As I ran, the man gave me a look, but soon turned his attention to the mantises and the beetles. If that wasn’t problem enough, the reeds parted again, and stepping from them, first one, then another, there were two beings perhaps twenty-five-feet tall. They were humanoid in structure, but broad in the hips and narrow in the shoulders, slumped somewhat with wide mouths that went almost ear to ear, and they had a third eye in the center of their broad foreheads. They were nude except for large net bags that hung around their waists. In the netting were three or four humans on each hip. Men and women and children. They were screaming in a high-pitched language that meant about as much to me as the song of cricket. It amazed me, big as the giants were, that they were able to support these human beings in mesh bags without showing any sign of strain.
The giants had massive feet with long toes. Their hands were enormous, oversized for their bodies; with fingers so long they had an extra row of joints. They carried in one hand what I can only describe as a giant scoop, and in the other a long, loose, open net. At the back of their necks, partially on the rear of their skulls, was a strange-looking, squid-like creature. Tentacles thrashed all about like Medusa hair. I couldn’t determine if these things were in fact some kind of secondary creature, or just some structural accouterment that came with the giants at birth.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the reeds rattled again, and two more of the creatures appeared, their waists dripping in netting filled with yelling humans.
The little man was brave. He stopped, stuck the sword in the limb at his feet, quickly swung the bow off his shoulder and flicked three arrows out between his fingers, laid them all against the bow, fired one right after the other, like bullets from a chamber.
One of the arrows went into the foremost giant, took an eye, the other lodged in the throat, and a third went into the chest. The last shot was about as effective as a porcupine quill in an elephant’s knee. The eye and throat shot, however, yielded results.
The monster grabbed at the arrow, jerked it free, taking what was left of his eye with it, and then he grasped at the one in his throat. The blood was pouring from that wound like a crimson river. It had hit a vital spot, an artery, and the giant wavered and stumbled, and fell, dropping onto the netting and its contents, crushing them like overripe fruit beneath his massive body, squirting blood and innards from under him and in all directions, like lumpy jam.
The man who had loosed the arrows let out with a bellow. It was not a sound of triumph, but of heartache. He had killed one of his tormentors only to destroy a large number of his own kind. The death of his enemy brought the death of his kin. And by his own hand.
I was at his side now, and I snatched the spear off of his back with one clean move. He turned, as if to stop me, then saw me lunging forward with the spear, tossing it smoothly into the knee of one of the giants. It might as well have been a porcupine quill in an elephant’s leg, but it was well placed. The giant stumbled and went to one knee.
The mantis creatures on their beetles had held back, to let the giants have their way, but now, seeing one dead, and one with his knee down, they rushed forward with a squealing and clicking kind of war cry.
One of my new comrade’s arrows knocked a mantis from its mount. I jerked his sword from its stuck position in the tree, and sprang forward, landing on the head of one of the beetles, and driving the sword through the chitinous chest of its rider. It was a deathblow, and the mantis tumbled off in a crash that sounded like dry bones rolling over rocks.
I fell off the beetle and saw it scuttle away, but decided I could catch it with my newfound muscles. Springing forward, I landed on its back and caught the long, vine reins and pulled at them, discovered the beetle worked very much like a horse. I wheeled it and saw that the man had finally broken and ran, which was, of course, the only sensible thing to do.
I charged after him, whipping the sword above my head. One of the mantises and its beetle were closing in on him, and as I came up behind the monstrosity, it turned its head and pulled from its belt a sword, tried to wheel its insect steed about to face me.
He was too slow. I was on him. I whipped an arc with my blade and clove his head from his shoulders with a single strike. I plunged the beetle forward, into the thickening foliage, came upon my new companion, darting for cover. I called out to him. Certainly he couldn’t understand my words, but he understood my intent. He wheeled about and took my extended hand as I, with effortless ease, swung him up behind me on the beetle.
Behind us the giants and the remaining mantis and its beetle plunged toward us.
The man I had rescued swung around on the backside of the beetle, so that he was facing the rear, and let loose with a volley of arrows. I glanced back once, just in time to see the mantis catch a shaft and fall from its mount into a thick wad of greenery. Then we gained ground, leaving the remaining giants and their poor captives behind.
When we finally stopped, I tied the beetle to a limb with the reins, not knowing what else to do. My companion pulled some leaves and grass here and there, gave it to the beetle. It squatted down with its many legs beneath it, and ate.
The man looked at me and smiled. His face was V-shaped, almost elfin. His hair was very red. I had never seen hair that red. He was all muscles, but the muscles, though similar in construct to mine, seemed somehow overlong and less pronounced, as if they had been drawn taught like a bow string.
He reached out cautiously for his sword, which I still held. I gave it up with minor reluctance. Then he gently touched my shoulder with the palm of his hand, and dipped his chin quickly. I assumed this was this world’s equivalent of a handshake.
I did the same in return. He moved away from me immediately, toward a clutch of strange plants that were blue in color, rose up high and were sharp tipped. As I followed, I realized these plants looked just like the blue sword I had been wielding, only longer. The sword, sharp as it was, was in fact a natural creation, and was some form of vegetation. It grew straight up in a large natural crop, and some of the growth was blue, some of it was red. The red blades drooped slightly, and I immediately had the impression that the red ones were a younger growth of the same plant.
My new partner bent down close to the tree into which the sharp plants grew, and got hold of it there. There was no blade there, just a kind of root. He pulled at it, and it came free from the great limb on which we stood; when it popped free, it did so loudly. He had picked one of the shorter growths, about six feet in length, and I saw that at least two feet of it was of the root. The root made a natural handle, except for a mass of fibrous vines that grew out of that portion. Bending down, he placed the fresh-pulled shaft on the tree trunk, and began shaving off the vines, or perhaps a more accurate description is smaller roots, until the larger root from which they grew was smooth. He chopped off part of that, left about seven inches of the haft remaining, the rest sword.
He handed it to me. I took it carefully. There was no guard, as such, but the root flared naturally close to where the blade part of the plant began, proving a kind of protection from your hand sliding up on the sharp edge. It was amazing that such a plant made a fine weapon. It was lighter than most swords of that size I had handled, by quite a bit, and its blade was of extraordinary sharpness and rivaled cold steel. I tapped it a few times on the base of the limb on which we stood, looked up and grinned at him.
He smiled. He took his sword and smashed up the root he had cut off of the sword, the part that was more like wood, and broke it open. He pushed it under my nose. It smelled sweet, kind of like a cross between the honey of a bee and a honey suckle plant. He tasted it, made a universal yum noise to let me know it tasted good.
Handing it to me, I took it, and ripped into it with gusto. I was suddenly starving. And though it was sweet, there was a texture to it that was akin to meat, and after only a few bites, I was feeling strong again.
We moved on by beetle back until the great sun’s light thinned through the trees and the sounds of wil
d animals, and what I assumed were birds, filled the air in recognition of the coming of the night. We stopped just before dark and my companion found a long green plant that sprouted out from the side of a tall tree, the base of which was of phenomenal diameter, and could not have been reached around by the entire East Texas town from which I came if they all linked hands. It went on for what appeared to be miles.
The green shaft of the plant was hollow, and my sword, with a bit of cutting, fit right into it. He handed me my natural sword and sheath, and then went about cutting vines. He took the sword and sheath back, fastened these to it so that I soon had a harness where I could sling the sword over my shoulder.
I thanked him, and though he didn’t understand the words, again, the meaning was clear.
He took over control of the beetle, and I rode on the back, as the insect climbed up the side of the tree. There was a saddle for the rider, and an extension on which I could sit, and the back of the saddle had a kind of lift that supported me above my buttocks and kept me from falling. I also quickly learned to lean forward as the amazing bug climbed up into thicker foliage. There were also straps that I could use to harness myself in, and they were easily unstrapped; they were made of some kind of vegetation that worked much like Velcro.
I noticed there were great gaps in the larger limbs, like caverns. My companion soon picked one of these, which was perhaps ten feet high and twenty feet long, and guided our mount into it. Once there, he used some of the vines he had kept to hobble our bug, and went out and got more greenery for it to eat while I stood at the mouth of our cavern and looked out at the dying light.
It was as if the night was a curtain, and it dropped down slow and certain, and soon it was dead dark. Or at least for a moment, but then my eyes adjusted, and up through the limbs of the trees I could see a patch of night sky, and a huge star, pulsating red and blue.
When my partner returned he had some fruits for us to eat, and more food for the bug. He built a fire by using some kind of growth that lit up when touched with a blue root of some sort. I didn’t understand it exactly, but it was a little like sticking a nine-volt battery against steel wool. It blazed.
When the fire was going, he pulled some large limbs around it and laid huge leaves over those to block out the direct light of the fire. It struck me that for anyone to see us up within this wood cavern, amidst this great clutch of foliage, deep in this wild and strange jungle, would have been a great feat, and more likely an accident, but I trusted my companion’s judgment on this matter far more than mine.
After awhile, I went back to the edge of our immediate home and looked up again at the star. He joined me, stood and looked too.
“Badway,” he said.
I looked at him.
He pointed up.
“Badway de moola,” he said.
This meant nothing to me. I pointed at the star. “Badway?”
He nodded. “Badway. Badway de moola.”
Whatever this meant, we were in agreement.
Back inside he gave me some heavy and very moldable large leaves. We lay on one and wrapped the other one around us. The leaves, like some kind of cocoon, enveloped us and held us loosely in its warmth.
We slept.
Chapter Five
The Horrors
In the night the rain came. It woke me with terrific lightning blasts and rolls of thunder like bowling balls being tumbled about inside a great steel drum. I sat up and saw that my partner sat up too. He lifted a hand, in a kind of wave, and lay back down. For him, I assumed, this was not uncommon. Soon I could hear his breathing, as he went back to sleep.
I got up and stood at the mouth of the tree cavern and watched great waves of rain splash through the jungle, caught up on a cool wind. It became so ferocious I had to back into my wooden cave, pressing my body near the rear. The rain smacked all the way inside of our cubby, and soon the air smelled wet and strange, the aromas fostered by stimulated plants. The smells were mostly unknown to me, but a few had some faint familiarity to boiled coffee and rich vanilla, a twist of lemon, a stinging sensation in the nostrils like sea salt. The rest were beyond my olfactory experience. The smells came in waves. And so did the rain.
I watched it for awhile. I found myself practicing the meditation that Jack had taught me. I didn’t levitate, but I did manage to sleep well after I finished and turned back in between my sleeping leaves.
By morning, the water had seeped in, and I was damp. But I noticed a curious thing. The tree wood was sucking up the water. On earth, in this kind of environment, everything would have remained wet for a long time, and rot would have been a problem, but here, the water was absorbed deep into the tree in a short time, so the damp didn’t stick around long enough to rot anything.
Physically, I had never felt better. As I said before, my muscles seemed imbued with strength and stamina. It was as if the very air I breathed had filled my veins with energy. I was contemplating all this, when I realized my new companion was up. He looked at me in my wet clothes and grinned. He, wearing only a loincloth, had fewer garments to contend with, and no shoes, and therefore was not as encumbered by water.
Our beetle was waiting patiently for a wad of breakfast greenery that we gave it. It ate contentedly, its sad eyes more like a deer’s than an insect’s, watching us while we ate stringy vegetation from a broken gourd. The beetle crunched its morning meal contentedly, and something about our sadeyed mount made me feel affection for it. I decided to call it Butch, at least to myself.
Although I had no idea where we were going or why, or even if we were on a mission other than continued flight from what might be chasing us, I fell in line like a soldier. Pretty soon we were mounted on Butch, heading into the twisting depths of the jungle that grew up from the massive boughs of the trees. It was a jungle contained on one massive tree that covered miles. Other trees with their own jungles could be accessed by our beetle. It was unique, to say the least. Jungles growing on massive trees that intersected with other trees and jungles. It was a world of jungle, populated by little jungles. I had never imagined the possibility of such a thing.
By midday the jungle had turned warm, but not hot. The rain water had been sucked into the plants, and as we went, many of the leaves and branches reached out to touch us like curious children, and then jerked away as if frightened.
From my companion’s manner, I was certain he was watching out behind us, to see if we still had pursuers. My thought was it would hardly be worth the trouble for that great band of giants, beetles and insect riders, to pursue a mere two men when they had so many already captured. Why they had been captured I was uncertain, but my guess was slavery.
It took me awhile, but on our second day out, I was able to ascertain that my new friend’s name was Booloo. He taught me this by touching his chest and repeating the word until I understood. I taught him my name, or a derivative of it. Brax.
It took me yet another day to ascertain from the position of the sun that we were in fact not fleeing our pursuers, but circling back toward them; this seemed like a less than intelligent procedure, but I was uncertain how to pass this thought along to Booloo, nor was I positive that if I could, it would matter. I might be better off abandoning Booloo if he was going to go back into the jaws of his former captors, but I felt being alone in this world of strange plants and animals without a mount or knowledge of how to survive might be worse. I made the decision to stick with him. For what it was worth, he was now my only friend.
One afternoon as the sun began to dip, and a greenish glow slipped through the jungle, Booloo directed Butch high up into the trees (and I refer to the trees of the little jungle, not the tree that supported it). Our insect scuttled acrobatically over limbs and tangled vines and the tops of trees, with an up-and-down motion that I had finally gotten used to; it was like gaining your sea legs on a ship. It was a great way to observe the dipping sun, and I began to realize that the greenish glow that often persisted was most likely due to floating
pollen. With my sinus problems, I was surprised I was not bothered, but I began to think it was the pollen from the trees that was in fact giving me my feelings of strength and stamina.
We came to a plunge in the forest, and Booloo guided Butch down into a grove of great trees, just as the wind picked up and came twisting through the forest like a wraith. The trees we were among were tall and white and had clumps of vegetation at their tops, but were otherwise limbless, smooth, and not that big around. When the wind blew the trees rattled together at their summits and the sound of their striking one another was like the clacking of thousands of hoofbeats.
We rode Butch between the trees, and just before the sun died down behind the world, we saw what looked like a great sheet of gray gauze stretched and wound about a dozen trunks. It twisted up to a height of thirty feet. As soon as we observed it, it was no longer there.
Booloo halted Butch and swung off, dropping the reins. Butch remained in his spot as I climbed down and moved with Booloo toward what had been there only moments ago, but was now nothing more than night. But as we grew closer, Booloo drew his sword, extended it, and slashed. There was a ripping sound, and then what had seemed like growing darkness split apart and dangled down, looking now like the gray gauze it had at first resembled. Whatever it was, it was a natural camouflage. Booloo seemed excited to have discovered it, and he knelt down with his sword and cut off two large swathes. He touched it with his sword, and the sword stuck. He tugged the sword free, and waited. The stickiness, which was white as puss, began to fade. Booloo reached down and picked it up. It was obvious it was no longer sticky. Once cut from its source, that aspect of it appeared to dissolve.
Sojan the Swordsman ; Under the Warrior Sky Page 14