Ice Dragon

Chapter 2

Blade came back to consciousness lying flat on his face, his nose and mouth pressed into damp cold earth that smelled of mold and moss and old evergreen needles, his head throbbing with the inevitable searing headache that always followed a transition. Yet the discomforts were the most welcome thing possible, telling him that he had indeed made the full transition safely, and not wound up somewhere in the limbo of distorted sensations that lay between Home Dimension and wherever he was now. The possibility of ending up in such a limbo was the one thing that bothered him more than any possible form of death or mutilation he might suffer in any new world he might reach.

Gradually the headache faded, the disorientation faded also, and strength and coordination returned to his sprawled limbs. He became conscious of more sensations from the world around him-the chirp of birds, the squeals and skittering feet of small animals in the shrubbery, the swishing and creak of branches moving in the wind. He also became conscious of a chill breeze playing over his bare skin. Reaching upward, he grabbed a conveniently drooping branch and pulled himself to his feet. He had to lean against the rough trunk of the tree for a moment until a fit of dizziness passed, then stepped out from under the tree and looked around him.

He was standing on the slope of either a very high hill or a rather low mountain, near the upper fringes of a forest of pinelike trees that covered its base. Looking up toward the summit, he could see the trees becoming sparser and sparser, giving way finally to bare rock and gray-green shrubs and creepers. Even farther up, at the point where the looming slope met the blue sky, there was the glint of unmelted snow fields.

In the other direction, the forested slopes unrolled themselves downward into a narrow valley before rising sharply on the other side in a bare cliff that formed the base of another hill, rising as high on its side of the valley as Blade's did on its. The valley thus formed ran roughly north and south, as far as Blade could tell from the sun. To the south of the two flanking hills were yet more hills and hummocks, suggesting a whole range spreading east and west, many miles wide and perhaps many hundreds of miles long. Through the valley itself ran a fair-sized river; Blade caught its silver-blue glimmer through the black-green masses of the trees. Then he turned to the north.

Part of the view to the north was cut off by the swell of the hill, but he could see enough to suddenly feel a chill from more than the breeze. To the north was a flat plain, and far away on the remote horizon of that plain was another silver-blue hue glimmering in the sky. Not the friendly' glimmer of a river, but the steel cold glare of endless miles of ice hurling back the sun. He had once seen the same thing from the deck of a ship approaching the Greenland ice cap. Out there on the northern plain, many miles away but glaring so fiercely that it was visible here, a vast glacial mass was marching south. For a moment he almost fancied he could hear the grinding roar of the billions of tons of ice scraping their way forward, stripping the countryside down to sterile bedrock, and the hill beneath his feet seemed to shudder in anticipation of the glaciers hurling themselves at it or perhaps over it.

Then he laughed, and the sensation passed. Glaciers took centuries, if not millennia, to cover the distance that separated him from that sinister ice. By the time the ice began pushing at the hill where he was standing, his great-great-great grandchildren (if any) would be old men and women. Still, glaciers relatively so near meant bitter winters, a short growing season (if any), and therefore better chances of finding human habitation if he made his way south. Even in mid-afternoon the temperature was barely above fifty, suggesting nights far too chilly for the comfort or even safety of a naked man. He would do well to head down into the valley, where he might at least find water and more shelter from the wind. Taking a last look at the blue glare on the horizon, he turned and began his descent.

He moved cautiously down the slope, eyes and ears alert for signs of human activity or dangerous animals, carefully avoiding twigs that might give off telltale crackings and patches of bare earth that would retain conspicuous footprints. He had no reason to believe that either man or large animal was within fifty miles of him; he had certainly seen nothing to indicate either from his original perch high on the hills. It was a matter of professional caution, nothing more.

The coniferous trees of the upper slopes gave way to hardwoods as he descended. He was able to find a broken branch sound enough to make a useful club. As the slope steepened, he found himself using it more and more as a climbing staff, one hand wielding it, the other reaching out for branches and saplings to grasp, or even handholds in the outcroppings of rock. He slipped and fell several times, the last time down an eight-foot drop that ended in a mass of prickly bushes. These broke his fall enough to keep him from breaking anything else, but he arose well scratched.

The wind faded as he descended deeper and deeper into the shelter of the valley. But the light was fading almost as rapidly. By the time he again saw the glimmer of the river through the trees, it was twilight, and he realized that darkness would overtake him on the move if he kept on going. It was time to make as much of a camp as he could.

The forest floor was thick with mulch, and the still waters along the banks of the river heavily grown with weeds and rushes. Pulling up rushes and laying them down as fast as they dried on turned-up mulch, then laying as many branches as he could on the reeds, Blade contrived himself an almost comfortable bed. Lying down, he distributed the rest of the branches over himself in as complete a cover as possible, placed the club within easy reach, and began planning his next day's travels and how to get food. A layer of animal fat smeared over his body would go a long way toward keeping out the cold, and even raw meat would be better than none at all. He was still working out details when the fatigue of many hours' hard traveling caught up with him and he fell asleep.

A shaft of sunlight stabbing squarely through a gap in the trees into his eyes brought him awake the next morning. He was fully alert within seconds, rose, and climbed down to the edge of the river, to drink. It was only after he had drunk his fill that he became aware of the silence lying over the forest like a fog. The wind had almost totally died, so even the faint swish and rustle it had made in the treetops was gone. But the silence was heavier even than that. The sounds of forest life he had noticed the afternoon before were gone, as though all the birds and small animals had suddenly been stricken mute. In this heavy stillness, the solitary gurgle and cluck of the river tumbling over the stones and roots along its banks sounded loud and ominous, rather than cheerful. Blade was at once on edge. It was with an especially firm grip on his club that he moved out, heading south along the riverbank, less alert now for man or beast than for some clue as to what had stricken square miles of the forest into silence during the night.

He estimated he had been on the move for the better part of an hour before he stepped out from behind a tree and found himself staring at a rough trail. To his right it led upward into the gloom of the forest, to his left it made a right-angle bend and ran off parallel to the riverbank, heading south. He ducked back behind the tree and spent a few moments mentally flipping a coin as to which way he should go, then decided that the way along the riverbank looked more promising. He stepped onto the path and continued on his way, all his senses screwed up to a still higher pitch of alertness.

He came upon the bridge suddenly. A sharp bend in the path still farther to the left, a gap in the trees, and visible through it the splintered planks and snapped-off pilings of a wooden bridge, the fast-flowing river curling with little flecks of foam around the debris. Blade turned off the path and crept through the trees to the riverbank.

From close up, the sight of the bridge was even more disquieting. There was no sign of explosion, yet Blade found it hard to believe that anything else could have completely ripped to pieces a bridge fifty feet long and set on foot-thick piles. Some of the piles had been snapped cleanly in two like matchsticks. Others, incredibly, seemed to have been bitten through, the broken ends furrowed and scarred by gouges that undeniably looked like the marks of giant teeth.

But the opposite bank of the river presented an even more disagreeable spectacle, one even more certain to rouse unpleasant speculations and imaginings than the ruined bridge. Here, no doubt, there had once been another path, leading off into the forest to the homes of whatever people had made the path. Now, however, something had plowed a swath sixty feet wide through the forest where the path had been, splintered or uprooted trees lying in a hideous tangle like a child's Tinker Toys dumped on the floor. Still-green leaves showed that the shambles was only a few hours old.

Blade realized now why the forest had been shocked into silence. Sometime during the night, while he slept his chilly but deep sleep on his bough bed, some-being-with the power of a medium-sized tank and the ferocity of a hungry tiger had come smashing through the forest from the east, as far as the bridge. After ripping the bridge apart as though it were a cardboard box, it-or perhaps they? — had gone back into the forest along the same path.

Blade would not have survived his first mission as an agent if he had not been able to control his instincts, which at the moment were strongly calling out for a hasty retreat. Having calmed himself, he began considering ways of crossing the river and following the trail of smashed trees to wherever it led. The bridge was useless, the river too deep and swift to ford. Bitter cold though it was, he would have to swim it. He half-walked, half-slid down to the bank, threw his club aside to leave both hands free, and slipped into the water.

Before he had stopped shuddering from the cold of the water that seemed to flow straight from the heart of those glaciers to the north, the current had him, whirling him out into midstream so fast that the rushes he grasped to slow himself snapped off in his hand. In midstream the current was moving him as fast as he could have jogged, and there was a moment when a submerged rock rasped at him and flipped him head down. He lunged his head into the air again, spitting and coughing, then thrashed furiously across the current until suddenly he felt its tug lessen. A moment later he could reach out and grasp a projecting root on the far bank. Shaking with cold, waving arms and legs frantically to restore life to them, he scrambled onto the bank and began to make his way back to the path. In the short time he had been in the river, it had carried him nearly a hundred yards downstream.

The best route back to the bridge was straight along the riverbank, though «straight» meant a bruising, skin-tearing scramble over boulders, past close-grown trees, through thorny patches of undergrowth. He was sweating, scratched, and swearing before he had covered fifty yards. It was just beyond that point that he found the body.

It lay half-concealed under a bush, one arm thrown around the squat trunk in a stiffened embrace as though the bush were an object of passion. The body was flour-white, completely drained of blood, and not surprisingly-one leg was missing just above the knee. The same monstrous jaws that had snapped off the pilings of the bridge had left their mark on the stump of the leg they had severed with a single bite. A trail of blood stretched away from the body, leading back toward the bridge.

Blade bent down and took a close look at the body. It was a man, in late middle age to judge from the wrinkles and the gray in his hair and beard, deeply tanned and hard-muscled through much outdoor living. He wore crudely tanned leather breeches, shapeless leather boots with wood soles and leather thongs, and a fur jacket with the fur worn inside. A leather pouch at his belt held flint and steel and a few hard crackers. This Blade appropriated. The man had no weapons on him, and Blade could not quite bring himself to take the clothes, apart from the fact that the man was both shorter and slimmer than Blade.

A few minutes' more scrambling brought him back to the bridge and the swath of smashed trees stretching off under the sun as far as he could see. Most of the ground along the riverbank was either churned up or buried under the debris, but in one undisturbed patch a footprint stood out clear and bold. Blade knelt to make a close inspection.

The footprint-if such it was-was an oval nearly two feet in diameter, sunk more than a foot into the ground. Deeper yet were a dozen or so smaller holes in the bottom of the larger one, as though a hobnailed boot had been pressed into the ground. The forward edge of the oval showed still other, shallower cuts, suggesting six-inch claws.

It was while examining the footprint that Blade first became conscious of the odor clinging to the smashed and splintered trees. It was not a strong odor, but distinctly unpleasant even as weak as it was. It was musky, damp, with vague hints of something fetid and rotten, like a skunk's odor, and with a hint even beyond that of deadly cold. Even in the full sun, Blade felt a chill as he took a deep breath and filled his lungs with the odor-then coughed and gagged.

The footprints and the odor together removed Blade's last glimmering hopes that the ruined forest was the result of some natural accident or even the work of some human machine. Whatever had the power of a tank and the savagery of a tiger was a living creature, a living creature that left footprints two feet in diameter. Beyond that Blade knew nothing else about it, but only hoped he did not have to meet it in his present inadequately equipped state. Although what would be adequate equipment for self-defense against something certainly no smaller than an elephant and perhaps as large as a dinosaur? An anti-tank gun, perhaps? Fortunately the creature or creatures were probably many hours away by now.

Setting out to follow the trail of ruin through the forest, Blade soon found it easier to move along one side or the other of the swath of tumbled trees, and avoid the continuous clambering over fallen trunks and stumbling over jutting branches. In the sun it was warm enough to work up a sweat, and Blade soon found himself wishing that the dead man had included a canteen with his gear. Thorns and broken branches jabbed at his already well-used skin, fallen logs turned under his feet and tumbled him to the ground, insects buzzed and whined about his head, shrieked nerve-wrackingly in his ears, clustered around the oozes of blood from minor scratches. He broke off another branch and kept waving it around his head to drive off the insects.

The sun marched up to the zenith, glared down from the blue for a while, gilding the air in the forest where shafts of light struck through the trees, then began its crawl down toward night. Blade began to wonder if he was on a fool's errand, and whether this path might be leading him nowhere except to the lair of whatever monsters had made it. If so, he would do well to turn around and make it back to the stream, where at least he could find water, before darkness. There he could perhaps contrive a raft or at least roll a log into the river and let the swift current carry him away to a more promising spot.

But something in the back of his mind kept prodding him onward, telling him over and over again that he was on the right course. Such intuitions had come to him before in tight spots; he had learned the wisdom of following them.

It must have been approaching five in the afternoon when he stumbled into the clearing. The neatly sawed-off stumps of the trees on its fringes and the piles of logs in the center told him it was man-made, and what cheered him even more was the axe stuck into one of the stumps: Not only was it a better weapon than the club; more important, it was an unmistakable sign of recent human presence. He swung the axe around his head several times in a flourish of joy before moving on.

Gradually other signs of human presence began to accumulate. Horse droppings-cold and hardening fast. Beehives-overturned, smashed like bottles hurled against a concrete wall-deserted by their inhabitants. Ants were already climbing up the debris to get at the dripping honey. A tree-house perched some thirty feet up in the crotch of a moss-grown forest giant heavy with overripe blue-green fruit. A small plank bridge over an even smaller ravine. Then, on the other side of the bridge, another body.

A woman this time. Young-in fact hardly more than a girl-naked, the caked blood between her thighs showing what had happened to her before massive blows had caved in her skull and had broken arms, legs, and ribs. This finally confirmed a suspicion that had been growing in Blade for some time. Whatever human habitation had been near here, it had been involved in last night's catastrophe and it and its people swept away.

But the dead girl also added a new dimension to the disaster. The wreckage in the forest, the dead man, the footprints-these were the work of some monstrous beast. But the dead girl was an unmistakable sign of violence done by men to men. He might find himself with a human opponent to fight before long.

He took time to lower the body into the ravine and cover it with leaves and branches. Then he moved on, axe swinging with deceptive looseness in one huge hand, yet ready to strike at a second's warning. Another body-a shaggy pony, head caved in, flies buzzing around the staring eyes. A pig running loose, scuttling frantically into the woods at the sight of him. A site used for many campfires, banked with soot-caked stones set in clay and piled high with ashes and bits of charcoal.

Now he could see in the middle distance the sun striking through the trees over a broad arc across his front. A clearing lay ahead. He gripped the axe with both hands and slipped forward, pausing behind each tree to watch and listen for any movement his approach might have stirred up. He came to the last tree, gripped the axe still more tightly, and pushed his head cautiously out.

The ruined village sprawled across the clearing in the fading light.