Blade chuckled. He was not, he reckoned, cutting much of a figure in her eyes. It was evident that her awe of him was fast turning to contempt. And the watchers, especially the males, must be puzzled. This young female must be by far the most toothsome in the tribe — and the god would have none of her. Blade could only hope they would not become outraged and attack.
She tired of the game. She lowered her legs and glowered at Blade in reproach. A woman spurned. Blade smiled and patted his belly. He selected a tender bit of meat and tossed it to her. She gobbled it, her eyes never leaving his face, and her small fangs flashed in what she must have meant as a smile of enticement. Blade tossed her more meat.
«Not tonight,» he said gently. «Thanks, but no thanks. I just don't think we could make it together. Your in-laws, for one thing. Just too many of them — and they would all want to live with us. Sorry, honey, but it wouldn't work out.»
He went on crooning nonsense. The female cocked her head at him, flashed her teeth again and seemed to shake her head. Off in the grass something roared and Blade glanced in that direction. When he looked back she had gone.
For the rest of the night Blade fought off sleep. The sun rose on a deserted world wrapped in gauzy white mist. The grass jungle was silent and the caves scattered along the base of the cliff, dark holes in the gray basalt, were as quiet as tombs. Blade knew they were there — watching him. The word had spread. He counted a score of fires, smoldering black embers now, up and down the line of cliffs. But never a sign of them.
Blade, selecting a club and the heaviest of the stone axes, began exploring up and down the line of the cliff. He passed dozens of caves without detecting a stir of life. He was tempted to venture into one of the caves but decided against it.
As it turned out he found what he wanted without risking the caves — a firepot, crudely fashioned of red clay and pierced for carrying by a vine sling, and a large collection of flints of varied sizes and uses. There were pebble tools and choppers and scrapers, axe heads, and even some punches and needles of bone. Blade made a pouch of skin and took what he needed. And found a prize second only to the firepot — a finely made knife of flint, double-bladed and with a tang properly chipped away and only waiting for a haft. He thanked the unknown genius who had made the knife. With it and the firepot he was in business.
Blade made a sling for the firepot, brushed aside ashes to find glowing embers, and half filled the pot. He covered the embers with a thin layer of ash, added sheets of dry bark to his pouch for tinder and began to seek a way up the cliffs. There was no question of going back into the grass jungle. It was quiet now, the towering green stalks moving only with the wind, but he knew what lurked in there. He thought of Ogar and made a sour face. It had to be up the cliffs.
The climb was easy. He found a series of crude footholds chiseled into the cliff face. Here and there wooden pegs had been pounded in. Half an hour later Blade stood on the rim of the cliffs. Before him, undulating and steadily rising, was a vast plain. Vegetation was sparse and the plain was creased and crisscrossed by dry stream beds. Water might turn out to be a problem. There had been none by the fires. Blade shrugged his big shoulders and began to walk.
The plain was like an uptilted washboard. It dipped and rose, but the inclination was always upward. As he climbed out of one deep rill he saw a dark shadow on the horizon, stretching in either direction as far as he could see. After another hour of toiling across the plain he saw that the shadow was in reality the fringe of a forest, a dense black woods. As he drew nearer and the forest dissolved into individual trees, he noted that it slashed across the plain in an exact line, a ruler-straight edge. It might have been laid out by a surveyor.
Blade halted to rest as he reached the forest. He squatted, gnawing a meaty bone, and let his glance rove up and down the line of immense trees. The view was not reassuring. The day had turned leaden as the sun was obscured by thick clouds. There would be rain before nightfall and, in the gloom, the forest crouched like some black beast awaiting a foolhardy traveler. Nothing seemed to move in there. There was not even the flit or chittering of birds and the pall of silence did nothing to cheer the big man. It was unnatural and a bit frightening — the only sounds were those of the wind and his own breathing.
He tossed away the bone and began to explore up and down the edge of the forest, seeking a path. None was to be found. Blade cursed himself for hesitating, yet continued to linger on the plain. Here he was fairly safe. Once into the dark wilderness he might encounter death behind any tree. Yet venture into the primeval gloom he must. There was no other way to go.
Blade checked his weapons and crude equipment, made sure he still had fire and plunged in. There was no path, but he found an opening between the giant boles of oak and beech and variant conifers, and began to walk again. The terrain still slanted upward, but the grade was less and the going easier.
Immediately he was in a darkling twilight. Had the sun been out he might have been walking in aqueous light, stained green by a canopy of interlocking branches a hundred feet overhead; as it was, the gloom was near to Stygian and several times, as he slid between the massive boles — some a good thirty feet around — he had to feel his way.
There were creepers everywhere, binding the forest together, as thick around as Blade's own biceps. It was like trying to walk through a net of stout rope. Blade swore and hacked with his stone axe, often got ensnared and cut his way out with the flint knife, and, as night began to fall, he reckoned that he had come perhaps two miles. If that.
He fought his way through a mass of tall, vile-smelling weeds into a small clearing, the first open spot he had seen, and prepared to camp for the night. There was much to do. He was famished and his supply of meat was gone; he had not yet found water and there was the question of wood for his fire.
Things began to go better. He found plenty of deadfall for the fire and, while gathering the wood, heard a stream purling and tracked it down. The water was sweet and cold and Blade, filthy with sweat and dirt and covered with burrs and ticks, cut and bruised in a score of places, plunged into the stream and had a bath along with his drink. As he went back to build his fire he felt better. He wondered where his next meal was coming from. He was famished.
As he was blowing on the embers in the firepot, readying them for the tinder, he sensed something behind him. Something had come out of the forest and was in the clearing just behind him. Bade put the firepot down and reached stealthily for the flint knife, wishing now that he had taken time to make a haft for it. The tang gave an uncertain grip.
The thing moved closer. He heard it and he smelled it. An animal smell of hide, fur? Blade whirled about.
It was a rabbit! More like an English hare, but like none he had ever seen before. It was the size of a Saint Bernard. Its ears were enormous, the feet huge and splayed, and it was of a peculiar rat-like color. It stared at Blade, unafraid, out of wide, pinkish eyes. Blade halted and looked back at the animal. It hopped closer to him. Blade nodded and readied his knife, thanking the Fates for supplying him with so easy a dinner. This hare-like creature was curious. Totally without fear of him. It had never been hunted and had never seen a man.