Suddenly, he straightened, slapping his knees. " 'Tis done; I am with you. If I am wrong, and mayhem strikes, why, then, let it come!"
"You are noble," Angelique murmured.
"I wish escape from my prison."
"You are brave," Frisson qualified.
The Bull stared at him for a moment, then nodded. "Yet every man fears some thing, and this is mine, this journey. Still, I long for it, too - so let us be about it."
He tose in one single, lithe, twisting movement and set off toward his cave. We others sprang to our feet and followed. I glanced back; saw the remains of our picnic; and, with a quick, muttered verse, banished the mess. It twinkled and was gone.
The Bull wrenched open the gate, and we followed him into the cave beyond it - with some trepidation, if truth be known. Me, I was remembering the story of Chicken Little - but the cave extended, going on and on. I realized it was another tunnel.
"What spell you used to seek out the Spider King, use now," the Bull rumbled. The Gremlin nudged me; I took a breath and started chanting, low, almost subvocally.
I had scarcely finished the first recitation when the tunnel started changing. its roof developed a split; then, as we walked along, the split became wider and wider until the roof was gone. I began to eye the dark space beyond it nervously, especially as the walls of the tunnel began to taper down, lower and lower, until they were scarcely knee-high, and we were walking on a concave pathway.
"Now," the Gremlin said, "one might feel dangerously exposed."
"One might," I agreed, with a nervous glance at the darkness around us-then looked again. "Hey! It's getting lighter!"
"We approach his region - mine enemy." The Bull came to a halt, pointing. "Yonder lies the pit of greatest danger for me - the pit of the Bear! Mark it!"
There he came, shambling through the mist, a huge dark shape in a phosphorescent cavern, and my heart sank down to my boots. But the trail led through that huge cave, a floating pathway with no visible means of support, angling through the ghostly cavern, perhaps six feet off the floor.
"Onward," the Gremlin said, face grim. "We gain naught, if we stand to be prey."
"Why, then, pray we must," Frisson countered, and immediately chanted, loudly,
I looked around in a panic, but there was no visible damage, and I let out a sigh of relief. "Please, Frisson! Write it down!"
"Even a prayer?" the poet cried, amazed.
"Anything," I snapped, "as long as it's original." But the Bear had heard and reared up on his hind feet, forelegs upraised as if imploring. "Comrades, please! I wish only detente!"
"Keep walking," I said grimly, and we did, though our steps had slowed with dread.
"Surely we are too heavy for so fragile a path," Angelique demurred.
"Forward," I commanded, "or he'll take the hindmost."
"Can you not make our weight less?"
"Oh, all right," I grumped.
"Volga, mother dear!" the Bear cried, "you have never had such a gift as this!" With that, he swung a huge paw with double eagle's talons at the maiden, to snag her dress. She screamed and shrank back, but the Bull roared in anger and leapt from the pathway, hooves slamming straight toward the Bear.
Ussrus stepped back just in time, and the Bull landed right in front of him, slamming a haymaker into the Bear's jaw. Its head rolled back, and its arms came up. "Comrade, please! I come in peace! A truce, I beseech you!"
"Don't trust him!" I called. "Cry no peace with the Bear who walks like a man!"
The Bull only kept his guard up, glowering.
"Bring him up, quickly!" the Gremlin hissed. "We cannot go on without him"' The way ahead was luminescent, glowing with distant fires. I called,
The Bull admitted, "There is sense in that, yet should I therefore not give him his truce?"
"No!" I bleated.
over and over the story, ending as it began:
"Betrayal!" the Bear cried. "Our plan is discovered!" His huge paw scythed toward the Bull's face, but the claws tangled in the Bull's long hair, just long enough for John to beat away the attack and counterpunch. The Bear recoiled, then came back roaring, with scythe-claws flailing. "Transform the imperialist war into civil war!"
Frisson pressed a piece of paper into my hand. I read it without thinking.
The Bull shot up into the air as if a huge hand had grabbed him, then dropped back onto the pathway-but very lightly, as if that same invisible hand was setting him down with the greatest of care. I began to wonder about Frisson's verse of prayer. The Bear recovered, its shoulders hunkering down, an ugly gleam coming into its eyes. "Do not set yourself above us! For surely, all history is that of class conflict!"
"The conflict part, I can believe," I said to the Gremlin, "but he totally lacks class."
"Keep walking, Wizard," the monster answered nervously.
"I sense an uprising," Gilbert muttered. The pathway shuddered under our feet, then pulled itself loose from the ground and drifted upward, curving into a widening spiral that wound up out of sight.
The Bear rose up, both forepaws hammering at the pathway, claws flashing like icicles. "Let us restructure the economy!" He hooked huge talons into the spiral and pulled downward.
The path jolted, and my companions cried out, fighting for balance. Frisson and I fell, but Angelique and Gilbert managed to keep their feet. The Bear dragged the pathway down, roaring, "Scorch the earth and burn the city! Let not a scrap remain to strength the enemy!"
"Too much anachronism is too much," I growled.
Light gleamed along a length of blue steel, and I found myself holding a Kentucky flintlock.
Well, one shot was better than none. I tucked it into my shoulder and sighted.
The Bear dropped the pathway and backed away, arms up high again.
"Brothers, do not shoot!"
The pathway whipped back up, then sank down, then back up, and even Angelique and Gilbert howled as we tumbled. I squeezed the trigger, and the hammer snapped down - but there wasn't even a flash in the pan. I threw the rifle at the Bear with an oath of disgust. The butt caught Ussrus right across the chops, and he reeled, head spinning.