Blade did not panic. He never did. But he was afraid. It was a nasty way to die. And, as Ogar returned and halted on the edge of the quicksand and gazed at him, Blade wondered if perhaps he had underestimated his hairy companion. For there was a certain look in Ogar’s small red eyes.
Blade did not struggle. He was sinking fast enough as it was. He tried to turn, wrenching his muscular torso around, and gauged the distance to the path he had just left. Not more than four feet No real danger with Ogar to help him.
Blade held out the stick. He made signs and sounds for Ogar to circle around the pool of quicksand and grab the stick and help Blade free himself. Ogar watched him and did not move.
Blade had a sinking feeling that he was no longer a god.
By now he was down nearly to his waist. It was like being caught in slimy wet concrete. Blade shouted at Ogar and made signs with the stick. Ogar began to search the ground around him for something.
Blade could not wait for Ogar. Could not trust Ogar. Whether or not the creature had led Blade into the quicksand deliberately, Ogar was now going to take advantage of the situation. Matters reversed themselves quickly in this Dimension X. Ogar was once again top dog.
Blade braced himself for a supreme effort. One end of the stick was sharp — if he could lurch back toward solid ground and manage to bury the point deep enough in the earth it would give him leverage of a sort. At best it wasn’t much of a chance, but it was the only one he had. Ogar was gathering stones.
It occurred to Blade, even as he sweated and strained for his life, that this was an old game to Ogar and his people. They must kill game this way. Drive it into the quicksand and then stone it or beat it to death with clubs and axes.
The first stone bounced off Blade’s ribs. It hurt. He glared at Ogar and bellowed and brandished the stick. Ogar flinched and retreated for a moment, then flung another stone that missed Blade and fell with a hollow plop into the quicksand. It was out of sight in a second.
There was a chill in Blade now and the faint wedge of panic. He fought it back. He would get out.
Ogar flung another stone. Blade was ready. He caught the stone and took aim and hurled it back with all his great strength. It caught Ogar in the pit of the belly. Ogar yelled and dropped his stones and clutched his stomach. He chattered obscenities at Blade.
Blade let his anger at Ogar fuel his final effort. He needed the extra incentive of his rage. He poised, raised the stick high over his head, summoned every muscle and lurched back for the path. He strained, grunting painfully, bone and sinew crackling, putting all his last reserve and hope into the lunge. He fell short.
The sharp end of the stick dug into the bank of solid ground, slipped and skidded back into quicksand. Blade was chest down in the stuff now, his face barely raised, his arms outstretched, and the stick was driving down into quicksand, nothing but quicksand.
Blade groaned aloud. He had failed and it was an inglorious death for such a man as himself. There was still no panic in him, but fear clotted his guts and he cursed himself for a fool. To die so — in a stinking little patch of sand before his new adventure had fairly begun.
The sharp end of the stick hit something solid and held. Blade summoned new strength from somewhere and applied tremendous pressure. The stick bit deeper and deeper and held. It had reached solid ground where the path shelved out into the quicksand, which was shallow around the edges of the pool.
Blade began to drag himself back from death. Cautiously and very slowly. If he dislodged the stick again he was done for. The entire work fell on his forearms, shoulders and biceps. He gritted his teeth, tensed and staked his life on his muscles. Now — and again — and now!
Muscles corded and lumped, a slithering of blue serpents beneath the smooth-tanned hide. With an aching slowness Blade dragged himself out of the quicksand and onto solid ground. He glanced around. Ogar was gone. Gone to fetch others like himself. Cousins, members of his tribe or clan. Ogar had figured that out. Together they would bring larger stones and clubs and kill Blade.
Blade allowed himself a minute to catch his breath. Then he scraped most of the sand from his body, found the stick and pulled it out of the ground, circled the pool and took off in a long, swinging lope for the line of cliffs. The sun was gone now, all but a wraith of final afterglow, and along the base of the cliffs he could see the sparking of a dozen fires.
He had covered five hundred yards when he heard Ogar scream. He had not gone to get help in killing Blade. He had been watching from cover. Watching so intently that he had forgotten the menace all about him.
Blade was too late to be of any help. He watched, feeling sick, as the monstrous thing went through the rites, so obscenely ceremonial, nearly sacerdotal, of having its supper. Dining on Ogar. With Blade as a reluctant witness and fascinated against his will. Never, in all the dimensions he had visited, and certainly not in Home Dimension, had he seen anything like this.
The animal was not an anteater, yet it had a scarlet ribbon of tongue some twenty feet long. The tongue was rough and covered with tiny suction cups. The tongue was wrapped around Ogar, who could not scream because his bones were crushed and he was being swiftly drawn into a gaping maw. Instinct, automatic compassion, sent Blade starting forward. Then sense prevailed and he stopped. He could not fight this thing with only a pointed stick.
The thing’s jaw was hinged. That hinge came unjointed now and the mouth gaped wider and the obscene tongue pulled Ogar in, whole and in one piece. The thing swallowed. Ogar made no sound as he disappeared. There was a lump in the thing’s belly as it slithered around on great clawed feet and contemplated Blade.
Blade hoped Ogar had been already dead. Or, this failing, that the stomach acids would kill him quickly.
The brute made no move to come at Blade. It huddled there, watching with cold, enormous eyes. To Blade it seemed part serpent, part crocodile, with scales and short, stumpy legs. He reckoned it at thirty feet long, including the scaled tail, and five feet high. It was very still. It watched him. Blade did not move.
The thing was like something out of mythology, a never-never product of man’s imagination. Basilisk? Cockatrice? Gorgon?
Blade grimaced and watched it. He had no idea what it was, except that it sure as hell wasn’t a product of his imagination. The problem was how to get past it and continue on the path to the cliffs. It would soon be totally dark. He dare not venture into the thick grass again. As it was, he had only the distant fires to guide him.
The problem was solved for him. Another of the things slid out of the grass and attacked without warning the one that had devoured Ogar. There was a tremendous sound of hissing as they locked tongues and went into a death struggle, rolling and clawing and butting at each other. They fought off into the tall grass. Blade ran.
Blade was badly shaken by what he had seen. He was not yet fully adjusted to this new world. That would come, as it always did, and he would take such things in his stride. But at the moment he still felt a strong and painful empathy for poor Ogar. It did not help much that such sudden death, and the manner of it, must be commonplace in Ogar’s world. Blade’s now. It was still a sickening way to die — as bad as quicksand.
Blade stepped up his pace. He did not look behind him, confident that he could outrun any of the huge, lumbering creatures frequenting the high grass. His salvation lay ahead in the fires and the caves.
Once a great furred head peered at him over the highest of the grass. Huge eyes glinted and the sound was a rumbling roar that tapered into a whine. Blade ran faster. At last he broke clear of the grass and was on barren ground, still marshy and springy beneath him. but free of obstruction. He could see the fires clearly now, dozens of them up and down the dark line of cliffs and scarcely a quarter of a mile off. Blade began to slow his pace. Time to reconnoiter. What manner of welcome, if any, lay ahead?
Chapter Eight
Blade fell to his belly and begin to inch forward on all fours. He stopped to catch his breath, t
o make a survey, and chanced to look behind him. Something had followed him out of the grass.
It was too dark to make the creature out in detail, but his stomach did a flip-flop. It was a giant toad, horned and scaly, as big as a house. It hopped after Blade in twenty-foot leaps, stopping each time to nose at the spoor. Blade ran like a dog, on all fours, as fast as he could. When he looked back again the thing had stopped. It was afraid of the fires. Blade sighed with relief as it hopped back toward the grass jungle.
A faint stir of wind riffled from the cliffs toward Blade. It bore the faint but unmistakable stink he had come to associate with Ogar, but was now buffered with dung, smoke and the odor of roasting meat. Blade sniffed the latter in appreciation. He was near to starving. He crawled on. They were upwind and could not scent him.
He found cover behind a single slab up upended rock. It was tall and wide and stood on a natural boulder plinth — a dolmen, or cromlech, placed by Ogar’s people for reasons beyond his understanding. Blade crouched behind the rearing stone and studied a group around the nearest fire. He counted ten of them. Four males and six females. All naked. All covered with hair. All with small, slim bodies and huge heads. Ogar’s people.
Two of the females were cooking meat on sticks held over the fire. Two of the remaining four women were nursing infants. The four males formed an outer circle between the females and the darkness. Each male, as he gnawed at a bone or a chunk of meat, kept a ceaseless vigil, staring into the darkness every few seconds and raising and dilating his nostrils to sniff at the wind. Blade willed the wind to hold steady, not to veer or back around. He wanted, and needed, the element of surprise.
His only weapon was the stick. Each of the males around the fire had a club or a stone axe ready to his hand. Blade pondered. He could not go back into the tall grass. Death was certain there. He was cold and hungry, naked, lacking in everything but a superb brain, matchless physique and all the guts he needed at any given moment.
Plus a smattering of Ogar’s crude language. It should be enough. Blade took a deep breath and stood up. He tossed the stick away. It was useless as a weapon and it might frighten them.
Smiling, his hands held high and in conciliation, Blade stalked into the circle of firelight. There was a dead hush, a vacuum of sound. Twenty eyes stared in surprise and terror.
Blade took swift advantage of the silence. He remembered Ogar’s exact sound as he rubbed his belly and asked for meat. Blade repeated it sow.
«Owwwnowwah — owwwnowwah—»
There was a great scrabbling rush — grunts and chattering and shrill cries of terror. The females snatched at their babies and ran. The men ran after them, forgetting their weapons. All vanished into the darkness toward the cliff. All but one — a young male who stopped and turned and snarled defiance at Blade. Blade took a step toward him and held out his hand. The male lost his nerve and fled after the others. Blade stood alone by the fire.
This did not discontent him. He had made friendly overtures and had been rebuffed and no doubt it was for the best. He set about consolidating his position. He piled new wood on the fire, selected a stone axe and a club and settled down by the blaze. One of the females had dropped a small haunch of meat into the fire where it lay sizzling and emitting delectable smells. Blade fished it out and, after scorching his fingers, brushed off dirt and ashes and burnt his mouth as he tore into it. He chewed and grinned and knew that he was making slobbering sounds and did not care. Meat had never tasted so good. As he satisfied his hunger his confidence grew — he was making the adjustment so necessary to staying alive in this new Dimension X. The worst was over. The chances were now an even fifty-fifty that he would survive.
They were watching him from out there in the darkness. On two sides. The man-things from their caves hi the foot of the cliff, the beast-things from the tall grass. The man-things were silent; the beasts roared and snarled and bellowed their hate and fear of the fire that kept them back. Blade stuffed himself on meat until his belly was swollen, wiped his greasy mouth, yawned and wished he could sleep. Impossible. He would never wake up.
He began to explore within the circle of firelight. He found a skin that would fit about his loins and another that would serve as a short cloak. He grunted and then smiled at himself — he must have sounded very like the late Ogar then. But he was pleased. Clothes, even raw, half-scraped skins, did make a difference. He busied himself, keeping his club and stone axe close at hand, and with a sharp, hand-worked flint he slit holes and made crude fasteners of wood and some creeper vine he found. He ate more meat and found himself thirsty and no help for it. No water. He would just have to thirst.
The supply of firewood, with care, would last until dawn. He fed the flames stingily and crouched near them, drowsing, yearning to sleep and not daring. And yet he must have dozed for a few seconds, for when his head snapped up and he came alert again she was there.
She came in silent abjection, on her hands and knees, crawling into view of the cliff side of the fire. Just within the aura of light she stopped and gazed at Blade, dog-like in her fear and cringing subjection. Blade understood. This young female had been sent to appease him. Once more godhood was bestowed and she was the price they paid, the sacrifice to a huge, massively muscled, hairless thing that threatened them. Blade smiled at the female and made a beckoning motion. She crawled a few paces nearer the fire, her small eyes intent on his, in terror, and yet doing as she had been told by the old men of the tribe.
She was very young, Blade thought. Possibly not more than twelve or thirteen, but already mature in body. A life span in this dimension would not be long.
The girlchild-thing — for so the thought of her — lacked some of the brutishness of feature common to Ogar and the others. Her body was supple, slim, fully revealed. Her body hair was lighter in color and not so thick as that of the males. Her legs were short and somewhat bowed, her waist small and her breasts, nearly hairless, were firm and plump with rigid out-thrusting nipples half an inch long. Her jaw and teeth, though out-jutting, lacked the prognathism of the males. Her skull was not so flattened, her frontal ridges less prominent. Blade thought of Lord L and smiled. By any gnathic index the old man would have had to list her as near to human.
Had he been longer in this particular Dimension X, and spent more time in the company of these creatures, Blade might well have accepted what she now offered. Offered in fear and trembling and, so he began to discern, some peculiar animal lust of her own. For there came a change in the glances she gave him and in the soft sounds she made deep in her throat. Nothing subtle.
The female halted just on the other side of the fire. She stared at Blade for a moment, then touched her breasts with her hands. She growled softly and he read both playfulness and desire into the sound. Most of her fear vanished. The smell of her came rank and acrid across the flames. She showed her teeth and chattered something at him. Blade did not move.
He was mindful that she might be a decoy, sent to lull him while the males crept up to brain him, and he searched the shadows beyond the fire. Nothing. He doubted they had the mental capacity for such a scheme. He went on watching her.
The lady was growing impatient. Blade choked back a laugh. By now she was puzzled and feeling slighted and beginning to dimly comprehend that the god-thing had no intention of becoming a lover. She growled at him. She lay on her back and clutched her breasts. She spread her legs wide, then raised her knees and stared through them at Blade.
Blade chuckled. He was not, he reckoned, cutting much of a figure in her eyes. It was evident that her awe of him was fast turning to contempt. And the watchers, especially the males, must be puzzled. This young female must be by far the most toothsome in the tribe — and the god would have none of her. Blade could only hope they would not become outraged and attack.
She tired of the game. She lowered her legs and glowered at Blade in reproach. A woman spurned. Blade smiled and patted his belly. He selected a tender bit of meat and tossed it to her.
She gobbled it, her eyes never leaving his face, and her small fangs flashed in what she must have meant as a smile of enticement. Blade tossed her more meat.
«Not tonight,» he said gently. «Thanks, but no thanks. I just don’t think we could make it together. Your in-laws, for one thing. Just too many of them — and they would all want to live with us. Sorry, honey, but it wouldn’t work out.»
He went on crooning nonsense. The female cocked her head at him, flashed her teeth again and seemed to shake her head. Off in the grass something roared and Blade glanced in that direction. When he looked back she had gone.
For the rest of the night Blade fought off sleep. The sun rose on a deserted world wrapped in gauzy white mist. The grass jungle was silent and the caves scattered along the base of the cliff, dark holes in the gray basalt, were as quiet as tombs. Blade knew they were there — watching him. The word had spread. He counted a score of fires, smoldering black embers now, up and down the line of cliffs. But never a sign of them.
Blade, selecting a club and the heaviest of the stone axes, began exploring up and down the line of the cliff. He passed dozens of caves without detecting a stir of life. He was tempted to venture into one of the caves but decided against it.
As it turned out he found what he wanted without risking the caves — a firepot, crudely fashioned of red clay and pierced for carrying by a vine sling, and a large collection of flints of varied sizes and uses. There were pebble tools and choppers and scrapers, axe heads, and even some punches and needles of bone. Blade made a pouch of skin and took what he needed. And found a prize second only to the firepot — a finely made knife of flint, double-bladed and with a tang properly chipped away and only waiting for a haft. He thanked the unknown genius who had made the knife. With it and the firepot he was in business.
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