then, and a number of paddlers and one chief fell with arrows in them. At the same time three archers fell, run through by spears thrown from the bank.

  And a hipporat came up out of the water as if ejected by a catapult, seized the side of a war canoe with its two huge front paws, and pulled the canoe over on its side. The entire complement, screaming, went into the water.

  There was a furious boiling here and there. Ulysses saw one of the limbless crocodiles rolling over and over with the leg of a leopard-man in its short jaws. The reptiles were also
among his own men, those who had fallen into the water when the hipporat had tilted the raft up.

  There was so much going on, Ulysses could not keep track of it all. He concentrated on the bank, where the greatest danger was. The ambushers were only evident now and then, seen through breaks in the vegetation as they threw spears. Ulysses directed the archers to fire into the thick green walls along the bank. Then he got the attention of the chiefs on the other rafts and told them to fire into the vegetation also. These transmitted the orders as soon as the men in the water had been pulled out.

  The third war canoe, the one which had come in from the exit, was commanded by a chief brave to the point of foolishness. He stood in the prow of the canoe, shaking his spear and urging his paddlers to greater efforts. Evidently he meant to ram the first raft or to ride the canoe right up on over it and then board it.

  The Wufea archers put an arrow through his thigh and six arrows through as many paddlers. But he knelt behind the snakeheads and shouted at his men to go on. The canoe came on, a little slower but still too swiftly to suit Ulysses. He lit another bomb and threw it just as a number of paddlers cast their paddles away and stood up to throw their spears. The canoe cut the water on a collision course with the raft. Nothing, apparently, could stop it.

  Ulysses’ bomb blew the front part of the canoe off and the chief with it. Water rushed in and flooded the rest of the hull, and it dived at an angle and disappeared momentarily just short of the raft.

  The bomb had gone off so close that it deafened and blinded everybody on the raft. But Ulysses, his eyes streaming, saw what was happening a moment later. Most of the shattered vessel’s crew were floating stunned or dead on the water, and then they began to go under as many-toothed jaws grabbed them.

  The leopard-men on shore were still taking a heavy toll with their spears. Ulysses lit another bomb and threw it. It fell into the water, exploding just after landing. A great gout of water was thrown up on the bank, but it could not have done any injury. However, it must have panicked the spearmen, because their fire ceased. Ulysses ordered the rafts poled ashore. To stay in the lake was too dangerous. The legless crocodiles were making the lake seethe; he did not know where they had all come from. And the hippo-rats were attacking the men in the water.

  The other two canoes, filled with dead or dying leopard-men, were drifting away. The arrow fire had been deadly. It was a tribute to the courage of his people, and also to his discipline, that they had kept up a very effective barrage.

  Now they turned their undivided attention to the foliage, and the resulting screams told of unseen hits. When the rafts hit the bank, Ulysses and his men piled out, grabbing the bags and quivers, and then plunged a few yards into the jungle. Here they stopped to reorganize.

  Ulysses sent some men back to the rafts with orders to pole them down, close to the bank, until they reached the far end of the lake. He counted his men. Twenty had died. There were a hundred left, of whom ten were wounded. And their journey was, in effect, just begun.

  They marched back along the bank without suffering any more casualties. At the end of the lake, they caught the drifting rafts, got back onto them, and resumed their downstream trip. From there the channel narrowed, and the current picked up speed. After a while, there must have been a definitely steeper incline to the branch, because they started to move at an estimated fifteen miles an hour.

  Ulysses asked Ghlikh if it was safe to continue on the raft. Ghlikh assured him it was safe for another ten miles. Then they should put ashore, because the riverlet became falls in another three miles.

  Ulysses thanked him, though he disliked even talking to the two batpeople. During the battle, they had cowered behind the archers and held each other in their arms.

  Ulysses acknowledged that he had no right to expect them to take part in the battle. This was not their fight. But he could not avoid a suspicion that Ghlikh must have seen the ambushers. He had flown close above the river level and so should have seen the one war canoe, anyway. Still, it was possible that he had not. Also, if he was leading them into a trap, why had he stayed with them? He had been in almost as much danger as the rest.

  On reflection, Ulysses decided that he was not being fair. He was letting his distaste influence his judgment. Not that he trusted them. He still felt that they were working for whoever Wurutana really was, or possibly for their own people.

  The rafts continued at about the same speed. After a while, they heard the soft thunder of the cascades. He let the rafts speed along for another three minutes and then gave the order to abandon them. As instructed, those on the edge of the rafts leaped ashore first. The ranks behind them moved up and jumped. Two fell into the water when the rafts bumped into the bank. One was caught and smashed between raft and bank; the other was swept away.

  Those remaining on the rafts threw all supplies except the bombs onto the banks. Ulysses did not trust the stability of the powder to last under the impact of hitting the ground. The bombs were tossed into the hands of those ashore.

  He was the last one off. He watched the six rafts being carried along, bump-bumping into the moss-covered wood of the bank. Then the channel curved away, and the rafts were hidden by the thick foliage. A few miles on, the party came to the falls. The riverlet was raging through the narrowing channel, and it arced out over the trunk of The Tree and fell into the abyss. Ulysses calculated that it was eight thousand feet to the ground, which made this waterfall about twice as high as the highest of his day, the Angel cataract in Venezuela.

  The party transferred to another branch which had only a small stream, about ten feet wide and three deep, in its channel. They went along the bank, though they could have gone faster if they had waded. But there were beautifully-colored, very poisonous snakes in the water and a few of the legless crocodiles. Ulysses decided to call these snoligosters, after a similar animal of the Paul Bunyan legends.

  Before dusk, they made another transfer via a liana complex. They proceeded along this branch until Ghlikh saw a huge hole at the juncture of a trunk and a branch on a nearby trunk. He said that they could lodge in this hole, although they might have to drive out whatever animals were using it for a home.

  “There are many such holes, quite large, in The Tree,” he said. “Usually where a branch starts out from the trunk.”

  “I’ve never seen any before,” Ulysses said.

  “You didn’t know where to look,” Ghlikh said, smiling.

  Ulysses was silent for a while. He could not get over his suspicions of this creature. Yet he might be doing him an injustice. And Ghlikh was probably even more eager than he to find a comfortable, easily defended place. On the other hand, a good defensive place could be a good place for an enemy to bottle you up in. What if the leopard-men followed them here and then surrounded it?

  At last, he made up his mind. His people needed a place where they could relax, relatively speaking. Also, his wounded needed tending, and some of them would have to be carried if they pushed on right now.

  “Very well,” he said. “We’ll camp in that hole for tonight.”

  He did not say that he planned to stay there for a few days. He did not want Ghlikh to know anything of what he was planning.

  There was no occupant to be driven out, though cracked bones and fresh droppings indicated that the owner, a large animal, might be coming back soon. He ordered the excrement carried out and thrown over the side, and the party moved in. The entrance was about twenty feet wide and seven high; the cave was a hemisphere about forty feet across. The walls were so smooth and polished, they looked as if they had been carved out. Ghlikh assured him that this was a natural phenomenon.

  Dead wood was brought in and piled up to block off most of the entrance, and a fire was built. The wind carried some smoke inside but not enough to make it too uncomfortable.

  Ulysses sat with his back against the glossy wall, and, after a while, Awina sat down next to him. She licked her arms and legs and belly for a while and then applie
d the cleansing saliva to her hands and wiped them over her face and ears. It was amazing what the saliva could do. In a few minutes, her fur, which had reeked of sweat and blood, was odorless. The Wufea paid for this with hairballs in the stomach, but they took a medicine of various herbs to get rid of the balls.

  Ulysses liked the results of the cleansing, but he disliked seeing them do it. The actions were too animal-like.

  “The warriors are disheartened,” she said after sitting by him in silence for many minutes.

  “Indeed?” he said. “They do seem quiet. But I had thought that was because they are very tired.”

  “There is that. But they are also gloomy. They whisper among themselves. They say that you, of course, are a great god, being the stone god. But here we are on the very body of Wurutana himself. And you are a tiny god compared to Wurutana. You have not been able to keep all of us alive. We are only a little way on our expedition, and we have lost many.”

  “I made it clear before we started that some would die,” Ulysses said.

  “You did not say all would die.”

  “Not all have died.”

  “Not yet,” she said.

  Then, seeing him frown, she continued, “I do not say that, Lord! They say that! And not all of them, by any means! But enough so that even those who have spoken are pondering the words of fear. And some have spoken of the Wuggrud.”

  She used the word Ugorto, her pronunciation of the—to her—difficult sounds and difficult combinations thereof.

  “The Wuggrud? Ah, yes, Ghlikh spoke of them. They are supposed to be giants who eat strangers. Huge ill-smelling creatures. Tell me, Awina, have you or any of our people ever seen a Wuggrud?”

  Awina turned her dark-blue eyes toward him. She licked her black lips as if they had suddenly become dry.

  “No, Lord. None of us have seen them. But we have heard of them. Our mothers have told us stories about them. Our ancestors knew them when we lived closer to Wurutana. And Ghlikh has seen them.”