Ghlikh smiled and said, "You forgot to say that you were also going to the south coast to determine if your kind existed there."
He tapped on the membrane and then listened to the reply. He said, "Wurutana has decided that you should be taken to the city of my people. The Wuggrud will escort you there."
He spoke to the chief, who seemed to be protesting. But the tiny Ghlikh spoke firmly to him and then shook his fist and screamed at him. The giant sullenly acquiesced, and Ulysses was led down the steps and out of the chamber. As soon as they were in the tunnel, he was able to breathe easier. He said, "Ghlikh, what about Awina? And my men?"
"Oh, they will go to make food for the Wuggrud, of course."
He spoke to the giant, who bellowed with laughter.
Ghlikh said, "We'll leave at dawn. Not all your people will be killed. That is, not at once. Some will be taken along and butchered as needed."
Ulysses hesitated. He wanted to ask that Awina be brought along with him. The idea that he might have to watch her skull being broken and her body torn apart and devoured raw sickened him. It would be easier on him if she were left behind and he was spared that sight. But then there was always a chance of escape, however slight it seemed at the moment. If she were left behind, she had no chance. With him, she might live.
But Ghlikh hated him, and he might do exactly the opposite of what Ulysses wanted. Asking him to take Awina along might ensure that she would be left behind. Or, worse, Ghlikh, knowing Ulysses' fondness for her, might have her butchered before his eyes.
He would have to chance that. He just could not keep his mouth shut.
"Ghlikh," he said. "You seem to have great authority here, as the representative of Wurutana, whoever he is. Can you see that Awina will be brought along with us?"
Ghlikh smiled and said nothing for a long time. Then, just before they reached the end of the tunnel, he said, "We'll see."
He meant to torture Ulysses with uncertainty. So be it. Ulysses could wait. There was nothing else he could do.
When they entered the dome, Ghlikh directed that Ulysses be placed by Awina. He grinned when he did this, and Ulysses knew that he was taking pleasure at the thought of their agonised conversation.
As soon as he was by her, Ulysses said softly, "The first chance you get, reach into my pocket and get my knife out."
He saw Ghlikh, across the room, talking to his wife, who looked over at them and smiled nastily.
Ulysses said, "I'll snuggle close and appear to be talking to you. You get into my pocket and get the knife and open the blade. You know how. And then saw away at the bonds."
He managed to get closer and leaned his head against her, working his mouth so that he seemed to be whispering. She stank of sweat and fear, and she was trembling.
Even if they don't see us, and if I can get your hands loose, what can we do against those?" she said, nodding at the giants.
"We'll find out," he said. A giant walked toward them, and Ulysses froze. But the Wuggrud turned his back on them and then sat down in front of them. Ulysses could not have wished for a better wall behind which to hide. Presently, the huge head dropped, and the giant was snoring like distant thunder. The others lay down to sleep with the exception of one who stood in the entrance. He, however, did not seem particularly interested in keeping an eye on the captives. Why should he? They were all tied up, and they were small, and he stood between them and the outside.
Ulysses was worried about Ghlikh and Ghuakh, however. At any moment one of them might think of the knife and come over to take it away from him. He could not see them now, which meant that they could not see him, either. Ghlikh might not like that; he would want to enjoy Ulysses' suffering.
But Ghlikh did not come. Possibly, he and his wife had decided to take a nap, too, before the hard journey began. Ulysses fervently hoped so.
As long as no one was watching them, Awina could work swiftly. She scooted around so her back was to him and then groped into his pocket. In this situation, her feline suppleness and the smallness of her hand and arm also helped. She got her fingers around the end of the knife and slowly pulled it out. She dropped it, and they both went rigid as the knife made a slight sound. The giant garrumphed deep in his throat and raised his head for a moment. The snoring stopped. Ulysses thought his heart would stop. But the head drooped forward again, and the growling and sawing started up.
Awina pressed the button, and the blade snicked out. It took ten minutes of awkward sawing before the leather cords were cut. Ulysses managed his wrists and worked his hands to get the circulation going. Then, keeping and eye on the guard, who was presenting his brutish profile to them, Ulysses cut Awina's bonds.
The next step was very crucial. If the guard saw them, or if the two bat-people were not sleeping, they would raise an alarm. At this stage, there was not much just two puny captives could do against the aroused giants.
He whispered to Awina to move slowly along the wall. He would slowly follow her until the sleeping giant in front of them blocked him from the guard's view. In the meantime, she was to cut the bonds of the Wufea next to her. Then he was to free the next man. And so on. When ten had gotten free, the knife was to be passed back to Ulysses. It would take too long and be too much in the open to attempt to free everybody.
Awina sent the knife on down the line and also transmitted his instructions. Neither he nor she could see the bat-people, but the Wufea next to her said that they were sitting with their backs near the wall and their heads between their knees. They looked as if they were sleeping.
The torches were almost out, and the fire at the entrance had long ago died. In a short time dawn would be greying the entrance and then the dome. The guard might wake up another to stand his duty at any moment. Or he might have orders to wake everybody up at dawn.
Awina put the knife in his hand, and whispered, "They say they're ready."
He looked around the back of the giant. The guard was scratching his back with the end of a stick and looking out the entrance. The bows, arrows, spears, knives, bombs, and the supplies of the captives were piled up near the entrance. The weapons of the giants were on the floor by their hands.
He rose cautiously and slowly, making sure that he would be hidden by the Wuggrud if the guard should turn. He reached around with the edge of the blade turned inward, and he slashed open the giant's jugular vein. The blood shot out, the snoring became a rattling, his knees opened, and his head fell down between his legs. Ulysses picked up the spear and, the bloody knife in his teeth, ran toward the guard.
Behind him, he hoped, the others were seizing the spears and clubs of their captors and using them to killing effect.
One of the giants cried out as he was struck.
The guard dropped the stick and whirled to face inward.
Ulysses drove the spear into the belly, but it did not go far. The fire-hardened point was not sharp enough, and the belly of the Wuggrud was protected by many inches of fat and massive muscles. He weighed probably five hundred and fifty pounds, maybe more. He took the spear with only a backward step, and then he shoved against it and charged Ulysses. The man clung to the spear and ran backward. There was nothing he could do but go along with the Wuggrud. Fortunately, the guard was empty-handed.
But then the guard, bellowing madly, stopped, and he grabbed the spear and shoved it away so violently that Ulysses was knocked off his feet. The guard, blood streaming from the wound, bent down and picked up the spear and raised it to run it through Ulysses. His enormous strength could have driven the end of a telephone pole through the body of a bull.
Ulysses stepped inside the point and pushed the knife through the fat and the muscles and ripped upward. At the same time, a black and white fury leaped upon the shoulders of the giant from behind, and a stone knife stabbed into its right eye.
The giant dropped the spear and staggered backward. Ulysses clung to the knife, which came out of the belly. He leaped in again, because the giant had reached upward to g
rab Awina. Ulysses cut into the giant's groin, turned the blade, and pulled it out. The giant grabbed for the wound, and Ulysses ran the knife through the back of his hand.
A bow twanged, and the giant fell, an arrow driven through his neck. Awina rolled over to escape being crushed. She had fallen off when he had reached back.
Ulysses whirled. The bellows, shouts and screams had suddenly ceased. Every giant lay dead on the floor. Most of them had died as they slept. Three had wakened in time to fight and had killed three Wufea.
He whirled back toward the entrance to see Ghuakh launch herself off the edge of the branch and Ghlikh close behind her.
Shouting, he ran after them, snatched a bow and arrow from the Wufea who had shot the guard, and ran out. Ghlikh had jumped off a large projection and was falling, his wings flapping. Ulysses fitted the nock of the arrow to the string and, unconsciously estimating the wind, aimed and let the shaft loose. It went all the way through the thin membrane of the right wing.
Ghlikh fell, screaming, but then his wings began flapping again and he descended in controlled flight toward a great branch on another trunk. Here Ghuakh waited for him. Ulysses watched them for a few minutes while his wife inspected the hole in his wing and their mouths worked furiously.
Ulysses returned to the cave and gave the knife to a warrior to cut the bonds of the others. When everybody was up and armed, he told them that they must go into the inner cave. They were eager for revenge. Inside the big cave, they killed all the Wuggrud in a few seconds. They shot the adult women, who could be as dangerous as the males, and then speared the juveniles and the infants.
Ulysses then went into the niche and tapped the membrane. The response this time was swift, understandable, and near-deadly. From a thousand hitherto unseen apertures in the walls, the floor and the ceiling, sprays of high-pressure water struck them, knocked them down, and rolled them over and over. They fought to their feet and were knocked down again. They spun around and around until they had gotten to the tunnel, which by then was half-flooded. Choking, coughing, bumped by the dead bodies of the Wuggruds, they slipped and slid to the outer dome and then out the entrance. Here the sudden rise of water almost swept them off the branch.
After a while, the stream dwindled and then quit. Cautiously, Ulysses went back into the dome, which had been swept clean of all bodies and the supplies. Most of these, fortunately, had been caught outside and stocked out of the way of the flood.
The entrance to the tunnel was sealed with a solid and sticky mass much like a honeycomb.
Ulysses counted noses and tallied the supplies and ammunition. Half of them still had their bows and a quiverfull of arrows. There were ten bombs left. Eighty-four warriors, not counting himself and Awina, were alive. They were a fatigued, beaten and bedraggled bunch. Their bowstrings and feathers on the arrows were wet and thus useless at the moment. The fuses of the bombs were also soaked, and possibly the powder was wet. They had little food.
Aufaieu, who was now the ranking Wufea chief, said, "Lord, we are ready."
He paused and then added, "To follow you back to our villages."
Ulysses tried to look him in the eye, but Aufaieu would not meet his gaze.
"I am going on," Ulysses said. "I am going to the south coast and there find out if mortals who look like me exist."
Aufaieu did not point out that a god should know this. He said, "And what about Wurutana, Lord?"
"There is nothing to be done about Wurutana at this time."
What could he or anybody do? Wurutana was just a tree, and whoever sat in power, whoever controlled the bat-people and the Wuggrud and possibly the leopard-men, could not be located. Not now, anyway. The Tree was just too vast; the controlling entity could be hiding anyplace in it. But Ulysses would capture a bat-man someday and force the location of the king of Wurutana out of him.
Or he supposed he would. Now that he thought about it, just why should he search out this hidden ruler? As long as he stayed within The Tree and did not bother those on the land outside The Tree, let him do what he wished. Ulysses had only come this far because he had not known what or who Wurutana was and because the Wufea and the others seemed to think that Wurutana was a danger to them and that the stone god could do something about it.
There was nothing to be done about The Tree itself. It would continue to grow until it covered the land. The Wufea and others could either adapt to it, learn to live on it, or they could build boats and seek out other lands.
"There is nothing to be done about Wurutana at this time," he repeated. "What we will do, what I do, will be to go on and explore the land along the sea to the south. If you wish to desert me, you may. I do not want cowards to accompany me."
He did not like to use such words. These people were not cowards. He did not blame them for feeling downhearted and eager to give up. He felt that way, too, but he was not going to give up.
Awina said, "Cowards is right! Go back to your villages, to the clans you have disgraced! The women and the children will mock you and spit on you! And you will not be buried with the brave men! You will be buried in earth reserved for cowards! The ghosts of your ancestors will spit on you from the Happy Warground!"
Aufaieu jerked as if she had hit him with a whip. He snarled soundlessly at her, and his great dark-blue eyes glared. It was bad enough to be talked to like that by a man. But a woman! Especially a woman who had gone through exactly the same perils and battles as the men.
"I am leaving at once," Ulysses said. He pointed toward the south. "I am going that way. I am not turning back. You may follow me or you may not. I will say no more."
Aufaieu looked panic-stricken. The thought of going back without the stone god to lead and comfort them was a terrifying one. They had only gotten this far because he had extricated them from the difficult positions. And then, even if they made it back without him, they would have to explain to their people why they had deserted their stone god.
Ulysses shouldered a bag containing some food and two bombs, and he said, "Come on, Awina."
He walked past the entrance to the hole and started to work his way around the trunk. When he got to the other side, where another mighty branch began, he paused. He heard noises behind him and said, "Awina! Are they coming?"
She smiled and said, "They are coming."
"Good! Let's push on, then!"
He halted about a hundred yards on, where water welled up from a cavity on top of the branch and ran into a deep groove. Fifty yards down, the groove became a wide channel, and a riverlet started its many-miled course. He waited for the others to climb around the trunk, clinging to projections of bark, and when they had all straggled to the spring, he spoke to them.
"Thank you for staying loyal. I can't promise you anything except more of what you've had. But if we do find anything rich, anything valuable, we will share equally in the profits."
Some were silent; some murmured, "You are welcome, Lord."
"Now," Ulysses said, "we'll build rafts again. But we will put railings on them to keep any legless things or great water rats from snatching us off the rafts."
While a third of the men were cutting down the bamboo-like plants for logs and poles, and lianas for binding the logs, he set another third up as guard. The remainder went hunting. By the time the rafts were ready to be launched, the hunters had returned with three goats, four monkeys, a snoligoster, and a big ostrich-like bird. They started fires, butchered the carcasses and set them up to be roasted. When the odour of the meat filled their nostrils, their hearts filled with cheer. Before long, they were laughing and joking. By then Ulysses and Awina had returned with a string of eight fish.
While Awina prepared the fish, Ulysses pondered on recent events and on what he should do next. Though he had not seen the bat-people since he had gone around the trunk, he knew that there was nothing to keep them from dogging him. All they had to do was stay out of range of their arrows. And when they found more leopard-men or the Wuggrud, whom he was convi
nced were descended from bears, they could bring them down on the war party.
Moreover, there must be many more of the caves with the diaphragms or membranes. There might be a network that interconnected most of The Tree with some central control. And it was possible that this control was the bat-people's chief. After all, he had nothing but his own hunch that somebody other than Ghlikh's people was the entity known as Wurutana.
If he did get to the south coast, he might find that Ghlikh had lied to him. He may have told him that story about humans living there as an additional lure to get him into The Tree.
He concluded that there was only one thing he could do. That was to go ahead and trust to fate and the skill and courage of himself and his party. But if he did chance across the city of the bat-people, he would invade it if he could. Even if the bat-men were not the controlling force or entity, they were executives for Wurutana. They would have valuable information.
The Stone God Awakens Page 10
