The third morning, the caravan started out. Ulysses Singing Bear was mounted on the biggest pony he could find. By his side Awina rode a mare, and then Ghlikh and Ghuakh rode behind two warriors. Forty warriors rode behind them and then came the four horse-drawn wagons and sixty more warriors. On the flanks, ahead and behind, scouts rode. The party was composed in almost equal parts of Wufea, Wagarondit and Alkunquib. Ulysses would have preferred that the fighting men all be of one race, because he was tired of preventing or settling quarrels or outright bloodshed between the old enemies. But he wanted to preserve the union and to have taken along only one race would have insulted the other two.
They certainly made a strange and colourful assembly. By then he had decided that all three were feline and had a common ancestor. The resemblance of the Wagarondit and Alkunquib to racoons was superficial.
The parade wound across the plains, stopping before dusk, or earlier, near a waterhole or creek. They killed much meat and all ate well. Day after day, the huge mass to the south became slightly larger and then, suddenly, it began to grow swiftly. Once, a small war party of the Kurieiaumea came close, but they were equalled in numbers by the invaders. Moreover, they seemed amazed by the fact that these people were riding horses. They kept a respectable distance and tried to keep up with them, but after the second day they lost them. Then, two days later, they were confronted by an army of almost a thousand feathered and beaded Kurieiaumea. Ulysses was not surprised by them. The Dhulhulikh had spotted them half a day before.
Ulysses stopped the caravan and studied them. They were almost as tall as he but as slim as greyhounds. Their fur was reddish, and their ears were set more forward on their heads. Though their faces were as human as those of the Wufea, their teeth were also those of carnivores. They were definitely not feline. There was something doggy about them. They even stank like dogs, and they sweat from their tongues.
Kdanguwing, the chief of the Alkunquib, said, "Lord, shall we charge them?"
The other chiefs scowled at him for presuming to talk. Ulysses held up his hand for him to wait and regarded the enemy even more closely. Their big war drums were beating, and they were all doing a little dance while their chiefs harangued them. They were strung out in a crescent which would enfold the caravan.
He gave orders and the war party spread out in a wedge with himself at the head and the wagons in the centre of the mass. It was a formation that had taken a long time for the undisciplined savages to adhere to.
Most of the warriors were armed with bows and arrows, but a number carried bazookas. These would have to dismount, however, to be effective, since the bazooka handler could not touch off the rocket himself. The tops of the wagons were platforms on which rocket tubes were mounted on swivelling columns.
Ulysses gave the order to advance, and the wedge started at a trot toward the canines. That a numerically inferior force would dare attack them on their home grounds seemed to paralyse the canines for a few minutes. But the chiefs finally got them going, and they came running at Ulysses' party. Their ranks got progressively less organised the nearer they came to the horsemen, and by the time the two had almost met, the canines were in a state of chaos. Every man — or every dog-like man — for himself.
Ulysses stopped the cavalry, the bazooka men dismounted, and the archers fired a volley. This was followed by six more volleys, each under the direction of sergeants who watched Ulysses for signals. It was an excellent exercise. The training paid off, and about two hundred Kurieiaumea went down with arrows in them.
Then, as they broke and ran, rockets struck among them and exploded. Though the warheads carried stone chips as shrapnel, the main effect of the missiles was panic. They threw away their weapons and fled. The cavalry advanced slowly and then stopped while a number retrieved the arrows and cut the ears off the dead and the wounded for trophies.
Two hours later, the dog-men, reorganised, their courage renewed by the scorn of the chiefs, attacked. And again they were cut down and sent running.
It was a great day for the felines, who had usually lost whenever they encountered the canines on their own grounds. They wanted to push on, burn the dog-men's villages, and massacre the females and children, but Ulysses forbade this.
Two days later, the blackish mass ahead became a dark green. Later, they saw blooms of many colours and hues. Grey streaks appeared in the green. These hardened into immense trunks and branches and roots.
Wurutanawa s a tree, the mightiest that had ever existed. Ulysses, thinking of Yggdrasil, the world tree of Norse religion, thought that here was one to match it. It was a world tree if he were to believe Ghlikh's and Ghuakh's description. It was like a banyan tree ten thousand feet high in many places and spreading out for thousands of square miles. It extended branches which eventually dropped to the earth, dived into the earth, and re-emerged as new trunks and new branches. It was a solid mass, all continuity. Somewhere in that vast octopus of tree the original trunk and branches were still living.
When they came to the first branch, which plunged from a great distance into the ground before them, they paused in awe. Then they rode around the grey corrugated-bark pillar and estimated that this branch was at least five hundred yards in diameter. The bark was so thick and fissured and indented, it looked like a heavily eroded cliffside.
They were all silent. Wurutana was overwhelming, like the sea, a great earthquake, a flood, a hurricane, a cyclone or a huge meteorite falling.
"Look!" Awina said, pointing. "There are trees growing on The Tree!"
Dirt had collected in many of the deep fissures, and seeds had blown or been dropped by birds, and trees had taken root in the earth in the fissures. Some of them were over a hundred feet tall.
Ulysses looked inside the gloom at the bottom. So thick was the vegetation above, very little sun penetrated down here. But Ghlikh had said that it was easier to travel in the upper terraces than on the bottom. So much water dripped from the tree onto the ground that it formed vast swamps. There were also quicksand and poisonous growths that did not seem to need the sun, and snakes that were venomous and cared not at all for the light. The caravan would disappear in the bogs and marshes within a few days.
Ulysses did not trust the bat-man, but he could believe this account. A dank unwholesome odour was breathed out from the roots. It stank of decay and pale furtive things and soil under water that would suck up anybody who was foolish enough to venture on it.
He looked up along the nearest branch. It came down at a forty-five degree angle from somewhere in that green and multicoloured welter several miles away.
"We'll ride on to the next one," he said, "and look around."
It was already evident that they would have to leave the horses behind. It was too bad they were not domesticated goats. He had seen goats bounding from the edge of one bark-ledge to another. They were orange-haired creatures with doubly curved horns and little black chin whiskers.
There were other animals, too. Black-bodied, yellow-faced monkeys with long ringed tails. A baboonish monkey with a green posterior and a scarlet coat. A tiny deer with knobby horns. A coatimundi-type animal. Something hog-like and grunting. And birds, birds, birds!
They rode for a half-mile until they came to the next branch — or root — entering the earth. Water flowed down a channel, a deep groove, on its back and into a creek bed. Ghlikh had said that there were many springs, creeks and even small rivers in the grooves on the tops of the branches. Now Ulysses could believe it. What a mighty pump this tree was! It must send its roots deep into the earth, driving through stone, and it sucked up the water contained in the rock and tapped domes of water far underground. It might even tap the ocean and turn its water into fresh liquid, rejecting the salts. Then it exuded the water at various places, and springs, creeks and riverlets ran.