Eventually there would be a pause while a couple of the hunters waited for a fresh supply of thorns and tank seeds to be brought up to them. Now and then one of the spearmen would grow too tired to strike any longer and would have to be replaced by a reserve.
Then the Akadi would gain another few centimeters, would press the line of ironwood back a little further. Nor were casualties absent among the defending people. A man or woman might tire and slip on the never-too-certain footing of cubble and branch and would have to be helped back by companions. Another few centimeters lost, if not the defender.
Given an endless supply of jacari thorns and tank seeds, and inhuman reserves of strength, Cohoma estimated the tribe could continue to fight the Akadi with minimal losses. But they couldn’t prevent the omnivores from gaining ground. Once a centimeter of footing was lost to the invaders, it could not be regained. That living torrent would not be forced back.
But the line held, held with the determination of churchmen. Those in the front rank who finally collapsed from exhaustion continued to be replaced. Yet, there were only so many fighters in the village, and now the replacements were growing fatigued as well. Occasionally an Akadi would slip under a faltering spear to grab a leg or arm with steely tentacles. Then an axeman would have to hurry to cut the monster away, for once having a grip they would let go only in death.
Steadily the little knot of humans was forced backward, back toward the tree-vines themselves which formed the natural and last line of defense for the Home-tree. Once through the pods, the Akadi would begin devouring the body of the tree itself. Then it would be only a matter of minutes before irreparable damage was done.
Logan knew what would happen. The villagers would throw everything into a final futile effort to push the Akadi back. For a moment, heads, and arms would rise above the writhing tentacles. Then all—men, women, children—would be engulfed by the unthinking mass, leaving the tree to perish despite their sacrifice.
The fighting raged continuously. It was not as noisy as a war between men would have been, but neither was it silent. Along the line of spearmen, men and women shouted encouragement to each other, defiance at their dog-sized tormentors, while the Akadi pressed blindly forward, chattering like a million castanets.
Slowly, grudgingly, the people gave way to the pressure of the untiring Akadi. The army was three or four meters from the first winding pod-vine when shouts traveled up and down the line of defenders. Logan recognized the voices of the shaman and the chiefs Sand and Joyla, that of Losting, and several other hunters. A sudden flurry of thorns from the snufflers held the Akadi for a moment while the line parted and fell to the sides. But the army did not pursue, so the living stream moved on, eating as it went. They began to gnaw at the nourishing bark of the tree, eager for the living wood beneath, as others rushed on to the first vines.
Cohoma felt a hand at his arm, saw one of the hunters pulling at him. The man’s tone was urgent. He followed him into higher branches, Logan with them. Even as they ran, she turned to gaze over her shoulder as a shout rose behind them. She saw the big nuts dropping, to land and burst among the slithering line of Akadi. As they burst, a fine powder gushed forth. It shone iridescent in the light of the receding sun. The Akadi slowed, stopped, began to paw among themselves with legs and thrashing tentacles. They tumbled over and over on each other, fell and rolled on their backs, beating against one another, against the wood of the Home, in a sudden, inexplicable frenzy.
Cohoma found himself racing down toward the Akadi with others, stabbing with his spear, only to withdraw it and stab again. He was amazed at the ease with which it punctured the surprisingly soft bodies. Green blood covered his lance. Nearby he saw Logan stabbing and hacking with her own spear.
A violent pain stabbed through his ankle. Looking down he saw that one of the Akadi had somehow slipped clear of the re-formed line of spearmen and had locked three tentacles firmly around his leg. Multiple teeth were chewing at his lower calf. He tried to get his spear around, couldn’t and found himself falling as his damaged leg gave way under him. Then something cut the creature between the second and third eye, pierced completely through the nightmare shape.
“Thanks, Kimi. Jesus, get it off me!” She stabbed again and green ichor squirted all over them, but the triangular teeth refused to relinquish their grip. Eventually she had to use an axe to cut the tentacles clear and then pry the jaws apart. Bright red circles covered his calf where the suckers had held. He had a steadily bleeding square wound in the back of the ankle. Using Logan as support, he limped clear of the fight. A small bottle of spray from their one survival kit stopped the bleeding. Coagulation set in immediately. A simple self-adhesive bandage was slapped into place.
“Didn’t see where the bugger came from,” he told her through clenched teeth. Sweat was standing out on his forehead and he wiped it off.
Logan studied the wound beneath the transparent bandage. “You’re going to have a square scar. Going to be fun explaining that.”
“I hope I have someone to explain it to …”
His words were drowned out by a roar that shook the Home-tree itself. The band of humans redoubled their efforts as they were joined by dozens of powerful green shapes.
A massive paw would rise and descend. Every time it did so, an Akadi would die, spine or skull crushed. For once the furcots roused themselves en masse from their daily sleep. For once their services were offered without consideration or discussion. The muscular hexapods wreaked havoc along the line of Akadi. Logan recognized Geeliwan, Losting’s furcot, among them; but there was no sign of Ruumahum.
One enormous furcot rose up from the midst of the fray with several Akadi hanging from him, their tentacles seeking vainly for a vulnerable place in that thick fur, teeth snapping and biting futilely. A second furcot appeared alongside the first, began picking the furious Akadi off his companion’s body, methodically crushing them.
Occasionally a furcot would be submerged by the stream, only to rise and dip like a breaching whale. However, thick fur, tough hide, and tremendous strength could not prevail forever against the untiring army. Every so often a furcot would disappear in the orange-red river of death and not rise again.
Then when it happened, it was unmistakable.
“Look!” Cohoma gasped at Logan for support and pointed. “They’re turning back, retreating. They’ve been beaten!”
Indeed, the Akadi had ceased moving forward, were in fact moving backward, back into the tunnel they had eaten through the world. They took nothing with them, leaving their dead and dying behind and trampling the injured and maimed in their retreat.
Now the people of the Home, some too exhausted to move, watched as their more energetic comrades moved about with axes and clubs—carefully, lest they slip on the blood-soaked cubbles and branches—dispatching those of the killers too crippled to flee.
The furcots gathered to themselves, idly killing a still biting Akadi, licking and grooming each other’s wounds. Some hunted through the branches and vines for those of the brethren who would no longer gather with them.
The exhilaration was temporary. Logan and Cohoma watched as the human survivors went among the legion of corpses, carefully searching among the mutilated and bleeding for any who still lived. Some were missing arms and legs, others heads or parts of same, while still others lay with their insides strewn over bright green leaves and blossoms, still beautiful in the last rays of the distant setting sun.
“By the Ordainments, they’re a courageous bunch. It’s almost enough to make me regret—”
“Shussh,” Logan cautioned him, nodding at the big hunter walking toward them.
A series of square-edged gashes decorated one side of his chest. Some had been crudely bandaged with long thin strips of a certain leaf. A snuffler rested loosely on his right arm and he carried a club in the other. There was hardly a centimeter of his body that was not covered with the tiny crimson circlets left by the probing suckers of the Akadi.
“Beat them?” Losting turned to stare wildly at them, and they recoiled at the naked blood-fury in his eyes. “Beat them—no. Do you think they stopped because of our efforts?” He hesitated. “We slowed them, true. It was a good fight. One I’d be proud to tell to my children. We slowed them enough to win the day … the day only. But stopped them, no. They stopped themselves.”
“Stopped themselves!” Logan blurted in spite of herself.
“Look about you,” Losting advised. “What do you see?”
Both giants turned their attention back to the battlefield. “Very little,” Logan told him. “It’s getting too dark.”
“Yes, it is getting too dark. For the Akadi as well as us. They have stopped because the day is at its end. While the night-rain falls they will sleep, to rise again tomorrow and come on with as much determination as they did today. We have only so many jacari for the snufflers, only so much blood. I do not see us holding them for another night. But we will try. We would not have stopped them today but for the furcots—and for this.”
He bent and reached down with the tip of the club, apparently slipping its flatter side under something. Logan and Cohoma leaned forward. At first they saw nothing. Then a last bit of daylight reflected off something tiny and bright as a jewel.
“That little thing?” she wondered, reaching forward with a thumb. “I can squash it like an ant.”
Losting moved the club aside before she did just that. “I’m not fond of you giants, though you fought well enough this day. But I would not allow my worst enemy to touch the seed of the adderut.” Rising, he looked around until he found a severed tentacle of a dead Akadi. He brought it back and laid it before them.
“Watch.” He tilted the club, shook it gently. The tiny metallic-hued, multilegged thing slid onto the tentacle. As soon as it made contact it seemed to disappear.
Cohoma stared harder in the fast fading light. “Where’d it go?”
“Look hard.”
Nothing happened. Then Cohoma thought he detected a slight swelling under the skin of the tentacle. Several minutes passed, during which the swelling became a bulge as big as a pebble, then a toe. Losting took out his knife and used it to touch the top of the bulge. The taut skin burst and a tiny purple ball popped out. It began rolling, rolling, toward the edge of the branch. He put out the club and stopped it, rolled it back. Cohoma and Logan could just see a tiny, many-legged spot near the base of the bloated globe—the original gemlike creature.
“That is the dust of the adderut,” Losting explained. “When it bursts, it scatters millions of these,” and he indicated the tiny bug. “If they touch wood or plant, nothing happens. But should they touch flesh, whether of man or furcot or Akadi, they burrow into it and … eat. Ah, how they eat!” This last was uttered with enough relish to make Logan slightly ill.
Cohoma was feeling none too well himself. This revelation was enough to make even an experienced, detached observer a little queasy.
“See,” Losting suggested, nudging the purple ball with the edge of the club, “how it moves, tries to run. The flesh under the skin where it burrows is quickly softened and consumed by the dust-bug. When one of these scrambles clear of its host and falls to a soft plant, the legs bury in and become roots. The pulp contained in this gross obscene body turns green as it is converted into food. Eventually the sac bursts and a new adderut plant grows on a new host.”
“Fascinating,” admitted Logan, who was turning slightly green herself. She was enough of a scientist to hold on to her last meal. But somehow this botanical marvel nauseated her in a way the day-long carnage had not. She could imagine several of them landing on her own body, digging in, eating. “Are they mobile little plants,” she asked hurriedly, “or insects, or what?”
“Maybe a little of both,” Cohoma suggested. “You’ve noticed the preponderance of green in animal life here—the furcots, the blood of the Akadi. I’m beginning to think, Kimi, that the usual clear-cut dividing line between plant and animal may not exist on this world.”
“Even so,” she replied, “this is one line of research I’ll be glad to let somebody else pursue when we get back to the station.”
Losting was not sure of the meaning of all their words. “True, they are dangerous things to fight with. One must work hard to emfol an adderut. If one should burst while being cut clear …” He didn’t need to finish the thought.
“No wonder the Akadi column halted,” Logan observed. “That whole forward section must have been literally eaten inside out in a couple of minutes.” She looked nervously at the wooden ground they were standing on. “What happens to the millions of those things that didn’t get anything to eat? Are we going to find them in bed tonight?”
Losting shook his head. “Their furious speed and energy is necessary, for those that fail to find sustenance immediately upon release die quickly. All will be dead before the sun is down. You need not fear them. Nor,” he added regretfully, “need the Akadi. We have no more adderuts. They grow far apart and infrequently. Though I wish for a thousand now, I cannot honestly say this makes me sorry.”
Logan stepped on the pulsating monstrosity. It burst, purple-green dye staining the wood of the branch.
They followed the hunter back into the village.
“What happens tomorrow, then?” Logan asked. “Is it completely hopeless?”
“There is always hope till the last is dead,” Losting reminded them. That did not seem encouraging to the giants. “We have our snufflers,” he said as he hefted the green wood weapon meaningfully, “and our spears and axes and our furcots. Then there are still the pollen-pods of the Home itself. After they are gone …” He shrugged. “I have my hands and my teeth.”
He left them. Logan looked after him while Cohoma muttered, “That’s great … commendable. I think we’ll do better taking our chances—poor as they may be—in the forest. I don’t feel quite so indebted to this noble tree.” He looked around at the sheltering trunklets. “At least we’ll die on the way home, not in defense of some stinking vegetable!”
Exhaustion had a single advantage. Sleep was no problem for even the most worried of the humans in the Home.
The last drops were still making their way down from the upper levels of the canopy as the tired tribe of humans once more prepared for the Akadi assault. Once again the hunters took up their positions high in the branches, snufflers ready, making quiet promises that each precious jacari would take an Akadi with it. When the toxic thorns were gone, they would lay snufflers aside and move down with axes and clubs to fight alongside their families. And once more the thin line of spearmen set themselves in defiant silence across the path along which the Akadi army would soon crawl—set themselves there knowing that those who should back them up now lay supine in the village, unmoving, asleep.
Cohoma and Logan took places well up in the curve of one of the major Home-tree branches. They would have an excellent view of the coming fight, be a little less anxious to throw themselves into battle. If Losting’s pessimism was born out, they would work their way back into the village, gather what was available in the way of provisions, and circle around the Akadi column. Then they would strike off southwest by compass, toward the distant station. Maybe they would reach it, maybe not, but at least they would have their chance.
Logan thought she heard a distant, feathery rustling far back in the undergrowth. The Akadi were rising, shaking off the lethargy of night, getting ready to ravage and destroy and kill again.
The giants readied themselves, as did the snuffler-armed hunters. So did the line of spearmen and their covering axe-wielders. They had no scouts out to warn of the Akadi’s approach. They were not needed. A few moments of advance warning meant nothing now. It was known where they would come from. Every man, woman, and child hefted a weapon and stared at the green hole in the forest.
Logan w
hispered to her partner, her knuckles around the shaft of the spear turning white. “Remember, if the tribe starts going under, we get out fast.”
“What makes you think the vine barrier will open for us?”
“There’ll be some last-ditch fighters going through. Remember, the vines are the tree’s last line of defense. We can always grab a kid from the line and use him. Besides,” she added coolly, “we’ve been eating the fruit from this tree for several days. We might have accumulated enough of the appropriate chemicals for the tree to recognize us, too.”
The rustling increased, but it seemed at once louder and more distant. The noise was chilling. Could the Akadi experience anything as complex as anger, she wondered? Where they preparing themselves with some furious war cries and speeches? What kind of brains did those orange horrors possess? Did all thoughts fuse in a single mindless evil, or were they capable of emotions beyond desire for killing, eating, and sleep? She had no way of telling.
Long moments came and went, and the volume of distant castanetlike sounds neither diminished nor increased, was loud enough to drown out all other forest sounds. Those manning the line of spears before the green tunnel were showing signs of edginess now. The hunters in the branches shifted constantly, nervously into new positions. All the while the sun climbed higher in the green sky. And still that orifice of hell declined to reveal its multiple horror.
Then there was a definite, if slight, motion detected at the far end of the tunnel, and shouts sounded up and down the line of defenders—shouts almost of relief. For it was the steady, nerve-breaking waiting that eroded the determination and broke the concentration of the hunters and spearmen and was worse by far than actual battle. However, there was no mass trembling in the herbaceous fronds fringing the tunnel’s mouth, no swaying of branches under massed weight. A few leaves rustled lightly as the first shape became visible. But it was not the Akadi. A human shout came from the tunnel, rising above the maddening, distant din. A second shape appeared alongside the first, thick green fur matted with rain, triple eyes half-closed in sleep.
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