“Stand back and let them do their work,” Temuchin ordered, and the soldiers instantly withdrew. “Watch them closely and if there is treachery, or mistakes, kill them at once.”
Thus encouraged, the stoat clansmen turned to their jobs. They appeared to know what they were doing. Some turned the handle while others adjusted the clanking pawls. One man even pulled himself out on the frame, far over the cliff’s edge, to grease the pulley wheel on its end.
“I will go first,” Temuchin said, slinging a heavy leather harness around his body under his arms.
“I hope that rope-thing is long enough,” Jason said, and instantly regretted it when Temuchin turned to glare at him.
“You will come next, after you have sent down my morope. See that it is blindfolded so it does not panic. Then you, then another morope, in that order. The moropes will be brought to the cliff only one at a time so they do not see what is happening to the others.” He turned to the officers. “You have heard my orders.”
Chanting in unison, the stoats turned the handle to wind the rope onto the drum, the pawls slowly clanking over. The pressure came on the harness but the rope stretched and thinned before Temuchin was lifted from the ground. Then his toes swung clear and he grabbed the rope as he swung out over the abyss, oscillating slowly up and down. When the bobbing had damped the operators reversed the motion and he slowly dropped from sight. Jason went to the lip and saw the warlord’s figure get smaller and finally vanish into the woolly clouds below. A piece of rock broke loose under the pressure of Jason’s toe and he stepped backwards quickly.
Every hundred meters, more or less, the men slowed and worked cautiously as a blob appeared where two sections of the elastic rope were joined together. They turned the handle carefully until the knot had cleared the pulley, then went back to their normal operating speed. Men changed positions on the cranks without stopping so that the rope moved out and down continuously.
“What is this rope?” Jason asked one of the stoats who seemed to be supervising the operation, a greasy-haired individual whose only tooth appeared to be a yellowed fang that projected above his upper lip.
“Plant things, growing things . . . long with leaves. What you call them mentri. . .”
“Vines?” Jason guessed.
“Yah, vines. Big, hard to find. Grow down the cliff. Stretch and very strong.”
“They had better be,” Jason said, then pointed and grabbed the man as the vine rope suddenly began to bounce up and down. He wriggled in Jason’s numbing grip and hurried to explain.
“All right, good, that means the man is down, let the vine go, it bounces up and down. Bring up!” he added, shouting at the crank operators.
Jason loosened his grip on the man who moved quickly away rubbing the injured spot. It made sense; when Temuchin had let go of the rope his released weight would have caused it to oscillate. Though not too much, his weight was surely only a small part of the overall weight of that massive length of cable.
“The morope next,” Jason ordered when the hook and sling were finally hauled up the cliff top once more. The beast was led forwards, blinking its red little eyes suspiciously at the brink ahead. The stoats efficiently fitted a broad harness about its body, then covered its eyes with a leather sack pulled down tight and tied under its jaw. After the hook had been attached the morope stood patiently until it began to feel its weight coming off the ground. Then, panic stricken, it began to struggle, its claws raking grooves in the dirt and cracking chips from the stone. But the operators had experience with this as well. The man, whom Jason had been talking to, ran up with a long-handled sledge hammer and, with a practiced swing, hit a mark on the bag, which must have been right above the creature’s eyes. The breath whooshed from its lungs and it went instantly limp. With much shouting and heaving the dead weight was swung clear of the ground and started over the edge.
“Hit just right,” the man said. “Too hard, kill it. Not hard enough it wake up soon and jump around, break rope.”
“Well hit,” Jason said, and hoped that Temuchin was not standing directly below.
Nothing appeared to be wrong and the rope vine clanked out, endlessly. Jason found himself dozing off and stepped farther back from the edge. Suddenly there were shouts and he opened his eyes to see the rope jerking back and forth, heaving with great bounces. It even jumped from the pulley and one of the men had to reseat it.
“Did it break?” Jason asked the nearest operator.
“No, good, all fine. Just bounce big when the morope come off.”
This was understandable. When the greater weight of the large beast was removed the elastic vine would do a great deal of heaving about. The motion had damped and they were bringing it up now. Jason realized that he was next and was aware of a definite dropping sensation in his stomach. He would have given a great deal not to suffer a descent on this iron-age elevator.
The beginning alone was bad enough. He realized that his feet were dragging free of the rock as the tension came on the vine and he automatically scratched with his toes, trying to stay on the solid mountain top. He did not succeed. The wheel turned another clank and he was airborne, swinging free, out from the cliff and above the cloud-bottomed drop. He took one look down between his twirling feet then riveted his attention straight ahead. The cliff top slowly rose above his head and the grim-faced nomads vanished from sight. He tried to think of something funny to say but, for once, was completely out of humorous ideas. Rotating slowly as he dropped he could, for the first time, see the continent-spanning cliff sweeping away on both sides, and could appreciate the incredible vastness of it. The air was clear and dry with the early morning sun lighting up the rock face so that every detail could be plainly seen.
Below was the white sea of the clouds, washing and breaking against the base of the continentwide cliff. The jagged, gray mountains that could be seen rising behind it, were dwarfed by comparison. Against the immensity of this cliff, Jason felt like a spider on a thread, drifting down an endless wall, moving yet seemingly suspended forever at the same spot, because the scale was so large. As he rotated he looked first right, then left, and in each direction the grained escarpment ran straight to the horizon, still erect and skytouching where it dimmed and vanished.
Jason could see now that the point on the cliff above, where the winch had been placed, was much lower than the rest of the stone barrier. He assumed that there was a matching rise in the ground below, for at any other spot along the cliff the length of the vine rope would not have been strong enough to support its own weight, exclusive of any added burden. The clouds rose up steadily below him until he felt he could almost reach out and kick them. Then the first damp tendrils of the fog touched him, and a few moments later the clouds closed around and he was alone in the gray world of nothingness.
The last thing that he expected to do, dangling at the end of the kilometer long, bobbing strand, was to fall asleep. But he did. The rocking motion, the fatigue of the day and night ride, and the blankness of his surroundings all contributed their bit. He relaxed, his head dropped, and in a few moments he was snoring lustily.
He awoke when the rain began trickling inside his collar and down his back. Though the air was much warmer he shivered and pulled his collar tight. It was one of those drizzling, dripping, all-day rains that seem to never end. Through it he could make out the streaked face of the cliff still moving by, and when he bent and looked between his toes something indeterminate was visible below. What? People? Friend or foe? If the locals knew about the winch that was out of sight in the clouds above they might possibly keep a massacre party waiting here. He swung the war ax out of his belt and slipped the thong about his wrist. Individual boulders were standing out below, set in a drab field of rain-soaked grass. The air was humid and sticky.
“Unbuckle that harness and be ready to let go of it,” Temuchin ordered, coming into sight as he stalked across the field below. “What is the ax for?”
“Anyone other than
you who might be waiting,” Jason answered, securing the ax in his belt again and working at the leather harness. A sudden stretch on the flexible rope lowered him to within feet of the grass.
“Let go!” Temuchin ordered, and Jason did, unfortunately just as the rope started up again. He rose a few feet and, for one instant, was suspended in midair, unmoving and unsupported, before he fell heavily. He rolled when he hit and jammed the hilt of his sword painfully into his ribs, but was otherwise undamaged. There was a quick whoosh above them as the rope, relieved of its burden, contracted and snapped upwards.
“This way,” Temuchin said, turning and walking off while Jason struggled to his feet. The grass was slippery and wet, and mud squelched up around his boots when he walked. Temuchin went around a pillar of rock and pointed up at its ten-meter high summit.
“You can watch from there to see when your morope arrives. Wake me then. My beast is grazing on this side. Be sure it does not stray.” Without waiting for an answer Temuchin lay down in a relatively dry spot in the lee of the rock and pulled a flap of leather over his face.
“Sure,” Jason said to himself, “just the job I wanted in the rain. A nice wet rock and a tremendous view of absolutely nothing.” He pulled himself up the steeply slanted stone and sat down on its rounded peak.
Thoughts of sleep were gone now, even sitting comfortably was impossible on the knobby hardness, so Jason writhed and suffered. The silence was disturbed only by the endless susurration of the falling rain, broken by an occasional trumpet of satiated joy from the morope as it enjoyed the unaccustomed banquet. From time to time the sheets of rain shifted, opening up a view down the hillside of grass pastures, with quick rivulets and dark-stained stones pushing up through the greenery. Ages of rain and damp discomfort passed before Jason heard hoarse breathing overhead and could make out a dim form dropping down slowly through the haze. He slid to the ground and Temuchin was awake and alert the instant Jason touched his shoulder.
There was something awe-inspiringly impressive about the great bulk of the limp morope, apparently unsupported, that swung down over their heads. Its legs were beginning to twitch and its breathing grew faster.
“Quickly,” Temuchin ordered. “It is beginning to awake.”
A sudden bounce dropped the morope lower and they grabbed for it, but the return contraction pulled it out of reach again. It was beginning to turn its head and was attempting to lift its neck. The next drop brought it almost to the ground and Temuchin leaped for its neck grabbing it and hanging on, his added weight pulling the foreparts of the creature to the damp ground.
“Unbuckle it,” he shouted.
Jason dived for the straps. The buckles were made easy-opening, being released by the throwing back of an iron handle. It would have been impossible to open normal buckles against the tension of the taut, stretched cable. The morope was beginning to thrash about when Jason threw open the last buckle—and leaped clear. The contraction of the elastic cable pulled the harness out from under the morope, raking its flesh so that it bellowed with pain, half flipping it over. The jangling harness, with a departing hiss, instantly vanished from sight in the rain.
The rest of the day settled into routine. Now that Jason knew what to do, Temuchin proved himself an experienced field soldier by taking advantage of the lull to catch up on his sleep. Jason wished he could join him, but he had been left in charge and he knew better than to try and avoid the responsibility. Soldiers and mounts dropped out of the rain-filled sky at regular intervals and Jason organized the operation. Some of the soldiers watched the field of grazing moropes while others stood by to land the new arrivals. The rest slept, except for Ahankk who, in Jason’s opinion, seemed to have fine vision, and who, therefore, occupied the lookout position. Twenty-five moropes and twenty-six men were down before the end suddenly came.
The work party were half dozing, depressed by the endless rain, when Ahankk’s hoarse call jabbed them to instant awareness. Jason looked up and had a brief vision of a dark form hurtling down, apparently right at them. This was just an illusion of the mist for the morope grew in size and struck the landing spot, plunging to the ground like a falling rock and hitting with a sickening, explosive sound. A great length of rope fell on and around it, the end landing not far from Jason and the soldiers.
There was no need to call Temuchin. He had been awakened by the shout and the sound of impact. He turned away after a single glance at the bloody, deformed corpse of the beast.
“Tie four moropes to the harness. I want it dragged away from here, along with that rope.” While his lieutenants jumped to obey him he turned to Jason. “This is why I sent a man first, then a morope. Two of the men will have to ride double. The stoats warned me that the rope broke after use, and that there was no possible way to tell when this would be. It usually breaks under a heavy load.”
“But has been known to snap when letting a man down. I can see why you went first. You’d make a good gambler, warlord,” Jason said.
“I am a good gambler,” Temuchin told him calmly, running a scrap of oiled leather over his rusting sword. “There is just one rope in reserve, so that I left orders to halt the drop if this one should break. A new rope will be in place by the time we return and a guard will be lowered and waiting for us. Now—we ride.”
X
“Is it permitted to ask where we are going?” Jason said as the war party moved slowly down the grassy hillside. They were spread out in a wide crescent with Temuchin and Jason at the center, while the moropes, who were dragging the carcass of their fellow, rode close by.
“No,” Temuchin said, which pretty well took care of that.
It was a smooth descent, as though the plains below were rising up to meet the escarpment, now invisible in the rain behind them. Grass and small shrubs covered the hill, cut through by streams and freshets. As they went lower these joined to form good-sized brooks that the moropes splashed through, snorting at the presence of such prodigious amounts of water. And the temperature rose. Jason—and the others—opened the helm back so the fine drizzle fell onto his overheated face. He wiped away the layer of grease that had covered his skin and began to think about the possibilities of bathing again.
The hill ended suddenly in a ragged cliff above a foam-flecked river. Temuchin ordered the corpse of the fallen animal and the festoons of rope dragged forward to the brink, where a squad of soldiers heaved and tipped it over the edge. It hit the water with a showering splash and, with a last, almost flippant, wave of one claw-studded paw, it was whirled away and vanished from sight. Without hesitation Temuchin turned their course southwest along the river’s bank. It was obvious that he had been forewarned of this obstacle, and the march continued at its kilometereating pace.
By late afternoon the rain had stopped and the character of the country had completely changed. Patches of brush and wood dotted the plain and, not far ahead, an extensive forest was visible under the lowering sky. As soon as Temuchin saw it he halted the march.
“Sleep,” he ordered. “We move again at nightfall.”
Jason did not have to be ordered twice. He was off his mount, while the others were still stopping, curled up on the grass with his eyes closed and the morope’s reins tied about his ankle. After the skull-banging, the grazing, drinking and galloping, the creature was happy to rest, too. It stretched full length on the ground, its chin extended in the rich grass, from which it pulled a clump to hold in its mouth while it slept.
The sky was dark, but to Jason it felt as though he had just closed his eyes when the steel fingers sank into his leg and shook him awake.
“We ride,” Ahankk said. Jason sat up, his stiff muscles creaking with the effort, and rubbed the granules of sleep from his eyes. He had washed out the dregs of achadh from his drinking skin earlier in the day and filled it with fresh stream water. He drank his fill and then sprayed a goodly quantity over his face and head. There was no water shortage in this land.
They rode out in a single file,
Temuchin leading and Jason one but last from the rear. Ahankk rode as rear guard, and it was obvious from his hot gaze and ready sword that Jason was what he was guarding. The exploring party was now a war party and the nomads needed no aid, and expected only interference, from a wandering jongleur. He was safe in the rear where he could not cause any trouble. If he did, he would be killed instantly. Jason rode quietly, trying to generate an aura of innocent compliance with the set of his shoulders.
There was no sound, even when they entered the wood. The padded feet of each morope fell in easy rhythm in the tracks of the preceding beast. Leather did not creak and metal did not rattle. They were spectral forms moving through rain-sodden silence. The trees opened up and Jason was aware that they had entered a clearing. A dim light was visible in the near distance and, by glancing out of the corners of his eyes at it, Jason could make out the dark form of a building.
Still silent, the soldiers had made a smooth right wheel and were moving on the building in a single line. They were no more than a few meters from the structure when a rectangle of light suddenly appeared as a door was opened. A man, silhouetted sharply against the light stood in the opening.
“Save him—kill the rest!” Temuchin shouted, and the attackers leaped forward before the words were out of his mouth.
Chance put Jason near the man in the open doorway, yet everyone else seemed to get there first. The man leaped back with a hoarse cry, trying to close the door, but three men hit it at once, driving it open and sending him back. All three of them remained flat on the floor, where they had fallen and Jason, who had just slid from his morope’s back, saw why. Five more of the men, two kneeling and three standing, had stopped at the open doorway with drawn bows. Two, three times they fired and the air hissed and thrummed from their bowstrings and the arrows’ flight. Jason reached them as they stopped the firing and charged into the building. He was right behind them, but the fight was over.
Deathworld: The Complete Saga Page 41
