Джеффри Ллойд - Liberator Of Jedd

Muscles corded and lumped, a slithering of blue serpents beneath the smooth-tanned hide. With an aching slowness Blade dragged himself out of the quicksand and onto solid ground. He glanced around. Ogar was gone. Gone to fetch others like himself. Cousins, members of his tribe or clan. Ogar had figured that out. Together they would bring larger stones and clubs and kill Blade.

Blade allowed himself a minute to catch his breath. Then he scraped most of the sand from his body, found the stick and pulled it out of the ground, circled the pool and took off in a long, swinging lope for the line of cliffs. The sun was gone now, all but a wraith of final afterglow, and along the base of the cliffs he could see the sparking of a dozen fires.

He had covered five hundred yards when he heard Ogar scream. He had not gone to get help in killing Blade. He had been watching from cover. Watching so intently that he had forgotten the menace all about him.

Blade was too late to be of any help. He watched, feeling sick, as the monstrous thing went through the rites, so obscenely ceremonial, nearly sacerdotal, of having its supper. Dining on Ogar. With Blade as a reluctant witness and fascinated against his will. Never, in all the dimensions he had visited, and certainly not in Home Dimension, had he seen anything like this.

The animal was not an anteater, yet it had a scarlet ribbon of tongue some twenty feet long. The tongue was rough and covered with tiny suction cups. The tongue was wrapped around Ogar, who could not scream because his bones were crushed and he was being swiftly drawn into a gaping maw. Instinct, automatic compassion, sent Blade starting forward. Then sense prevailed and he stopped. He could not fight this thing with only a pointed stick.

The thing's jaw was hinged. That hinge came unjointed now and the mouth gaped wider and the obscene tongue pulled Ogar in, whole and in one piece. The thing swallowed. Ogar made no sound as he disappeared. There was a lump in the thing's belly as it slithered around on great clawed feet and contemplated Blade.

Blade hoped Ogar had been already dead. Or, this failing, that the stomach acids would kill him quickly.

The brute made no move to come at Blade. It huddled there, watching with cold, enormous eyes. To Blade it seemed part serpent, part crocodile, with scales and short, stumpy legs. He reckoned it at thirty feet long, including the scaled tail, and five feet high. It was very still. It watched him. Blade did not move.

The thing was like something out of mythology, a never-never product of man's imagination. Basilisk? Cockatrice? Gorgon?

Blade grimaced and watched it. He had no idea what it was, except that it sure as hell wasn't a product of his imagination. The problem was how to get past it and continue on the path to the cliffs. It would soon be totally dark. He dare not venture into the thick grass again. As it was, he had only the distant fires to guide him.

The problem was solved for him. Another of the things slid out of the grass and attacked without warning the one that had devoured Ogar. There was a tremendous sound of hissing as they locked tongues and went into a death struggle, rolling and clawing and butting at each other. They fought off into the tall grass. Blade ran.

Blade was badly shaken by what he had seen. He was not yet fully adjusted to this new world. That would come, as it always did, and he would take such things in his stride. But at the moment he still felt a strong and painful empathy for poor Ogar. It did not help much that such sudden death, and the manner of it, must be commonplace in Ogar's world. Blade's now. It was still a sickening way to die — as bad as quicksand.

Blade stepped up his pace. He did not look behind him, confident that he could outrun any of the huge, lumbering creatures frequenting the high grass. His salvation lay ahead in the fires and the caves.

Once a great furred head peered at him over the highest of the grass. Huge eyes glinted and the sound was a rumbling roar that tapered into a whine. Blade ran faster. At last he broke clear of the grass and was on barren ground, still marshy and springy beneath him. but free of obstruction. He could see the fires clearly now, dozens of them up and down the dark line of cliffs and scarcely a quarter of a mile off. Blade began to slow his pace. Time to reconnoiter. What manner of welcome, if any, lay ahead?

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.