Champions Of The Gods

Chapter Twelve

Blade awoke with a headache that pounded and throbbed and seemed to shoot pulses of pain off to every part of his body. It was the worst headache he could ever remember feeling after a return to Home Dimension. He lay there, letting the headache shut out the rest of the world. He remembered Arllona and his desperate effort to snatch her away from the flames of the Mouth of the Gods in Kano. He also knew he ought to be up and asking about what had happened to her. For the moment he knew it would be pointless to try moving as much as his little finger, even to save himself.

Gradually the pain started fading from his limbs and body. Strange sensations replaced them. He did not feel the cool sheets of a hospital bed under him. Instead he felt damp moss, matted grass, dead leaves. He did not smell antiseptic hospital odors, but fresh growing flowers and rotting wood. He did not hear the whir of electronic diagnostic machines and the brisk click of nurses' heels on tile floors. He heard the sound of birds, the wind in tall trees, something large and alive crunching through bushes a good distance off. As the pain started to fade from his head, Blade opened his eyes and looked straight up.

Golden sunlight struck into his eyes, sunlight filtering down through a maze of leafy branches a hundred feet above him. All around were thick tree trunks, overgrown with preposterous tangles of flowering vines. The air was thick with odors, damp and warm.

Blade sat up, then felt both head and stomach settle down. His skin was reddened and smarted like a bad case of sunburn, but nothing worse. He stood up, brushed himself off, and looked around him again. The second look showed him nothing he hadn't seen the first time. This started him thinking.

Something hadn't gone the way Lord Leighton had planned it. He was not in London, or even in Britain. The forest around him looked like virgin jungle. If he was in Home Dimension, the computer had dropped him into the middle of Africa or perhaps South America.

That was a fair-sized «if.» He could have also landed in some other part of the Dimension where Kano and the Raufi were now fighting it out. Dimensions were often complete worlds, as complex and varied as the Earth of Home Dimension.

He might also have gone sailing off into another Dimension entirely! That did not frighten Blade: He was about as incapable of being frightened as any sane man could be. But the idea of being bounced randomly about among different Dimensions was slightly unsettling.

In any case, it was hardly surprising that something had gone wrong. With the best of intentions, he had added a whole new factor to what was already a mass of unknowns by trying to help Arllona. What had that done to the computer's effect on him-or on both of them?

It was a waste of time thinking about it, he decided. He faced a mystery that even in Home Dimension would have been a monumental headache for Lord Leighton himself. It would just have to stay a mystery, for the time being.

The first thing to do here and now was find Arllona, if she was any place where she could be found. Blade didn't like the thought that he might have snatched her from the flames of the Mouth of the Gods to have her die miserably in this jungle. Looking for her, though, could end up like searching an entire field of haystacks for a needle that might not be in any of them.

Blade quickly scanned the patch of forest where he'd landed, carefully examining the ground and the trees. Within minutes he found a fresh depression in the moss, one that had the shape of a human body about the size of Arllona's. From the depression a trail of the prints of small bare feet led off into the forest. From a projecting stub of branch hung a tuft of long, dark brown hair-Arllona's, as far as Blade could tell.

Apparently Arllona had landed some distance from Blade, recovered consciousness first, then wandered off into the forest. Why hadn't she found him and waited for him? There could be various possible reasons for this, none of them particularly pleasant to think about.

Blade broke off a dead branch and traced the outline of Kano's flame emblem several inches deep in the moss and mold of the ground. If Arllona somehow came back here, she might recognize the sign and realize she should stay. Then Blade broke off another stick, one long enough and heavy enough to be a decent club, and strode off into the forest on the woman's trail.

Her trail was easy enough for an experienced outdoorsman like Blade to follow. For the first few hundred yards the trail wandered aimlessly back and forth, as though Arllona hadn't been quite sure which way to turn. Then it straightened out and ran straight for nearly a mile.

At the end of the mile, something had frightened Arllona into a dead run. The footprints showed the long, stumbling strides of someone running in desperation or blind panic. Several times Blade found more tufts of hair, caught on branches or vines and jerked out by the roots as Arllona had plunged onward. He moved on faster, trying to look and listen in all directions at once.

Another half a mile, and a tangle of fallen branches. Someone or something had plunged blindly into them, hard enough to snap the brittle or rotten wood in a dozen places, hard enough to cut and gouge themselves. The jagged ends of several branches showed the reddish-brown of drying blood. A closer look told Blade that the blood was almost fresh. He was less than half an hour behind Arllona now.

He quickly circled the tangle of branches and picked up the woman's trail again. She was still running, but her footprints showed an irregular stride, as though she was stumbling or staggering as she ran. Blade was tempted to break into a run himself, but he realized he had to look and listen for her even more carefully now.

He was also alert for other sights and sounds. Arllona was bleeding and panic-striken. Every forest had animals that followed the scent of blood or were drawn by signs of panic and fear.

Blade had barely finished this thought when he heard a faint moan from ahead. He stopped and listened. The sound came again. It seemed to be coming from a human throat, but there was nothing human about it.

It came a third time. Now Blade could be sure that it came from a particularly dark patch of close-grown trees. Blade headed that way, skirting several fallen branches that thrust long thorns out in all directions. Jagged stubs and more red-brown stains showed that Arllona had plunged straight on through.

Just inside the trees her flight had ended. She lay sprawled facedown at the foot of a tree, covered with sweat, bruises, and still bleeding cuts. Torn earth under her fingers and toes showed where she had kicked and clawed desperately after falling.

Blade bent down, checked her for broken bones, then gently turned her over. Her breathing came in broken gasps, and her eyes were closed. Blade shifted her so that her feet were higher than her head, then began to clear the dirt and weeds from her mouth.

As he worked, he heard her breathing become deeper and more regular. Then her eyes flickered open. They would not meet his, though. They wandered aimlessly about, then closed again. Her mouth opened, and the same low animal's moan he'd heard before came out.

Blade grimaced. By some unknown miracle, Arllona had made the transition with him, from the Mouth of the Gods in Kano to wherever they were now. But it looked very much as though her mind was gone. Was he alone in this unknown jungle with an insane woman?

The next three days were an ordeal Blade wouldn't have wished on his worst enemy. At one time or another he was in danger of death from just about everything except boredom.

Arllona's mind was indeed gone. That was clear after the first day. She whimpered, she drooled, her eyes refused to focus. She could walk, but to keep her with him Blade had to tie a length of vine around her waist and lead her like a dog. She would eat and drink only if he put the food and water in her mouth.

Then there was the deadly windless heat of the forest, the endless twilight, the hunger, the thirst, and the insects. Especially the insects. They swarmed around Blade and Arllona. Some bit, some stung, some crawled over their scratches or into their eyes and noses and mouths, some just whined maddeningly in their ears. They tramped along in the middle of a whining, buzzing cloud. The insect bites spread across their skins until they both looked as if they had some repulsive rash and Arllona's eyes were swollen half-shut.

On the fourth day they came to a small stream, and the worst of the ordeal was over. The water was muddy and scummy, but they were too thirsty to care. Blade scooped several small fish out of the stream and gutted them with his bare hands. They ate the fish raw. He also scooped up mud from the bank and smeared it on the worst of the insect bites. They looked even worse as the mud slowly dried on their skins, but they itched and smarted less. Most important, the stream offered some sort of direction. Following it gave Blade real hope of getting out of the jungle.

Just before darkness fell that day, the jungle offered solid proof that this was not Home Dimension. In Home Dimension there was nothing like the forty-foot thing that came crashing and crunching through the trees along the stream. Its hide was scaled, its feet were clawed, its head sprouted a triangle of horns, its jaw opened wide enough to swallow Blade whole and displayed a double set of foot-long teeth. It growled, it hissed, it muttered to itself, it made the ground shake. Fortunately it did not notice Blade and Arllona as they ducked for cover.

If he had been alone, Blade would have climbed the nearest large tree. But there was Arllona, who had never climbed a tree in her life. Blade had to lead her to the nearest bush and crouch under it with her until the beast went snorting off into the twilight. She was too paralyzed with fear to move or speak until the forest was quiet again.

They slept under the bush that night. That wouldn't keep them from getting eaten if the creature came back and was feeling hungry. It would hopefully keep them from getting trampled on.

The night passed quietly. In the morning they awoke, drank again from the stream, and started off. The stream grew steadily wider during the next two days' march. By nightfall on the second day they could see a wide patch of sky overhead. Judging by the position of the sun, Blade thought that they seemed to be heading roughly northeast. Beyond the treetops, Blade caught a faint shadowy hint of mountains on the horizon.

Blade caught a two-foot fish that night, using a strand of vine for a line and insects for bait. Even raw, the fish was like a feast. In another day or two the stream would probably be wide and deep enough for him to try building a raft. Then they could float the rest of the way down to wherever this water might lead them. It might not lead them to civilization. It should lead them out of this damned jungle!

The next morning they walked for only an hour before the stream flowed into a full-sized river. It stretched nearly two hundred feet from bank to bank, muddy green and sluggish, running almost due north and south. Far to the north loomed a wall of gray, rocky mountains. In the center the wall reared up into a massive volcanic cone, its summit trailing a long white plume of steam.

Blade guided Arllona to a patch of soft grass, then stood on the bank, looking up at the mountain and at the blue sky above it. They weren't safe yet. Their journey might not even be half over. But certainly they weren't likely to face anything like the jungle they'd left behind them. Now they would have water and fish for the rest of their journey. Now he could start looking along the bank for logs to tie into a raft. Now he could-

The unmistakable sound of fast-moving human feet broke into Blade's thoughts. He whirled, eyes sweeping across the jungle behind him. The sound grew louder. He snatched up his club and started toward where he'd left Arllona.

Before he'd covered half the distance, he heard an explosion of crackling branches off to his left. He whirled again, in time to see four dark brown men dash out of the forest at a dead run. He could see that they all wore feather headdresses and carried long, heavy spears. Three wore brightly dyed loincloths, while the fourth was stark naked.

Blade knew that he was too far from cover to get out of sight before the men saw him. He would simply be speared from behind. He dropped into fighting stance and raised his club over his head with both hands, twisting his face into a ferocious glare. When they saw him, the four would see a formidable warrior, ready to fight to the death.

Blade might have been made of glass for all the attention the four men paid him. They spread out along the riverbank, looking toward the jungle and raising their spears.

Blade had just time to wonder why they were doing this when his question was answered. Something large was approaching through the jungle, something that was clearing its own path through the trees like a tank and making the ground shudder as it walked. Blade heard the crackle and crash of falling trees, the thud of massive feet, hungry growls and grumblings. The naked warrior shouted an order to the other three. They moved farther down the bank, but slowly and reluctantly, looking backward at their leader.

The leader turned enough to catch sight of Blade. His eyes widened, and Blade saw the muscles of his throwing arm tighten. The spear rose and the point swung toward Blade.

Then a tree crashed down, close enough to send twigs and leaves flying into the clearing. The growl turned into a deafening bellow. An immense scaled head reared up out of the forest, a triangle of massive horns jutting out ten feet. Toothed jaws opened, wide enough to bite a horse in half.

The naked warrior raised his spear higher, shook it at Blade, then shook his head and pointed with his free hand toward the beast. Blade got the message. The warrior would fight him, after he was through with the beast. It was his prey, and Blade should stand clear.