“You’ve been a deep pain in my ass for some time now,” Orc said. “You used to be so jolly I forgave you your irritating habits and your running off at the mouth. Not to mention your crazy fits. But I’m really tired of your pessimism.”
“What crazy fits?”
Ijim was bristling.
Orc went down into the tunnel. The trapdoor was left propped open. The young Lord hoped that this would make some fresh air flow through the tunnel. Ijim did not come along with Orc.
“There’s not enough space for two to work together,” he said. “Anyway, this is just a reconnoiter. You don’t need me.”
“Fine!” Orc said. “You can work with your flint. We’re going to need a couple of hundred awls before we’re through.”
Ijim had mentioned the night before Orc’s descent into the tunnel that he should tell him that he tended to panic in closed small places. He would not like it if Orc told anyone about this. But there it was.
“That doesn’t mean I won’t be going with you when we try for the gate. I’ll make it through with you. Somehow. I’ve done it before when it was absolutely necessary. And if it didn’t take too long.”
Thus, Orc was now alone as he crawled on hands and knees. He wore pads on his knees and gloves on his hands. He carried a lit torch and several extra torches. Attached to his belt was the end of a thin strip of rawhide. He had estimated the distance between the trapdoor and the point at which the tunnel would be deepest under the river. To make sure, he had probed the river in its middle to gauge its depth.
When the strip became tight, it would indicate that he should stop crawling. He hoped that the estimate was near the reality. He also hoped that the torch fumes would not overcome him. As it was, they made him cough and burned his eyes.
After a near unendurable length of time, the strip tautened. He took his gloves off, wet a finger, and held it up. There seemed to be a very slight flow of air, but he could just be imagining that. Wishful thinking or not, he had to go to work. He got down onto his back. After removing from his bag the wooden support he had built, he set it by his side. Having placed the torch upright in the support, he incised a square on the top of the tunnel with one of the sharp flint scrapers from the bag.
Ijim was right. Hammering or pounding would bring the kamanbur. Eventually, he would have to use a stone hammer. But that could wait until the last moment. The scraper made a screeching noise which he hoped would die out before it reached the other end of the tunnel.
He was taking a chance that some lone kamanbur or a pack of kamanbur would come along this tunnel. If that happened, it would happen.
Though the glassy substance was hard, it was softer than iron. It could be cut as easily as bronze, though “easily” was only a relative term. Tiny flakes shining in the torchlight fell down onto his chest. Stopping now and then to wipe the sweat from his face or to drink water from his leather bottle, he moved the edge of the scraper across the lines of the square. After an indeterminate time, he stopped. The torch fumes seemed to be stronger, and he felt somewhat faint. His moistened finger could detect no movement of air. Alarmed, he took the torch from its support and crawled back toward the entrance trapdoor.
He and Ijim had arranged signals for emergencies. The Lord of the Dark Woods would tug the strip twice, pause, then tug it twice again to call Orc out of the tunnel. Orc would do the same if something happened to him that required that Ijim drag him out by the leather strip. Orc crawled back to the platform. The trapdoor was closed. The end of the strip which Ijim was to hold was lying on the platform. Something must be wrong if Ijim had shut the door.
He rolled the torch down the slope so that its light would not be seen when he raised the door. Slowly, he moved the door up about an inch. He saw several kamanbur moving around at the base of the tree which held the little hut he and Ijim had built. The lower branches were festooned with the shiny gray strands spat from the creatures’ mouths. When he raised the door another inch, he saw that the treehouse was beyond the reach of these. Ijim’s dark face was in a window.
An hour later, the beasts had left. Orc crawled out of the tunnel and went to the tree. He called up softly, “What happened?”
Ijim, while climbing down, said, “They came to investigate. I think they came through a tunnel upriver and then circled around through the woods. I saw them before they got close, and I ran to the tree. I’m sorry I didn’t have time to signal you. The only thing I could do was to close the trapdoor and hope they hadn’t seen me doing it. I guess they didn’t.”
“Maybe, now they’ve satisfied their curiosity, they’ll leave us alone,” Orc said.
He went down the tunnel after a while and resumed work. The next day, he crawled to the other end of the tunnel before he began his scraping. He had to determine that that exit-entrance was open. Or, if it were closed, that it could be opened from the tunnel side. A pale light in a round frame and loud whistling sounds showed that there was no trapdoor on this end. Since he might be smelled by the tenants, he went no closer.
Six days later, while he was incising, a drop of water fell on his face. That was soon followed by a steady drip. He continued scraping away in the narrow trenches forming the square. Water was soon oozing out from all four of the lines. Then, in one corner, it spurted out. He got out of the tunnel.
“I don’t think it’s going to give way until it’s hammered at,” he told Ijim. “The kamanbur will hear me. But if I can loosen it enough so the water breaks through entirely, it won’t matter.”
“You don’t want to wait until tomorrow?” Ijim said. He was pale under his dark pigment.
“Let’s get everything ready now,” Orc said. “That won’t take more than a few minutes. Then I go back. Be ready.”
The sun was three-quarters of the way across the sky. Big black clouds were building up to the west, and the faint sound of thunder reached them.
The trees on the north side of the bank partly obscured the vision of the watchers in the nest. Orc and Ijim had also transplanted several large bushes to conceal their activities. Orc was not worried about being seen. But a party of kamanbur, reinvestigating the men, could show up at any time.
When he got back to the square, he drove several flint awls into its corners. His stone hammer struck again and again against a leather pad placed on the blunt end of the awl. He did not want to make much noise until he was ready to begin hammering on the square itself. The awls punched through the corners easily enough, though he had to use a different tool for each corner. The ends became quickly blunted or broken off.
Water had formed in a pool below the square. He was half-sunk in it. Suddenly, water spurted out of the tiny hole just made in a corner of the incised square. Its high-pressure jet half-blinded him, and he had to stop several times to blow water out of his nose. Despite the difficulties, he finished with the awls. Then he used a heavy stone hammer. The force of the blows was decreased by lack of space to swing the hammer and by his position on his back. Also, he had moved back so that his face was not directly below the square. That changed the angle of attack. He persisted, knowing that many lesser blows would equal a few strong ones.
Between the impacts of the stone on the square, he could hear whistlings. The kamanbur would soon be on him.
Then, as he had expected—no way to avoid it—the shiny gray square shot down and against his chest. It struck hard enough to hurt him. The water spouted through and hit him with a force harder than that of the square. He rolled over, though the water pressed him to the tunnel floor for a moment. He began crawling away as swiftly as he could. Water rose until he was swimming, though its advance bore him upward at a slight angle toward the trapdoor. The tunnel had become black as soon as the water had doused the torch flame. His tools were left behind. It was his life that concerned him now.
Ijim was supposed to be hauling in the line as hard and as swiftly as he could. If his efforts were doing any good, they were not apparent. Orc could feel no tug on the line.
He saw daylight ahead. The trapdoor had been left open. Then he could see nothing. The water had filled the tunnel and was rising faster then he could swim. A few seconds later, he burst into the nearly vertical part of the tunnel just below the trapdoor. Ijim grabbed Orc’s outstretched hand and yanked him on out. The water surged up above the hole and fell back. Thereafter, it stayed level with the surface of the river.
The thunderheads were closer, larger, and blacker. Orc hoped that the lightning, thunder, and possibly rain would come soon. For some reason, he thought that all that would aid the Lords’ invasion of the nest. It would certainly make it more dramatic.
Some weapons, including bows and arrows and short spears, were in watertight cases. Ijim helped strap one on Orc; Orc helped Ijim with his case. With other weapons inserted in containers in their belts, they plunged, Orc first, into the dark tunnel. Ijim was still pale, and his teeth were chattering. But he looked determined. Orc, however, was not sure that his uncle would have the courage to follow him. The claustrophobia would be made worse by having to swim all the way into the nest. As it was, Orc was not sure that they would not drown before reaching their goal.
Just as he believed that he could no longer hold his breath, he saw a glimmer above him. He thrust upward desperately, and his head broke the surface. A few seconds later, Ijim’s dark face was beside him.
Ijim drew in several long breaths, then gasped, “That was the most terrible thing I’ve ever endured! I thought …”
“Quiet!” Orc said softly. While dog-paddling and sucking in air, he looked around. There was just enough space between the water and the ceiling for their heads. The pale light from an opening in the floor of the story above shone on a ramp ascending from the water to the opening. Around them floated the bodies of many kamanbur, adults and puppies. No sound came from above.
He swam to the ramp and went up it on his hands and knees. When he got to the room above, he took his ax from its container. Ijim, still gasping, was close behind him. A faint breeze moved over Orc’s wet skin and brought him an unidentifiable stench. The room was empty of kamanbur but not of other living creatures. Some were in large cages constructed of the dried gray strands and set along the bases of the walls and halfway up them. The grasshopper-sized insects therein glowed intermittently but made a steady light. The off phases of half of them were balanced by the on phases of the other half.
“Fascinating,” Orc said. “A very unusual symbiosis between insects and mammals.”
In larger cages attached to the walls were two other types of insects. One had scarlet-and-yellow-striped wings which beat as swiftly as a hummingbird’s. Their combined noise made a low roar. These obviously kept the air moving. There were also spidery things the size of Orc’s head. He had no time to determine their function.
He undid the waterproof case. From it, he took a short flint-tipped spear, a quiverful of arrows, and a bow. The spear was in a slender case within the larger case. After fitting the quiver strap over his shoulder, he strung the bow. Then he fitted an arrow to the bow. Having done all this very quickly, he trotted off along the curving wall. He passed a number of hallways. Not until he came to one with a larger entrance did he halt. This should lead to the room at the intersection of the two buildings that formed the horizontal and vertical arms of the cross within the circle, as seen from the top of the ridge. His guess was that Los had placed the gate at the intersection. But he had no idea on what floor it would be.
“Hurry!” Ijim said behind him. “They’ll be coming down as soon as they get over their scare!”
Orc did not reply. He ran down the hallway past the insects in the walls. The light was not strong, though that coming through the thousands of holes in the walls added to the illumination. Abruptly, he was in the room in the central part of the cross.
He stopped. He was in luck. There, in the center of the round-walled room, was the gate. It was made of the shimmering more-than-diamond-hard metal called tenyuralwa.
Around it were piled kamanbur bones. These were a warning to the nest tenants to stay away from the upright square. Some time ago, the gate had been erected by Los, who had by some means kept the kamanbur from attacking him. After he had left, the creatures had investigated the gate. Some had gone through the side which was set with a trap and had perished. The parts of the bodies that had been in this world when the foreparts were burned or cut off had been arranged around the gate by the kamanbur. All the skeletons were of the hind parts only.
“If the kamanbur come down now,” Ijim said, “we won’t have much time to figure out how to get through!”
The gate was a metal square seven feet high. Its base had been secured to the floor with a hard black stuff, Thoan glue that no acid could dissolve or any fire burn away. Orc put his bow and arrow down, removed his spear from its case, and put it by the bow. After picking up a bone, he went to the other side of the gate and threw the bone through the square. It passed through unhindered and landed on the floor. That meant that the opposite side of the gate was the entrance to the other world.
Ijim had untied and unrolled a leather bundle and removed from it two torches and the ignition materials. They were a box containing wood shavings, splinters, dried grass, twigs, and two roughened flints set into wooden handlers. He arranged the inflammable material in a pile and began striking the flints together.
Orc walked around the square, kicking bones out of the way. Then he cast one through the opposite side of the square. As he expected, it disappeared. Another bone thrust a few inches into the square and quickly withdrawn was unsheared. A second later, he repeated the same action. This time, all the bone extended past the middle of the gate had been sheared off. That part was not visible because it was in the other world.
Ijim was cursing. The sparks struck from the flints had not set fire to the pile. He said, “Sometimes, it takes a lot of time! But we may not have that!”
Orc was too intent on his tests to reply. He put a legbone in again and again, counting seconds, rlentawon, rlenshiwon, rlenkawon, rlenshonwon, rlengushwon. Translated, one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four, one thousand five. When he had used up that bone, he began testing with another.
Ijim said, “Ah! Finally! Success!”
Orc turned to face him. The Lord of the Dark Woods was holding the end of a pine brand just above the fiery pile. The smoke from the flames was drifting slowly toward the nearest exit, which was the square of the gate.
“Listen carefully, Ijim. The trap seems to be a time-interval shears. I don’t think the timing is random. We have approximately a second and a half to get through. The field goes off just that long. We have to stand close and jump through. But we must raise our hands up and hold our elbows close to our body. Our legs must be in the same vertical plane as our bodies. Anything sticking out too far ahead of our bodies or too far behind will be cut off.”
Ijim nodded, and he said, “One hop does it. It’ll be awkward to do that and go through without bending our knees.”
Ijim understood as well as Orc—after all, he was many thousands of years older—that each man would have to use a bone first to test and thus to estimate the time base on which to start counting before taking the hop. There would be nothing accurate or guaranteed about the counting. Mostly, it would be luck that would get them through safely.
“One chance only,” Orc said. He started, then stared past Ijim.
“We won’t have time to practice jumping before we make the real one. Give me a torch.”
Ijim, who had been bent over while lighting the second torch, straightened up and whirled around. By then, the room near the archway was filled with forty or so kamanbur. They spread out, their heads hanging low, jaws open, teeth gleaming, saliva dripping, pincers clacking together, prehensile tails straight up but curling at the ends. Their yellow eyes were fixed on the men.
Orc saw directly down the mouth of one. Inside it were two hornlike projections. These w
ould be the guns, as it were, out of which were shot the thin quick-drying strands. Ijim advanced to the pile of bones encircling the gate, shouted, and waved the torch at them. They shrank away from him. Then one of them, a large female, emitted a series of long and short whistles. The gray beasts formed a circle around the bone enclosure.
Orc said, “They may have figured out that they can come through the gate on the other side without being harmed. They could attack us from two sides.”
He ran around the gate and swung the torch back and forth at the kamanbur. They moved back but not as far as when they had first been threatened.
Ijim screamed, “Let’s do it now! I’ll go first! You watch my back!”
Orc could not help wondering if Ijim was planning to shove him back through the gate when he jumped after him. The idea of doing that to Ijim had occurred to him, though he had rejected it. Why should Ijim do that? He would still need Orc. But the Lords, like the leblabbiy, did not always act logically.
Orc ran back to the other side. He waved his torch as he did so. Gray strands shot out from the mouths of those in the front rank. They fell short by a few inches. After the range-finding tests, the kamanbur moved about a foot closer to the Lords. By the time he reached Ijim, the Lord was burning off several strands wrapped around his legs. The quickly flaming strands stank like a mixture of garlic and rotten potatoes.
The leader whistled some more messages, and they retreated. Then a dozen advanced a few feet from the pack and crouched. They looked so much like runners at the blocks that Orc understood what they meant to do. They would dash forward in a body and, when very close, jump. While still in the air, they would expel the entangling strands. Their prey would not be able to burn them all away before the kamanbur fell upon them.
“Now!” Orc yelled.
Ijim turned around slowly. His eyes were as unmoving as glass balls set in cement. His lips, however, were writhing as he articulated very swiftly but not very clearly.
The World of Tiers, Volume 2 Page 58
