A Dilbian with coal-black fur was just charging into the clearing John had just left, forty feet below. Tark-ay was scrambling to his feet.
“Where is he?” roared this Dilbian. “Point him out!”
“What are you doing here?” said Tark-ay.
“Don’t try to pretend you don’t know. I found out! When Boy Is She Built didn’t come back in time, I went looking for her. When I found her coming out of these woods she had some explaining to do. I know it all now. Where’s this Shorty who’s been acting as if I was running away from him?”
“You’re too late,” said Tark-ay, not without a certain tone of satisfaction in his voice, it seemed to John. “He’s escaped.” And he pointed to the cut sections of the rope that had bound John.
“Escaped?” The Dilbian, who could be no other than the Streamside Terror, had gone ominously quiet. John, peering at the two of them from around the tree, was trying to make up his mind whether to make a run for it, or lie quiet and hope they would not come searching this way.
He decided to lie quiet. It would give him a chance to case the Streamside Terror and see, if possible, what gave that Dilbian his reputation as a battler. So far, there had been no indications. The Terror was by no means the biggest Dilbian John had seen; he was considerably shorter, for example, than the Hill Bluffer. Perhaps his unusualness was a matter of reflexes.
“You let him escape?” said the Terror, mildly.
“Alas,” said Tark-ay, a trifle smugly.
“WHY?” roared the Terror.
Hemnoids were no more without nerves than humans, apparently. Tark-ay jumped involuntarily, as the Terror erupted with full lung power two feet from his nose.
“That’s not for you to question!” snapped Tark-ay. “And furthermore—”
There was no furthermore. For just then, the Terror lit into him.
Note: noted John. Terror gives no warning. Does not telegraph punches.
The fight became active in the clearing below John. Tark-ay was valiantly attempting to employ his high skills and arts; but seemed somewhat hampered by the factor that the Terror had closed with him immediately and they were both now rolling around on the ground together.
Note: noted John. When no stream available, Terror attempts to batter opponent against handy rocks and trees.
No matter how you sliced it, the battle proceeding below was an awe-inspiring bit of action. The combined weight of the two opponents must have run close to fifteen hundred pounds; both were skilled fighters, and both in top condition.
Note: noted John. Liberal use of nails and teeth gives Terror considerable advantage over opponent not trained to this sort of fighting and not expecting same.
The Terror was definitely gaining the upper hand. Tark-ay seemed to be weakening.
Note: noted John. Terror particularly quick for someone so large. Would smallness of human and consequent greater maneuverability of human give human slight advantage in this department however? Possibly. But what good would it do just to keep dodging?
The fight below seemed drawing to its close with the Terror emerging as a clear winner. John suddenly realized that with all this noise going on, now was the ideal time for him to get away from the vicinity and travel.
He traveled.
* * *
At first, he merely headed off through the woods in a plain and simple attempt to put as much distance between himself and the place of his recent captivity, as possible.
As soon as he had covered about a quarter mile or so, his first urgency dwindled a bit. He took time out to get a handkerchief out of his pocket, tear it in half and bind up the cuts on his wrists, which had been bleeding somewhat messily, all down his hands. There was no water nearby in which he could wash his hands, but he rubbed them in dry leaves, and got them looking better than they had before.
Then he sat down on a fallen tree to catch his breath and began to think about getting his bearings.
He had no idea in what direction he had been carried the night before after being wrapped up in the leather blanket, or whatever it was that had been used to bundle him up. However, he remembered Gulark-ay’s reference to Clan Hollows territory, “just over the river”; and he recalled that Sour Ford Inn had been right at a river. Consequently, the river in question could not be far from him; and once he found it, he could go up or down it until he found Sour Ford Inn and the Bluffer.
John utilized some elementary woodcraft. He hunted for the tallest tree he could find close at hand and climbed it.
From its top he spotted the river, about half a mile away and almost due west according to the sun. And on this side of the river, a mile or two upstream was some cluster of buildings which was probably Sour Ford Inn.
John climbed down again and headed west, not forgetting to keep his eyes peeled for the Terror or even for Tark-ay, assuming the Hemnoid had been left in condition to travel.
However, he met no one. When he reached the river, he found there was a trail running alongside it; and he had hardly proceeded half a mile up the trail before he ran into a group of five Dilbians.
“Hey! Whoop!” hollered the first of these, the minute he got around a bend in the trail and spotted John. “There he is! Where’d you run off to, Shorty? The Bluffer’s got half the people between here and Twin Peaks out looking for you!”
CHAPTER 15
“Never,” said the Bluffer, as he swung through the forest with John on his back, “again. Nothing with legs. If it’s got legs it can deliver itself. The mail’s for things that can’t get around on its own. That’s what the mail’s for.”
John felt too comfortable to be disturbed by the postman’s grousing. He had put his foot down for the first time, when the group he had run into had brought him back to the inn, and insisted on a couple of hours sleep in ordinary fashion. He had gotten them, in the peace of the inn dormitory. When he had woken up, he had decided as well to quit worrying about possible allergies and have something more than paste and pill concentrates to eat.
He had stuffed himself, accordingly. Dilbian bread, he discovered was coarse and full of uncompletely milled kernels, the cheese was sour and the meat tough, with a sour taste to it. It tasted delicious, and he just wished he had been able to hold a bit more. No allergic reactions had showed up so far; and now, with a full stomach, he drowsed on the back of the Dilbian postman, all but falling asleep in the saddle. As he drowsed, he wondered dreamily about his escape from Tark-ay. It all seemed almost too good to be true.
They were descending now into a country of lower altitudes, although they were still far above the central plains of this particular Dilbian continent. The central plains, being warmer in the summer than the Dilbians liked, were only sparsely settled. They regarded them as lush, unhealthy places where a man from the uplands lost his moral fiber quickly and fell into unnamed vices. Black sheep from the respectable communities of the clans often ended up down there, where the living was easy and no questions asked about a man’s past.
So, the higher Hollows area was regarded as lowlands, in the ordinary sense by the mountain-living Dilbians. And in fact, John noticed that the countryside here did look a lot different. A new type of tree, something like a birch, was now to be seen among the hitherto unbroken ranks of sprucelike coniferoids of the uplands. And fern and brush began to put in an appearance.
All this could have been quite interesting to John if he had not been half-asleep; and if he had not had other things swimming about in the back of his mind, specifically, that apparently unavoidable meeting with the Streamside Terror, to which events and the Hill Bluffer seemed to be rushing him in spite of himself.
He felt like someone who has been caught in an avalanche, and now was riding it down the mountainside—for the moment on top of the moving mass, but with an inevitable cliff edge looming ahead. What the blazes was he to do, he wondered dully out of his half-awake state, when he found himself suddenly shoved, barehanded against the Terror? Doubtless with an impenetrable ring
of Dilbian spectators hemming them both in, as well.
And for what? Why? Everybody from Joshua on through Gulark-ay seemed to have a different explanation of the reasons for the combat taking place. Everybody’s patsy, that’s what I am, thought John gloomily and dozed off again. Time went by.
He awoke suddenly. The Hill Bluffer had stopped unexpectedly, with a startled grunt. John sat up and looked around with the uncertainty of a man still fogged by sleep.
They were out of the woods. They had emerged into a small valley in which a cluster of buildings stood in the brown color of their peeled, and naturally weathered logs, haphazardly about a stream that ran the valley’s length. Beyond the village, or whatever it was, there was a sort of natural amphitheater made by a curved indentation in the far rock wall of the valley. Past this, the path curved on through an opening in the valley wall and into the further forest.
However, it was not this pleasant little village scene that caught John’s attention as he came fully awake.
It was a group of five brawny Dilbians who stood squarely athwart the path before himself and the Bluffer.
Armed with axes.
The Hill Bluffer had not said a word from the moment of John’s awakening. Now he exploded. In his outrage he was almost incoherent.
“You—you—” he stuttered, roaringly. “You got the almighty nerve—you got the guts—! You dare stop the mail? Who do you think—just who is it thinks he’s got the right—”
“Clan Hollows in full meeting, that’s who,” said the middle axman, a Dilbian almost as tall as the Bluffer, himself. “Come on with us.”
The Bluffer took two steps backwards and hunched his shoulders. John felt himself lifted on the swell of the postman’s big back muscles.
“Let’s just see you take us!” snarled the postman. He sounded slightly berserk. Up on his back, John swallowed automatically looking at the Dilbian axes. John was in rather the same position as someone with a drunken or excitable friend who is in the process of getting them both into a fight. Harnessed to the Bluffer the way he was, there was no way he could quickly get down and loose in the case of trouble; and just at the moment the Bluffer did not seem to be thinking of taking time out to put his mail in a safe place before committing suicide.
“Hey!” said John, tapping the Bluffer on the shoulder. He might as well have tapped one of the Dilbian mountains in a like manner, for all the attention he attracted.
“Spread out, boys,” said the head axman, hefting his forty-pound tool-weapon. The line began to extend at either end and curve in to flank the Bluffer. “Postman, officially in the name of Clan Hollows, I’m bidding you to immediate meeting. The grandfathers are waiting for you there, postman. And that Shorty you got with you.”
The Hill Bluffer ground his teeth together. Seated just back of the Dilbian’s mandible hinges the way John was, it made an awesome sound.
“He’s mine.” The postman sounded like he was talking through clenched jaws. “Until delivered! Come try to take him, you hollow-scuttling, thieving low-land loopers, you Clan Hollows sons of—”
The axmen were beginning to snarl and look red-eyed in turn. Desperate times, thought John, call for desperate measures.
He leaned forward, got the Bluffer’s right ear firmly in his teeth. And bit.
“Yii!” roared the Bluffer—and spun about, almost snapping John’s head off at the neck. “Who did that—? Oh! What’re you trying to pull, Half-Pint.” He tried to twist his neck around and look John in the face.
“That’s right,” said John. “Get in a fight! Get the government mail damaged! Back on my Shorty world they’ve got better postmen than that.”
“They can’t do this to me,” rumbled the Bluffer, but his voice had noticeably dropped in volume.
“Sure,” said John. “Your honor. But duty comes before honor. How about me? It’s as much against my honor to let these axmen take me in. There’s nothing I’d like better,” said John, smiling falsely, “than to get down from your back here and help you take these Hollows unmentionables to pieces. But do I think of myself? No. I—”
“Listen at him,” said one of the axmen. “Help take us to pieces! Hor, hor.”
“You think that’s funny, do you!” flared the Bluffer afresh, spinning to face the tickled axman. “You just remember this is the Shorty chasing down the Terror. How’d you like to tangle with the Terror, yourself, hairy-legs?”
“Huh!” said the other, losing his good humor suddenly, and hefting his ax. However, he did throw a second look over the Bluffer’s shoulder at John and stood where he was.
“All right, men,” said the leader of the axmen. “Enough of this chit-chat! When I give the word—”
“Cut it! Cut it!” boomed the Bluffer. “We’ll go with you. Half-Pint’s right. Lucky for you.”
“Huh!” said the axman who had laughed before. But as they all fell into a sort of hollow square with the Bluffer and John in the middle, he stayed well to the rear. Together they marched down into the valley and toward the amphitheater at the far end.
* * *
They went through the village, which under the bright early afternoon sun seemed to have a fiesta air about it, and to the amphitheater. The main road up which they traveled was alive with Dilbians of all ages moving in the same direction and many questions were thrown at the guard around John and the Bluffer. The guard, marching stiffly, with axes over their shoulders, looked straight ahead to a Dilbian and refused to answer.
They came at last to a long, meter-high ledge of rock on which five very ancient-looking male Dilbians sat on one low bench. The one on the far right was a skinny oldster who seemed slightly deaf, since as they came up he was cupping one ear with a shaky hand and shouting at the Dilbian next to him to speak up. As the Bluffer and John were brought to a halt before them, John was astonished to notice the number of other familiar faces in the forefront of the gathering. One Man was there, seated on a sort of camp stool. Ty Lamorc and Boy Is She Built stood not far from the giant Dilbian. And Gulark-ay and Joshua Guy were flanking old Shaking Knees, who—whether in his capacity as mayor of Humrog, or father to Boy Is She Built—was looking important.
“Hey!” cried John, trying to attract the attention of the little human ambassador.
Joshua Guy looked up, spotted John, and gave him a large smile and a cheery wave of one hand.
“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” called the ambassador; he went back to chatting in a friendly manner with Gulark-ay and Shaking Knees.
“I can’t see him. Where is he? Get him out in the open!” the deaf grandfather on the end of the bench was snapping fretfully.
“Sit here,” said an axman. The Bluffer sat down on a bench. John climbed down from the saddle and sat beside him.
“There he is!” said the deaf grandfather. “Why didn’t someone point him out to me before. What? Hey? Speak up!”
He was nudged by the grandfather adjoining. The grandfathers conferred, for the most part in low voices. Then they all sat back on their bench, and the central one waggled a finger at the head axman, who stepped out into the open space before the ledge and turned to the crowd.
“Clan Hollows is now meeting in open session!” he shouted. “No fighting! Everybody listen!”
The crowd muttered, grumbled, and took about forty seconds to subside to a passably low level of noise.
“Ahem!” The central grandfather, a heavy Dilbian whose hair was showing the rusty color of age, cleared his throat. “The grandfathers have called this meeting to discuss a matter of Clan honor. In short: is the honor of Clan Hollows involved in the ruckus that one of the Clan Members, the Streamside Terror, has got himself into?”
“Yes!” spoke up Boy Is She Built.
“Who said that?” said the central grandfather.
“She did,” said an axman, pointing at Boy Is She Built.
“Keep her quiet,” said the grandfather.
“Shut up!” said the axman to Boy Is She Built.
> “I apologize for my daughter to Clan Hollows,” said Shaking Knees.
“You ought to,” said the center Clan Hollows grandfather.
“What’d she say? Hey?” said the grandfather on the end. And they started all over again.
Three minutes later, approximately, things were fairly well straightened out and the meeting underway.
“It seems,” said the center grandfather, “that the Terror, wanting this female that just interrupted your grandfather, here, got himself involved with a couple of different types of characters, who may or may not be real people, ended up coming back here with one of the types of characters, known as a Shorty, hot after him, and killing one of the other types of characters, known as a Fatty. Everybody agree to this?”
There was a stir in the forefront of the crowd and Gulark-ay spoke up.
“If the grandfathers will allow a stranger to speak—”
“Go ahead,” said the center grandfather. “You’re the Fatty top man from Humrog, aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“You don’t agree?” said the center grandfather.
“I just,” said Gulark-ay in a voice that reminded John of heavy maple syrup being poured from a five-gallon can, “wished to point out to the grandfathers of Clan Hollows that the Fatty in question is not quite killed. The Terror apparently left him for dead; but it seems now he will recover.”
“Well, then, there’s no blood feud involved there!” said the grandfather, sharply. “Why aren’t we informed properly about these things?”
“I don’t know,” said the chief axman.
“Speak when you’re spoken to,” said the center grandfather. He looked out over the crowd. “Where’s the Terror? I don’t see the Terror.”
“He’s waiting at Glen Hollow,” said Boy Is She built.
“Shut up,” said the axman who had spoken to her before.
“Let her speak now,” said the center grandfather. “Unless somebody else can tell us why the Terror’s at Glen Hollow instead of here? I didn’t think so. Go on, girl!”
“The Terror says the Clan can’t force a man to dishonor himself. If he’d known the Half-Pint Posted, this Shorty here, had been after him, he wouldn’t have moved a step after taking Greasy Face to avenge his honor against Little Bite—”
The Right to Arm Bears (dilbia) Page 10
