Then he went to the window and watched. And waited.
— XXIII-
The stench.
Jon hadn't been prepared for the stench.
It struck him like a blow. The odors of rotting flesh, stale urine, and fresh feces assaulted his acutely perceptive olfactory senses as soon as the door opened. But above all was the unmistakable scent of kill-or-be-killed tension. It saturated the air, permeated the walls.
He moved straight out from the door and entered a winding passage that curved left, then right. The palm of his right hand was sweaty where it gripped his hunting club.
Jon was frightened. He had disguised his fear when talking to Tlad — had almost hidden it from himself, then — but now it came screaming to the surface. He was trembling, ready to strike out at or jump away from anything that moved or came near him.
This was not the forest. The rules here were all different, as unique as they were deadly. The softly glowing rock walls on either side of him were pocked from floor to ceiling with burrows and recesses. Any mad, frenzied creature of any shape, imaginable or otherwise, could be lurking within, ready to pounce, ready to maim or kill without provocation.
He maintained his pace at a wary trot, first upright, then bent, using his left arm as an extra leg, eyes continually moving left, right, above, and behind. So far, no sign of Hole dwellers. There were dark things pulled back tight into the burrows around him, he knew — things that might rush and leap upon him were he smaller and less sure-footed.
The passage widened ahead and forked left and right. His innate sense of direction led him to the right, but as he started down the new path, he heard a cacophony of scraping feet, growls of rage and grunts of pain from around the bend not far ahead of him. And it was moving closer.
Looking up, he spotted a ledge within reach above his head. He pulled himself up and lay flat on his belly with only his eyes and his forehead exposed. The noises grew louder, and then the source staggered around the bend in the passage.
At first he thought it was a huge, dark, nodular creature with multiple human heads and uncountable black spindly arms waving frantically in all directions. But as it moved closer, Jon realized that it was a gang of the spider like teries he and Tlad had seen earlier — perhaps the same gang, perhaps a new one — attacking another larger creature en masse.
The lone victim suddenly reared up on its hind legs and threw off four or five of its attackers, but an equal number remained attached. Jon saw that this creature was taller than he, and vaguely human in form, although grotesquely out of proportion. Its round, bald head was affixed to its body without benefit of a neck; its shoulders were massive, as were its arms which reached nearly to the ground when it raised itself erect.
From the shoulders the body tapered sharply to a narrow pelvis and ludicrously short, stubby legs.
Jon also saw what the spider gang was after: not the creature itself, but the three small wriggling children clinging to its underbelly. That and its four flattened breasts labeled it a female.
And a female to be reckoned with! Her hugely muscled arms swatted fiercely at the members of the spider gang, keeping them away from her young as she struggled to reach shelter. She was holding her own until two of the spider-men attached themselves to her shoulders and started clawing at her eyes.
This last happened as the group passed below Jon's perch. He knew it would be much to his advantage to let them all move on by and finish their battle further down the passage. But something in that misshapen mother's fierce, selfless defense of her equally misshapen brood touched him. He had to intervene.
Just this once, he promised himself.
He leaned over the edge of the ledge and swung his club at the nearest spider-man on her back, putting all of his arm and a good deal of his back behind the blow. The club cracked across the middle of the creature's spine and it went spinning to the floor where it lay screeching incoherently and kicking — but only the two forward legs were kicking. The second spider-thing looked up at Jon with unfocused fury in the imbecilic eyes of its human face, then launched itself upward with a howl. There was no revenge motive in its action, only hunger at the sight of what appeared to be a vulnerable prey.
The howl caught the attention of the other gang members and for an instant they withdrew from their attack on the mother and her young. She did not hesitate to take advantage of it: a huge arm lashed out and grabbed one of the spider-things by two of its legs, then lifted it and smashed it against the floor again and again until the two limbs were torn free of their sockets and the rest of the pulpy body skidded across the floor to land against a wall and lay still.
Jon stopped watching to deal with the second spider-thing. Its leap had brought it to the ledge and from there it lunged directly at Jon's face. He battered at it before it could reach him. Four wild bone-breaking swings of his club knocked the creature from the ledge. The rest of the gang looked on its three fallen members and fled back the way they had come.
The mother went over to the creature with the injured spine and halted its screeching with two crushing blows to the head. She then checked the body of the one that had fallen from the ledge. Satisfied that none would ever bother her again, she backed up to where she could get a look at Jon.
Standing erect, she stared at him, as if her dull mind were trying to comprehend why he had helped her. Jon wasn't so sure himself, and now wondered if it had been a foolish gesture. She had him trapped here on this ledge and could easily reach up with those long arms and grab him.
They watched each other.
She still clutched the two legs she had ripped from one of the spider-things. The three little monstrosities clinging to her abdomen began to wriggle and squeal. Without taking her eyes from Jon, she put the bloody end of one of the legs up to her wide mouth and nibbled off a piece of raw flesh. She chewed rapidly without swallowing, then took small bits of the masticated meat from her mouth and fed them to her young. With an abrupt motion, she stepped closer to Jon's ledge and held up the untasted leg to him.
Suppressing a retch, he leaped to the ground and fled down the passage.
These were once human? he asked himself when his stomach had settled and he had slowed from a run to a jog. Or are they still human despite what they've become?
And where does Jon the tery fit in?
No answers came.
He arrived at the central pool, a stagnant body of water fed by a slow underground spring. Something on the far side lapped briefly at the pristine smoothness of the water's surface, then scuttled away.
It was dark in this region. Perhaps the excess moisture had a deteriorative effect on the phosphorescence. Whatever the cause, it made finding the door Tlad had described more difficult.
Jon began scouting the water's edge, looking for a rock wall with a door in it. He found it almost by accident — had he not been dragging his left hand against the rock as he searched he would have passed without noticing it. But his fingers felt a long vertical groove and he stopped to inspect.
The notched handle was there. So were the three studs.
Water rippled behind him. He turned and saw nothing at first other than a bubbling disturbance at the center of the otherwise flawless surface. Another ripple and he spotted something floating on — no, rising from the pool. He could not make out the shape and did not care to. Whatever it was, it did not wish him well — not here in the Hole.