most part, was reluctant to leave their present location. This gave them excellent protection but Ulysses knew his 'men' and what they were thinking. He yelled at them and told them what would happen in the future if they did not get going. Once it was explained, they reacted swiftly enough. They just did not live much in the future; they had trouble seeing past their present situation.
The end of the branch, or, rather, the place where it abruptly bent at ninety degrees to the horizontal, was two miles away. The party made slow progress because of the thick vegetation and also because they were under orders to move slowly and quietly.
Ulysses saw the spume of white and black about a quarter of a mile before he got to it. He had climbed a tall tree to get a better look, at the same time making sure that he would not be seen by the bat-men, who were flying overhead now and then. The mists rose up and spread out to some distance, as he had hoped. Up in the tree, the roar of the falling water was unfiltered by the jungle.
He was about to climb back down when he saw a Dhulhulikh flap by. He clung to the tree and tried to make himself look like a barky excrescence. No moonlight hit him directly, though enough sieved through the leaves to make the darkness more silver than black. The bat-man went by once, winging so slowly he was just short of stalling. Then his wings beat faster and he climbed as he banked. He came back toward the tree, moving through patchy areas of blackness and pale yellow, the moon's rays bouncing off his bald head and catching beams off his wings, which were darker than his body. He came down just above the tops of the brush, and then flew upward, beating his wings to keep from a complete stall. Just before he landed on the branch of the tree, on the other side of the trunk from Ulysses, he did stall. And he landed as smoothly as an owl on the branch.
He had no talons with which to grip the branch, but he reached out and grabbed a smaller branch and so kept himself from going ahead. After he had folded his wings, he turned to face away from Ulysses. He wore a belt with a stone knife and carried in one hand a short slender spear. From a cord around his neck hung a coiled instrument. Ulysses guessed that this was a horn of some kind. The fellow was sitting there to watch for the enemy. If he saw them, he would summon the others with his horn.
There was no noise from below loud enough to rise above the soft thunder of the waterfall. His men had seen the bat-man and were waiting for the next development. The jungle looked unpopulated.
Ulysses left his position and worked his way around the trunk. His bow and quiver were at the foot of the trunk. Fortunately, they were on the side of the trunk opposite the bat-man and were also in the shadows. Ulysses had only his switchblade knife, which was held between his teeth. He had to cling with both hands and move very slowly. Even though the waterfall drowned out noise, it was not so loud that the keen-eared bat-man would not be able to hear the rustle of leaves or creak of branch.
The man continued to face away from Ulysses as he moved out on the same branch as the one he sat on. He stood upright, balancing himself easily, because the branch was thick. He slid one foot ahead and then brought the other up, slid his forward foot ahead, brought the other up, and so on. Once, he stopped and took the knife from between his teeth. The bat-man's wings half-spread, flapped slightly and then folded back in. In that moment, Ulysses saw the hole in the membrane of the right wing. And he recognised the silhouette of the man's head and the set of the shoulders. It was Ghlikh.
His intention to kill was gone. He could use Ghlikh.
Killing would be easier than capturing. He had to make sure that he could knock Ghlikh out and at the same time keep him from falling. Though Ghlikh weighed only about forty-five pounds, he could be hurt or even killed by a thirty-foot fall. Ulysses also had to make sure that he didn't rush too swiftly or he might go over along with him.
He approached very slowly, afraid that the little man would detect the bending of the branch under his two hundred and forty-five pounds. But Ghlikh was not out near the slender part of the branch. He was halfway, still on the thick part. And so Ulysses was able to chop him along the side of his neck, not too hard, because he was afraid he would snap the thin, probably hollow-boned, neck. Soundlessly, Ghlikh collapsed and fell forward, and Ulysses had to grab with the other hand and seize his wing. He called to those hidden in the brush, and they came out. A moment later, he dropped the unconscious man into waiting arms. By the time he got down, Ghlikh was tied and gagged. A few minutes afterward, his eyes opened. Ulysses stood in the moonlight so that Ghlikh could see who had captured him. Ghlikh's eyes widened, and he struggled. He was still squirming when he was hoisted onto Ulysses' back as if he were a backpack. Ulysses told Wulka, the Wagarondit chief who was carrying Khyuks, to hit Ghlikh again, and Wulka gladly obeyed.
The half-mile was covered as swiftly as possible. Ulysses had the honour of being the first to start the climb down. The mists shrouded him, not only from the view of any bat-men who might be coming along soon, but also from view of the others. What with the darkness and the clouds rising from the abyss, he could barely see two feet before, or under, him. The droplets collected over his body and made him cold. They also made the bark and his fingers and toes slippery.
There was nothing to do but go down. If he had been alone, or with people who did not expect him to be a god, he might have stayed outside the mist and taken his chances on being seen by the bat-people. But he could not avoid his obligations or break his word.
'The mist is our protection,' he said. 'But like all protections, all shields, it has its disadvantages. It exacts a price. It hides us from our enemies, but it also holds its dangers. It will be slippery, and we will be blind.'
It was also very slow going, he thought, as he groped with his foot for a protection below him. His hands clung to outthrusts of bark, one foot was half in a fissure, and the other foot moved around for a ledge or crevice. Finally, it found a ledge, and he lowered himself gently, made sure he had a secure hold, and then lowered his foot again. This process went on for an unaccountable time, and then the darkness paled, and he could see just a little more than before.
He had a solid extension beneath him. Carefully, he walked out on it, testing each unseen inch of bark with his toes. The waterfall roared on his left and water swirled against his left foot. He jumped as something touched him, and he whirled with his knife in hand. Dimly, he saw the short, slender, black-and-white figure of Awina. She came closer then, her eyes big round darknesses. He put the knife away, and she clung to him for a moment. Her fur was wet, but after a minute their bodies began to warm each other. He ran his hand over the round top of her head and felt the wet silky ears and then ran his hand down her back. She felt more like a drowned rat than the soft deliciously furry being he had known.
Other figures jelled out of the mists. He moved away from Awina, counting them as they appeared. All were there.
Ghlikh began twitching. He had been as motionless as a bag of meat during the descent, but now he thought it was safe to move and try to get his circulation going again. Ulysses had him removed from his back and the bonds around his legs taken off. The little man hopped around on his skinny legs and huge feet while two Wagarondit stood ready to stab him if he tried to run or fly.
Ulysses walked carefully out of the mists. The top of the waterfall was about five hundred feet up. There were no bat-people in sight. Only the bushes and sides of leaning trees broke the edge of the upper part of the branch. He turned and saw that the branch continued on a horizontal plane until it was lost to sight. There was nothing to keep them from building more rafts and continuing on the riverlet. But they must hide in the jungle until nightfall again. They could sleep part of the day, although they had to spend some time in hunting. Their food supply was getting low.
Late that evening, no longer sleepy but suffering from hunger pangs, they organised four hunting parties. An hour later, they butchered a legless crocodile, a hipporat, two big red goats and three large monkeys.
They ate well that evening, and everybody felt much better. They cut down poles and bound them together and then set out on the riverlet. Before dawn, they came to another downward bend of the great branch and another cataract. They climbed down but stayed outside the mists, and by dawn they reached the bottom and another riverlet; after sleeping and hunting again, they made more rafts. The bottom of the third waterfall proved to be also the bottom of The Tree, or, as Awina called it, the Feet of Wurutana.
The vast trunks, branches and other vegetation growing overhead to a height of ten thousand feet formed a complex that barred all but a few of the sun's rays. A deep twilight reigned here at noon, and in the mornings and afternoons a near-night like a storm of ravens' feathers filled the spaces between the gigantic columns and buttresses plunging into the swamp. The ground beneath The Tree received the precipitation of the cataracts and the rainfall that was not caught by the branches and the colossal leaves of The Tree and the vegetation that grew on The Tree. A swamp had formed at the base of The Tree, a vast unutterably dismal swamp. The depth of the
