Finally, he got off the apron of stones. He rose to a crouch and, grabbing handsful of grass, pulled himself up to the ledge. Holding onto this with one hand, he worked his way as swiftly as he dared away from the hole.
Just as he got to a point above a slight projection of the mountain, a stony half-pout, the mountain shook and bellowed. He was hurled outward to land flat on his face on the miniledge.
The loose rocks slid down and over the edge, leaving the stone beneath it as bare as if a giant broom had swept it.
Silence except for the screams of some distant birds and a faint rumble as the stones slid to a halt far below. Anana said, “It’s over, Kickaha.”
He turned slowly to see her looking around a spur of rock.
“The gate would have closed the moment its activator was destroyed. We got only a small part of the blast, thank God. Otherwise, the whole mountain would’ve been blown up.”
He got up and looked alongside the slope. Something stuck out from the pile below. An arm?
“Did Urthona get away?”
She shook her head. “No, he went over the edge. He didn’t have much of a drop, about twenty feet, before he hit the second slope. But the rocks caught him.”
“We’ll go down and make sure he’s dead,” he said. “That trick of his dissolves any promises we made to him.”
All that was needed was to pile more rocks on Urthona to keep the birds and the beasts from him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
IT WAS A month later. They were still on the mountain, though on the other side and near its base. The valley was uninhabited by humans, though occasionally hunters ventured into it from the river-village they’d seen on coming from the gate. Kickaha and Anana avoided these.
They’d built a leanto at first. After they’d made bows and arrows from ash, tipped with worked flint, they shot deer, which were plentiful, and tanned the hides. Out of these they made a tepee, well-hidden in a grove of trees. A brook, two hundred yards down the slope, gave them clear cold water. It also provided fine fishing.
They dressed in buckskin hides and slept on bearskin blankets at night. They rested well but exercised often, hiking, berry-and nut-picking, hunting, and making love. They even became a little fat. After being half-starved so long, it was difficult not to stuff themselves. Part of their diet was bread and butter which they’d stolen one night from the village, two large bagsful.
Kickaha, eavesdropping on the villagers, had validated his assumption that they were in Drachef land. And from a reference overheard, he had learned that the village was in the barony of Ulrich von Neifen.
“His lord, theoretically, anyway, is the duke, or Herzog, Willehalm von Hartmot. I know, generally, where we are. If we go down that river, we’ll come to the Pfawe river. We’ll travel about three hundred miles, and we’ll be in the barony of Siegfried von Listbat. He’s a good friend. He should be. I gave him my castle, and he married my divorced wife. It wasn’t that Isote and I didn’t get along well, you understand. She just wouldn’t put up with my absences.”
“Which were how long?”
“Oh, they varied from a few months to a few years.”
Anana laughed.
“From now on, when you go on trips, I’ll be along.”
“Sure. You can keep up with me, but Isote couldn’t, and she wouldn’t have even if she could.”
They agreed that they would visit von Listbat for a month or so. Kickaha had wanted to descend to the next level, which he called Amerindia, and find a tribe that would adopt him. Of all the levels, he loved this the most. There were great forest-covered mountains and vast plains, brooks and rivers of purest water, giant buffalo, mammoth, antelope, bear, sabertooths, wild horses, beaver, game birds by the billions. The human population was savage but small, and though the second level covered more territory than North and Central America combined, there were few places where the name of Kickaha, the Trickster, was not known.