From close up, the sight of the bridge was even more disquieting. There was no sign of explosion, yet Blade found it hard to believe that anything else could have completely ripped to pieces a bridge fifty feet long and set on foot-thick piles. Some of the piles had been snapped cleanly in two like matchsticks. Others, incredibly, seemed to have been bitten through, the broken ends furrowed and scarred by gouges that undeniably looked like the marks of giant teeth.
But the opposite bank of the river presented an even more disagreeable spectacle, one even more certain to rouse unpleasant speculations and imaginings than the ruined bridge. Here, no doubt, there had once been another path, leading off into the forest to the homes of whatever people had made the path. Now, however, something had plowed a swath sixty feet wide through the forest where the path had been, splintered or uprooted trees lying in a hideous tangle like a child's Tinker Toys dumped on the floor. Still-green leaves showed that the shambles was only a few hours old.
Blade realized now why the forest had been shocked into silence. Sometime during the night, while he slept his chilly but deep sleep on his bough bed, some-being-with the power of a medium-sized tank and the ferocity of a hungry tiger had come smashing through the forest from the east, as far as the bridge. After ripping the bridge apart as though it were a cardboard box, it-or perhaps they? — had gone back into the forest along the same path.
Blade would not have survived his first mission as an agent if he had not been able to control his instincts, which at the moment were strongly calling out for a hasty retreat. Having calmed himself, he began considering ways of crossing the river and following the trail of smashed trees to wherever it led. The bridge was useless, the river too deep and swift to ford. Bitter cold though it was, he would have to swim it. He half-walked, half-slid down to the bank, threw his club aside to leave both hands free, and slipped into the water.
Before he had stopped shuddering from the cold of the water that seemed to flow straight from the heart of those glaciers to the north, the current had him, whirling him out into midstream so fast that the rushes he grasped to slow himself snapped off in his hand. In midstream the current was moving him as fast as he could have jogged, and there was a moment when a submerged rock rasped at him and flipped him head down. He lunged his head into the air again, spitting and coughing, then thrashed furiously across the current until suddenly he felt its tug lessen. A moment later he could reach out and grasp a projecting root on the far bank. Shaking with cold, waving arms and legs frantically to restore life to them, he scrambled onto the bank and began to make his way back to the path. In the short time he had been in the river, it had carried him nearly a hundred yards downstream.
The best route back to the bridge was straight along the riverbank, though «straight» meant a bruising, skin-tearing scramble over boulders, past close-grown trees, through thorny patches of undergrowth. He was sweating, scratched, and swearing before he had covered fifty yards. It was just beyond that point that he found the body.
It lay half-concealed under a bush, one arm thrown around the squat trunk in a stiffened embrace as though the bush were an object of passion. The body was flour-white, completely drained of blood, and not surprisingly-one leg was missing just above the knee. The same monstrous jaws that had snapped off the pilings of the bridge had left their mark on the stump of the leg they had severed with a single bite. A trail of blood stretched away from the body, leading back toward the bridge.
Blade bent down and took a close look at the body. It was a man, in late middle age to judge from the wrinkles and the gray in his hair and beard, deeply tanned and hard-muscled through much outdoor living. He wore crudely tanned leather breeches, shapeless leather boots with wood soles and leather thongs, and a fur jacket with the fur worn inside. A leather pouch at his belt held flint and steel and a few hard crackers. This Blade appropriated. The man had no weapons on him, and Blade could not quite bring himself to take the clothes, apart from the fact that the man was both shorter and slimmer than Blade.
A few minutes' more scrambling brought him back to the bridge and the swath of smashed trees stretching off under the sun as far as he could see. Most of the ground along the riverbank was either churned up or buried under the debris, but in one undisturbed patch a footprint stood out clear and bold. Blade knelt to make a close inspection.
The footprint-if such it was-was an oval nearly two feet in diameter, sunk more than a foot into the ground. Deeper yet were a dozen or so smaller holes in the bottom of the larger one, as though a hobnailed boot had been pressed into the ground. The forward edge of the oval showed still other, shallower cuts, suggesting six-inch claws.
It was while examining the footprint that Blade first became conscious of the odor clinging to the smashed and splintered trees. It was not a strong odor, but distinctly unpleasant even as weak as it was. It was musky, damp, with vague hints of something fetid and rotten, like a skunk's odor, and with a hint even beyond that of deadly cold. Even in the full sun, Blade felt a chill as he took a deep breath and filled his lungs with the odor-then coughed and gagged.
The footprints and the odor together removed Blade's last glimmering hopes that the ruined forest was the result of some natural accident or even the work of some human machine. Whatever had the power of a tank and the savagery of a tiger was a living creature, a living creature that left footprints two feet in diameter. Beyond that Blade knew nothing else about it, but only hoped he did not have to meet it in his present inadequately equipped state. Although what would be adequate equipment for self-defense against something certainly no smaller than an elephant and perhaps as large as a dinosaur? An anti-tank gun, perhaps? Fortunately the creature or creatures were probably many hours away by now.
Setting out to follow the trail of ruin through the forest, Blade soon found it easier to move along one side or the other of the swath of tumbled trees, and avoid the continuous clambering over fallen trunks and stumbling over jutting branches. In the sun it was warm enough to work up a sweat, and Blade soon found himself wishing that the dead man had included a canteen with his gear. Thorns and broken branches jabbed at his already well-used skin, fallen logs turned under his feet and tumbled him to the ground, insects buzzed and whined about his head, shrieked nerve-wrackingly in his ears, clustered around the oozes of blood from minor scratches. He broke off another branch and kept waving it around his head to drive off the insects.
The sun marched up to the zenith, glared down from the blue for a while, gilding the air in the forest where shafts of light struck through the trees, then began its crawl down toward night. Blade began to wonder if he was on a fool's errand, and whether this path might be leading him nowhere except to the lair of whatever monsters had made it. If so, he would do well to turn around and make it back to the stream, where at least he could find water, before darkness. There he could perhaps contrive a raft or at least roll a log into the river and let the swift current carry him away to a more promising spot.
But something in the back of his mind kept prodding him onward, telling him over and over again that he was on the right course. Such intuitions had come to him before in tight spots; he had learned the wisdom of following them.
It must have been approaching five in the afternoon when he stumbled into the clearing. The neatly sawed-off stumps of the trees on its fringes and the piles of logs in the center told him it was man-made, and what cheered him even more was the axe stuck into one of the stumps: Not only was it a better weapon than the club; more important, it was an unmistakable sign of recent human presence. He swung the axe around his head several times in a flourish of joy before moving on.