Vagabonds of Gor (36 page)

"It is too heavy," she said.

"One may put one's shoulder under the lower crossbar," I said. "I do not think it will be difficult."

I then turned away from her, addressing myself to the pole. I got my shoulder under it and, as I had expected, it was not difficult to lift from the soft sand. When I had it on the sand I looked up, and saw that she was gone. I could see her footprints in the sand, and where they entered the marsh. In the marsh, of course, she might have gone any way. I surmised the route I supposed she would take, at least for the time, but I did not pursue it. I then dragged the pole to the marsh and, floating it, waded out a way, and thrust it into the center of what seemed a deep, promising channel. I then returned to the island, and from the island, back into the rence, to locate the raft, and my things.

I had barely reached the raft when I heard, once more, a scream.

I turned about.

It came from the direction from which I had come, from the direction of the island.

I again heard the scream.

Then I saw, about a hundred yards away, to the right, the head of the ul, stalking, bobbing, over the rence.

Tenacious, indeed, I thought.

I heard screams, splashing.

Then the ul struck its huge wings against the air, lifting itself above the rence, hovering.

The screams stopped.

The ul then began to climb, then turn, and circle, scanning. Its quarry, I supposed, must be hiding in the rence. It had lost contact with it. Then I saw the total alteration in the attitude of the monster, and it turned, and began to glide downward, silently, toward the marsh. When it struck, the marsh water splashed up, furrowing, twenty or thirty feet in the air. I heard more screaming. I caught sight of the Lady Ina plunging through the marsh, her hands extended, her hair wild behind her. Following her, over the rence I now again saw the small head of the ul, bobbing, inquisitive, bird-like.

I drew my blade and began to hasten toward the island, intending to intersect the path of the Lady Ina's flight. Once I caught a glimpse of her again, small, white, blond, terrified, crashing through rence.

There was no difficulty, of course, in keeping track of the ul, whose head overtopped the rence. Once I saw its entire body, moving with great speed, impelled by a snap of those huge skin wings. Then again, only its head.

In a sense, of course, though I seldom saw her, it was also easy to surmise the position of the Lady Ina. The purposefulness of the ul located her for me. She was before him, fleeing. It was on her trail he trod. Then I again saw her plunging through the marsh, pushing her way through rence, approaching the edge of the island. She was wading, falling, getting up, wading again. Then she emerged onto the island, the sand to her ankles. She looked wildly about.

Then the ul burst through the rence behind her. She looked back and screamed. She tried to turn then, to run, but stumbled and fell into the sand, and in that instant the ul was upon her, pinning her to the sand with one giant, clawed foot. She squirmed wildly in the sand, half covered, and the ul, then, locked its foot about her. It then put its other foot on her, as well, and also closed it about her body. She was as helpless as though she were clutched in the talons of a tarn. She lifted her head inches from the sand and screamed.

The ul had reached its head down, its jaws gaping, when it saw me approaching, some yards away. It then lifted its head, closing its jaws. It watched me approaching. It then, for what reason I am not sure, perhaps because of its memory of fire, perhaps because of the injuries I had caused it, perhaps because of a mere desire to safeguard its prey, smote its great wings, and, blasting sand about, bending nearby rence almost to the water, began to rise into the air.

My eyes half closed, crouching, fighting my way through the sand and wind, I lunged toward it. I did not attack its feet for fear of striking the girl. I, then, was under it, running. It, hovering, backed over the marsh. I leapt upward with the sword and the blade met the beating wing on its forward strike and the blade and my arm, too, given the force, penetrated it like paper, and the thing rose up uttering a wild, hissing noise, clutching the girl, I hanging in the rent wing. Its flight was erratic and it climbed, and spun, and circled against me, the injured wing, air passing through it, burdened, too, with my weight, muchly ineffective. I swung in the wing, dangling.

I saw the marsh dizzily spinning beneath me. The noise of the creature now was a wild deafening squeal. The monster's quarry, its creamy flesh in its grasp, its blond hair spread in the wind, made gasping, sobbing, choking noises. I think it could hardly breathe, for the movements, the ascents and descents, the turning in the air. My arm slipped down through the skin. I feared I might rip free and fall to the marsh below, sometimes a hundred feet below, sometimes as little as thirty or forty feet. The creature tried to bite at me, to pull me from its wing, and I kicked at it, and thrust at its jaws, pushing them up, away.

Once my hand slipped inside the lower jaw and I managed to withdraw it only an instant before the upper jaw, like the lid of a box, snapped shut against the lower. Then the ul was spinning erratically again, and we were turning head over heels. I then managed, hanging there, swinging, when it again achieved some stability, to transfer the sword to my left hand, under the wing. With my left hand I thrust the blade again and again into its left side. I could get little leverage for these thrusts, but they were repeated, again and again, and blood told of counts tallied.

Then the jaws opened widely, perhaps four or five feet in width, and reached for me. I tried to swing back but could move very little. I thrust the blade out, between the jaws. The jaws snapped downward and the point of the sword emerged through the upper jaw and the lower jaw was tight under the hilt of the sword. The tongue, moving about, from one side to the other, cutting itself, bleeding, pushed against my hand. The creature, turning and spinning, hissing, tried to close its jaws. This put the blade higher through the upper jaw. Closer and closer to my hand came the relentless upper jaw, until it was stopped, held by the guard. The tongue pushed against my hand and the hilt. It then, spinning about, climbing, tried to open its jaws. I tried to turn the blade, to keep the jaws pinned shut.

Its left eye was balefully upon me. Its left side bled in a dozen places. Then it began to fall, erratically, turning in the air, and then, somehow, again, it regained some stability. I saw what I took to be the island below, to the left. We were perhaps fifty or seventy feet then from the rence. It put back its head, lifting it, twisting it, and given the power of its body, the sword, fixed still in its jaw, was torn from my grasp.

I heard the girl scream, released. I saw her falling toward the marsh below. Unburdened then to that extent the creature tried again to climb, it could manage only a few feet. The great wings no longer beat frenziedly. Then it tried to reach me with its legs. Its left leg, given my position, could not do so. Reaching across its body it tried to reach me, too, with its right leg. I tried to pull back. Claws tore at me, raking my leg. Then it tried to reach me with the claws of its right forelimb, the wing claws, at the arch of the wing.

These claws, I think, are largely vestigial, given the modification of the forelimb to support the wing. They may, however, together with those of the feet, enable the creature, in suitable environments, to cling, bat-like, to surfaces, such as rock faces and trees. They may also be used in intraspecific aggression. I pushed them away.

In trying to reach me with these claws, of course, it lost aerial stability, and began to fall, twisting downward. It recovered in a moment and then, with the wing itself, began to beat, and thrust, at me. In attempting this, however, it again lost aerial stability, and began once more to plummet, spinning toward the marsh. It opened its wings to try to climb again, perhaps some fifty feet or so, above the marsh, and did climb, yard by yard, as though it would ascend to the clouds, but then it fell slowly, its wings beating, toward the marsh. It was suddenly in the water and I freed myself of the wing and backed away.

I saw the claws of the forelimb, and the wing itself, push against where I had been. I stood back. It was lying there then, half submerged, its wing twisted and torn. The head turned to regard me. I waited for a time. The body went lower in the water. I then, carefully, freed my sword from its jaws. I then thrust once, deeply, cleanly, into its left side. It was then dead. The ul, I thought, is not the monarch of the delta. Man, small man, puny man, with his weapons, is the monarch of the delta. There was much blood in the water and I waded back toward the island. Two short-legged tharlarion passed me, like ships, moving toward the dead ul.

I climbed onto the sand. I would cross the island, and return, again, to the raft.

I had not sheathed the sword.

"Wait!" I heard, a tremulous voice, small, pleading. I did not turn about. I had thought she had been killed. I continued toward the other side of the island.

"Wait, please!" I heard.

I then turned about.

I saw her a few yards behind. I could also see her footprints in the sand, where they had followed mine. She approached to within a few feet of me, but no nearer. She stood there, frightened, shuddering. She was filthy.

"I thought you had been killed," she said.

"I thought you had been killed," I said.

"I fell in the water," she said.

"Apparently in a channel," I said.

"I nearly drowned in the mud," she said.

"You look disgusting," I said.

"Is it dead?" she asked, frightened.

"Yes," I said.

I thought her knees might give way, that she might fall to the sand.

"It is dead," I said.

"You are injured," she said. My left leg was covered with blood.

"It is nothing," I said.

"There may be others," she said.

"Probably not in this vicinity," I said. The larger uls, as opposed to the several smaller varieties, some as small as jards, tend to be isolated and territorial.

"But there are many dangers in the delta," she said.

"Some, perhaps," I said.

Suddenly she hurried forward and dropped to her knees in the sand before me. She was sobbing and shuddering, uncontrollably. She put her head tremblingly down to the sand. The palms of her hands were in the sand, the sand coming over her fingers. She kept this position for several Ihn. Then she looked up at me, piteously, pleadingly, from all fours. "Please," she said. "Please!"

She had performed obeisance before me.

"Please!" she wept.

I regarded her, impassively.

She crawled to my knees and clasped them, kneeling before me, looking up at me, tears in her eyes. She held her arms about my legs, closely. I could feel her move and tremble, and shudder. Her face was running with tears. Then she put her cheek down, against my bloody leg. I could feel her tears on my leg. "Please," she whispered piteously, "Please! Please!"

"Lick the blood from my leg," I said.

"Yes, yes!" she said, eagerly.

I looked down to see that small, lovely pink tongue addressing itself dutifully, eagerly, assiduously, to its task. How in contrast its softness, its color, and its attentive delicacy seemed to the bedraggled, filthy figure, with its matted hair, at my feet. To be sure, the figure was curvaceous.

When she had finished her task, cleaning the blood and dirt from my leg, she looked up at me, hopefully, her hands still on my legs.

"Back away," I said. "Stay on your knees."

She backed away, about two yards, on her knees.

I raised the blade of the sword a little. "Lift your chin," I said.

She complied.

"You are filthy," I said.