Then a whiff of scent reached me, and I remembered the branch in my belt. Though it had been some time since I had picked it up, yet there was no wilting of leaves or blossoms. It might have been freshly broken from the tree. I touched its stem, and from that contact spread a feeling of clean cold – nowise else can I describe that sensation. Just as the heat generated by the land about me bore with it a sensation of filth and long decay, this cold was a knife to cleave to sanity and straight thinking.
On impulse I took the branch from my belt, and I leaned over, to sweep it lightly over my tormented feet. Though the bandages kept it from touching my flesh, the toes stopped writhing. They no longer dug into the soil. So it was that when I went on, I carried it, fastening my food package to my belt in its place. In my other hand I still swung the weighted bag.
What I fronted as I rounded the end of the next mound was nothing that a stone-heavy bag could menace. For a single instant, a very short one, I thought that I had caught up with Oomark. Then I knew that the thing fronting me was not Oomark, even in transformation.
It was much larger, a little taller than I, and with a lot more bulk. The likeness to Oomark was in general form, for it balanced on two hoofed feet. And since it wore no clothing, the hairy growth on its flanks was free to hang in rough tangles, matted with clots of mud and sticky masses. Hoofed as it was, it was also a biped and walked erect. There were unmistakable hands on the ends of its forelimbs. And with those it scratched busily in the hair of its flanks. Its head was long and narrow. Perhaps once it had been more humanoid, but now it was like some grotesque mask, for the nose was broad and there was very little chin beneath its loose and working lips.
Since it slavered a little, a thread of moisture pended from its mouth and wet the tuft of beard waggling on its chin. Above the very large eyes, horns, much larger and more curved than those of Oomark had grown, spread up and back. The skin of its face was yellow-brown. And from its body arose such a stench as made me sick. It regarded me unblinkingly, and – what was worse – it regarded me with manifest intelligence and malignant purpose.
I backed away. The thing continued to scratch and stare. Then it advanced, stumping along as if it had no need to hurry, as if the outcome of any contest was already decided in its favor. And I knew that it was enjoying my fear and disgust.
I dared not turn my back on it to run. I had a feeling that I must face it squarely and that as long as I could do that, I had some small advantage on my side. It was purposely using the effect it had on me to break my nerve. So I sidled along, swinging the weighted bag in my hand, though that was a pitiful weapon to use against this.
It watched me with a contemptuous satisfaction through strange eyes. They had no dark core or pupil, and they were a full red, like those of the flying things I had earlier passed. As I crept back and it stumped forward, we came into the darker shadow of the mound, and those eyes suddenly blazed with fire, like twin torches in the murk.
Seen so, there was no impression of blindness about them. Though they appeared as opaque ovals of fire, yet it was plain they were still organs of sight.
I continued to back away, just as it relentlessly followed, though it made no move to attack. Then my shoulders struck against one of those turfed rises, and I staggered, struggling to keep my feet. I tried to slip along, one shoulder braced against the mound, with the very small comfort of knowing that side of me protected.
The creature lifted its homed and ill-shaped head and gave voice to a series of grunts. And to my shuddering horror, those were answered from my right, as if another such monster were only waiting there for me to reach it. I stopped, afraid to turn my gaze from those blazing eyes to look.
Once more my adversary grunted and this time was answered by a squawking as two of those flying things I had seen guzzling the fruit flapped down. The thing threw out an arm, and one of the flyers used that as a perch. The other kept to the air, soaring and dipping, its supple neck twisting as if there were no bones in that length, thrusting its head first toward the monster and then leveling, with the neck in a straight line, as if about to aim itself at me.
But that was not the end of the company gathering to hold me at bay. There came a thudding, the pounding of something running, and a black shadow pushed up beside the horned one. It was very large, its spine ridge equal in height to the first one’s shoulder, and it went four-footed. A tail as thin as skin stretched over bones (as might well be, for it was not smooth but knobbed at regular intervals) swung at its haunches. And its head was but a skull covered with skin, with no flesh underneath for padding. It had great dark pits for eyes, and deep in those I could see a flicker of the same fire as in the homed one’s. Jaws gaped wide, taking up two-thirds of its head, set with a double row of fangs that were phosphorescent. A great black tongue showed between them. It had small ears set very close to its skull, and in contrast to the hairiness of the homed one, its skin, so tight in places, but sagging in disgusting wrinkles about its bloated paunch, carried no fur at all.
It squatted down on its hindquarters, flanking the homed one. I knew that I could not turn my back on this company, nor even look away from them long enough to see what might lie ahead if I continued to slip along the wall of the mound. To retreat was impossible, nor did I have even the faintest hope of victory if they rushed to bring me down.
What followed was so total a surprise that I jerked back against my support of earth and again nearly overset myself. I heard words, though they meant nothing to me.
“Skark, Skark! Shuck, Shuck!”
The four-footed thing leaped, whirled, and planted its forefeet against the mound opposite me. Its skull-head went back, and from its open jaws came such a sound as might make all hearers shudder.
The homed one also faced in that direction, tilting back its monstrous head to see aloft the better. At the same time it gave a toss to set the winged thing off its perch on the arm into the air, as if signaling it to search out the source of that call.
The hoarse voice was continuing. “Skark, Skark! Shuck, Shuck!”
I was so startled that it took me almost too long to realize their attention was caught by that call and that now I had a slim chance for escape. I reversed my way and pushed along the side of the mound in the opposite direction to the sound that had warned me. There one of the side paths opened, and into this I slipped, then ran on, keeping some watch on my back trail.
The continued sound of those words, called over and over, drowned out now and then by the baying of the four-footed enemy, somehow reassured me. Could I believe that someone – something – in this maze of horrors had deliberately intervened to save me? Oomark? Yet that voice had not been his. It was deeper, hoarser, no child’s cry.
“Skark-Shuck-”
Now that I was away from the immediate vicinity of it, I could not be sure of the direction, save that it was behind. The words echoed among the mounds, now sounding so loudly that I feared some ill chance had brought me circling back to the spot, now so faintly that I could hardly distinguish the separate words, encouraging me to believe I was well away from danger, though I would not allow myself to rely on that.
If I could only get free of the mounds! I stared about me, hoping against very faint hope that I would see something that would suggest I was retracing my original path. However, each way was so like the other that they told me nothing.
A whiff of evil smell was my first guide. I was sure that that. was what I had scented at the fruited trees, and it came from a new trail to my left. Since I had no other guide, I might as well surrender to that of my nose.