CHAPTER 14

The discussion went on in lively fashion for some time. And an amazing thing happened to John. He dozed off. The subject matter might have been enough to keep him awake; but the two Hemnoids had become unintelligibly technical; and the tone had become the tone of in-group discussions the universe over. Half the wrangling was over authorities and precedents, rather than about the actual performance contemplated. Moreover, John had had two rough nights and days in a row. His body made up his mind for him. It went to sleep.

When he reawakened, the sun was well up over the trees, and he found that he was not the only one who had become tired of the discussion. Boy Is She Built was reading the two Hemnoids the riot act.

"—and I think you're disgusting, both of you!" she was informing them, in anything but well-modulated tones. "And crazy! And stupid! I keep telling you why don't you just hit him over the head? But, oh no! Not you! It's got to be first we'll do this. And then we'll do that. And then—oh, no, we can't do that, because it'd finish him off too quick—or somebody else tried it and it didn't work out too well."

"Little lady," began Tark-ay.

"You give me a pain!" cried Boy Is She Built. "And you aren't even mad at him, that's what gets me! If it wasn't for Streamside, I don't think I'd even let you have him! You're just—just—you're disgusting, both of you!"

"You don't understand," said Gulark-ay. "The point is—"

"Well, I'm glad I don't. If this is the way you Hemnoids are, I'm not sure I don't like Shorties better, after all. I'll bet if it was him helping me and you two tied up over there, he'd tell me to go right ahead and hit you over the head. He wouldn't go on arguing about doing this first, and doing that second." Boy Is She Built made an unsuccessful effort to imitate the deep liquidity of the Hemnoid voices gloating over a particularly attractive idea. " `and we moost try thees. Oh, wee surleee moost!' You both give me a pain!"

Tark-ay, glancing helplessly away from her, found his glance meeting that of John's; and shrugged helplessly at the human.

"Well," said Gulark-ay, shaking his head and getting to his feet, "there's no help for it. We'd just be wasting him to go to work now. I have to get on to see the grandfathers of the Hollows clan; and I can't get back until late afternoon, now. Let's put it all off until this evening. I'll bring some supplies from my stuff, when I get back, something good in the way of food and drink, and we can make a bang-up night of it. How does that strike you, Tark-ay?"

"Mr. Ambassador," said Tark-ay, his voice full of deep emotion, "you are a gentleman!"

"Thank you, thank you indeed," said Gulark-ay. "Well, I'm on my way, then. Traveling in my direction, Boy Is She Built?"

"I should think so!" Boy Is She Built jumped to her feet. "I was supposed to meet Streamside just two hours after the sun was up, and I forgot all about it. He gets awfully impatient. Maybe he went off and left that Shorty female alone."

And without even waiting for Gulark-ay, Boy Is She Built hurried off.

"Mr. Ambassador," said Tark-ay, looking after her. "You don't know. You just don't know."

"Cheer up," said Gulark-ay. "It'll be all remembered to your advantage in my reports." He rearranged his robes. "I'll be back this evening, then."

"May the hours fly until then, Mr. Ambassador."

"Indeed," said Gulark-ay; and departed in his turn.

Tark-ay left alone with John, sighed heavily. He produced a curved knife from his robe, with which he proceeded to clean his fingernails, meanwhile heaving another occasional heavy sigh. Finished, he stuck the knife into a piece of firewood beside him and tapped its hilt with his finger to make it vibrate back and forth. After a while he gave even this up. His eyes closed. He dozed.

John, lying still, watched the Hemnoid carefully from fifteen feet of distance. It had not occurred to John before, but Tark-ay had probably not had a good night's sleep either for some time. He waited.

Tark-ay slid down the tree against which he was leaning. He began to breathe heavily with a whistling overtone which John took to be the Hemnoid equivalent of a snore. He lay sprawled out. John's eyes went to the knife, still stuck in the chunk of firewood.

As quietly as he could, John slid down flat on the ground himself. Luckily, it was downhill. He rolled over once. Twigs crackled and pebbles rattled away from him. But Tark-ay did not wake up. John rolled over a second time.

Three minutes later he was rubbing his bound wrists against the blade of the upright knife blade. It was not as easy as it looked in the pictures John had seen. He did a pretty good job of slicing up his wrists in the process, and the rope was thick. Also, he discovered, it is not easy to get pressure against the blade of a knife stuck upright in a piece of wood. The angle is all wrong.

Nevertheless, some ten minutes after he had first started his roll downhill, he was cutting his feet loose from their bindings, knife in hand. He got the foot-tyings parted, stuck the knife in his belt and took off, as quietly as he could up the slope into the trees.

Tark-ay had not stirred.

John was just about to congratulate himself on having gained his freedom without mishap, when an infuriated roar behind him stopped him in his tracks. Instinctively, he dodged behind a nearby tree, turned and looked back.

A Dilbian with coal-black fur was just charging into the clearing John had just left, forty feet below. Tark-ay was scrambling to his feet.

"Where is he?" roared this Dilbian. "Point him out!"

"What are you doing here?" said Tark-ay.

"Don't try to pretend you don't know. I found out! When Boy Is She Built didn't come back in time, I went looking for her. When I found her coming out of these woods she had some explaining to do. I know it all now. Where's this Shorty who's been acting as if I was running away from him?"

"You're too late," said Tark-ay, not without a certain tone of satisfaction in his voice, it seemed to John. "He's escaped." And he pointed to the cut sections of the rope that had bound John.

"Escaped?" The Dilbian, who could be no other than the Streamside Terror, had gone ominously quiet. John, peering at the two of them from around the tree, was trying to make up his mind whether to make a run for it, or lie quiet and hope they would not come searching this way.

He decided to lie quiet. It would give him a chance to case the Streamside Terror and see, if possible, what gave that Dilbian his reputation as a battler. So far, there had been no indications. The Terror was by no means the biggest Dilbian John had seen; he was considerably shorter, for example, than the Hill Bluffer. Perhaps his unusualness was a matter of reflexes.

"You let him escape?" said the Terror, mildly.

"Alas," said Tark-ay, a trifle smugly.

"WHY?" roared the Terror.

Hemnoids were no more without nerves than humans, apparently. Tark-ay jumped involuntarily, as the Terror erupted with full lung power two feet from his nose.

"That's not for you to question!" snapped Tark-ay. "And furthermore—"

There was no furthermore. For just then, the Terror lit into him.

Note: noted John. Terror gives no warning. Does not telegraph punches.

The fight became active in the clearing below John. Tark-ay was valiantly attempting to employ his high skills and arts; but seemed somewhat hampered by the factor that the Terror had closed with him immediately and they were both now rolling around on the ground together.

Note: noted John. When no stream available, Terror attempts to batter opponent against handy rocks and trees.

No matter how you sliced it, the battle proceeding below was an awe-inspiring bit of action. The combined weight of the two opponents must have run close to fifteen hundred pounds; both were skilled fighters, and both in top condition.

Note: noted John. Liberal use of nails and teeth gives Terror considerable advantage over opponent not trained to this sort of fighting and not expecting same.

The Terror was definitely gaining the upper hand. Tark-ay seemed to be weakening.

Note: noted John. Terror particularly quick for someone so large. Would smallness of human and consequent greater maneuverability of human give human slight advantage in this department however? Possibly. But what good would it do just to keep dodging?

The fight below seemed drawing to its close with the Terror emerging as a clear winner. John suddenly realized that with all this noise going on, now was the ideal time for him to get away from the vicinity and travel.

He traveled.

At first, he merely headed off through the woods in a plain and simple attempt to put as much distance between himself and the place of his recent captivity, as possible.

As soon as he had covered about a quarter mile or so, his first urgency dwindled a bit. He took time out to get a handkerchief out of his pocket, tear it in half and bind up the cuts on his wrists, which had been bleeding somewhat messily, all down his hands. There was no water nearby in which he could wash his hands, but he rubbed them in dry leaves, and got them looking better than they had before.

Then he sat down on a fallen tree to catch his breath and began to think about getting his bearings.

He had no idea in what direction he had been carried the night before after being wrapped up in the leather blanket, or whatever it was that had been used to bundle him up. However, he remembered Gulark-ay's reference to Clan Hollows territory, "just over the river"; and he recalled that Sour Ford Inn had been right at a river. Consequently, the river in question could not be far from him; and once he found it, he could go up or down it until he found Sour Ford Inn and the Bluffer.

John utilized some elementary woodcraft. He hunted for the tallest tree he could find close at hand and climbed it.

From its top he spotted the river, about half a mile away and almost due west according to the sun. And on this side of the river, a mile or two upstream was some cluster of buildings which was probably Sour Ford Inn.

John climbed down again and headed west, not forgetting to keep his eyes peeled for the Terror or even for Tark-ay, assuming the Hemnoid had been left in condition to travel.

However, he met no one. When he reached the river, he found there was a trail running alongside it; and he had hardly proceeded half a mile up the trail before he ran into a group of five Dilbians.

"Hey! Whoop!" hollered the first of these, the minute he got around a bend in the trail and spotted John. "There he is! Where'd you run off to, Shorty? The Bluffer's got half the people between here and Twin Peaks out looking for you!"