Monsters and Magicians (18 page)

He crouched even lower, sheltering all save his eyes and forehead behind the thick wood, when a crashing and crackling of brush issued from some unseen part of the narrow defile which centered the tributary stream. Abruptly, two really big cervines— large as American elk, both of a rufous hue and neither of them antlered—burst out of the brushy defile, followed at very short distance by another.

The third still was running well, but bore a pink froth at mouth and distended nostrils and was clearly panting with effort, pain, or both together, mouth open wide, tongue quite visible.

The two leaders were out of the defile and galloping toward the stream, the injured straggler followed in their hoofprints, when that happened which caused Fitz to start so strongly that he almost dropped the drilling-gun out of pure shock.

From somewhere it had lain or crouched completely unseen in the bushes and shrubs at the mouth of the defile for who could know just how long, a shape from out of nightmare sprang up and, moving with the speed of insanity, clamped down massive jaws crowded with more pointed, two-inch teeth than Fitz thought any one beast should have high on the straining, rear off-leg of the last big deer.

The reddish-coated herbivore shrieked a sound that was half scream, half bleat and strove mightily to pull free from the grip of those fearsome, tooth-studded jaws, but the efforts only brought more injury and certain agony, for Fitz could see that, while pointed, the teeth also were flattened and recurved, the distal areas of them apparently sharp edges, edges designed for the slicing and laceration of flesh.

All its head covered over in fresh, bright blood, the attacker was pulled along by the frantic strength of the doomed deer until all its four- or five-yard length was out of the bushes and on the clearer area where one stream joined the other. There on the stream bank, unequal to more effort—what with the older injury and this newer—the deer, gasping fo breath and coughing up great, frothy masses of rec

bubbles and even some liquid blood, sank to the knees of its forelegs. The monster hung on stubbornly, silently, unremittingly, through the final spasms of the large cervine, for all that Fitz thought that at least one kick had connected somewhere on the scaly body.

At length, the beast roused itself and shook the deer savagely by the tattered and gory leg its jaws still grasped; the end result of the shaking was the separation from that leg of a huge chunk of skin-covered muscle tissue, a chunk so large that Fitz doubted if even a monster of that size could swallow it whole.

He was wrong. The monsters mouth opened to disclose an expanse of dark blue palate and what looked to the man in the tree like a second row of teeth behind the first. Regrasping the chunk of deer meat, the jaws opened farther . . . and farther . . . and still farther, the lower jaw seeming to completely separate from the upper, both upper and lower jaws of the squarish, slightly oversized head widening even more, along horizontal fines as well as vertical ones. In less time than seemed possible, most of the flesh and muscle and skin of the big deer s off-side ham and hip was out of sight down the monsters gullet and it was clamping teeth in the still-quivering carcass, shaking at it to tear off another chunk of hot, bleeding flesh.

Enthralled by the horror to which he had perforce been witness, Fitz had clean forgotten the earlier sounds in the distance. But now those sounds were no longer distant; they were coming near, very near. He was certain, now, that they were not only of

human throats, but that they were something more than simply a spate of wordless cries; they were shouts of words . . . and he was dead-sure he had heard the language or one very similar to it before. It was not English, he knew, but he could not just then say what language it was.

If the monster below heard the shouts, it did not seem to fear or even to heed them; it just kept tearing away at the carcass of its kill, forcing down gobbets of bloody meat that looked to be every bit as big as its outstretched head. Watching the predator from high in the tree, Fitz wondered if the whatever-it-was—it looked a little like the things Seos had thought of as land-dragons, save only that it was not so large as those and its head and neck were significantly different—could gobble up the whole deer and reflected to himself that it just might, for its body was a bit larger than that of the deer, though its legs did not seem as long. He breathed a silent prayer of thanks that the thing down there all covered with blood did not look to be of a build for tree-climbing, for he doubted that anything short of the Holland and Holland elephant gun far away in its case in the rock shelter could easily or quickly stop any creature that size . . . and it just might still be hungry after downing the deer, entire. Fleetingly, he entertained the notion of flying back to the rock shelter and fetching the cased weapon and ammunition, then thought better of it; it could be that he was hiking into territory that these things regularly hunted and he had less than twenty rounds for the double-rifle, so he had better just practice extreme caution and wariness from now on, until he found

out or learned a better way to fend the things off. Maybe . . . ? Yes, maybe that thing down there was one of the "tests" Puss kept mentioning. Could be.

The creature had devoured about half the soft tissue from off the deer and was crouching on a pair of thick, flexed but long-looking hind legs, while using its more slender and much shorter clawed forelegs to turn the carcass over, when the oncoming shouts began to be accompanied by sounds of brush crashing in the defile.

At this, the beast raised its large, blood-dripping head, ignoring the cloud of flies and other insects that buzzed and hovered about the feast of blood. From out that lipless mouth, a tongue that looked to be a good two feet long flickered again and again, rapidly; like the lining of the mouth, it was of a dark blue color, shading to blue-black at its two tips.

Briefly, it went back to the task of seeking to turn the carcass, but more and now louder sounds from out the twisting course of the defile again brought up its fearsome head and prompted still more tongue-flickerings.

Then, from out the brush, almost in the same spot whence the deer had exited to the doom of one, ran a near-naked man grasping a long, slender-hafted spear or lance. Spotting the now sibilantly hissing monster, the man halted and, leaning his weapon against one sweat-streaked, dusty-dirty, brush-scratched, yellow-brown shoulder, half-turned to shout back several sentences in that familiar but still unremembered language, using both hands for a makeshift megaphone. He was answered by first one, then another voice in the same language, whereupon he shouted a single syllable, then turned to again face the huge

predator, his lance presented, level and steady, while he stood, panting and sweating, regaining his breath.

Carefully shielding his binoculars to prevent sunlight from reflecting off the lenses and thus betraying his arboreal position to knowing eyes, Fitz studied the spearman at the mouth of the defile. He was not big, that was certain, perhaps five foot-four or -five, his weight maybe a hundred and thirty. His skin tones and the epicanthic folds of his eyes identified him as an oriental. His bare feet and his hands were proportional to his height as was his head. His visible musculature seemed well developed, and the rapidity with which he regained his breath and be-g^n to breathe normally after what had certainly been a long, hard run over rough country and through thick vegetation bespoke excellent physical condition.

The litde man's "clothing" consisted of a strip of greyish cloth that circled the slim waist, had been brought between the thighs and then knotted in place; his thick, shoulder-length, black hair was restrained by another, thinner strip of cloth that covered his forehead, was now soaked in sweat and looked to have some kind of stains in the space over his black-pupilled eyes.

His only visible weapon (and not much of one, thought Fitz, with which to face a terror the size and clear strength and savagery of that deer-killer) consisted of a haft of some hardwood, well finished, smooth, evenly polished and dead-straight, a bit over an inch wide and about seven feet long. But where one might have expected, in the hands of so primitive-appearing a man, a spear shod with stone or bone or antler, one would have been as surprised as was Fitz

to see the blade riveted to the business-end of the haft. It was slender, four to five inches in length, and shone with the silvery sheen of carefully polished steel.

Then there was another man behind the first, come from out the dense, masking brush. This one, though clearly of the same race, clad and armed identically, was a hair taller, a little more slender in build, and sported thin moustaches and a skimpy chin-beard. Gaspingly, his prominent ribcage working like a bellows, he spoke several sentences or phrases to the first, receiving monosyllabic replies, and Fitz thought to see his face begin to darken in anger, but then two more of the short men came up from behind to begin gasping out their own words to the first.

The blood-slimed monster, meanwhile, none of the two-legged interlopers having advanced on it and tempted beyond endurance by such an abundance of fresh-killed meat, had gone back to trying to get the half-consumed carcass flipped over that the feasting might recommence until the pack of two-legs decided whether or not to try to steal away with the kill. It was long accustomed to the necessity of protecting kills, often then overstuffing itself with the flesh of those of the would-be thieves not sagacious or fast enough to escape its swift wrath, strength and insatiable hunger for flesh.

Up at the mouth of the defile, six of the oriental spearmen had debouched and were standing in the curved line, facing the gorging monster with spears levelled, when another man came out from the brush with still another on his heels. The six spearmen, though they all kept their attention on the monster

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and their spears pointed in its direction, visibly stiffened and fell silent upon the arrival of the two.

"Brass/' thought Fitz, watching warily from the tree. "Can't be anything else. One of these two must be their chief; probably the beefy, mean-looking customer."

The smaller newcomer said something in a low tone to the bigger and that man—not all that much taller, perhaps as much as five-foot-eight, but with more massive bone structure, a wider body, thick, very muscular arms and legs, bigger hands and feet, scarred face and body and a bald or shaven head, also scarred—addressed the spearmen in a growling bark. At this, they all stiffened even more than previously and the slender man, the second to arrive, said one or two words, but fell abruptly silent at a few growled syllables from the big man. Then the first man began to speak.

Fitz chuckled silently. "That big bozo reminds me of some DIs I've had the misfortune to know better than Td have preferred. Whatever he said to the stringbean, there, probably translates into 'When I want some shit out of you, mister, 111 squeeze your head!' He wants his situation report from the first man on the scene, not from any johnny-come-latelies."

While the first-arrived spearman spoke, answering apparent questions put to him by both the big man and the smaller, seven more of the orientals appeared from out the defile, six of them armed with the lances, one carrying what looked like some kind of axe—a broad, metal head on a haft about two feet long. This one handed something long and slender to the smaller man who had come out with the bigger

one, but the bushes were so thick in that area that Fitz could not see clearly what it might be.

After a brief conference between the big man and the smaller who had arrived with him, the bigger one began to bark short, terse phrases and the spearmen formed into two ranks, the spears of the rear rank projecting between the men of the first. At a measured, slow pace, the spearmen bore down upon the predatory monster, the twelve spearpoints winking brightly in the sunlight.

Having just gotten the carcass over to where the other side of flesh could be easily torn off, the beast had to turn from it and make to defend it. It first hissed like an old steam locomotive, then followed that with a healthy roar, but the scavengers did not halt or even pause in their advance, drawing closer and still closer to the contested loll and its defending, rightful owner.

The sun had not yet been up long enough to make it truly warm in this shady place at waters edge, but Fitz's binoculars showed him rivulets of sweat on more than one of those dusty, yellow-brown feces. Yet not one of them hesitated or slowed or even looked like halting and turning back from the mighty, awesome beast; regardless of any justifiable fears, regardless of the rough, rock-strewn ground, the two dressed ranks came on, staunch and steady, blank-faced, spears held ready for the thrust.

"Barbarians, hell!" thought Fitz. "For all their primitive appearance and those spears, those bastards can't be anything but trained, drilled, disciplined troops—veterans, from the performance they're giving out there."

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At that moment, as the ranks of ill-armed little men bore down to do battle with the huge, scaly, blood-streaked monster, Fitz finally got a clear, unobstructed view of the hands and body of the small man who had been with the big one and who now strode on a pace or so ahead of him, just behind the second rank of the spearmen. That was when all the bits and pieces fell into place in the watchers mind.

"Of course," he breathed, almost aloud, "that's why the damned language sounded so familiar. It's been a good thirty years, but God knows I used to hear the bastards shouting and screaming and chattering enough, back then, to remember the sounds and rhythms of their speech for a lifetime. Could these be from that time, that war? How should I know? Considering the time that Sir Gautier came from, the era of the man who became Cool Blue, and the date I entered into whatever this place really is, it could easily be ... as easily as not be. They could be from an earlier time than the era of World War Two; if they are, that might be the explanation of why they don't have firearms, just what look like handmade spears, an axe and a set of Japanese samurai swords.