The climb was easy. He found a series of crude footholds chiseled into the cliff face. Here and there wooden pegs had been pounded in. Half an hour later Blade stood on the rim of the cliffs. Before him, undulating and steadily rising, was a vast plain. Vegetation was sparse and the plain was creased and crisscrossed by dry stream beds. Water might turn out to be a problem. There had been none by the fires. Blade shrugged his big shoulders and began to walk.
The plain was like an uptilted washboard. It dipped and rose, but the inclination was always upward. As he climbed out of one deep rill he saw a dark shadow on the horizon, stretching in either direction as far as he could see. After another hour of toiling across the plain he saw that the shadow was in reality the fringe of a forest, a dense black woods. As he drew nearer and the forest dissolved into individual trees, he noted that it slashed across the plain in an exact line, a ruler-straight edge. It might have been laid out by a surveyor.
Blade halted to rest as he reached the forest. He squatted, gnawing a meaty bone, and let his glance rove up and down the line of immense trees. The view was not reassuring. The day had turned leaden as the sun was obscured by thick clouds. There would be rain before nightfall and, in the gloom, the forest crouched like some black beast awaiting a foolhardy traveler. Nothing seemed to move in there. There was not even the flit or chittering of birds and the pall of silence did nothing to cheer the big man. It was unnatural and a bit frightening — the only sounds were those of the wind and his own breathing.
He tossed away the bone and began to explore up and down the edge of the forest, seeking a path. None was to be found. Blade cursed himself for hesitating, yet continued to linger on the plain. Here he was fairly safe. Once into the dark wilderness he might encounter death behind any tree. Yet venture into the primeval gloom he must. There was no other way to go.
Blade checked his weapons and crude equipment, made sure he still had fire and plunged in. There was no path, but he found an opening between the giant boles of oak and beech and variant conifers, and began to walk again. The terrain still slanted upward, but the grade was less and the going easier.
Immediately he was in a darkling twilight. Had the sun been out he might have been walking in aqueous light, stained green by a canopy of interlocking branches a hundred feet overhead; as it was, the gloom was near to Stygian and several times, as he slid between the massive boles — some a good thirty feet around — he had to feel his way.
There were creepers everywhere, binding the forest together, as thick around as Blade's own biceps. It was like trying to walk through a net of stout rope. Blade swore and hacked with his stone axe, often got ensnared and cut his way out with the flint knife, and, as night began to fall, he reckoned that he had come perhaps two miles. If that.
He fought his way through a mass of tall, vile-smelling weeds into a small clearing, the first open spot he had seen, and prepared to camp for the night. There was much to do. He was famished and his supply of meat was gone; he had not yet found water and there was the question of wood for his fire.
Things began to go better. He found plenty of deadfall for the fire and, while gathering the wood, heard a stream purling and tracked it down. The water was sweet and cold and Blade, filthy with sweat and dirt and covered with burrs and ticks, cut and bruised in a score of places, plunged into the stream and had a bath along with his drink. As he went back to build his fire he felt better. He wondered where his next meal was coming from. He was famished.
As he was blowing on the embers in the firepot, readying them for the tinder, he sensed something behind him. Something had come out of the forest and was in the clearing just behind him. Bade put the firepot down and reached stealthily for the flint knife, wishing now that he had taken time to make a haft for it. The tang gave an uncertain grip.
The thing moved closer. He heard it and he smelled it. An animal smell of hide, fur? Blade whirled about.
It was a rabbit! More like an English hare, but like none he had ever seen before. It was the size of a Saint Bernard. Its ears were enormous, the feet huge and splayed, and it was of a peculiar rat-like color. It stared at Blade, unafraid, out of wide, pinkish eyes. Blade halted and looked back at the animal. It hopped closer to him. Blade nodded and readied his knife, thanking the Fates for supplying him with so easy a dinner. This hare-like creature was curious. Totally without fear of him. It had never been hunted and had never seen a man.
It hopped closer and wrinkled its nose at Blade's odor.
He moved closer. It did not retreat. Blade sprang.
It was the easiest kill he had ever made, of man or beast. The giant hare squealed only once as he plunged the knife into the throat and drew it across. Blood gushed and soaked him. He smashed a great fist down on the head for good measure, then let it bleed itself out while he got on with his fire. In five minutes he had a good blaze going. Ten minutes later he had skinned, gutted and disjointed the hare. He seared a savory joint over the fire and wolfed it down. It was delicious.
Blade found more wood and built the fire up until he had a well-lit circle some forty feet in diameter. Inside the circle of light he piled a great reserve of wood. Fighting off sleep all the time, he selected a slim tree within his pale of light and began to hew away with his flint knife and axe. It was slow work, and tedious, but within a few hours he had wood enough for a bow and several arrows. They would be crude, and he must use vine for a bowstring, but they added enormously to his scant arsenal. He had flint for heads and they could be bound to the shafts with vine tendrils. He was at a loss for fletching — there were no birds in this damn forest.
By now sleep was winning — he could fight it off no longer. He stacked wood on the fire and, with axe and club in hand, made a cautious exploration just outside the circle of light. He found nothing. The forest brooded, as silent and empty as it had been in daytime. Apart from the giant hare he had seen no living creature. It should be safe to sleep, and sleep he must.
He lay down near the fire. Yawned. Struggled to think. Closed his eyes. Richard Blade fell crashing into oblivion.
Pain brought him gradually and reluctantly awake. Not one concentrated pain, not a wound nor a bite, but rather a series of small pains adding up to agony. And there was sound — a sucking sound. A drinking sound. Along with the pain and the sucking, his body was covered with an intolerable itch. He was aflame with itch, going mad with it. He came fully awake and dug his nails into his crotch and upper legs, scratching furiously. His fingers touched something unspeakably slimy and he snatched them away, In the dying firelight he stared at them. They were covered with blood. His blood.
Only then, as he came fully awake to horror, did he realize what had happened. He was covered with leeches! Enormous leeches. Swollen, bloated slugs, hundreds of them, sucking and sucking away at his life.
Blade screamed harshly and leaped to his feet. He staggered and nearly fell, weak and reeling, and knew that he had awakened only just in time. The pain was a blessing. Another few minutes and the leeches would have bled him to death.
Still they clung in their hundreds. Blade pulled them off and flung them away. He crushed them with nasty bladder-popping sounds. He had gotten over the worst shock and he fought back revulsion and frenzy and went about the grim business of extermination. It was not easy. They were a solid wriggling and sucking mass on his back, from his anus to his shoulders, and he could not get at them. They writhed around his groin and in his pubic hair.