As soon as he thought it dark enough, he gave the order to move out. Khyuks was tied to Ulysses’ back and gagged. Ulysses had given his word that the batwing would not be killed if he gave information. It was true that Khyuks had not answered all the questions, but he had answered most. And Ulysses admired the little man’s courage and endurance. He knew it was dangerous to be sentimental to an enemy, but he did not feel like killing the plucky little fellow. Moreover, he might be able to use him later.
They returned to where they had hidden the raft logs and the poles. The rafts were put back together, and the party launched itself out on the dark riverlet. The moonlight did not filter down very far. Occasionally, a ray broke through an avenue of branches. Once, a thin ray lit up great dark round objects in the water ahead of them. There was a snort, and a needle of water shot up from some aperture in the creature. Then the water boiled as bodies disappeared. The rafts pushed on through the roiling as the occupants waited, tensely, for the great hipporats to appear beside the rafts or, worse, underneath them. But the rafts proceeded unmolested.
Several times, Ulysses saw the seemingly endless lines of a legless crocodile slide out from the silvery-black bushes and into the silvery-black water. He waited for the violent upthrust of a short-jawed, many-toothed head onto the raft and the closing of teeth around the leg of someone—or himself. Or the lash of a mighty tail from the darkness and the smash of bone and pulping of flesh and the body flying into the riverlet.
More miles passed without incident. Birds and unknown animals gave their weird cries. Then the current picked up and they were going so swiftly that the polers had no need to shove against the bottom. Now they were busy pushing against the bank so that the rafts would not bump against them.
The great branch was leaning downward at a steeper rate, although the inclination was not noticeable in the dark by the raftmen. If it had not been for the pickup in the current’s speed, they would have thought they were on a level.
Ulysses liked but also worried about the speed. He crouched down by the bound Khyuks and splashed water from the riverlet onto the little face. The water made the unconscious bat-man open his eyes.
He croaked, “I am thirsty.”
Ulysses dipped more water with his gourd and lifted Khyuks’ head so he could drink. Then he said, “I think the water is rushing toward some fall. Do you know anything about it?”
“No,” Khyuks said sullenly. “I know nothing of any waterfall.”
“That means what?” Ulysses said. “That you are ignorant of this area or that there is no waterfall at the riverlet’s end?”
“I didn’t fly over the end of this branch when I came in,” Khyuks said.
Ulysses said, “Well, we’ll find out the hard way whether or not there is a cataract. I want to get out of here with all possible speed, and I’ll keep us on the rafts until the last possible moment. There might be some difficulty, but not an impossibility, I hope, in getting off the rafts at the last moment.”
He did not elaborate. Khyuks was not so deep in pain that he could not visualize what might happen. It could be every man for himself, and Khyuks, his legs and hands tied, would be dependent on someone else to get him ashore. There might not be enough time for anyone to carry him or throw him ashore, even if anyone felt so inclined.
After a while, Khyuks spoke again. It was evident that he loathed himself. He wanted to keep his mouth shut and take whatever was coming. But he was unable to face the death at the end of the branch. Perhaps, Ulysses thought, there was something especially horrifying about death in water to him.
“Judging by the current,” he said slowly, “we must be about three miles from the end. Where the first cataract is.”
Ulysses considered the possibility that Khyuks was not frightened. He might be lying so that he could trap them all, send them all to a falling watery death, including himself.
“We’ll go another mile or so,” Ulysses said. “Then we’ll get off the rafts.
There was enough light so that he could see Khyuks’ face. Now and then, the light strengthened as the moon’s rays shot through openings between leaves and branches and trunks thousands of feet above them. The bat-man’s face was as unreadable as a piece of leather.
At that moment, a cry brought Ulysses upright and raised a chill on the back of his neck. He turned around to see what Awina was pointing at. There was a big tree growing out of a dirt-filled crack about fifty yards away. It was only about fifty feet high, but it spread out horizontally to eighty feet or so on either side of the massive trunk. The cry had come from something on one of its branches. A moment later, he saw its origin. A number of dark bodies launched themselves from the dark mushroom shape out into the abyss below the great branch on the rim of which the tree grew. Great leathery wings spread out, and the little bat-man disappeared behind the vegetation. Within a minute, the first of them reappeared again, flapping strongly to carry himself up and over the rafts. And in another minute there were many more.
There was only one thing for Ulysses to do. If his people stayed on the rafts, they would be open to attack from above. Worse, they would have to quit the rafts later on while under attack and under conditions which would make it difficult to defend themselves.
He shouted an order, and the polers on the outside of the rafts shoved against the bottom. The rafts moved in toward the banks, and those on the bankward edges leaped out and grabbed the bushes. Meanwhile, Ulysses had begun tossing the heaviest boxes through the air and onto the banks. He hoped that the impact would not trigger the unstable black gunpowder. The boxes of bombs fell onto the bushes without reacting.
Then he lifted up Khyuks and heaved him with an effort that dipped the raft on his side. The little fellow, squawking, crashed face-down onto a thick growth. Wulka, a Wagarondit, picked him up.
By that time, the first of the batpeople was swooping down on the raft, his little hands holding a short spear. He never got above them; an arrow thudded into his chest and he fell with a loud splash. A great legless length launched itself from the bushes on the opposite bank, roaring as it went through the air.
Ulysses shot once, noted that his arrow had driven into the shoulder of a bat-man, and then turned and leaped onto the bank without waiting to see the man’s fall. He held his bow out with his right hand and clutched at a branch with his left. His hand closed around a thorny length, and he exclaimed with the pain. But he did not let loose.
Something hit the dirt just beside his right foot. A missile cast, or dropped, by one of the flying men. Then he had dived over the bush, pulling himself over, and never mind possible damage to the quiver or the bow. When he was behind the bush, he crawled on through the vegetation until he was covered by a large and heavy bush. He roared at his chiefs and at Awina until they had all answered.
In response to more of his orders, they made their way through the tangles until they were close to him. During this time, the bat-men had been swooping over the jungle and dropping or hurling assegais, darts, and shooting small arrows. No one was hit, and after a while the bat-men quit their blind bombardment. They were losing too many weapons.
In the meantime, the archers had brought down five of the fliers. The batpeople retired to the tree for a conference.
Despite their retreat, they held the upper hand. Their enemy could only go so far in one direction and then they would have to climb down the trunk or up the trunk to get to another branch. If they did this, they would be exposed, and the batpeople could kill off the entire party, with little or no casualties to themselves.
If their enemy continued to hide in the dense vegetation of this branch, they would just be putting off the inevitable. The batpeople could send for more fliers and, in time, flush them out. Especially since they would be restricted in their hunting and could be starved out if the winged men did not care for a direct battle.
Ulysses had tried to count his foes while they were zooming over in the moon-speckled darkness. He estimated they number
ed about a hundred. At the moment, they were gone except for six sentinels who kept diving and climbing but always just out of effective range of the arrows.
Ulysses crouched under the bush and tried to think of what to do. And while he thought, he became aware of a very faint murmuring sound. He requested quiet from those around him and, within a minute, thought he could identify the noise. It had to be the distance-muted roar of a waterfall.
He gave orders to the nearest, Awina, who relayed them. There was some delay because the party, for the most part, was reluctant to leave their present location. This gave them excellent protection but Ulysses knew his “men” and what they were thinking. He yelled at them and told them what would happen in the future if they did not get going. Once it was explained, they reacted swiftly enough. They just did not live much in the future; they had trouble seeing past their present situation.
The end of the branch, or, rather, the place where it abruptly bent at ninety degrees to the horizontal, was two miles away. The party made slow progress because of the thick vegetation and also because they were under orders to move slowly and quietly.
Ulysses saw the spume of white and black about a quarter of a mile before he got to it. He had climbed a tall tree to get a better look, at the same time making sure that he would not be seen by the bat-men, who were flying overhead now and then. The mists rose up and spread out to some distance, as he had hoped. Up in the tree, the roar of the falling water was unfiltered by the jungle.
He was about to climb back down when he saw a Dhulhulikh flap by. He clung to the tree and tried to make himself look like a barky excrescence. No moonlight hit him directly, though enough sieved through the leaves to make the darkness more silver than black. The bat-man went by once, winging so slowly he was just short of stalling. Then his wings beat faster and he climbed as he banked. He came back toward the tree, moving through patchy areas of blackness and pale yellow, the moon’s rays bouncing off his bald head and catching beams off his wings, which were darker than his body. He came down just above the tops of the brush, and then flew upward, beating his wings to keep from a complete stall. Just before he landed on the branch of the tree, on the other side of the trunk from Ulysses, he did stall. And he landed as smoothly as an owl on the branch.
He had no talons with which to grip the branch, but he reached out and grabbed a smaller branch and so kept himself from going ahead. After he had folded his wings, he turned to face away from Ulysses. He wore a belt with a stone knife and carried in one hand a short slender spear. From a cord around his neck hung a coiled instrument. Ulysses guessed that this was a horn of some kind. The fellow was sitting there to watch for the enemy. If he saw them, he would summon the others with his horn.
There was no noise from below loud enough to rise above the soft thunder of the waterfall. His men had seen the bat-man and were waiting for the next development. The jungle looked unpopulated.
Ulysses left his position and worked his way around the trunk. His bow and quiver were at the foot of the trunk. Fortunately, they were on the side of the trunk opposite the bat-man and were also in the shadows. Ulysses had only his switchblade knife, which was held between his teeth. He had to cling with both hands and move very slowly. Even though the waterfall drowned out noise, it was not so loud that the keen-eared bat-man would not be able to hear the rustle of leaves or creak of branch.
The man continued to face away from Ulysses as he moved out on the same branch as the one he sat on. He stood upright, balancing himself easily, because the branch was thick. He slid one foot ahead and then brought the other up, slid his forward foot ahead, brought the other up, and so on. Once, he stopped and took the knife from between his teeth. The bat-man’s wings half-spread, flapped slightly and then folded back in. In that moment, Ulysses saw the hole in the membrane of the right wing. And he recognized the silhouette of the man’s head and the set of the shoulders. It was Ghlikh.
His intention to kill was gone. He could use Ghlikh.
Killing would be easier than capturing. He had to make sure that he could knock Ghlikh out and at the same time keep him from falling. Though Ghlikh weighed only about forty-five pounds, he could be hurt or even killed by a thirty-foot fall. Ulysses also had to make sure that he didn’t rush too swiftly or he might go over along with him. He approached very slowly, afraid that the little man would detect the bending of the branch under his two hundred and forty-five pounds. But Ghlikh was not out near the slender part of the branch. He was halfway, still on the thick part. And so Ulysses was able to chop him along the side of his neck, not too hard, because he was afraid he would snap the thin, probably hollow-boned, neck. Soundlessly, Ghlikh collapsed and fell forward, and Ulysses had to grab with the other hand and seize his wing. He called to those hidden in the brush, and they came out. A moment later, he dropped the unconscious man into waiting arms. By the time he got down, Ghlikh was tied and gagged. A few minutes afterward, his eyes opened. Ulysses stood in the moonlight so that Ghlikh could see who had captured him. Ghlikh’s eyes widened, and he struggled. He was still squirming when he was hoisted onto Ulysses’ back as if he were a backpack. Ulysses told Wulka, the Wagarondit chief who was carrying Khyuks, to hit Ghlikh again, and Wulka gladly obeyed.
The half-mile was covered as swiftly as possible. Ulysses had the honor of being the first to start the climb down. The mists shrouded him, not only from the view of any bat-men who might be coming along soon, but also from view of the others. What with the darkness and the clouds rising from the abyss, he could barely see two feet before, or under, him. The droplets collected over his body and made him cold. They also made the bark and his fingers and toes slippery.
There was nothing to do but go down. If he had been alone, or with people who did not expect him to be a god, he might have stayed outside the mist and taken his chances on being seen by the batpeople. But he could not avoid his obligations or break his word.
“The mist is our protection,” he said. “But like all protections, all shields, it has its disadvantages. It exacts a price. It hides us from our enemies, but it also holds its dangers. It will be slippery, and we will be blind.”
It was also very slow going, he thought, as he groped with his foot for a projection below him. His hands clung to outthrusts of bark, one foot was half in a fissure, and the other foot moved around for a ledge or crevice. Finally, it found a ledge, and he lowered himself gently, made sure he had a secure hold, and then lowered his foot again. This process went on for an unaccountable time, and then the darkness paled, and he could see just a little more than before.
He had a solid extension beneath him. Carefully, he walked out on it, testing each unseen inch of bark with his toes. The waterfall roared on his left and water swirled against his left foot. He jumped as something touched him, and he whirled with his knife in hand. Dimly, he saw the short, slender, black-and-white figure of Awina. She came closer then, her eyes big round darknesses. He put the knife away, and she clung to him for a moment. Her fur was wet, but after a minute their bodies began to warm each other. He ran his hand over the round top of her head and felt the wet silky ears and then ran his hand down her back. She felt more like a drowned rat than the soft deliriously furry being he had known.
Other figures jelled out of the mists. He moved away from Awina, counting them as they appeared. All were there.
Ghlikh began twitching. He had been as motionless as a bag of meat during the descent, but now he thought it was safe to move and try to get his circulation going again. Ulysses had him removed from his back and the bonds around his legs taken off. The little man hopped around on his skinny legs and huge feet while two Wagarondit stood ready to stab him if he tried to run or fly.
Ulysses walked carefully out of the mists. The top of the waterfall was about five hundred feet up. There were no batpeople in sight. Only the bushes and sides of leaning trees broke the edge of the upper part of the branch. He turned and saw that the branch continued on a horizontal plane unt
il it was lost to sight. There was nothing to keep them from building more rafts and continuing on the riverlet. But they must hide in the jungle until nightfall again. They could sleep part of the day, although they had to spend some time in hunting. Their food supply was getting low.
Late that evening, no longer sleepy but suffering from hunger pangs, they organized four hunting parties. An hour later, they butchered a legless crocodile, a hipporat, two big red goats and three large monkeys.
They ate well that evening, and everybody felt much better. They cut down poles and bound them together and then set out on the riverlet. Before dawn, they came to another downward bend of the great branch and another cataract. They climbed down but stayed outside the mists, and by dawn they reached the bottom and another riverlet; after sleeping and hunting again, they made more rafts. The bottom of the third waterfall proved to be also the bottom of The Tree, or, as Awina called it, the Feet of Wurutana.
The vast trunks, branches and other vegetation growing overhead to a height of ten thousand feet formed a complex that barred all but a few of the sun’s rays. A deep twilight reigned here at noon, and in the mornings and afternoons a near-night like a storm of ravens’ feathers filled the spaces between the gigantic columns and buttresses plunging into the swamp. The ground beneath The Tree received the precipitation of the cataracts and the rainfall that was not caught by the branches and the colossal leaves of The Tree and the vegetation that grew on The Tree. A swamp had formed at the base of The Tree, a vast unutterably dismal swamp. The depth of the water varied from one inch to many feet, enough to drown a man. Out of this water, and out of the mud, many strange, foul-smelling, pale and blotched plants grew.
The twilight showed them nightmare forms. Great pieces of bark, many of them bungalow-sized, had fallen off the sides of The Tree and hurtled downward, striking branches and trunks and knocking off other large and decaying crags of bark. The Tree, like the World-Snake of Norse mythology, shed its skin. Bark was always rotting and then breaking off and either falling onto the tops of the mighty branches, there to decay more, or else coming down like cold black falling stars to splash into the water and the mud of the swamp. There, half-sunk, they decayed, and the insects and vermin that infested this dusky world bored into the great masses and made their houses therein.