In the meantime, the archers had brought down five of the fliers. The bat-people retired to the tree for a conference.
Despite their retreat, they held the upper hand. Their enemy could only go so far in one direction and then they would have to climb down the trunk or up the trunk to get to another branch. If they did this, they would be exposed, and the bat-people could kill off the entire party with little or no casualties to themselves.
If their enemy continued to hide in the dense vegetation of this branch, they would just be putting off the inevitable. The bat-people could send for more fliers and, in time, flush them out. Especially since they would be restricted in their hunting and could be starved out if the winged men did not care for a direct battle.
Ulysses had tried to count his foes while they were zooming over in the moon-speckled darkness. He estimated they numbered about a hundred. At the moment, they were gone except for six sentinels who kept diving and climbing but always just out of effective range of the arrows.
Ulysses crouched under the bush and tried to think of what to do. And while he thought, he became aware of a very faint murmuring sound. He requested quiet from those around him and, within a minute, thought he could identify the noise. It had to be the distance-muted roar of a waterfall.
He gave orders to the nearest, Awina, who relayed them. There was some delay because the party, for the most part, was reluctant to leave their present location. This gave them excellent protection but Ulysses knew his "men" and what they were thinking. He yelled at them and told them what would happen in the future if they did not get going. Once it was explained, they reacted swiftly enough. They just did not live much in the future; they had trouble seeing past their present situation.
The end of the branch, or, rather, the place where it abruptly bent at ninety degrees to the horizontal, was two miles away. The party made slow progress because of the thick vegetation and also because they were under orders to move slowly and quietly.
Ulysses saw the spume of white and black about a quarter of a mile before he got to it. He had climbed a tall tree to get a better look, at the same time making sure that he would not be seen by the bat-men, who were flying overhead now and then. The mists rose up and spread out to some distance, as he had hoped. Up in the tree, the roar of the falling water was unfiltered by the jungle.
He was about to climb back down when he saw a Dhulhulikh flap by. He clung to the tree and tried to make himself look like a barky excrescence. No moonlight hit him directly, though enough sieved through the leaves to make the darkness more silver than black. The bat-man went by once, winging so slowly he was just short of stalling. Then his wings beat faster and he climbed as he banked. He came back toward the tree, moving through patchy areas of blackness and pale yellow, the moon's rays bouncing off his bald head and catching beams off his wings, which were darker than his body. He came down just above the tops of the brush, and then flew upward, beating his wings to keep from a complete stall. Just before he landed on the branch of the tree, on the other side of the trunk from Ulysses, he did stall. And he landed as smoothly as an owl on the branch.
He had no talons with which to grip the branch, but he reached out and grabbed a smaller branch and so kept himself from going ahead. After he had folded his wings, he turned to face away from Ulysses. He wore a belt with a stone knife and carried in one hand a short slender spear. From a cord around his neck hung a coiled instrument. Ulysses guessed that this was a horn of some kind. The fellow was sitting there to watch for the enemy. If he saw them, he would summon the others with his horn.
There was no noise from below loud enough to rise above the soft thunder of the waterfall. His men had seen the bat-man and were waiting for the next development. The jungle looked unpopulated.
Ulysses left his position and worked his way around the trunk. His bow and quiver were at the foot of the trunk. Fortunately, they were on the side of the trunk opposite the bat-man and were also in the shadows. Ulysses had only his switchblade knife, which was held between his teeth. He had to cling with both hands and move very slowly. Even though the waterfall drowned out noise, it was not so loud that the keen-eared bat-man would not be able to hear the rustle of leaves or creak of branch.
The man continued to face away from Ulysses as he moved out on the same branch as the one he sat on. He stood upright, balancing himself easily, because the branch was thick. He slid one foot ahead and then brought the other up, slid his forward foot ahead, brought the other up, and so on. Once, he stopped and took the knife from between his teeth. The bat-man's wings half-spread, flapped slightly and then folded back in. In that moment, Ulysses saw the hole in the membrane of the right wing. And he recognised the silhouette of the man's head and the set of the shoulders. It was Ghlikh.
His intention to kill was gone. He could use Ghlikh.
Killing would be easier than capturing. He had to make sure that he could knock Ghlikh out and at the same time keep him from falling. Though Ghlikh weighed only about forty-five pounds, he could be hurt or even killed by a thirty-foot fall. Ulysses also had to make sure that he didn't rush too swiftly or he might go over along with him.
He approached very slowly, afraid that the little man would detect the bending of the branch under his two hundred and forty-five pounds. But Ghlikh was not out near the slender part of the branch. He was halfway, still on the thick part. And so Ulysses was able to chop him along the side of his neck, not too hard, because he was afraid he would snap the thin, probably hollow-boned, neck. Soundlessly, Ghlikh collapsed and fell forward, and Ulysses had to grab with the other hand and seize his wing. He called to those hidden in the brush, and they came out. A moment later, he dropped the unconscious man into waiting arms. By the time he got down, Ghlikh was tied and gagged. A few minutes afterward, his eyes opened. Ulysses stood in the moonlight so that Ghlikh could see who had captured him. Ghlikh's eyes widened, and he struggled. He was still squirming when he was hoisted onto Ulysses' back as if he were a backpack. Ulysses told Wulka, the Wagarondit chief who was carrying Khyuks, to hit Ghlikh again, and Wulka gladly obeyed.
The half-mile was covered as swiftly as possible. Ulysses had the honour of being the first to start the climb down. The mists shrouded him, not only from the view of any bat-men who might be coming along soon, but also from view of the others. What with the darkness and the clouds rising from the abyss, he could barely see two feet before, or under, him. The droplets collected over his body and made him cold. They also made the bark and his fingers and toes slippery.
There was nothing to do but go down. If he had been alone, or with people who did not expect him to be a god, he might have stayed outside the mist and taken his chances on being seen by the bat-people. But he could not avoid his obligations or break his word.
"The mist is our protection," he said. "But like all protections, all shields, it has its disadvantages. It exacts a price. It hides us from our enemies, but it also holds its dangers. It will be slippery, and we will be blind."
It was also very slow going, he thought, as he groped with his foot for a protection below him. His hands clung to outthrusts of bark, one foot was half in a fissure, and the other foot moved around for a ledge or crevice. Finally, it found a ledge, and he lowered himself gently, made sure he had a secure hold, and then lowered his foot again. This process went on for an unaccountable time, and then the darkness paled, and he could see just a little more than before.
He had a solid extension beneath him. Carefully, he walked out on it, testing each unseen inch of bark with his toes. The waterfall roared on his left and water swirled against his left foot. He jumped as something touched him, and he whirled with his knife in hand. Dimly, he saw the short, slender, black-and-white figure of Awina. She came closer then, her eyes big round darknesses. He put the knife away, and she clung to him for a moment. Her fur was wet, but after a minute their bodies began to warm each other. He ran his hand over the round top of her head and felt the wet silky ears an
d then ran his hand down her back. She felt more like a drowned rat than the soft deliciously furry being he had known.
Other figures jelled out of the mists. He moved away from Awina, counting them as they appeared. All were there.
Ghlikh began twitching. He had been as motionless as a bag of meat during the descent, but now he thought it was safe to move and try to get his circulation going again. Ulysses had him removed from his back and the bonds around his legs taken off. The little man hopped around on his skinny legs and huge feet while two Wagarondit stood ready to stab him if he tried to run or fly.
Ulysses walked carefully out of the mists. The top of the waterfall was about five hundred feet up. There were no bat-people in sight. Only the bushes and sides of leaning trees broke the edge of the upper part of the branch. He turned and saw that the branch continued on a horizontal plane until it was lost to sight. There was nothing to keep them from building more rafts and continuing on the riverlet. But they must hide in the jungle until nightfall again. They could sleep part of the day, although they had to spend some time in hunting. Their food supply was getting low.
Late that evening, no longer sleepy but suffering from hunger pangs, they organised four hunting parties. An hour later, they butchered a legless crocodile, a hipporat, two big red goats and three large monkeys.
They ate well that evening, and everybody felt much better. They cut down poles and bound them together and then set out on the riverlet. Before dawn, they came to another downward bend of the great branch and another cataract. They climbed down but stayed outside the mists, and by dawn they reached the bottom and another riverlet; after sleeping and hunting again, they made more rafts. The bottom of the third waterfall proved to be also the bottom of The Tree, or, as Awina called it, the Feet of Wurutana.
The vast trunks, branches and other vegetation growing overhead to a height of ten thousand feet formed a complex that barred all but a few of the sun's rays. A deep twilight reigned here at noon, and in the mornings and afternoons a near-night like a storm of ravens' feathers filled the spaces between the gigantic columns and buttresses plunging into the swamp. The ground beneath The Tree received the precipitation of the cataracts and the rainfall that was not caught by the branches and the colossal leaves of The Tree and the vegetation that grew on The Tree. A swamp had formed at the base of The Tree, a vast unutterably dismal swamp. The depth of the water varied from one inch to many feet, enough to drown a man. Out of this water, and out of the mud, many strange, foul-smelling, pale and blotched plants grew.
The twilight showed them nightmare forms. Great pieces of bark, many of them bungalow-sized, had fallen off the sides of The Tree and hurtled downward, striking branches and trunks and knocking off other large and decaying crags of bark. The Tree, like the World-Snake of Norse mythology, shed its skin. Bark was always rotting and then breaking off and either falling onto the tops of the mighty branches, there to decay more, or else coming down like cold black falling stars to splash into the water and the mud of the swamp. There, half-sunk, they decayed, and the insects and vermin that infested this dusky world bored into the great masses and made their houses therein.
These were long thin corpse-coloured worms with hairy heads; beetles coloured a hard blue and armed with huge mandibles; long-nosed shrew-like beasts with saberteeth; pale yellow scorpions; bright scarlet-and-midnight-black snakes with tiny horns on top of their triangular heads; many-legged soft-bodied dozen-antennaed long-bodied centipedish creatures which emitted a stinking gas with a loud explosion when startled; and a host of other repulsive animals. The great broken chunks of bark, lying everywhere in the dimness like boulders left behind by the retreat of a glacier, were crowded with the venomous verminous life.
Around the jagged slabs grew tall, slender, branchless plants which produced a heart-shaped greenish-yellow berry that sprouted from cracks in the horny shells of the plants. There was also a thick slimy weed that projected a foot or two above the muddy water or the watery mud underfoot. Above this there sometimes flapped a broad-winged insect with body and wings the colour of the skin of a man just dead, and its head was white with two round black markings and a down-curving black mark below the two markings, so that its face was that of a skull. It flew by silently, sometimes just touching a member of the party with the tips of its wings and causing that person to jump. But all motion and noise were subdued. The people talked very quietly, often whispering, and they did not laugh. Their feet sank into the water and the mud beneath and were pulled out slowly, almost apologetically, so that sucking sounds were slow and soft. The people huddled together, and no one wanted to step aside into the bushes or behind the tall pale grey-blue stalks to attend to their needs.
Ulysses had thought, at first, that he would keep to the swamp. Though the going was slow and rough, this place seemed more desirable than the area above, where there were too many sentient enemies. But one day and one night among the Feet of Wurutana were enough for him and more than enough for his people. The next morning, when he almost jumped a foot as a blood-coloured frog leaped off a slab of bark onto his shoulder and then into the ankle-deep water, he decided that he could not take much more. They had tried to sleep on a piece of bark as big as a small chateau. But all night long they had been disturbed by the creatures which crawled out of the holes in the bark and by the weird sounds of the swamp animals.
He decided that he would lead them back up the nearest inviting branch. They had to skirt a broad area which seemed to be filled with quicksand pools, so it was not until noon that they reached a rough-surfaced column that dived from the heights into the swamp. Thankfully, they began clambering up it, and by dusk they had reached a promising horizontal portion of a branch. This contained a riverlet which, however, looked poisonous. Its water was carmine,
Ulysses examined it and found that the colour came from millions of tiny creatures, each of which was so small it was almost invisible when isolated. Ghlikh, who had decided to talk by then, said that these animals spawned once a year. He did not know where they came from or where they went. The waters of the riverlets and the pools would remain red for about a week and then would become clear. In the meantime, they served as food for the fish, birds and beasts in the jungle. He recommended making a soup of them.
Ulysses took his recommendation, but he made Ghlikh drink the soup first. After several hours went by with no bad results to the bat-man, Ulysses gave the go ahead. He drank a gourdful and found the soup very rich and tasty. For the next few days, as they poled their rafts, they ate merely by scooping up the carmine animals from the water. Not having to stop to hunt made their progress far swifter. They traversed approximately fifty miles, climbing down three cataracts, before they reached the lowest level of the riverlet. By then the carmine animals had disappeared.
When they climbed up again, Ulysses, acting partly on a whim and partly on curiosity, led them as high as they could go. The climb took three days up the gnarled and fissured side of the vertical trunk. At night, they slept on a projection of bark big enough to form a ledge to hold the entire party. The third day, they climbed through the clouds and only broke free of them toward evening. But in the morning the clouds were gone, and they could see into the abyss. They were at least ten thousand feet up. The trunk continued to rise for another two or three thousand feet, but there was no sense in their climbing any higher. This was as high as the branches grew. This branch was a bonanza; it seemed to go on forever, and its downward slope was very gentle.
A spring welled out at the junction of branch and trunk, and more springs added to the bulk of the riverlet so that, a mile away, it became navigable.
Every mile or so, the branch extended a vertical part which went all the way to the bottom—as far as they could determine—or else joined with another branch below.
To prevent the bat-men from trying to fly away, Ulysses had punched holes in the membranes of their wings and tied them together with thin strings of gut. He had forced them to climb
up the trunk by themselves, since their weight was too much for anyone to bear on that extended climb. They had been in the middle of the line that crawled up the craggy barky cliff so that they could not try to climb off. They were so light, they could climb much faster than even the agile Wufea.
Ulysses ordered camp made. They would rest for several days, hunt and scout around. He hoped that he could find another hole in a trunk and so get a chance to experiment with the communication-membrane inside. Ever since his experience with the Wuggruds, he had looked for other holes. He was sure that these must exist by the many thousands, but he had seen none. They were everywhere, according to the bat-men. It was frustrating to know this and yet be unable to find them. However, he was also sure that each hole would be guarded by the bear-like Wuggrud or leopard-like Khrauszmiddum. He could not really afford another encounter with them if they outnumbered his people. But he chafed. If only he could get to a communication-membrane. By now he knew the code. The language was the trade language, and the code was similar to Morse in that it used a combination of long and short pulses.
The Stone God Awakens Page 12