King Of Zunga

CHAPTER TWO

Blade awoke lying on his back in tall grass. His head was throbbing with the usual splitting headache that followed being hurled into Dimension X. But that was now more or less a welcome sign. It indicated that he was back in the real world, instead of being stuck in some limbo halfway between dimensions like a kitten up a tree.

Directly above him, the branches of a tall tree spread across his field of vision. From the branches drooped pale green leaves nearly three feet long stirring slightly in a faint, hot breeze. A glaring yellow sun burned down with tropical fury through the leaves, making Blade wince and turn his head aside. The glare did not help his headache. Around him in the grass he could hear the buzz and hum of insects, and once a flock of birds flew squawking across a patch of blue sky visible through the leaves.

A tremendous bellowing roar suddenly sounded nearby, a single blast at first but echoed at once by half a dozen more. It sounded like a chorus of foghorns. Then the sequence came again, definitely louder. A heavy, irregular vibration came to Blade through the ground. When the bellowing sounded for a third time, he did not wait any longer. Ignoring the stabbing pains in his head; he scrambled to his feet and climbed the tree as fast as he could. He preferred to watch whatever was approaching from a safe and high perch, where he would be in no danger of being trampled underfoot.

High above the ground he perched himself in the fork of two stout branches. On three sides the land stretched away as far as Blade could see, level as a table and covered with the long grass, occasional low trees, and extensive patches of shrubbery. On the fourth side the trees and shrubs slowly thickened, until a few hundred feet away they became a solid mass of greenery. The bellowing sounded for the fourth time. A tremendous crashing and splintering followed as bushes and small trees went over or came up by the roots. Then a line of huge gray beasts came lumbering out of the forest.

They were at least a hundred yards away, but Blade was quite happy that he was already up in a tree. They were easily the size of full-grown African elephants, and very nearly the same ashy, dirty gray. But these beasts were built lower to the ground, with four thick legs splayed out to the side and ending in massive blunt-clawed feet. The head was almost square, with small ears now standing erect and a blunt piglike snout instead of a trunk. But what drew Blade's eye most was the tusks.

From the cheeks of each beast, two enormous, dirty, yellow-white tusks jutted forward. The shortest pair was easily six feet long. Blade noticed that they were slightly flattened at the ends as well, like the blades of gigantic shovels. The beasts kept streaming out of the forest and lumbering onto the open plain, all except for one. That one was the largest, with tusks that must have stretched a good nine feet. It stationed itself at the edge of the forest, and every few seconds it threw its head back and gave the bellow Blade had first heard. When the last of the beasts was clear of the forest, their leader turned, gave a final bellow, and then set off at a fast rolling trot to catch up with its followers. Only when the whole herd of two dozen or more of the beasts was well out on the plain did Blade consider climbing down.

Now his problem was getting something between his bare skin and the sun. It was glaring down on him with a fury that was already bringing the sweat out on his skin. It was fortunate that he had tanned himself to a turn in the Mediterranean. Otherwise he would have faced the prospect of spending the next few days recovering from a bad sunburn.

A quick experimental tug showed that the three-foot leaves of the tree came loose easily enough. Blade climbed out on the heavier of the two branches until he felt it begin to sag under him, snapping the huge leaves off short and dropping them to the ground. By the time he scrambled down the tree, scraping his skin on the rough bark, a couple of bushels of leaves lay on the grass.

As a trained survival expert, it was no great matter for him to take the grass and leaves and weave himself a hat and a sort of apron or loincloth. These would be enough at least to keep the sun off his head and the thorns out of his genitals.

Now for a weapon. Not for use against the big, tusked animals-short of carrying a big-game rifle, the best thing to do about them was to climb trees. But there were bound to be other less unmanageable but perhaps no less dangerous animals. He had seen no sign of human beings; perhaps this was finally the uninhabited dimension. But he wasn't going to assume he had the forest and plain all to himself, not yet at any rate. Finding out the hard way was too dangerous in Dimension X.

He set off toward the forest. After a hundred feet his path met the trail beaten through the grass and shrubbery by the herd of tuskers, and the going became easier. As the forest rose to meet him and rose around him, Blade became more and more alert. He found himself trying to watch the trees for things jumping down on him, the ground ahead for snakes and thorns, and all around him for whatever other dangerous life this forest might hold.

He had covered about a hundred yards in from the edge of the forest when he came to a cluster of saplings lying scattered in all directions. The tuskers had been at work here, obviously, using their tusks to uproot the saplings and then leisurely stripping them of their leaves. Most of the saplings were bare sticks now. Blade bent down and searched the wreckage until he found a sapling broken off into about a six-foot length. He picked it up, swung it first with one hand, then with the other, then with both. It balanced well enough for green wood, and it was certainly better than bare hands. Much better than bare hands for Richard Blade, who knew a great deal about the use of the quarterstaff and more than a little kendo.

He was not more confident or less wary as he moved on along the trail. Only a very foolish or untrained man thinks that he can be careless just because he has a weapon in his hands. Blade had never been foolish, and he hadn't been untrained since before he came to Oxford. He had been a fencer and a boxer at his public school. He had no more intention now of getting into trouble than he had before picking up his staff. But he at least hoped that if trouble came to him, he would have a better chance of getting out of it.

The next thing to find was water. Here in a tropical country he was going to have to be much more careful than usual about water. He decided that his best bet was to keep right on going, following the herd's trail. Not too far, though. Until he had a better weapon than the staff, he didn't want to spend a night in the forest. He would be better off out on the plain, preferably up in a tree, where nothing could come at him without his noticing it.

As he moved on deeper into the forest, he heard and saw unmistakable signs of abundant wild life. He heard no more of the trumpeting and bellowing of the tuskers. But several times he heard full-throated roars that sounded far too much like a lion's for comfort. Once he heard a sharp grunting noise close by. It broke off in a shrill scream and a violent crashing sound, as though a violent fight were going on. Blade stopped dead and held his staff ready until the crashing died away. It was replaced by a series of contented grumblings and the sound of powerful jaws crunching bones. Whatever had just killed its prey out there in the forest either had not caught his scent or was too busy dismembering its first kill to be interested in another. Very definitely he would be better off out on the plain after darkness fell!

He took more care to tread softly after this, feeling with his staff for a solid footing at each step forward. But still, thorn-covered branches raked his bare calves, exposed roots caught his toes and made him stagger, branches snapped under his weight with cracks that sounded in his cars as loud as gunshots.

He must have scrambled and stumbled a good two miles into the forest by now. When a gap in the forest cover showed him the sky, the sun was still high overhead, but definitely beginning to slide lower. Darkness came quickly in the tropics. He would have to ration his time, to give himself enough for the trek back out of the forest.

Still onward. The heat had been brutal enough out in the open plain, under the sun. Here in the forest there was shade, but there was not a breath of air moving. Sweat poured off Blade; he was as wet as if he had been swimming. Insects attracted by the smell of sweat swarmed around him, forming a whining cloud in front of his eyes and around his head, darting in, nipping and biting. Some of the bites drew blood, and other insects, attracted in turn by the blood, came droning in to add themselves to the swarm. Blade snapped off a branch from a fallen tree and waved it in front of his face with his free hand. That at least kept them out of his eyes, but all the rest of his body still lay open to their attack. His throat was dry and sour with thirst, but right at the moment he would have traded ten gallons of water for a can of insect repellent.

Then suddenly the trail broadened. Blade stopped. Not more than a hundred feet ahead, the trail seemed to come to an end in a wide open space with trees growing close around it. He moved forward even more cautiously than before, taking one step at a time and listening between each step. Nothing for a long time, except the buzz and shrill whine of the insects. Then, coming from the clearing ahead, he heard the sound of something large splashing through water.

If he could have stopped breathing, Blade would have done so. He waited until the sound died away, and then moved forward again. Now he caught the scent of water in the faint breeze that blew down the trail. He took the last few steps, and found himself on the edge of a broad pond.

The pond was circular, roughly a hundred feet in diameter. On three sides trees grew closely around it and overhung it, drooping branches downward until the leaves dangled in the water. On the fourth side, where Blade stood, a broad rim of bare black earth showed the footprints of hundreds of animals. Most of the prints were the circular four-clawed marks of the tuskers, sunk a foot or more into the soft ground.

The water looked clear and clean. Only a few patches of fallen leaves and one or two floating branches dotted its shimmering blue-green surface. On Blade's left, a misshapen tree trunk lay half submerged, sagging downward into the water. Blade shifted his grip on the staff so that he could strike out with one hand, and stepped out onto the open bank.

As he did so, the tree trunk came alive. It writhed backward, bent into a bow, and lifted a head as large as a horse's up from the surface of the pond. The head rose slowly, bobbing and weaving at the end of a neck thicker than Blade's own body, occasionally opening a mouth rimmed with foot-long dagger-pointed teeth.

At the first movement of the snake Blade froze, at the second he began inching back into the cover of the trees. The head swiveled back and forth ten feet above the ground. Green-hued eyes the size of dinner plates scanned the edges of the pond. Then the snake lowered itself down to the ground, and began slowly and steadily to pull itself out of the forest onto the bank.

Blade swore mentally. Against that monster his staff would be about as useful as a Boy Scout knife. As long as it was camped on the edge of the pond, it would be a risky business to try getting water. He could only hope the snake wasn't settling down; for its afternoon nap.

More and more of the mottled black-brown body flowed out of the forest, until there must have been sixty feet of yard-thick snake stretched along the bare earth. The breeze carried its faint musk to Blade. He swallowed, his mouth and throat suddenly drier than even his thirst had made them.

Then from off to his right, near the far end of the earth bank, came the unmistakable sound of a wooden drum. It came in a rapid, staccato rhythm-boom boom boom boom-and then a long rolling brrrrrmmmm. Blade stiffened. So did the snake. Its scales grated on the earth as it heaved its head upright again, once more searching all around it. The drum sound came again. The snake's head swayed, then dropped to the earth, and it began to move. Slowly at first, then more rapidly, it slithered along the bank, past the motionless and silent Blade, and then on to the trail left by the tuskers. In a minute the last few feet of its tail had vanished from sight. Blade heard the scrapings and cracklings it made as it writhed its way through the tangle of smashed undergrowth along the trail, then those too faded away. Silence returned to the pond.

Blade heaved a sigh of relief, but only a small sigh. Somebody lurking in the forest nearby had beaten that drum. He might be as dangerous as the snake. Blade licked dry lips, then decided to take a chance. He was not going to get water or find out anything about his invisible neighbors by clinging to this tree.

Lifting his staff, he stepped slowly out onto the bare earth of the bank. He took two more steps, taking him well clear of the trees. Then he lifted his staff high over his head, and rammed it hard into the soft ground so that it stood upright, quivering slightly. He turned away from it, toward the place where the drums had sounded. Then slowly he raised his arms and spread his hands, palms outward, in a gesture of peace.

A nerve-wracking moment of silence followed. Then there was a faint swish and crackle in the bushes, and six men sprang out of the shadows onto the bank.