by Джеффри Лорд
Pterin had that knife out now, and was holding it at arm's length while his lips moved in silent prayer. But Blade noticed that his eyes never left the orank as it swung about them in great circles. There was nothing wrong with Pterin's courage, at least.
The orank's circles were getting wider now. On each one the creature swept a little closer to the men in the baskets. Now Blade was watching it as intently as the priest was. Would it strike blindly, directly at the men? They had the remotest sort of fighting chance if it did that. Or would it have the wit to slash the rope apart, dropping the men helplessly to their death in the jungle below? They were doomed if it did that. They would plummet helplessly down to smash themselves to pulp on the ground, and the orank could feed at leisure on the remains.
At the outermost point of its widest circle, the creature suddenly turned. It turned so sharply that for a moment the great black wings were almost vertical. Above the toothed beak Blade saw two gigantic red eyes glaring at him. Then the orank leveled out and lunged in toward the men in the baskets.
As it turned, Blade braced himself as best he could and raised both hands. It was coming straight at him; beak open, eyes glaring. Now he could hear the beat of the wings and the creature's breathing, smell its breath, rank with filth and decay. It screamed again, and then it was on him.
As the beak drove forward, seeking to snatch his head from his shoulders in a single snap, Blade ducked. The beak swept past him, the savage teeth clicking shut on empty air. As the creature's neck came within range, Blade chopped down hard with the edges of his hands, right hand first, then left. He did not expect to break the foot-thick neck, but he knew the blow would startle a creature that must be expecting a sitting and helpless prey.
It did. The orank let out a scream of surprise and pain, and did a complete somersault in midair. It did not pull out of its dive until it was a hundred feet below the two men. By the time it had circled back for another attack, Blade was ready again. He noticed Pterin looking at him with interest.
The orank made its second lunge. Again Blade ducked, again his hands lashed out in a deadly double stroke with all his enormous strength behind it. The creature's tough hide bruised and scraped Blade's skin, but this time along with the scream Blade heard bone crack. Once more the creature flipped over in midair and dove away, and this time it fell almost five hundred feet before it could recover.
Perhaps he should try to grab the creature's neck the next time, strangle it or break the neck? No, it was too strong for that. It might pull him out of the basket in its final struggles even if he killed it. And then the orank was coming in for the third pass, and Blade crouched ready to meet it.
The orank was in a rage now, and also in pain. It shook its head from side to side as it came in. As the orank lunged, it misjudged the height of the still descending basket. Its darting head shot under the basket, striking it a tremendous blow that nearly jolted Blade over the side. But the shock also brought the orank to a dead stop in midair. For seconds it hung there, pressed hard against the basket.
Those seconds were all Blade needed. His left hand chopped down even harder than before against the vulnerable neck. His right lashed out sideways, against the wing thrust hard against the frame. The wing-bone was large, but like that of any flying creature, it was fragile. In both neck and wing Blade felt bone shatter under his blows.
The orank gave its most terrible scream yet, and dropped away, head twisting feebly on its crippled neck, the broken wing trailing as it frantically struggled to stay in the air with the good wing. It kept on dropping, with Blade watching to see if by some miracle it would recover again and return to the attack. It did not. It kept dropping, until it vanished in the mist that was beginning to gather below.
Blade was sitting back in the basket, gasping for breath, when he heard a sudden, unmistakable, crack of breaking wood. Moving very gently and cautiously, he turned to look at the frame.
«Damn,» he said.
Both of the poles of the frame were cracked where the orank's wing had struck them. In the fast-vanishing light Blade could not see how bad the breaks were, but he knew one thing. His life and Pterin's depended on their remaining motionless.
«Pterin,» he called across to the man in the other basket.
«Yes, warrior-indeed you are a strong spirit, and-«
«Never mind the compliments. The frame poles are cracked. Don't move. Don't even breathe deeply. How much farther down is it?»
There was a long silence from the other basket, as if Blade's words had struck Pterin dumb. Then the answer came softly, as if the priest were afraid speaking aloud might worsen the creaks. «We must be over halfway.»
Much good that will do us if the frames break now, thought Blade. When you are falling, a height of two thousand feet is no better than a height of a mile. He took a very shallow breath and gently shifted to a more comfortable position in the cramped basket. Then he settled down to wait. There was nothing else to do.
They were plunging downward at more than two hundred feet a minute. At that rate it would take another ten minutes or more for them to reach the bottom. Would the frame hold together that long? On the other hand, would going down faster increase the swinging motion, increase the strain, increase the risk of that final fatal break? Blade wished he knew. He also wished there was some way to get word up to the crew of the windlass now so far above.
Now they seemed to be going down faster. Had the windlass crew seen another orank, or were they just afraid of one? Well, so was Blade. Another attack was the last thing the battered frame could stand. And falling down through many hundreds of feet of damp twilight to go splat on the floor of a forest in some strange dimension seemed a silly way to go.
Less than a thousand feet to go now. They were definitely sinking faster. But the frame was swinging back and forth like a pendulum now, and the more rope above it the wider the swing. Blade found himself having to hold on to the frame to keep from being pitched out, listening to the ominous creakings, listening for the one final crack that would hurl him out into space and down.
It did not come. They passed five hundred feet, and Blade saw color returning to the priest's face. The pendulum motion was easing too. The sheer weight of the rope now payed out was beginning to hold them steady, perhaps. Blade hoped so. But his ears were still listening for that sound that would quite literally be the crack of doom.
Four hundred feet, three hundred, two hundred. Blade found he could breathe normally, and unclench hands that had been clamped to the frame like steel claws. Another minute or so, and they would be safe. The descent was slowing now as the windlass crew eased off in paying out the rope. Blade took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh.
Cr-r-raaaak!
Blade felt the basket lurch and sag. He did not need to look at the frame to know what had happened. Instead he looked down. In the darkness it was hard to be sure-but did he see water glimmering faintly below? He had barely time for a flash of hope, when the frames parted entirely and his basket plunged downward.
As it did so, it turned over, throwing Blade out. For a moment he was head down and certain he was going to fall into water. But would it be deep enough to break his fall from nearly two hundred feet up? As these thoughts flashed through his mind, his body was straightening itself. His only hope was to enter the water with his body absolutely straight. Legs went down, head went up, arms went still farther up until they were above his head. Now he was looking up at the sky as the air rushed past, the approaching water below, just enough time to wonder if the cloudy dark sky above would be the last sight in his life
He hit the water with an impact that seemed to break every bone in his body, dislocate every joint, and flay the skin off the dismantled skeleton. The water closed over him. As he sensed its chill, he realized that he was still alive. His body was still straight when it arrowed into the muddy bottom.
He went into the mud up to his knees and felt a terrible suction like an enormous mouth trying
to draw him in deeper. He kicked with his feet, churned with his arms, felt foul-smelling debris float up past him from the muck below. Then he broke free. He had one moment of utter certainty that his lungs were going to burst before he reached the air-then his head broke surface.
His lungs filled in one convulsive gasp, and his vision slowly cleared. As it did so, the surface of the water suddenly lit up, as a dozen men with yellow-orange torches stepped out onto the bank of the pond. One of them shouted, and his arm shot out. Unmistakably, he was pointing at Blade. The others waved their swords and joined their shouts to the first man's.
Blade said «Damn!» a third time. If the banks of the pond had been unguarded, and the road into the forest clear. . Well, there was nothing to do now but once more await a better opportunity. Taking his own good time, he began to swim slowly toward the bank.
Chapter 7
The warriors on guard around the pond promptly bustled Blade off to a small camp in the forest. There he was joined by Pterin, whose basket had not broken free and who had landed safely, if white-knuckled. Both men were examined by a doctor-priest, Blade with particular care. The doctor did not try to hide his surprise and delight that Blade had fallen from a height of nearly two hundred feet and remained unharmed.
«Such a strong spirit,» he kept saying. «A spirit such as we have not seen in many, many years. Such a spirit will be pleasing beyond measure to mighty Ayocan. And Ayocan shall be pleased.» Blade was getting more than slightly tired of the ritual phrases about pleasing and displeasing Ayocan.
He was found to be in excellent health. So, rather to Blade's regret, was Pterin. After a night in the camp they returned through the forest, back to the bank of the great river. The clouds hung low, hiding the river's mile-high leap down the cliff. Only a patch of mist low down against the blue-gray cliff showed where it lay.
About a mile downriver from the falls the forest path came out onto the river bank. A boat waited, not a canoe this time, but a massive barge with high sides and an even higher cabin in the stern. A tall, stout mast amidships carried a single square blue sail, and from ports in the sides jutted twelve long sweeps. A fearful reek rose from below decks, suggesting a crew of seldom-washed slaves down there manning the sweeps. The hull, decks, and cabin were all painted and well-scrubbed white. On the bluff bow a massive white carving of the man-bat figure of Ayocan jutted out over the water. Here below the falls, in the damp, semitropical forest, the water of the river flowed sluggishly, a dull and dirty brownish-green.
Pterin went aboard the boat, followed by Blade, bound and carried as usual in a litter. They were barely aboard when the Holy Warrior who appeared to be captain started bellowing orders. Thick lines of woven fiber were cast off, the reefs shaken out of the sail, the sweeps run out. The barge moved out into the stream. From below came the sound of a drum beating out a rowing cadence, accompanied by the occasional crackings of a whip.
The river was more than half a mile wide, its banks thickly overgrown with a dozen different kinds of creeper-hung trees, tangles of vines, clumps of bushes-a solid green jungle. But Blade's eyes were probing the greenness nonetheless. The servants of Ayocan had unbound him and left him unbound when they locked the door of the aft cabin on him. The windows of the cabin were closed by bronze bars, of course, but bars could sometimes be worked loose. Then a quarter-mile swim would take him to shore. He could vanish in the pathless jungles before they even noticed he had gone, certainly before they could organize a pursuit.
This wasn't the time, however. He wanted to wait until the boat was passing down an inhabited part of the river. Blade saw no point in escaping only to die in the jungle. He wanted to escape and find people who could help him on his way, far from this land and the priests and Holy Warriors of Ayocan Who Shall Not Be Displeased. To the devil with them! If he had the chance, he was going to displease mighty Ayocan as much as he could, and Pterin could try to square things with their man-bat god.
Blade waited until the next day before he started working on the bronze bars of his windows. He wanted to be sure that he was not being watched too closely. It did not take him long to realize that the warriors on guard aboard this ship were remarkably sloppy in the watch they kept. They brought his meals and his clean bedding regularly, and escorted the doctors in and out. But otherwise they paid no attention to him. It was as if he were shackled to the boat's timbers by an invisible and unbreakable chain they trusted to keep him aboard under any circumstances. Well, they would soon discover the price of that kind of carelessness.
The bronze was cold-worked and tough, but not tough enough to resist Blade's muscles and ingenuity. Before the evening meal arrived, Blade was able to work two of the bars loose at one end. One more, and he could bend out all three and make a gap large enough to slip even his massive body through. He had seen at least one large village and several isolated houses along the bank since breakfast. They were moving along a populated stretch of the river now. So why wait any longer? Wait until after dark, pull the third bar loose, and then swim for it. Blade carefully replaced the two loosened bars so that they looked normal, and settled down to wait for the evening meal.
It came, heavy and steaming hot as usual. He ate as lightly as he could without arousing the suspicions of the watching doctor. He did not want to have to swim and run on a stomach weighted down with the food provided by the cult of Ayocan. But this would be his last meal at the hands of the cult!
The priests took the plates away. Their eyes rested briefly on the mounds of uneaten food, but they said nothing. Alone again, Blade did a quick series of limbering-up exercises. Good. His body was in more than adequate shape for anything it might have to do during the escape. Then he turned toward the window, eyes on the third bar.
He had just taken a firm grip on it when a sudden outburst of noise from outside made him stop and turn around. He did so just in time. The cabin door flew open, and Pterin and two Holy Warriors tramped in.
«Ah, warrior,» said Pterin. «There is a matter in hand that I thought you might wish to see.»
«What sort of matter?»
«One of the sweep-slaves has rebelled. He struck a Holy Warrior in the service of mighty Ayocan and drew blood. For this he will be punished.»
«How?»
«We shall release him from service on this boat.»
How was releasing a slave from service a punishment? Blade managed not to stare in confusion at the priest. There was more in this than Pterin's mere words indicated.
«Why do you wish me to see it?»
«It might interest you.»
«Perhaps.»
«No, certainly.» The priest's face and voice hardened. «Now-do you wish to come out or not?» The two warriors put their hands on the hilts of their swords. The verbal fencing was over. This was an order.
Blade followed the priest out on deck. The two Holy Warriors fell in behind him. Blade took careful note of the distance between him and them. If they were even slightly too far away for a quick reaction, he might have a chance. A quick lunge for the railing, then over the side. He had noticed no bows aboard the boat, or anywhere else among the Holy Warriors of Ayocan. Once he was in the river, they could hardly touch him. It would not be as good as a completely secret escape from his cabin window, for the alarm would be up at once, but-
More noise burst up from below, shouts, thumpings, the rattle of chains. The forward hatch flew open, releasing a stench that made Blade gag. Two warriors scrambled up the ladder from the hold, dragging a filthy, gaunt figure. The sweep-slave was naked except for a breechclout, and so weak he could barely stand unaided. But his eyes glared into Pterin's eyes as the priest approached him.
«Slave,» said the priest, «you find service in this vessel of the servants of mighty Ayocan displeasing?»
«What d'ye think, ye damned pimp!»
«Indeed, I think you find it displeasing. Well, not all of us are made as to serve the god. And Ayocan will have none in his service who find that service
a burden to them. He is not a tyrannous god. So I speak for him when I say-you are to be at once released from service on this vessel.»
The slave started and jumped as though he had received an electric shock. He stared at Pterin, his eyes wide with dawning hope. His bony and blistered hands began to shake, and tears streamed down his face, cutting small furrows in the coating of filth on it. «Ye'r speaking truth, priest? Truth?»
«The priests of mighty Ayocan do not lie, slave. It is displeasing to the god. And Ayocan shall not be displeased.» Pterin nodded to the two Holy Warriors standing on either side of the slave. «Release him from the service of the ship.»
The slave was just starting to say, «If ye could land me near-«when the warriors grabbed his arms. They lifted his wasted body completely clear of the deck in one motion, strode to the railing, and lifted him high above that.
Pterin stood watching, a thin smile on his lips. «For in truth I did not lie. Thus do I release you. Go, with the blessing of Ayocan!» The guards gave a tremendous heave, and the slave shot over the railing and into the river below.
His mouth opened as the, guards heaved, and a scream of stark raw terror came out as he soared into the air. It cut off in a gurgle and a splash as he struck the water. A moment later another scream split the evening, and then a third, as though the man was being burned alive. Ignoring the warriors behind him, Blade dashed to the railing and stared down into the river.
Not burned alive, but eaten alive. The dark water around the man was being churned white by the frantic dartings of dozens of tiny, savage fish. Then it was no longer white, but red with the slave's blood. The man let out another horrible scream, and threw a hand into the air-a hand eaten bare of flesh, with two fish still clinging to the white bones. Another scream, and then the man had nothing left to scream with, as the fish ate out his throat and then his internal organs. For one more moment his head stood out on the red surface of the water, then it sank out of sight.