Champions Of The Gods

Chapter Thirteen

The beast was not two hundred feet long and fifty feet high. It just looked that way as it lumbered out of the forest, ploughing a path through full-grown trees like a man ploughing through high grass. Probably it was no more than half that long or high. But the ground shook with each step it took, and when it threw back its head and hissed the sound was like an exploding boiler.

The naked warrior with the spear looked as small as a mouse as he stood in the beast's path. The spear in his hand looked as puny and useless as a toothpick. He stood his ground, though, raised and brandished the spear, shouted and stamped, and bellowed curses and war cries at the beast. Blade watched, partly fascinated, partly amazed, and partly appalled.

He knew he should gather up Arllona and slip away along the riverbank. However the battle came out, they could be long gone by the time it was over. The survivors, if any, would be in no shape to chase them. That was the only sensible thing to do.

For once, Blade could not quite bring himself to be sensible. He had never seen such mad courage or courageous madness as this warrior was showing. He wanted to see how this fight came out, and he hoped he would see the warrior walk away the victor. There wasn't much chance of that, but if it happened he wanted to be there to see it.

The beast hissed and raised its head again. Blade saw that several spears already jutted from its head and neck. The warriors or their comrades had already struck home, enough to drive the beast and draw it after them, out of the jungle to the riverbank. The beast's jaws and teeth glistened with fresh blood. The fight hadn't been one-sided.

The world seemed to explode now, as the beast noticed the tiny figure trying to get its attention. Its head rose as high as a three-story building, arching up and out on a neck six feet thick and covered with scales a foot across. The head swayed back and forth, as the spearman continued his furious war dance. Then it swooped downward.

A second before the head and the man came together, Blade saw what the warrior was trying to do. He was trying to draw the creature into a furious lunge, then leap aside, going in under the horns with a thrust to one eye. With just a little more skill and speed he could have done it.

The warrior leaped a fraction of a second too late. One of the horns smashed him across the chest, crushing ribs and left shoulder. He sprawled backward on the grass without making a sound or letting go of his spear. He still didn't make a sound as the jaws closed on him, the teeth meeting with a clak as they tore through his body in a dozen places. He didn't let go of the spear, either. A last convulsive jerk of his right arm drove it into the beast's nose, hard enough to pierce the scales. It jutted out at an angle as the beast's head rose, the warrior still clamped tightly in its bloody jaws.

The beast went on rising until its neck was fully extended. It went on rising until the front legs were clear of the ground. As it reared it swiveled on its massive hind legs. Blade saw thirty feet of armored tail swing like a club, heard bushes and trees crackling and crunching, heard Arllona scream. He realized suddenly that she was directly in the path of the swinging tail, and he hurled himself toward where he'd left her.

Like the dead warrior, he was a fraction of a second too late. As it swung toward the fear-paralyzed woman, the beast's tail rose into the air. Arllona stayed where she was. Blade saw with relief that the tail should pass clear over her. But as the scaled mass rose, it smashed into still another tree. Wood gave way with a terrible crackling and splintering. The tree tottered, then toppled over squarely on top of Arllona. She had time to scream once in helpless terror. She screamed again as the tree crashed down on her, a long and completely terrible scream, screaming out her life as the falling tree crushed her into the ground.

The beast's tail swept over Blade's head low enough to brush his hair. The falling tree crashed down close enough for a branch to whip painfully across his ankles. He stood alone, as the tail thudded to the earth behind him, staring at Arllona's arm sticking out from under the tree. Then there was silence, except for the hissing and crunching of the beast as it devoured the last remains of the man who had faced it alone.

There was no silence in Blade's mind. There was a rage so physical that he could hear it bubbling in his ears like boiling stew. His eyes swept down the scaly length of the beast, looking and remembering. He remembered that the hunter had been going for the eyes. So there was the vulnerable spot.

A spear in one eye-All the spears he could see were sticking in the creature's head and neck.

Very well, he would go get one of those. Blade's massive legs churned, and he plunged forward. He sprang onto the beast's tail like an Olympic high jumper. The tail offered him a clear path up on to the broad back. He remembered that dinosaurs were slow-witted and sluggish, unable to respond quickly to a fast-moving danger.

Blade moved fast. He dashed up the tail, onto a scaled back as broad as the roof of a small house. His rage made him inhumanly clear-sighted and precise in all his movements. At each step each foot landed exactly where he aimed it. He never slipped, never stumbled, never slowed down. He heard the three surviving warriors shout in astonishment as they saw him, but he paid no attention to them. All his attention was on the great head that was getting closer and closer.

He ran off the beast's back, past its front legs, and onto the neck. A single line of three-foot spines ran up that neck. Blade kept on until the neck narrowed too much to give him safe footing. A spear jutted out of the neck just below him. He knelt down, pulled the spear free with one hand, and grasped one of the spines with the other. He began pulling himself along with one hand while he held the spear ready to strike with the other.

By now the beast had realized that something unusual was happening. It snorted angrily and raised its head, peering in all directions except the right one. Blade kept moving.

The beast snorted again, hissed explosively, and stretched its neck upward, the head twisting and turning thirty feet above the ground. The movement was so slow that Blade easily kept both his grip and his spear.

Now he was too close for the beast to turn and see him or close its jaws on him even if it wanted to. For a moment the beast stood motionless, giving Blade steady footing. He released his grip on the last spine, took the spear in both hands, gathered his legs under him, and hurled himself through the air.

He landed sprawling on his stomach across the scaly nose. From somewhere that seemed incredibly far away he heard more surprised shouts from the three warriors.

The beast's muzzle was finely scaled and as slippery as wet glass. For a moment Blade thought he was going to slide off and fall thirty feet. Then he dug his spear' point into the scales and stopped his slide. From a yard away a yellow eye more than a foot across stared at Blade. The beast seemed to realize what was happening. It hissed louder than ever and started to rear higher. The sound half-deafened Blade. He ignored it and stood up, each foot wedged firmly in place at the base of a horn. Then he raised the spear over his head and with both arms drove it down into the eye.

If the beast's hiss had been loud before, now it sounded like the end of the world. Blade braced himself harder and leaned forward on the spear, driving it in deeper. Blood and foul-smelling yellow fluid gushed over him. The spear point struck bone. Blade put all his weight and all his enormous strength behind one final furious thrust. He felt bone crack, splinter, and give way, and the spearpoint rammed itself down into the beast's brain.

The beast reared up as if it was reaching up to bite at the sky itself. Its jaws opened and shut, the teeth clashing and crashing together with noises like an enormous threshing machine. The hiss came again, then turned into a scream. A convulsion twisted the beast from the tip of its tail to its head. The head snapped forward, then back. Blade felt his feet slipping, felt his hands torn loose from the spear with a jerk so violent that it seemed to yank every one of his fingers out by the roots. Then he was flying through the air.

He flew high, turning over and over in mid-air. He had time to see the beast starting to topple, and the other warriors standing as if they were rooted to the ground. Then he plunged downward. A branch caught him, sending a burning pain up and down one leg. Then he landed.

Blade was expecting to smash down on the ground. Instead he landed with a tremendous splash in the river. Pure reflex made him exhale desperately as he went under, to keep the water from entering his lungs and choking him.

He went down so far that his legs sank up to the knees in the sticky, slimy mud of the river bottom. For a hideous moment he kicked and thrashed furiously, struggling to break the suction of the mud. In another moment he knew his lungs would fill with water and the dark river would do what the dying monster on the bank hadn't been able to do.

Then the mud let him go. Blade's churning legs drove him upward into the daylight, into the air. His starved lungs took in an enormous gulp of air. Then he paddled to the bank and climbed out, water and mud and strands of weed dripping from him.

Now to find out what the three warriors thought of what he'd done. For all he knew he might have barged into a religious rite and now be doomed ten times over for sacrilege and blasphemy.

The dinosaur was dead, sprawled full-length along the river bank. In its fall its neck and tail had smashed down still more trees and hurled them about like matchsticks. It lay completely motionless, not even the tip of the great tail twitching.

Shouts sounded from the other side of the body and the three warriors appeared. They sprang over the outstretched neck and ran toward Blade, holding their spears level across their chests with both hands. Blade crossed his arms on his chest and stood where he was to meet them.

The three warriors ran up to Blade, thrust their spears into the ground, took off their feathered headdresses, and hung them on the ends of their spears. Then they threw themselves facedown on the ground in front of Blade, hands outstretched toward him.

If he'd done anything religious, it didn't seem like anything they were objecting to! It looked more like those warriors were worshipping him. Blade let them lie for what seemed like a dignified length of time, then spoke.

«Rise up. I would look on the faces of brave warriors.»

One of the three warriors slowly rose to his knees. «You cannot mean that. We are as nothing compared to you, who have done what no Hunter of the Ganthi has ever dared do. We are barely worthy to wash the feet of your woman.»

That reminded Blade of Arllona. He grimaced. «My woman has no more need of any aid, except that of men to bury her. The creature slew her, so I slew it.» He motioned to all three men. «Rise, I said. The Hunters of the Ganthi need not be ashamed before any man of any people.»

All three Ganthi warriors rose uncertainly to their feet, brushed themselves off, and retrieved their spears and headdresses. The first one to speak turned to the others.

«Brothers of the Hunt, we shall return at once to Thessu. The Eldest Brother of this Hunt is slain, honorably and bravely. So are the others of our band. We can do no more.

«We have also found a warrior not of the Ganthi who is worthy to be admitted among us. Perhaps he shall even be an Eldest Brother of the Hunters. Since the Ganthi lived in this land, such a warrior has come among us only five times. We shall bury our Eldest Brother and the woman of this warrior, then we shall return to Thessu.»

The man turned to Blade. «I am Kordu. It is the law of the Ganthi that Strangers in our land must die, unless they prove worthy to live among us. You have proved that you are worthy. You have proved it ten times over!» For a moment awe at what he had seen Blade do overcame him and he was silent.

Blade nodded. «I thank you and your Hunters. It will be a pleasure to be among the Ganthi if all are such as you. Now let us go bury our dead.»

Blade let the Ganthi bury the dead warrior first. This did not take very long, since there was hardly enough of the man left to bury. Then Blade led them over to where Arllona lay.

A last jerk of the dying beast's tail had hurled the fallen tree twenty feet away. Arllona lay exposed to view where the tree had smashed her into the ground. She was not a pretty sight, but Blade had seen more than his share of gruesomely mangled bodies. The face was almost intact. He knelt and rested one hand briefly on the pale forehead, then closed the staring eyes, stood up, and turned away.

He did not turn back until the three Ganthi had finished scraping the earth back over Arllona's body. He stood in silence for a moment, looking down at the grave. What could he say about Arllona, the girl who had lived a short and unhappy life in Kano and had met a wretched death far off in some other Dimension? That was about all the epitaph he or anyone else could give her.

«It is done,» he said briefly to the three Ganthi. «Let us go.»

Kordu nodded, picked up a spear drawn from the dead beast, and handed it to Blade. «By custom no one may bear a spear until he has received it at the Warriors' Feast. But I say you are worthy to bear that spear now.»

«I thank you, Kordu,» said Blade. He took the spear and fell in behind Kordu as the warrior led the way toward the jungle.