The party had been forced to travel on trunks before, of course. To get from one branch to another was quite easily done if the branches happened to be linked with a complex of lianas and other vegetation. Usually, this was the condition. But now and then they had to travel around a trunk to get to another branch. This was slow but reasonably safe, if one did not look down. The bark was like a very rough cliffside, and climbing up was as easy as going up a chimney with one open side. Ulysses managed the ascent well enough, though his hands and back were torn and bloody. Here the lesser weight, the wiriness and the fur of the nonhumans were to their advantage.
Breathing heavily, Ulysses finally pulled up over the last ledge and was on a branch. He had started climbing early that morning, and it was almost dusk. Below, it was already nightfall; the depths looked cavernously gloomy. The yowl of a leopard-like cat rose past them, sounding far away. A monkey pack whooped about a thousand feet down. He estimated that they were at least eight thousand feet above the ground. Yet they were not at the top of The Tree. The trunk rose at least another two thousand feet, and there were a dozen great branches between the one on which they stood and the tip of this trunk.
It got cold up here after dusk. Twigs, branches and logs from dead trees were collected and piled at the bottom of those fissures which were not filled with dirt. Up here, the dust was not as thick as below and there was more naked bark. The sun went down, and then clouds moved around them. Shivering and damp, they moved in closer to the fires.
Ulysses spoke to Ghlikh, who was sitting near him by the flames.
"I am not so sure that your idea was a good one. It is true that there is less vegetation here, and so we can move more swiftly. But the cold and the wet may make us sick."
The bat-man and his wife were pale demon figures in the fog and the flickering light of the fire. They were enfolded in blankets out of which their naked heads and the leathery wings projected. Ghlikh's teeth chattered as he said, "Tomorrow, my Lord, we will build a raft and go sailing down a stream. Then you will see the wisdom of my advice. We will cover so much more territory so much more swiftly. You will see then that the discomfort of the nights are more than offset by the ease of travel of the days."
"We shall see," Ulysses said, and he got into his sleeping bag.
The cloud moved over his face like a wet breath and covered it with droplets of water. But the rest of him was warm. He closed his eyes, then opened them to check on Awina. She was in her bag, but sitting up with her back against the wall of the grey fissure. Her large eyes were fixed on him. He shut his eyes then but still saw hers, and when he slept he dreamed of them.
He woke with a shock, his heart hammering, his breath coming hard. The scream was still ringing in his ears.
For a minute, he thought he had dreamed. Then he heard the exclamations of the others and the noise as they fought to get out of their bags. The fire had gotten low, and the figures scrambling around in the dark looked like monkeys at the bottom of a pit.
He stood up, an assegai held ready. Ready for what? His question got a volley of babble; everybody was as uncertain as he. The party was separated into three groups, each of which was around a fire at the bottom of a canyon-like fissure, the top of which was several feet above even Ulysses' head. Then a round object appeared in the fog near him, and a voice said, "My Lord! Two of our people are dead!"
It was Edjauwando, a Wagarondit from another group. Ulysses hoisted himself out of the fissure and others followed him. Edjauwando said, "Two have been killed with spears."
Ulysses examined the dead by the light of the fire, which had been increased with a pile of branches and twigs. The throat wounds could have been made with spears, but Edjauwando was just guessing about the weapons used.
The guards said that they had seen nothing. They had been stationed outside the fissures but had sat at their posts half in their bags and half-wrapped in blankets. They said that the screams had come from out there — pointing into the cloud — and not from the victims.
Ulysses increased the guards and then returned to his fissure. He said, "Ghlikh, what kind of sentients are in this area?"
Ghlikh blinked at him and then said, "Two, Lord. There are the Wuggrud, the giants, and there are the Khrauszmiddum, a people like the Wufea but taller and spotted like the leopard. But neither live this high up. Or, at least, very few do."
"Whoever they are," Ulysses said, "they can't be many. Otherwise, they would have rushed the whole group."
"That is likely," Ghlikh said. "On the other hand, the Khrauszmiddum like to play with their enemies as a leopard plays with a young goat or a cat with a mouse."
There was little sleep the rest of the night. Ulysses did doze off, only to be awakened with a hand shaking him by the shoulder. An Alkunquib, Wassundee, was saying, "My Lord! Wake up! Two of my people are dead!"
Ulysses followed him to the crevice in which the Alkunquib had slept. This time, the two dead were guards. They had been strangled and their bodies rolled over into the crevice on top of their fellows. The other three guards, only a few feet away, had heard nothing until the bodies struck the bottom of the fissure.
"If the enemy has any force at all, he lost a good chance to kill many more of us," Ulysses muttered.
Nobody slept the rest of the night. The sun came up and began to burn away the cloud. Ulysses looked around the area for signs of the attackers but could find nothing. He ordered the corpses to be wrapped up in their sleeping bags and tossed over the side of the branch. After the priests had said their little ceremonies, of course. It would have been more fitting, according to their religions, if the bodies could have been buried. But on this branch, any dirt that had collected in the crevices was occupied by a tangle of roots of trees or bushes. So the bodies went over the side in the closest approximation of a burial that could be arranged. They turned over and over, narrowly missing a great branch a thousand feet below and then disappeared into a liana complex.
After a silent breakfast, Ulysses gave the word to march. He led them along the branch for half the day. Shortly after noon, he decided to transfer to a slightly lower one which had been running parallel to theirs for several miles. Its vegetation was much thicker; the reason for this was the riverlet which filled a third of the area on its top. He was interested in building a raft according to Ghlikh's suggestion.
The transfer took place on an almost horizontal liana complex. Ulysses sent the party over in three groups. While the first crawled over, the rest stood guard with bows and arrows. This was a good time for their enemies to try a surprise attack, because those on the complex were too occupied in hanging onto the lianas and making sure their footing would not be on a deceptively firm, but actually insecure, plant. Those staying behind scanned the thick growths for possible ambushers. A thousand enemies could have been easily concealed at a very close range.
When the first party reached the other side, they stationed themselves to cover the next, while a third group remained as rear guard. Ulysses had gone with the first group. He watched the next party crawl over the complex, which sagged just a little under the weight of the Alkunquib and the supplies and bombs they carried. He had already explored the immediate area and made certain that there were no ambushers there.
When the first Alkunquib was about twenty feet from the branch, the third group raised a great shout. Ulysses, startled, saw that they were pointing upward. He raised his eyes just in time to see a log about ten feet long falling toward the Alkunquib warrior. It did not hit him, but it plunged through the tangle, ripping lianas and vines and creepers apart. The warrior suddenly found himself dangling at the end of a liana. Those behind him had frozen at the first impact, and then they scrambled forward recklessly as other missiles, logs, branches and clods of dirt, crashed through the tangle.