The animal's desperate effort only made its fate certain. Its hind feet slipped on the muddy bank and went out from under it. Before it could do more than squeal again, the creature in the water was upon it. Six-foot jaws tipped with horns opened like a pair of scissors, then clamped down on their prey. Half the animal disappeared into those jaws with a final agonized squeal. The creature in the pool rose higher out of the water, showing a reptilian head with a second pair of horns jutting up behind the eyes. Its victim's hind legs thrashed wildly in the air, then there was a faint splash and nothing but spreading ripples and a little blood on the surface of the pool.
Blade decided that it might not be such a good idea to bathe in one of the pools after all.
Instead, Blade climbed halfway down the bluff, then slipped into the water. He'd underestimated the force of the current, and was promptly swept off his feet and down toward the pool. Rocks bruised him and scraped skin off his arms and legs, and for a moment he was afraid he was going all the way down into the pool and what waited there. Then he caught a projecting root and with a desperate wrenching of all his muscles heaved himself out of the water.
At least he could drink safely from the rapids, and he drank until he could almost feel the water sloshing around inside him. Then he ate two of the fruits, scrambled up a tree and made himself as comfortable a bed in its branches as he could manage. Blade didn't know how far the reptiles were willing to come out of the water, and didn't want to find out the hard way. At least he could be fairly sure they didn't climb trees.
His tree-bed wasn't really comfortable, but after his day's exertions Blade didn't care. He was asleep within minutes, drifting off as the night chorus of the jungle rose around him. The last sound he heard was an uproar of splashing from the direction of the stream.
Chapter 3
More and louder splashing woke Blade, along with whistlings, hootings, and gruesome noises like the horns of gigantic trucks. The birds and insects were lost in the uproar. With a safe fifty feet between him and the ground, Blade watched the reptiles heading for home.
He counted at least twenty of them lumbering through the trees and splashing into the lower pool. They ranged from comparative runts no more than fifteen feet long to one monster who must have been well over forty. His skull alone was a yard wide, and each of the jutting spikes along his back was two feet high. Each scale on his belly was the size of a man's hand. Like all the others, he was a greenish-black on the back and head, and a dirty orange on the belly and the insides of his four clawed legs. The creatures looked like some nightmarish horned caricature of a crocodile.
Some of the creatures were smeared with dried blood and shreds of flesh from their night's victims. All of them seemed to be in a bad temper. They honked, hissed, slapped their tails on the ground, and occasionally hurled challenges to fight. Then two of them would go at each other with horns and teeth, rolling over and over, clawing at the ground, lashing out with their tails hard enough to flatten bushes and small trees. None of the fights seemed to hurt anything except the undergrowth.
Eventually each of the horned crocodiles plunged into the lower pool, briefly sank out of sight, then swam off downstream with only its eyes above water. Blade waited until the last one was gone, then waited a little longer to be on the safe side. By the time he finally climbed down, it was full daylight.
He looked downstream as far as he could see, without finding any sign of the creatures. Apparently they hunted along the banks by night, then laired up in the water by day. If he traveled by day and spent the nights in the trees, he should still be able to follow the course of the stream without any unfortunate meetings with the crocodiles.
He'd still better have some sort of weapon against them. No matter how alert he was or how thoroughly the creatures stayed hidden by day, he didn't want to rely on luck and his ability to outrun them. But did he have any chance of making an effective weapon? The crocodiles were as long as small boats, they must weigh as much as large automobiles, and they were far more agile out of the water than any similar Home Dimension creatures. Their tooth-lined jaws could probably snap Blade in half at a single bite.
Their jaws-there was the key to the problem. Perhaps he couldn't make a weapon to hurt them, but he might make something to keep them from hurting him. If he could keep them from closing those formidable jaws on him
Quickly Blade began searching the ground for sticks and lengths of vine. Again he wished he had a machete, but realized he probably wouldn't need one here. The fighting crocodiles had mangled the underbrush as thoroughly as a team of bulldozers, and bits and pieces of wood lay everywhere.
It took him less time than he'd expected to find what he needed, and almost no time to put the pieces together. Within a few minutes he had a length of wood, roughly straight, about two inches thick and two feet long. With lengths of vine he tied two more shorter pieces of wood crosswise to the longer one, about four inches from each end. He'd have liked to put a point on each end of the long piece, but there weren't any sharp stones in sight.
There was his defense against any crocodile. He would wait until the creature opened its mouth, then shove the jaw-bracer inside. As the creature tried to close its mouth, the ends of the longer stick would dig into the upper and lower jaws, holding them apart. The two crosspieces would help hold the longer stick in place.
At least that was the theory, and Blade couldn't see anything wrong with it. In practice, the jaw-bracer was going to need great speed, nearly perfect timing, and a certain amount of luck. Blade knew he had the first two, and could hope for the third. After that he wasn't going to worry. With its jaws braced open, the crocodile would have to chase him and try to knock him down with its tail. Blade was fairly certain he could outrun any of the crocodiles.
Blade made a belt of a longer piece of vine and hooked the jaw-bracer over it, where the weapon would be ready to hand. He considered making a second one, then decided to wait. He could pick up the pieces for the second one as he moved along, and he certainly wouldn't need more than two. It would take some luck to meet one of the crocodiles with the jaw-bracer, and really incredible luck to survive two of them. If he was attacked by three-well, his luck was going to run out, and there wasn't much he could do about it.
Blade ate two more of the fruits, threw away several which had started to go bad, and drank some water. Then he started off along the bank of the stream.
Swebon was the son of Igha of the Two Spears, chief of the Four Springs village among the Fak'si. Igha's wives bore him four sons who lived to manhood, but of these one was killed in a raid against the Yal the year before Igha's death from the Stomach Eater. Another was eaten by a Horned One in the very moon of his father's death. This left only Swebon and his brother Guno to be chiefs of the village, and most of the warriors felt that Swebon was much the wiser of the two. Guno was held in great honor for his strength and swiftness, but he had a hot temper which had made him enemies. In fact, his temper was so hot that some of the warriors who voted for Swebon also urged him to have Guno put to death.
«No,» said Swebon. «Guno is a mighty warrior, as you have said. He is also wise enough to know that he can now do nothing against me. Since this is so, I will not kill him simply because he might do something. The Fak'si need all their warriors.»
No one could deny that, with the Yal, the Banum, and the Kabi all seeming to make two raids for every one they'd made in years past. Not to mention the Treemen, and the slave-raiders of the Sons of Hapanu, who were worse than the other tribes and the Treemen put together! Swebon would have had to think hard before killing Guno, no matter what he might threaten against his brother and leader.