The smoke was much nearer. It rose higher than the windwhale. He saw hints of the fires that fed the column, which had begun to develop a bend in its trunk down lower. Grim. Maybe the rock was right. Something had to be done.
This was the dozenth such city, though the first they had come to still in its death throes. The progress of the insanity was an arrow pointing due south, a craziness that could make sense only to the crazy himself.
The windwhale began rumbling with internal flatulences. The horizon tilted, rose. Mantas piped and squealed behind Bomanz. He got a death grip on his seat.
The monster was headed down.
Why? It was not time to drop a menhir. It was not feeding time.
Mantas hurtled past in pairs and squadrons, spade-headed darts spreading across the sky, headed toward the city and its coronet of circling carrion birds.
"There is a good wind running a mile below us, wizard." Bomanz glanced back. His scar-faced stone friend. "If it holds we will overtake the destroyer shortly after nightfall. You have only that long to prepare."
Bomanz glanced around again. The stone was gone. But he was not alone. Darling and Silent had come to stare at the stricken city. The dark man's face was impassive but Darling's was a study in empathetic agony. That touched the soft-headed, softhearted side of the old man. He faced her, said, "We will put an end to the pain, child." He spoke carefully so she could read his lips.
She looked at Silent. Silent looked at her. Their fingers flew in the speech of the deaf. Bomanz caught part of the exchange. He was not pleased.
They were discussing him and Silent's remarks were not complimentary.
Bomanz cursed and spat. That bastard had it in for him for no damned reason.
The manias decimated the carrion birds, used the up-draft from the fires to soar high, then returned to the windwhale carrying a feast for their young. They settled down to nap.
But there was no real relaxation for anyone. The windwhale had dropped till it was only half a mile high. It passed the city, scudding along at twenty miles an hour. Soon the monster had to climb back into less vigorous air so as not to catch up before nightfall.
The scar-face stone returned when Bomanz was not looking. When he did notice it, he said, "I feel it now, rock. It reeks of corruption. And I still have no idea what I could do to hurt it."
"Worry not. There is a new decree from the god. You are not to reveal yourself except in extreme circumstance.
Our attack will be exploratory, experimental, and admonitory only."
"What the hell? Why? Go for the kill, I say. Hit him with everything the one time he don't know we're coming. We'll never get a better shot."
"The god has spoken."
Bomanz argued. The god won.
The windwhale began shedding altitude at dusk. Soon after nightfall Bomanz spied the campfires of an army ahead. A pair of mantas took to the air to scout. They returned, reported whatever they reported. The windwhale slanted down toward the encampment, cutting a course that would rip through its heart.
Mantas poured off the windwhale's back, scrambled around and over one another in a search for updrafts.
Bomanz felt the old terror moving closer. It was restless but did not seem alert.
The ground came up and up. Bomanz clung to his seat and awaited certain impact, now unconcerned by the insult inplicit in the fact that a dozen menhirs had moved into position around him and Darling, and her thugs were spread out ready for trouble.
The windwhale leveled out. Campfires slid out of sight beneath it. The screaming down there was almost inaudible because of the creak and rumble and intervening bulk of the giant of the sky. Bomanz felt the shock of the old evil, caught completely unprepared. It went into a pure black rage.
Just as it began to respond mantas swooped in from every direction. They cut the heart out of the night with the glare of the lightnings they discharged from the store in their flesh. Bolts stabbed around by the hundred, keeping the old horror so busy guarding himself he had no chance to counterattack.
The windwhale dumped tons of ballast and began a slow ascent, struggling to gain altitude against the weight of plunder.
Bomanz could not see the monster's underside and was glad. Its tentacles would be grasping men and animals and anything else it considered edible. It was an intelligent beast but it did not exempt other intelligences from its food supply if they were its enemies.
Many of the Plain races ate their enemies.
Bomanz found the idea repugnant in practice, yet it had a certain moral allure. How vigorously would men prosecute their wars if they had to eat those who fell before their swords?
Interesting. But how to impose the requirement?
The manias began returning. Near as the old man could tell, they were very pleased with themselves.
It was over. The windwhale was up and safely away and now preoccupied with its digestion. Bomanz rose. Time to turn in.
As he passed Darling, Silent, and the scarred menhir, he said, "Next time the bear is going to bite back. You should have stuck him while you had him."
XXII
The "bear" was stunned, numb, immobile within the desolation of his camp, desperately trying to grasp the sense of his sudden misfortune.
His entire existence was a headlong assault upon adversity. Having something go sour was never a surprise. But a disaster of these proportions, with its implication of vast, previously unconsidered forces in motion, had for the moment obliterated his initiative. He lacked even his usual insane volition driven by the engine of rage.
The beast Toadkiller Dog was less stricken. Its memories of the son of the tree were fresh. It had not deceived itself when it came to that sprig's connection with its sire. It had been but a matter of time till Old Father Tree showed an interest.
Toadkiller Dog had been to the Plain of Fear. He had come face-to-face with the god. His memories of the confrontation were not sweet. He had been lucky to escape.
But that had been a profitable adventure. He had seen the Plain firsthand. Now what he knew might become a useful tool. If the wicker man would listen.
Unlikely.
It was not now the half-rational thing that had been the Limper before. It had become so self-centered, so self-involved, as to be the hub of a solipsistic universe.
The beast prowled the camp, past men and the remains of men. Shock lay upon the survivors like a smothering quilt. Only a few understood what had happened. He heard mutterings about the wrath of the gods. Those men did not know how truly they spoke.
It would be hard to hold them together if that theory gained credence. Problems of conscience were endemic already.
There was faint hiss, a crack, and a blinding flash. The beast's fur stood straight out. Little blue sparks pranced and crackled amidst it, though the bolt had missed.
Soldiers scurried around like hens in a panic.
That sniper had attained a tremendous speed, falling from several miles high. It came and went too quickly for any response. Even in daylight there would have been little chance to get it.
Flash. Crack! Screams. A man pranced in a shroud of will-o'-the-wisp fire.
So there it was. Having made its presence known, the windwhale was embarking on a program of terrorism and attrition that would not stop till the wicker man proved he could stop it.
Toadkiller Dog snarled at the wicker man till the glaze left his rheumy eyes and he nodded once, sharply. He began to shake so hard he creaked and squeaked. He was trying to control his rage.
To yield might prove fatal.
One of those bolts, accurately delivered, could destroy his toy body, leaving him next to powerless, his army at the mercy of the monster above. Somewhere out there, planing around the camp, were manias watching for a chance at the quick kill missed during the surprise attack.