"You didn't tell me it was going to be easy," Garric mouthed as he crept sideways over the edge of the trail.
The slope here was more gradual than in many places, less than one to one, but the rock had a slick covering of hair-fine moss. He found a crack to stick his right big toe into, then settled his weight onto it as he reached down with his left hand. There was nothing better than a handful of moss to grip, short and slippery, but he clung to it as best he could.
"There is a root on your right side," the Bird said, fluttering in the air beside him. "It's narrow, but it will hold you."
Garric swept his hand over the rock and found the root, crawling up the rock from a plant lower down. It was no thicker than a piece of twine, but its suckers held it to the stone like ivy on a brick wall. He pinched the root between his thumb and forefinger, afraid to wrap his whole hand around it lest he pull it away from the cliff.
Garric could hear the Coerli now, the rasping rhythms of their voices. He couldn't tell how many there were, but he doubted he'd be able to handle one healthy warrior in his present condition.
"Though we'd try," cautioned the ghost in his mind; and of course he'd try and die trying. But better to avoid the problem.
"There are five warriors and their chief, Grunog," the Bird said. "Grunog has no females, but he hopes to gain enough prestige in this new land to make himself powerful in two years, or perhaps three."
Garric had stuck the axe helve under his sash, but when he squeezed himself to the rock face the blade gouged him over the hipbone. He'd have been all right if he'd shifted the axe before he left the trail, but he hadn't thought of the problem until it jabbed him.
Supporting himself by his hands alone, Garric removed his right foot from the crack and felt below him for another toe-hold. He was sure the axe was drawing blood. As soon as he got another safe foothold, he'd—
His right arm spasmed in response to the shoulder wound. Garric lost his grip and tore through plants as he crashed down the cliff side. He bounced from rocks to the bottom fifty feet below where he'd started. Above him the Coerli were calling excitedly.
My fault! Garric thought. Intellectually he knew it really wasn't anybody's fault: he was pushing himself to the limit, and if that sometimes meant he went over the edge-literally, in this case-that was inevitable.
But he still blamed himself.
"This way!" the Bird said, fluttering around the nearest tall trunk. Garric got to his feet and followed.
He'd lost the axe but the knife was stuck hilt-deep in the ground beside him. He snatched the weapon, a single piece of polished hardwood, as he ran. He'd probably been lucky not to put it the long way through his thigh.
It didn't strike Garric till he'd started running that he might be badly injured by a fall like that. Duzi, he could've been killed... and he'd known that, but he hadn't let himself think about it because that might've made it so. That was superstitious nonsense!
"And the soldier who isn't superstitious has the brains of a sheep!" said Carus. "No matter who you are, bad luck can kill you. You may pray to the Great Gods or trust your lucky dagger that you wore in your first battle, but there's going to be something."
Garric could see better than he'd expected. His eyes seemed to be adapting to the greater than usual dimness, but mostly it was the phosphorescent fungus coating patches of the trees and ground. The soil was loamy and damp with a thick layer of leaf litter. Many of the fallen fronds had been eaten away into blue, yellow, and vaguely red skeletons that would've been gray if there'd been even a little more ambient light.
Roots spread around the base of each massive trunk as though the tree had been flung straight down and had splashed. Instead of bark they were covered in scales, though Garric noticed that the patterns varied from slants to curves. One tree-otherwise no different from the others for as high as Garric could see-had flowers growing in the middle of diamonds of lighter scales, set off from the rest of the trunk.
Garric could hear the Coerli calling to one another as they pursued. They must've come down the side of the chasm also, though probably under better control than he'd managed. In the maze of trees he couldn't tell how close his pursuers were or even the exact direction their voices were coming from, but he didn't doubt they'd catch up with him soon.
"Can you swim?" the Bird asked.
"Yes," said Garric.
At least he hoped he could. Though he'd gotten up immediately and begun running, he was feeling the effects of his fall. Nothing was broken, but the bruises on his right ribs and the side of his left knee hurt worse than stab wounds. The chilliness of his right buttock almost certainly meant it was oozing blood that cooled in the air.
Working bruised muscles was the best thing he could do for them, and you don't really lose much blood from a scrape. Besides, if he was going swimming, that'd clean him up.
The Bird swooped in a jangle of light around the biggest tree Garric'd seen in the Abyss yet; at the height of his head above the ground, it must be twenty feet across. On the other side of it was a pond on which pads of fungus floated. There was enough current to keep the center of the broad channel clear of the scum of spores that covered both shorelines, but he couldn't see anything actually moving.
Garric started for the shore, a band of faintly glowing muck. "No!" the Bird said. "Not there-follow!"
It angled to the right and fluttered ten or a dozen yards to what seemed to Garric to be an identical piece of fungus-covered mud. "Here!" the Bird said, flying out over the water. "Cross it as fast as you can."
As I planned to do, Garric thought. In a manner of speaking it wouldn't have made any difference if he'd said the words aloud-the Bird heard him the same either way-but consciously at least he wasn't trying to win stupid verbal games in the middle of a real life-and-death struggle.
He thrust the wooden dagger under his sash and ran into the water. He didn't dive since he didn't know how deep it was. The far shore was about a hundred feet away; the only reason he could see it in this mist was that the pond was black, while rosy phosphorescence dusted the mud of the shore.
Garric splashed two steps in to reach knee height, then threw himself forward and began swimming. The water was warmish and had a cleansing feel, unlike the tidal millpond in Barca's Hamlet where he'd learned to swim.
He felt a flash of white pain when he stretched out his right arm for the first time in a crawl stroke, but then he settled into a rhythm. He supposed he hadn't stuck his arm straight overhead since he'd gotten the shoulder wound.
Stretching's good for it, he thought, his mind grinning though his mouth was too busy sucking in air. Of course if I'd fainted and drowned, that wouldn't have been so good; but it might not make a whole lot of difference. Unless maybe the cat men can't swim?
"They swim better than you do," the Bird said in its dry mental voice. "Get out of the water quickly. Run!"
Stagger rather than run was the word for the way Garric left the pond, but at any rate he got out as quickly as he could. Every muscle hurt and it felt as though his feet were sinking in deeper on this side than they had in the forest on the other side.
Maybe they were; certainly they were cutting ankle deep through the mud and leaving swirls in the fungus on the surface. Unless the cat men were blind, they'd be able to track him easily.
"Even if they were blind they could follow your scent," the Bird said. It landed in the crotch of a tree that branched like a candelabrum. "Can you climb to here?" it asked, fluttering its wings to call attention to itself. "It will help some if the Coerli manage to cross."
The crotch was only fifteen feet in the air, and the rough trunk provided a good grip. Ordinarily Garric would've been up it with a few quick hunches of his shoulders and kicks of his tight-clamped legs.
In the present circumstances it was much harder, but it was necessary regardless. If the cat men had to climb to get at him, it gave him a chance to kill one or two that he wouldn't have on the ground surrounded by creatures so lethally quick.
Garric made it, throwing himself into the crotch and letting his tensed abdomen hold his weight. He whooped for breath through his open mouth as the Coerli came like lithe ghosts from the trees on the other side of the pond.
The maned leader followed the tracks to the water with his eyes, then up the far bank to the tree where their prey sat wheezing. "There's the animal!" he cried. "The heart and lungs to the warrior who drags him down!"
Instead of depending on his warriors to do the job, Grunog leaped into the pond and started across. He moved as smoothly as an otter despite holding his wooden mace out in front of him. His warriors arrowed into the water to either side of their leader.
To Garric's surprise, he hadn't lost the knife in swimming. The Coerli didn't have bows and didn't throw their spears. They'd use their hooked lines at first, but by keeping close to the trunk he'd be able to keep from being wrapped by them and dragged down.
The hooks would probably pull off chunks of flesh, but pain didn't matter much now. The Coerli were going to kill and eat him before the business was over, after all.
The warrior on the right side of the line disappeared, thrashing all four limbs. The other cat men didn't appear to notice. They'd reached the middle of the slow stream.
"Bird?" Garric began.
Grunog let out a scream like skidding rocks. He twisted and raised his mace to strike. Before he could, he sank straight down. A moment later the mace bobbed to the surface; the wood was dense and floated very low in the water.
"Large salamanders live in the lake," said the Bird. It was clinging to the tree sideways, just above the level of Garric's head. "You crossed at the boundary between the territories of two of the largest. The splashing drew them to investigate, but they're sluggish. You'd reached the shore before they arrived."
Garric didn't ask how much clearance he'd had; it didn't matter, after all. There wasn't any other choice.
The remaining warriors milled uncertainly in the water. Garric stood on the branch, no longer exhausted and perfectly confident. He pointed his dagger at the cat men and shouted, "Begone, interlopers or I will loose the rest of my minions on you!"
A Corl gave a hacking cry and thrust his stabbing spear beneath him. Blood bubbled to the surface. He called out again and went down. From the roiling water rose a corpse-white creature with an oval head and a tail as fat as the body proper. It rolled under again and disappeared.
The surviving cat men paddled back the way they'd come. When they reached the shore, they scrambled up and vanished into the forest. They hadn't said a word after Garric had called his empty threat.
"I see what you mean about big salamanders," Garric said. He wasn't feeling pain, but his whole body was trembling from reaction. "That was a good six feet long, including the tail."
"That was a small one," said the Bird. "Normally they wouldn't come close to their larger fellows for fear of being eaten themselves, but when they smelled the blood they were too excited to keep away."
"Oh," said Garric. His blood. The Coerli themselves had been taken too recently for their blood to have spread far. "Just as well I scraped myself, I suppose."
"Yes," said the Bird. "Now to the cave. It's not far. I hope we won't have any more difficulties before we get there."
Garric lowered himself by hanging from the limb with both hands, then dropped to the ground. His knees flexed but didn't buckle as he'd thought they might, especially the left one.
"Yes," he said. "I hope that too."
* * *
"'Now some of these days and it won't be long,'" sang Chalcus, his voice soft in the still air. "'You'll call my name and I gonna be gone.'"
"I hear water close," said Merota, walking a step behind Ilna with her hands pressed tightly together in front of her. She was obviously very frightened, but she was trying in every way she could to hide the fact. "I hope we're near the lake."
Ilna pursed her lips. The child was talking because she was afraid, not because the words would do any real good at all. It made Ilna angry—
Because Ilna was afraid also, afraid that she wouldn't be able to get Merota and Chalcus out of the trap they were in because of her. Which made her want to snarl at whoever was closest to let out the anger and fear churning inside of her.
With a tiny smile of self-mockery, she said, "It's just the other side of the hedge to our left, I believe, but it may be some way before I find a passage through-"
The aisle kinked to the right. She stepped around it, her back straight and a knotted pattern closed in her hands ready for need. White mist rolled through the gap in the hedge, clean-smelling and the first thing in this garden that had felt cool.
The mist was as thick as a feather pillow. Ilna couldn't see through it.
Chalcus joined her in the opening, keeping Merota between them. He reached over the child's head and stroked Ilna's cheek as lightly as a butterfly's wing.
Merota knelt and thrust a hand down into the mist. "I can feel the water!" she said excitedly. "It's running really fast!"
"Stand up, dear one," Chalcus said. "We're not swimming out into that without being able to see more than I can now. Not unless we have to."