Despite that, Corylus really hoped that the creature wouldn't decide he was an enemy. He recalled Caesar's description of Germans laughing the first time they saw the soldiers of Carce who were so much smaller than the barbarians themselves.
They didn't laugh after the first battle, though; those who were still alive. Corylus wasn't laughing at this creature.
"I am Gaius Cispius Corylus," he said. "May I ask your name?"
"Of course you're Corylus, cousin," the woman said with another trill of laughter. "And I'm Coryla, silly. My tree was struck by a rain of burning glass from the moon. The rest of it perished in the fire, but the glass sealed the air away from one nut, so I still survive. As for the Ancient-"
She ran an affectionate hand through the fur over the creature's spine. It writhed toward her touch but continued to keep its unwinking eyes on Corylus.
"-I don't know what his name is; I don't know if he has a name. My tree grew over his grave, but he wasn't with me until the glass fell."
Corylus would have touched the tektite amulet if he could have moved his hand. Or if he'd had a hand to move, which might be closer to the real situation.
"Is the glass, ah, magical?" Corylus said. He was speaking and she was understanding him, but he couldn't feel his lips move.
"What?" the sprite said. She bent to rub the base of the creature's ear. It tilted its fox-like head toward the touch, but it never took its eyes off Corylus. They had the same golden cast as its fur, but the pupils were slitted horizontally instead of vertically like a cat's. "I shouldn't think so, no."
She gave the creature a final pat over the ribs and straightened. "But he is, of course," she added. "He's a great magician. Did he bring you to him, do you suppose? I'm not always sure what he's planning, even though he's part of me, in a way."
"Him?" said Corylus in amazement. "It? But it's just an animal, isn't it?"
The sprite's laughter was as sweet and musical as a nightingale singing in the dusk. "Of course he's an animal, cousin," she said. "You're all animals, you and him and the squirrels in the branches of my tree. Didn't you know that?"
"I mean…," said Corylus. "It doesn't think the way a man does. Or you do. It, he, isn't he your pet?"
The creature made a clicking sound at the back of its throat and stood up. It continued to stare at Corylus. Its hind legs folded the way a man's did, not a dog's.
"Pet?" said Coryla. He thought she would laugh again, but the look she gave him had nothing of humor in it. "Him? Are you mad, cousin?"
The creature reached toward Corylus; toward where his face should be, if he had a face. It had four slender fingers. One was opposed to the other three like the hind claw of an eagle, not a human thumb.
I am a soldier of Carce. I will not flinch.
Fingertips as gentle as a fly's wing touched Corylus' cheek.
I can feel it! he realized, and as he did, light bloomed around him. He was lying on his back on the cliff top where he had fought the Cyclops. He breathed with a gasp of surprise-and shouted with the sudden pain of it. My ribs are broken!
Coryla and the creature were looking down at him. She seemed sympathetic and perhaps a little concerned; the creature…
It wasn't safe to read the expression on a face as inhuman as that of the creature, but it certainly seemed to be laughing at him. How did I ever imagine that it wasn't intelligent?
"You can sit up, can't you?" the sprite said. "Because there are other giants besides the one you killed. And worse things."
"I don't know," Corylus said. He touched his chest gently, trying not to move his body. He must be bruised as badly as he ever had been in his life, but there wasn't the stabbing, grating pain that would have meant that he had broken ribs. "You said I killed the Cyclops?"
Coryla offered him her hand. He took it carefully, expecting the lightly built sprite to stagger forward when he started to put real weight on her. Instead, she remained as fixed a support as a deeply rooted hazel tree.
After a flash of blazing agony, the pain in Corylus' chest subsided to a throbbing ache, as though he were sitting too close to a hot fire. Several of the catches of his breastplate had popped. He undid the remaining one, then dropped the dented armor to the ground. That done, he turned slowly. He was looking for the Cyclops and hoping to see its body.
"Well, you did and he did himself, I suppose," she said. "He stumbled after you stabbed him and broke his neck. But if you hadn't stabbed him, he probably wouldn't have fallen, don't you think? So I said you killed him."
Corylus walked cautiously to the edge of the crag and looked over. His chest hurt and his left leg was as stiff as a statue's, except for the hip joint. That felt like the blazing pit of Aetna.
Two ships lay on their sides just above the water; their decks were tilted at a thirty-degree angle. That much was the same as the mural he had seen in the instant before the smoke swept him here. Close up he now saw that the vessels were winged craft like those of the vision, not ordinary fifty-oared galleys as he had assumed.
The mangled bodies of their crews were scattered on the shingle. On the ground near the Cyclops' cave was an iron-bound club the length of a ship's mast. The monster's strength would have made it devastating.
Among the dead were two figures whose bright armor hadn't saved them from crushing blows. One's corselet had been dished in; the other's helmet was flattened so completely that blood and brains oozed through the grill that covered the face.
Directly at the base of the crag was the Cyclops, sprawled on his face with his head cocked sharply to the right. Corylus frowned. Any of the Scouts could have jumped the twenty feet to the shingle and expected-reasonably hoped, at least-to have staggered off without serious injury, but the giant weighed more than an ox. Even the bones of its short, thick neck couldn't take the shock of that hard landing.
"I told you he was dead," the sprite said chidingly. "Don't you suppose we'd better leave? That you should, I mean. It's all the same to us, you know."
Corylus looked at her. The slope rising above the Cyclops' cave wasn't nearly as steep as the escarpment to the beach, but he wasn't sure he could climb it in his present condition.
He was sure that he couldn't get down to the beach, unless he did it the way the Cyclops had. And probably with the same result, since he couldn't land with flexed legs and roll as he'd learned to do with the Scouts.
"Mistress," he said, "I can't go anywhere until I've recovered some. If I ever do: my leg may be permanently injured. If you can save yourselves, you'd best go do it."
The furry creature stood a pace behind her, its torso leaning forward and its hips thrust back for balance. It clicked in its throat and stepped to Corylus' side. He couldn't jerk away-he stood on the edge of the crag-and if he tried to run, he suspected he'd faint with pain.
"What's he doing?" the sprite said. She cocked her head quizzically.
And by Haides, how would I know? Corylus thought, but he kept his face impassive.
The creature touched Corylus' left hip; moved its slender hand down to his knee; and then dropped into a near squat to touch his ankle as well. The fingers pressed, but instead of greater agony, they brought relief.
The creature straightened. Its tongue waggled from the side of its jaw again; perhaps it really was laughing. It reached out with both hands and caressed Corylus' chest through the sweat-soaked tunic. The pain in his ribs vanished like chaff in a windstorm. Its tongue still lolling, the creature backed to where it had been behind the sprite.
Corylus swallowed. "Thank you, master," he said as formally as if he were addressing a magistrate, not something frighteningly inhuman. To the sprite he added, "I believe I can walk normally now. Where do you suggest we go? Since you appear to be more familiar with this place than I am."