Awina turned her dark-blue eyes toward him. She licked her black lips as if they had suddenly become dry.
"No, Lord. None of us have seen them. But we have heard of them. Our mothers have told us stories about them. Our ancestors knew them when we lived closer to Wurutana. And Ghlikh has seen them."
"So Ghlikh has been talking?"
He stood up and stretched and then sat down again. He had been about to walk across the cave but remembered that it was the mortal who came to see the god, not the god the mortal. He called, "Ghlikh! On the double!"
The tiny man scrambled to his feet and waddled across the floor. He stood before Ulysses and said, "What is it, my Lord!"
"Why do you spread stories about the Wuggrud? Are you trying to dishearten my warriors?"
Ghlikh's face was expressionless. He said, "Never would I do that, my Lord. No, I have not spread stories. I have merely answered, truthfully, the questions your warriors put to me about the Wuggrud."
"Are they as monstrous as the tales have it?"
Ghlikh smiled and said, "Nobody could be that monstrous, my Lord. But they are bad enough."
"Are we in their territory?"
"If you are in Wurutana, you are in their territory."
"I wish we could see a few and get our arrows into them. Then we'd shake this fear out of my men."
"The thing about a Wuggrud," Ghlikh said, "is that you will see them, sooner or later. But by then it may be too late."
"Now you're trying to scare me."
Ghlikh raised his brows. "I, Lord? Try to scare a god? Not I, Lord!"
Then he said, "It is Wurutana, not the Wuggrud, that have thrown your brave warriors into such a blue funk."
"They are brave!"
He thought, I will tell them that there is nothing to be done about Wurutana itself. It is just a tree. A mighty big one. But it is a mindless plant which can do nothing to them. And the others, the Khrauszmiddum and the Wuggrud, are only the lice on the plant.
He would wait until morning to tell this. Just now, they were too tired and dull. After a night's rest and a good breakfast, he would tell them that they could rest for a few days. And he would give them an inspiring speech.
He walked around, made sure that there was plenty of firewood and that guards had been appointed. Then he sat down again, and while he was thinking about his speech, he fell asleep.
At first, he thought that he was being awakened for the guard duty which he had insisted on standing. Then he realised that he was being rolled over, and his hands were tied behind him.
A voice said something in an unfamiliar tongue. The voice was the deepest basso he had ever heard.
He looked up. Torches were flaring in the dome. Giants held them. Beings seven feet tall, even eight feet tall. They had very short legs, very long trunks and long bulky arms. They were naked, and their hair distribution was much like a man's except for the fur across the belly and the groin. The skin was as pale as a blond Swede's, and the hair was reddish or brown. Their faces were humanoid, but prognathous, with dark round wet noses. Their ears were pointed and set high on their heads. They stank of sweat, garbage and excrement.
They carried huge knobbed clubs, long-handled wooden mallets and spears with fire-hardened points.
The thing — he must be a Wuggrud — spoke again. His teeth were widely separated and sharp.
There was a piping sound. It took a few seconds to grasp that the thin voice was Ghlikh's and that he was speaking to the Wuggrud in his language.
Ulysses felt such rage that he should have been able to tear apart the bonds around his wrists. But they held.
He said, "You foul stinking treacherous animal! I should have killed you!"
Ghlikh, smiling, turned and said, "Yes, you should have, my Lord!"
He spat on Ulysses and then kicked him in the ribs. The kick hurt the man's delicate foot more than it hurt Ulysses. The Wuggrud growled something, and Ghlikh hopped away.
The giant reached down and grabbed Ulysses by the neck with a huge hand and sat him upright. The hand choked him. When his senses returned, he saw that every one of his people were bound. No, not all. About ten lay dead, their skulls crushed.
The rear wall had been slid aside, exposing a tunnel. Torches set in stands on the wall flamed inside the tunnel.
So that was how they caught them. But how could so few overcome so many, even if those few were ogres? What had happened to the guards? Why hadn't the noise of the struggle awakened him?
Ghlikh squatted down in front of him. He said, "I got a powder from the Wuggrud. I put it in your water. In everybody's drinking water. It takes effect slowly and subtly. But very powerfully."
It was subtle. The water had tasted pure, and he had no headache or bad taste.
He looked around. Awina was sitting near him with her hands also tied behind her. The thought of something happening to her made him frantic.
His intention to ask Ghlikh why the ten had been killed was stifled. A Wuggrud leaned down and with a single twisting movement of his enormous hands tore off the leg of an Alkunquib. He began tearing at the flesh, ripping off big chunks, and gobbling them with much smacking, chewing, and gulping.
Ulysses thought he would vomit. He was sorry that he could not. Awina had turned her head away. Ghlikh and Ghuakh stood in one corner and looked indifferent.
There were ten of the ogres — that was the best term for them — ten ogres in the dome and each ate upon a corpse. Then they threw the bones down and wiped away some of the blood on their mouths and chins with the back of their hands. They held the uneaten parts against their chests. Their chief growled like thunder at Ghlikh, who pointed at Ulysses and said something. The chief jerked a dirty bloody thumb at Ulysses, and another giant walked over and set him up on his feet, lifting him by the back of his neck. The fingers dug into his neck so severely that he was sure blood would pop out of his veins. The giant got behind him and prodded him toward the tunnel entrance with the point of his spear against his back.
Ulysses tried to give Awina a look that would tell her that he did not think all was lost, but she still kept her head turned away. He walked into the tunnel with the shuffle of huge feet and the sputter of the torches the only sounds. The tunnel curved gently to the right, straightened out, curved to the left, straightened out, and suddenly he was in an immense room in the heart of the trunk.
There were torches all around, set in the walls. Their smoke rose to the darkness-veiled ceiling and disappeared, apparently through vents. There was a slight draft of air, also going toward the ceiling. The stench was overpowering; the odours of garbage and excrement were so strong they seemed almost solid. They stuck in his throat and threatened to strangle him.
Behind him Ghlikh said, "Shau," his equivalent of "Phew!"
There were about ten adult females and thirty juveniles and children scattered around the room. The females were almost as big as the males and much fatter. Their breasts, hips, thighs and stomachs were huge and sagging. On seeing the meat in the males hands, they set up a cry. The males threw the mangled remains to them, and women and children began to eat.
The room was divided into two parts. The smaller was set in a high niche at the other end and held a disk-shaped object placed vertically in the wall. A set of steps cut out of the wood gave access to it. Ulysses climbed it while the sharp wooden point of the spear dug into his back. Ghlikh and the chief followed him.
The disk was actually a membrane set in a ring of living wood, which was flush against the wall. Near it were two sticks of wood with slightly knobbed ends. Ghlikh picked these up and began tapping on the membrane. Ulysses listened and counted. The taps consisted of some sort of code, he was sure of that. Perhaps it was a primitive Morse code.
Ghlikh stopped tapping. The membrane vibrated. Its surface changed shape, and sounds came out. Pulses. Dots and dashes.
Ghlikh stood there with his head cocked to one side and his huge ears wiggling. When the membrane quit vibrating, he began tapping on it. After a while, he stopped to listen to some more pulses of unequal duration. Ulysses could make out patterns, units with dot-dot-dash-dot, dash, dash-dot-dash-dot, and many more, but these made no sense to him, of course.
The membrane could be likened to an eardrum or the diaphragm in a telephone. Behind it might be the end of a long vegetable nerve-cable, and at the other end, God only knew where, would be an entity transceiving at another membrane.
Ulysses had wondered why they had thought it necessary to bring him here. He found out a minute later when Ghlikh started to ask him questions.