Liberator Of Jedd

Chapter Eight

Blade fell to his belly and begin to inch forward on all fours. He stopped to catch his breath, to make a survey, and chanced to look behind him. Something had followed him out of the grass.

It was too dark to make the creature out in detail, but his stomach did a flip-flop. It was a giant toad, horned and scaly, as big as a house. It hopped after Blade in twenty-foot leaps, stopping each time to nose at the spoor. Blade ran like a dog, on all fours, as fast as he could. When he looked back again the thing had stopped. It was afraid of the fires. Blade sighed with relief as it hopped back toward the grass jungle.

A faint stir of wind riffled from the cliffs toward Blade. It bore the faint but unmistakable stink he had come to associate with Ogar, but was now buffered with dung, smoke and the odor of roasting meat. Blade sniffed the latter in appreciation. He was near to starving. He crawled on. They were upwind and could not scent him.

He found cover behind a single slab up upended rock. It was tall and wide and stood on a natural boulder plinth — a dolmen, or cromlech, placed by Ogar's people for reasons beyond his understanding. Blade crouched behind the rearing stone and studied a group around the nearest fire. He counted ten of them. Four males and six females. All naked. All covered with hair. All with small, slim bodies and huge heads. Ogar's people.

Two of the females were cooking meat on sticks held over the fire. Two of the remaining four women were nursing infants. The four males formed an outer circle between the females and the darkness. Each male, as he gnawed at a bone or a chunk of meat, kept a ceaseless vigil, staring into the darkness every few seconds and raising and dilating his nostrils to sniff at the wind. Blade willed the wind to hold steady, not to veer or back around. He wanted, and needed, the element of surprise.

His only weapon was the stick. Each of the males around the fire had a club or a stone axe ready to his hand. Blade pondered. He could not go back into the tall grass. Death was certain there. He was cold and hungry, naked, lacking in everything but a superb brain, matchless physique and all the guts he needed at any given moment.

Plus a smattering of Ogar's crude language. It should be enough. Blade took a deep breath and stood up. He tossed the stick away. It was useless as a weapon and it might frighten them.

Smiling, his hands held high and in conciliation, Blade stalked into the circle of firelight. There was a dead hush, a vacuum of sound. Twenty eyes stared in surprise and terror.

Blade took swift advantage of the silence. He remembered Ogar's exact sound as he rubbed his belly and asked for meat. Blade repeated it sow.

«Owwwnowwah — owwwnowwah—»

There was a great scrabbling rush — grunts and chattering and shrill cries of terror. The females snatched at their babies and ran. The men ran after them, forgetting their weapons. All vanished into the darkness toward the cliff. All but one — a young male who stopped and turned and snarled defiance at Blade. Blade took a step toward him and held out his hand. The male lost his nerve and fled after the others. Blade stood alone by the fire.

This did not discontent him. He had made friendly overtures and had been rebuffed and no doubt it was for the best. He set about consolidating his position. He piled new wood on the fire, selected a stone axe and a club and settled down by the blaze. One of the females had dropped a small haunch of meat into the fire where it lay sizzling and emitting delectable smells. Blade fished it out and, after scorching his fingers, brushed off dirt and ashes and burnt his mouth as he tore into it. He chewed and grinned and knew that he was making slobbering sounds and did not care. Meat had never tasted so good. As he satisfied his hunger his confidence grew — he was making the adjustment so necessary to staying alive in this new Dimension X. The worst was over. The chances were now an even fifty-fifty that he would survive.

They were watching him from out there in the darkness. On two sides. The man-things from their caves hi the foot of the cliff, the beast-things from the tall grass. The man-things were silent; the beasts roared and snarled and bellowed their hate and fear of the fire that kept them back. Blade stuffed himself on meat until his belly was swollen, wiped his greasy mouth, yawned and wished he could sleep. Impossible. He would never wake up.

He began to explore within the circle of firelight. He found a skin that would fit about his loins and another that would serve as a short cloak. He grunted and then smiled at himself — he must have sounded very like the late Ogar then. But he was pleased. Clothes, even raw, half-scraped skins, did make a difference. He busied himself, keeping his club and stone axe close at hand, and with a sharp, hand-worked flint he slit holes and made crude fasteners of wood and some creeper vine he found. He ate more meat and found himself thirsty and no help for it. No water. He would just have to thirst.

The supply of firewood, with care, would last until dawn. He fed the flames stingily and crouched near them, drowsing, yearning to sleep and not daring. And yet he must have dozed for a few seconds, for when his head snapped up and he came alert again she was there.

She came in silent abjection, on her hands and knees, crawling into view of the cliff side of the fire. Just within the aura of light she stopped and gazed at Blade, dog-like in her fear and cringing subjection. Blade understood. This young female had been sent to appease him. Once more godhood was bestowed and she was the price they paid, the sacrifice to a huge, massively muscled, hairless thing that threatened them. Blade smiled at the female and made a beckoning motion. She crawled a few paces nearer the fire, her small eyes intent on his, in terror, and yet doing as she had been told by the old men of the tribe.

She was very young, Blade thought. Possibly not more than twelve or thirteen, but already mature in body. A life span in this dimension would not be long.

The girlchild-thing — for so the thought of her — lacked some of the brutishness of feature common to Ogar and the others. Her body was supple, slim, fully revealed. Her body hair was lighter in color and not so thick as that of the males. Her legs were short and somewhat bowed, her waist small and her breasts, nearly hairless, were firm and plump with rigid out-thrusting nipples half an inch long. Her jaw and teeth, though out-jutting, lacked the prognathism of the males. Her skull was not so flattened, her frontal ridges less prominent. Blade thought of Lord L and smiled. By any gnathic index the old man would have had to list her as near to human.

Had he been longer in this particular Dimension X, and spent more time in the company of these creatures, Blade might well have accepted what she now offered. Offered in fear and trembling and, so he began to discern, some peculiar animal lust of her own. For there came a change in the glances she gave him and in the soft sounds she made deep in her throat. Nothing subtle.

The female halted just on the other side of the fire. She stared at Blade for a moment, then touched her breasts with her hands. She growled softly and he read both playfulness and desire into the sound. Most of her fear vanished. The smell of her came rank and acrid across the flames. She showed her teeth and chattered something at him. Blade did not move.

He was mindful that she might be a decoy, sent to lull him while the males crept up to brain him, and he searched the shadows beyond the fire. Nothing. He doubted they had the mental capacity for such a scheme. He went on watching her.

The lady was growing impatient. Blade choked back a laugh. By now she was puzzled and feeling slighted and beginning to dimly comprehend that the god-thing had no intention of becoming a lover. She growled at him. She lay on her back and clutched her breasts. She spread her legs wide, then raised her knees and stared through them at Blade.

Blade chuckled. He was not, he reckoned, cutting much of a figure in her eyes. It was evident that her awe of him was fast turning to contempt. And the watchers, especially the males, must be puzzled. This young female must be by far the most toothsome in the tribe — and the god would have none of her. Blade could only hope they would not become outraged and attack.

She tired of the game. She lowered her legs and glowered at Blade in reproach. A woman spurned. Blade smiled and patted his belly. He selected a tender bit of meat and tossed it to her. She gobbled it, her eyes never leaving his face, and her small fangs flashed in what she must have meant as a smile of enticement. Blade tossed her more meat.

«Not tonight,» he said gently. «Thanks, but no thanks. I just don't think we could make it together. Your in-laws, for one thing. Just too many of them — and they would all want to live with us. Sorry, honey, but it wouldn't work out.»

He went on crooning nonsense. The female cocked her head at him, flashed her teeth again and seemed to shake her head. Off in the grass something roared and Blade glanced in that direction. When he looked back she had gone.

For the rest of the night Blade fought off sleep. The sun rose on a deserted world wrapped in gauzy white mist. The grass jungle was silent and the caves scattered along the base of the cliff, dark holes in the gray basalt, were as quiet as tombs. Blade knew they were there — watching him. The word had spread. He counted a score of fires, smoldering black embers now, up and down the line of cliffs. But never a sign of them.

Blade, selecting a club and the heaviest of the stone axes, began exploring up and down the line of the cliff. He passed dozens of caves without detecting a stir of life. He was tempted to venture into one of the caves but decided against it.

As it turned out he found what he wanted without risking the caves — a firepot, crudely fashioned of red clay and pierced for carrying by a vine sling, and a large collection of flints of varied sizes and uses. There were pebble tools and choppers and scrapers, axe heads, and even some punches and needles of bone. Blade made a pouch of skin and took what he needed. And found a prize second only to the firepot — a finely made knife of flint, double-bladed and with a tang properly chipped away and only waiting for a haft. He thanked the unknown genius who had made the knife. With it and the firepot he was in business.

Blade made a sling for the firepot, brushed aside ashes to find glowing embers, and half filled the pot. He covered the embers with a thin layer of ash, added sheets of dry bark to his pouch for tinder and began to seek a way up the cliffs. There was no question of going back into the grass jungle. It was quiet now, the towering green stalks moving only with the wind, but he knew what lurked in there. He thought of Ogar and made a sour face. It had to be up the cliffs.

The climb was easy. He found a series of crude footholds chiseled into the cliff face. Here and there wooden pegs had been pounded in. Half an hour later Blade stood on the rim of the cliffs. Before him, undulating and steadily rising, was a vast plain. Vegetation was sparse and the plain was creased and crisscrossed by dry stream beds. Water might turn out to be a problem. There had been none by the fires. Blade shrugged his big shoulders and began to walk.

The plain was like an uptilted washboard. It dipped and rose, but the inclination was always upward. As he climbed out of one deep rill he saw a dark shadow on the horizon, stretching in either direction as far as he could see. After another hour of toiling across the plain he saw that the shadow was in reality the fringe of a forest, a dense black woods. As he drew nearer and the forest dissolved into individual trees, he noted that it slashed across the plain in an exact line, a ruler-straight edge. It might have been laid out by a surveyor.

Blade halted to rest as he reached the forest. He squatted, gnawing a meaty bone, and let his glance rove up and down the line of immense trees. The view was not reassuring. The day had turned leaden as the sun was obscured by thick clouds. There would be rain before nightfall and, in the gloom, the forest crouched like some black beast awaiting a foolhardy traveler. Nothing seemed to move in there. There was not even the flit or chittering of birds and the pall of silence did nothing to cheer the big man. It was unnatural and a bit frightening — the only sounds were those of the wind and his own breathing.

He tossed away the bone and began to explore up and down the edge of the forest, seeking a path. None was to be found. Blade cursed himself for hesitating, yet continued to linger on the plain. Here he was fairly safe. Once into the dark wilderness he might encounter death behind any tree. Yet venture into the primeval gloom he must. There was no other way to go.

Blade checked his weapons and crude equipment, made sure he still had fire and plunged in. There was no path, but he found an opening between the giant boles of oak and beech and variant conifers, and began to walk again. The terrain still slanted upward, but the grade was less and the going easier.

Immediately he was in a darkling twilight. Had the sun been out he might have been walking in aqueous light, stained green by a canopy of interlocking branches a hundred feet overhead; as it was, the gloom was near to Stygian and several times, as he slid between the massive boles — some a good thirty feet around — he had to feel his way.

There were creepers everywhere, binding the forest together, as thick around as Blade's own biceps. It was like trying to walk through a net of stout rope. Blade swore and hacked with his stone axe, often got ensnared and cut his way out with the flint knife, and, as night began to fall, he reckoned that he had come perhaps two miles. If that.

He fought his way through a mass of tall, vile-smelling weeds into a small clearing, the first open spot he had seen, and prepared to camp for the night. There was much to do. He was famished and his supply of meat was gone; he had not yet found water and there was the question of wood for his fire.

Things began to go better. He found plenty of deadfall for the fire and, while gathering the wood, heard a stream purling and tracked it down. The water was sweet and cold and Blade, filthy with sweat and dirt and covered with burrs and ticks, cut and bruised in a score of places, plunged into the stream and had a bath along with his drink. As he went back to build his fire he felt better. He wondered where his next meal was coming from. He was famished.

As he was blowing on the embers in the firepot, readying them for the tinder, he sensed something behind him. Something had come out of the forest and was in the clearing just behind him. Bade put the firepot down and reached stealthily for the flint knife, wishing now that he had taken time to make a haft for it. The tang gave an uncertain grip.

The thing moved closer. He heard it and he smelled it. An animal smell of hide, fur? Blade whirled about.

It was a rabbit! More like an English hare, but like none he had ever seen before. It was the size of a Saint Bernard. Its ears were enormous, the feet huge and splayed, and it was of a peculiar rat-like color. It stared at Blade, unafraid, out of wide, pinkish eyes. Blade halted and looked back at the animal. It hopped closer to him. Blade nodded and readied his knife, thanking the Fates for supplying him with so easy a dinner. This hare-like creature was curious. Totally without fear of him. It had never been hunted and had never seen a man.

It hopped closer and wrinkled its nose at Blade's odor.

He moved closer. It did not retreat. Blade sprang.

It was the easiest kill he had ever made, of man or beast. The giant hare squealed only once as he plunged the knife into the throat and drew it across. Blood gushed and soaked him. He smashed a great fist down on the head for good measure, then let it bleed itself out while he got on with his fire. In five minutes he had a good blaze going. Ten minutes later he had skinned, gutted and disjointed the hare. He seared a savory joint over the fire and wolfed it down. It was delicious.

Blade found more wood and built the fire up until he had a well-lit circle some forty feet in diameter. Inside the circle of light he piled a great reserve of wood. Fighting off sleep all the time, he selected a slim tree within his pale of light and began to hew away with his flint knife and axe. It was slow work, and tedious, but within a few hours he had wood enough for a bow and several arrows. They would be crude, and he must use vine for a bowstring, but they added enormously to his scant arsenal. He had flint for heads and they could be bound to the shafts with vine tendrils. He was at a loss for fletching — there were no birds in this damn forest.

By now sleep was winning — he could fight it off no longer. He stacked wood on the fire and, with axe and club in hand, made a cautious exploration just outside the circle of light. He found nothing. The forest brooded, as silent and empty as it had been in daytime. Apart from the giant hare he had seen no living creature. It should be safe to sleep, and sleep he must.

He lay down near the fire. Yawned. Struggled to think. Closed his eyes. Richard Blade fell crashing into oblivion.

Pain brought him gradually and reluctantly awake. Not one concentrated pain, not a wound nor a bite, but rather a series of small pains adding up to agony. And there was sound — a sucking sound. A drinking sound. Along with the pain and the sucking, his body was covered with an intolerable itch. He was aflame with itch, going mad with it. He came fully awake and dug his nails into his crotch and upper legs, scratching furiously. His fingers touched something unspeakably slimy and he snatched them away, In the dying firelight he stared at them. They were covered with blood. His blood.

Only then, as he came fully awake to horror, did he realize what had happened. He was covered with leeches! Enormous leeches. Swollen, bloated slugs, hundreds of them, sucking and sucking away at his life.

Blade screamed harshly and leaped to his feet. He staggered and nearly fell, weak and reeling, and knew that he had awakened only just in time. The pain was a blessing. Another few minutes and the leeches would have bled him to death.

Still they clung in their hundreds. Blade pulled them off and flung them away. He crushed them with nasty bladder-popping sounds. He had gotten over the worst shock and he fought back revulsion and frenzy and went about the grim business of extermination. It was not easy. They were a solid wriggling and sucking mass on his back, from his anus to his shoulders, and he could not get at them. They writhed around his groin and in his pubic hair.

Blade, near to fainting from loss of blood, reeled to the fire and plucked out a brand and began to sear his body with it. It worked. He did not feel the bite of flame in the blessed relief of being rid of the leeches. In any case, the burns would be superficial.

When he was free of them, though scorched here and there, he mustered his strength and went around stomping as many of the things as he could find. He was amazed to see them, once deprived of their host, screw themselves into the ground like worms. Earth leeches! For one grim and angry moment Blade wished that J and Lord L might be here to share in this adventure.

His body inflamed, covered with thousands of tiny bites, Blade staggered to the brook and lay down in the cold rushing water, unmindful of any greater danger. He lay in the water for a long time, feeling some of his strength come back, knowing that he would be all right in a day or so. But he would have to eat — and eat — and eat. There was plenty of the hare left and he could make broth in the firepot. Meantime he could finish his bow and arrows, make a spear and prepare for whatever new ordeals lay ahead. That there would be ordeals he never doubted. By now he had learned that life, and survival, in any Dimension X were chancy and that the odds were always against him. This particular Dimension X was not any different.

One thing he was positive about — he would build himself a platform in a tree and he would sleep there.