Ehomba stared back while a gargling sound emerged from the throat of the startled Simna. They were hares, the herdsman saw immediately.
Hares as big as elephants.
XIII
NEITHER MAN LAUGHED. EXPECTING SOMETHING TOOTHIER, they nonetheless did not lower their guard for a moment. A small hare could bite off a man’s finger, while a larger one like those that inhabited the Naumkib country could knock the wind out of a person with a single kick, or do real damage if such a blow struck a vulnerable area. Hares the impossible size of those they now confronted should be capable of biting a horse in half or kicking down a castle wall. Though not what was expected, they were no less potentially lethal.
Ehomba wondered at his own surprise. In a country of tree-high grass, what could be more natural than to encounter grass-eaters of equivalent size?
He was watching the triumphant sangoma carefully. He had not seen the little green man trace any arcane symbols in the air, nor had he been heard to enunciate any mysterious phrases. His voice had not been raised in alarm, nor had he uncorked a gourd or bottle of concentrated musk. Therefore the appearance of the titanic hares was most likely a consequence of their mere presence in the area, and a natural curiosity about the source of human conversation. The boastful sangoma might know their ways, but he had done nothing thus far to indicate that he commanded them.
Which did not make their present situation any less potentially perilous. With an admirable effort of will, Simna held his ground when his natural instinct was to run for cover among the rocks behind them. That, Ehomba suspected, was what Boruba-Ban-Beylok had intended to do the instant the hares made their initial appearance. With his small size and knowing the ways of the new arrivals as intimately as he surely did, he was doubtless counting on finding a place of safety long before the travelers did, leaving it to the hares to finish off the unbelievers.
Ehomba put up his sword. Using his spear as a walking stick, he marched straight toward the nearest of the immense leporids. Still holding his own weapon out in front of him, Simna made a grab for his tall friend—and missed. He did not follow.
“Etjole, are you crazy? They’ll bite off your arms—or your head! They’ll stomp you into the earth! Etjole!”
Ignoring the well-meaning swordsman’s warnings, Ehomba approached until he was within paw-length of the nearest hare. Glowering, it leaned toward him, both front paws extended. It could easily pin him to the ground, or pick him up and, with a single snap, bite off his face.
Now, it is said that there is no talk among hares, and that they reserve all such ability for their death throes, for as everyone knows, the scream of a dying hare is as piercing and soul-shattering a sound as exists in nature. But most men know nothing of the lives of such creatures, for they are familiar with them only as garden pests, or a possible dinner. Not so with Etjole Ehomba, and not by accident or chance.
The great ears inclined forward to listen to the softly speaking herdsman. With a single short hop that caused it to emerge entirely from the grass, its white-faced companion moved intimately close. Both enormous leporids remained quite still as Ehomba whispered to them. Only their whiskers and oversized nostrils moved, quivering without pause.
Boruba-Ban-Beylok was positively beside his diminutive green self. “What are you waiting for? Kill them! Kill them both! They are intruders, interlopers, blasphemers! Tear them to pieces, crush their bodies beneath your great feet! Take them up and hurl them—”
He broke off as the point of Simna ibn Sind’s sword replaced that of Etjole Ehomba at the front of the sangoma’s green-skinned throat. The stocky swordsman was grinning nastily. “Here now, bruther, that’s about enough noise-making out of you, don’t you think?” He glanced significantly in the direction of the soft-voiced conversation that was now taking place between prodigious hares and easygoing herdsman. “We wouldn’t want to interrupt a friendly chat between man and beast, now, would we?”
Ignoring the presence of the sword as much as it was possible to do so, a goggle-eyed Boruba-Ban-Beylok gawked at the unreasonable trio, the two huge hare heads bent close to the tall intruder so as not to miss a single word of his gentle discourse.
“No—it’s impossible! No man may talk with the great grass-eaters! Such a thing cannot be!”
As time continued to pass without the immense herbivores attacking, Simna grew increasingly at ease. “You have eyes, don’t you, wise man? Tiny, beady, nasty eyes, but eyes nonetheless. Believe it: It is happening.” He nodded in the direction of the most unlikely conversation. “My country friend there may sometimes smell of cattle piss and sheep droppings, but he is just full of surprises.”
“This can’t be happening.” Moaning, the distraught sangoma dropped to his knees.
Moments later Ehomba broke off the talk and rejoined the other two. Behind him the great hares waited, following his progress with their bottomless eyes, noses twitching, whiskers as long as a man’s leg quivering. The white-faced one turned away and began to gnaw at the nearest grass stalk. The green span disappeared into the oversized, mechanically grinding mouth as neatly as a log into the maw of a sawmill.
Fully aware that his life was on the line, Boruba-Ban-Beylok gazed up at the solemn-faced herdsman. “Don’t kill me, warlock of an unknown land! Please don’t! My people need me. They rely on my knowledge and skills to help them survive in the grass. Without me they will panic and perish.”
“I doubt that,” Ehomba replied. “I have no doubt that you are a person of importance among your tribe, and master of some small competencies. But I think they would manage to find another to take your place.”
“Too right, bruther.” Nodding agreement and smiling wickedly, Simna shoved the point of his sword more firmly against the green man’s neck.
“However,” Ehomba went on even as he rested his free hand on the swordsman’s arm, “I will kill another only to defend myself, and that is no longer necessary.”
“Awww.” Openly disappointed, Simna reluctantly drew back his blade. The air went out of Boruba-Ban-Beylok. Then he rose and gestured in the direction of the hares, who were both now munching contentedly on the towering grass, indifferent to the small drama being played out in their vicinity.
“How?” he asked simply. “I have never seen or heard of such a thing, magician.”
“As soon as I saw what kind of creatures were threatening us, I was no longer worried. And stop calling me that.” A touch of irritation crept into the southerner’s voice. “I am a herdsman; nothing more, nothing less.”
“As you say, mag—herdsman. You were not worried? You are the first interloper I have ever encountered who was not terrified by the very sight of the giant browsers.”
“That is because I know them,” Ehomba explained. “Or rather, I know their kind. You see, I come from a dry country, and in dry country there is always constant competition for pasturage. Left to themselves, cattle will compete with sheep. There are also the wild animals: the antelope and the rhinoceros, the mice and the meerkats, the bushbuck and the brontotherium, the gerbil and the gormouth.”
Simna’s brows drew together. “What’s a gormouth?”
“Tell you later.” To the sangoma he added, “In the face of such endless competition for forage a herdsman can do one of two things: poison and kill those that compete with his herds for food, or try to work out some kind of mutually acceptable arrangement that satisfies all.”
“And you,” the sangoma asserted, “you are a compromiser.”
Ehomba nodded. “The Naumkib are not a violent tribe. Our herds and flocks share with the oryx and the deer. They understand this, and so do the animals we claim for our own. To maintain this peaceful arrangement it is sometimes necessary for the parties involved to ratify and adjust, to discuss and debate. The talking of it is delegated to those of us who possess some small skill in conversation.”
“And you,” Simna declared bluntly, “you talk to hares.”
“Yes.” The herdsman nod
ded once. “I talk to hares.” He glanced back over his shoulder at the quietly browsing brown behemoths behind them. “Among the Naumkib there is a saying for each species, for each of the grazing kind we have learned to deal with. For the hare it is ‘Speak softly and carry a big carrot.’ Unfortunately, I have no carrots to offer these, but I think it would not matter. To impress these would take a carrot the size of a sago palm.
“But they recognize a conciliatory spirit, and being of a nonviolent nature themselves, were quick to respond to my overtures.” He looked down at the green hominid, who, while still wary, had managed to cease trembling. “I do not know if it is natural to your tribe, Boruba-Ban-Beylok, but you, at least, should learn some hospitality.”
Immediately, the sangoma dropped to his knees and placed his forehead and palms upon the ground. “Command me! Tell me what it is you need of me.”
“Well now, that’s more like it, bruther.” Strutting back and forth while picking at his teeth with the point of his sword, Simna considered the offer. “For a start we—”
“We need nothing from him,” Ehomba declared, interrupting. “I take nothing from someone who is offering under duress.”
“Duress? What duress?” Simna demanded to know. “I’ve drawn back my sword, haven’t I? Besides, what’s wrong with taking from someone who’s under duress? D’you think he’d not do so if given the chance?”
“I do not know,” the herdsman replied softly. “I know only that I am not him.”
“Well, I ain’t him neither,” Simna protested, “but I do know that finding a way through this bulwark of bastard grass is going to be Gimil-bedamned difficult, and that he probably could show us the way!”
Eagerness shining from his face, the sangoma rose quickly to his feet. “Yes! I can have several of our youth guide you! Otherwise you will quickly become hopelessly lost and wander about until you perish.” He waved an arm at the green barrier. “In the grass there are no landmarks, no way to determine direction. Even at night, the tops of the blades will shut you in and keep you from seeing the stars. Nor can you climb to find your position. The upper edges of the blades are too sharp, and can cut a person to shreds.” He tapped his chest.
“Only the Tlach know the way, and are small enough to slip easily between the blades.”
“We appreciate your insights,” Ehomba informed him, “but we must move quickly. Therefore your offer is declined.”
Sword hanging at his side, Simna gaped at his friend. “Declined? You think we’re going to be able to travel faster through that mess without a guide?”
“Yes.” Turning, Ehomba smiled reassuringly at his bemused companion as he started back toward the browsing hares. “And we are not going through the grass—we are going over it.”
“Over—oh no, not me! Not me, Etjole!” Simna started backing away, toward the familiar, comforting, unmoving rocks. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking ...”
Reaching the haunch of the nearest hare, Ehomba turned to look back at him. “Come, Simna ibn Sind. I have a long ways yet to travel and therefore no time to waste. Is it so very different from mounting a horse?”
“I don’t know.” Uncertain, unsure, but unwilling to be left behind, Simna reluctantly took a step forward. “I’ve always had a decent relationship with horses. My own relationship with hares has been solely at the dining table.”
“I would not mention such things around them.” Placing his left foot on the brown hare’s right, Ehomba stepped up. Using the long fur as a convenient hand-hold, he pulled and kicked his way upward until he was sitting on the broad chestnut shoulders just behind the great head. The enormous, towering ears blocked much of the view forward, but there was nothing to see anyway except the endless, monotonous field of grass.
“Why not?” Making an easier if more hesitant job of it than the herdsman, the always-agile Simna boosted himself into an identical riding position on the neck of the second elephantine hare. “You’re not going to tell me they can understand us?”
“Not our words, no,” Ehomba informed him, “but they are good at sensing things. Feelings, emotions, which way a predator is likely to jump. Helpless as the majority of them are, they have to be.” Leaning forward, he spoke into the nearest ear. He did not have to whisper. With auditory apparatus the size of trees, the hare could have heard him clearly from the top of the final jungle-draped ridge.
With a turn and a leap, they were off, Ehomba holding tightly to the thick neck fur and maintaining his usual contemplative silence, Simna howling and protesting at every bound. With each mighty hop they cleared tracts of grass that would have taken men afoot many difficult, sweaty minutes to traverse, and with each jolting landing Simna ibn Sind seemed to find a new imprecation with which to curse the extraordinary method of travel.
They were not alone on the veldt, nor were the Goliath hares the only oversized creatures to be seen. The wind-whipped, emerald green food source was host to an abundance of equally remarkable creatures. At the apex of every gargantuan leap they could see down and across the soaring grassland. Tree-sized blades twitched where hippo-sized mice gnawed at fallen seeds. Caterpillars as long as dugout canoes felled stems like nightmare loggers at work in an unripened forest. Earthen ramparts that would have made any siege engineer proud were the work not of attacking or defending armies, but of bull-like moles and gophers that burrowed prodigiously beneath the rich soil.
Once they were attacked by crows the size of condors. Unceasing in their search for an easy meal, the black-feathered robbers struck boldly from all sides—not at the hares, which were far too big to serve as prey for them, but at the far smaller riders clinging to their backs. Simna had his sword out as soon as he saw the first bird approach, but he never had the opportunity to use it.
Sharp, barking caws and cut-cuts sounded on his right. Using his legs to maintain his seat, Ehomba was sitting up straight, hands cupped around his mouth in a most unusual fashion, and shouting back at the marauding crows as good as they were giving. To hear those clipped, guttural caws coming from his mouth was an entertainment any prince would have paid to witness. Simna got it for free. Given the seriousness of the circumstances, his commentary following the crows’ departure perhaps ought to have been less acerbic.
“Wait, don’t tell me!” The swordsman made a great show of analyzing in depth what had just transpired. “I know, I know—you can talk to crows, too.”
Untutored herdsman though he might be, when it came to unfettered sarcasm Ehomba was not above responding in kind. “You are very observant.”
Holding tight to the neck fur of his hare, Simna reserved his rejoinder for the moments when he and his mount were sailing freely through the air above the grass. “So you’ve convinced me. You’re not a sorcerer. You’re just the world’s greatest talker. What else can you talk to, Etjole? Turtles? Nightingales? Dwarf voles?”
“In my country there are many crows,” the herdsman responded without a hint of guile. “Living there is as hard for them as for hares or cattle, men or lizards. It is ...”
“A desert country, a dry country, difficult and bleak—I know, I know.” Simna returned his gaze to the unbroken swath of green that still stretched out in every direction before them. “Not that I’m complaining, mind. I’ve always been adept at the languages of man, but never bothered to try learning those of the animals. Maybe it’s because I didn’t know they had languages. Maybe it’s because no one I ever met or heard tell of knew that they had languages.”
“It sounds to me,” his companion called across to him, “like you have spent most of your life around men who only talked and did not listen.”
“Hah! Sometimes, they don’t even talk. They just swing things, large and heavy or slender and sharp. I’ll make you a deal, bruther. You take care of talking to the dumb animals we encounter, and I’ll take care of talking to the men.”
“Fair enough,” Ehomba agreed, “but there is one thing more you will have to help me with.”
Simna glanced over at his friend. “What’s that?”
“How does one tell which is which?”
Onward they raced through the high green veldt, their mounts seemingly tireless, covering great difficult distances with each bound. Until, at last, it seemed that they were tiring. They were not. It was the universal perspective that was being altered, not the enthusiasm of the hares.
The first indication that something had changed came from Simna’s observation that they were covering shorter and shorter distances with each bound. This was immediately confirmed by Ehomba, who was the one to point out that the hares were jumping as frequently and as powerfully as ever. It was not that they were covering less and less distance with each leap, but that they were covering less proportionately. Because with each hop now, they were growing smaller and smaller.
The hares shrank to rhino size, then to that of a horse, then a calf, at which point they could no longer support their human riders. After a very bad moment during which he thought he was shrinking as well, Simna realized that he and his companion were not changing in size. It was only the world around them that was changing.
They followed the hares forward until both fleet-footed creatures were reduced to the size of those that Simna knew from his travels in his own homeland and other countries: small brown furry creatures that barely came up to the middle of a man’s shin. Their noses still twitched, their whiskers continued to flutter, and in every other aspect they were unaltered, even to the white splotches on the face of his own former mount. But the journey had reduced them from giants to the reality of the world he had always known. The real world, he decided—though in the company of a singular individual like Etjole Ehomba, who was to say what was real and what imaginary?
Carnivores of Darkness and Light: Journeys of the Catechist, Book 1 Page 13
