The ball zoomed straight on, unrolling, leaving its straight line of string. Since it had an infinite length, it would proceed to the infinite end of the plain. Infinity could be compassed by infinity; even an ordinary ogre might grasp that! This process would complete the halving of the Stalliorfs range.
Now Smash set his ear to the floor and listened. Yes-his keen ogre hearing heard a faint hoofbeat in the distance, to the forward right. The Stallion was up there somewhere, moving clear of the rolling string.
Now Smash had the creature partially located. He had done something unexpected, forced bis opponent to react, and gained a small advantage.
Smash bit the remaining ball in half and shaped the halves into new balls. He hurled one to the east, establishing a pie-section configuration that trapped the Stallion inside. Then he listened again, determining in what quadrant the creature lurked, and pitched another half-ball in a curve. This wound grandly around behind the Stallion's estimated location, cutting off its retreat. For, though Smash had not tromped personally wherever the string went, the string remained his agent and surely counted. He was using a sort of leverage, and the Horse could not cross his demarcation, lest the animal break its own rule of being only in the last place Smash looked.
He put his ear to the floor again. The beat of hooves had ceased. The Stallion had either gotten away or stopped running. Since the former meant a loss for Smash, he did the expedient thing and decided on the latter. He had at last confined his target!
Smash stomped into the string-defined quadrant. If the Stallion were here, as he had to be, he would soon be found.
In due course Smash spied a blotch on the horizon. He stomped closer, alert for some ruse. The blotch grew as he approached it, in the manner that distant objects did, since they did not like to appear small from up close. It took the form of an animal, perhaps a lion. A lion? Smash didn't want that! He refused to have a mundane monster foisted off on him in lieu of his object. "If it's a lion, it's a Stallion!" he muttered-and of course as he said it, it was true. A single, timely word could make a big difference.
It was a huge, standing, wingless horse, midnight black of hide, with eyes that glinted black, too. This was surely the Night Stallion-the creature he had come to settle with, the ruler of the nightmare world.
Smash stomped to a halt before the creature. He stood taller than it, but the animal was more massive. "I am Smash the Ogre," he said. "Who are you?" For it was best to be quite certain, in a case like this.
The creature merely stood there. Now Smash saw that there was a plaque set up at its forefeet, and the plaque said: TROJAN.
"Well, Trojan Horse," Smash said, "I have come to redeem the lien on my soul."
He had expected the animal to charge and attack, but it did not move or respond. It might as well have been a statue.
"How do I do this?" Smash demanded.
Still no response. Evidently the creature was sulking, angry because he had caught it.
Smash peered more closely at the Stallion. It certainly seemed frozen! He tromped forward and put out a hamhand to touch it.
The body was metal-cold and hard. It was indeed a statue.
Had he, after all, located the wrong thing? That would mean he had been deceived by a decoy and would have to do his search all over again. Smash didn't like this notion, so he rejected it.
He looked at the floor. Behind the statue were hoofprints. The thing might be frozen now, but it had not always been. Probably its present stasis was merely another device to interfere with Smash's quest. This was one devious beast!
Well, there was one way to take care of that. He stood before the Stallion and hoisted a hamfist. "Deal with me, animal, or I will break you into junk."
The midnight orbs seemed to glitter ominously. Trojan did not like being threatened!
Smash found himself alone, on a lofty, windy, rainswept pinnacle.
He looked around. The top ledge was just about big enough for him to stretch out on, but almost featureless. The flat, slick rock terminated abruptly at the edge, plunging straight down to a smashing ocean far below. There were no plants, no food, no structures of any kind-just the tug of the wind and the roar of the ocean beneath.
The Night Stallion had done this, of course. It had spelled him to this desolate confinement, getting rid of him. So much for fair combat.
The storm swirled closer. Storms really liked to get a person stranded in a situation like this! A bolt of lightning crackled down, striking the pinnacle. A section of rock peeled off in a shower of sparks and collapsed, falling with seeming slowness to the distant water.
Smash stood at the steaming brink and watched the tiny splash. The rock had been a fair chunk, massive, yet from this vantage it looked like a pebble.
This was a really nice vacation spot for an ogre. But he didn't want a vacation; he wanted to fight Trojan. How could he get back into the action?
Now his perch was too small to stretch out on. About a quarter of it had fallen. The wind intensified, taking hold of his fur, trying to move him off. He wanted to travel, but not precisely this way! What kind of a splash would he make?
Rain splatted in passing sheets, making the surface doubly slick. The water coursed around his feet, digging under his calloused toes, trying to pry him from the rock so that he would be carried with it as it flowed over the brink in a troubled waterfall. Such a drop did not hurt water, but his own flesh might be less fortunate.
A huge wave surged forward, below, taking dead aim at the base of the rock column. The wave smashed in-and the entire column trembled. More layers of stone peeled and fell. For a moment Smash thought the whole thing was coming down, but about half of it withstood the violence and held its form.
However, it was obvious that this perch would not endure much longer.
Smash considered. If he stood here, the column would soon collapse, dropping him into the ravenous ocean. He was an ogre, true, but he lacked his full strength; he would probably be crushed between the tumbling rocks in the water. If he tried to climb down, much of the same thing would happen; the column would collapse before he got below. Ogres were tough, but the forces of nature operating here were overwhelming; he had no realistic chance.
He saw that the ocean waves developed only as they got close to the tower. His Eye Queue concluded that this meant the water was much deeper away from this structure, because deep water didn't like to rouse itself from its stillness. That meant that region was safe to plunge into.
Good enough. He hated to leave this pleasant spire, but discretion urged the move. He leaped off the brink, sailing out in a clumsy swan dive toward the deep water.
Then he remembered he couldn't swim very well. In a calm lake he was all right; in a raging torrent he tended to drown.
He eyed the looming ocean, surging deep and dark. It was no mere torrent; it was an elemental monster.
He had no chance at all. Too bad.
He faced the horse-statue. There was no tower, no ocean. It had all been a magic vision. A test, perhaps, or a warning. Obviously he had wiped out. He felt weak; he must have lost a chunk of his soul.
But now he knew how it worked. The Night Stallion did not fight physically; the creature simply threw turbulent visions at him, the way Tandy threw tantrums and cursefiends threw curses. The ocean tower had been sort of fun. So were those tantrums, he realized; when Tandy hit him with one of them... But that was nothing to speculate on right now.
"Try it again, horseface!" he grunted. "I still want my soul back."
The Stallion's dark eyes flashed malignantly.
And Smash stood in the center of a den of Mundane lions-real lions this time, not stallion or ant-lions.