Sos now far outweighed his opponent, and held a weapon he was sure Sol had never seen before. Sol, on the other hand, held a makeshift implement but he was the finest warrior ever seen in the area, and the weapon he had fashioned was a staff.
The one thing the rope was weak against.
Had Sol's barrow been available, he might have taken the sword the club or one of the other standardized instruments of battle, but in his self-reliance he had procured what could be had from nature, and with it, though he could not know it yet, the victory.
'After this we shall be friends,' Sol said.
'We shall be friends.' And somehow that was more important than all the rest of it. They stepped into the circle.
The baby cried.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was midsummer by the time he stood at the foot of the mountain. This was a strange heap of lava and slag towering above the twisted landscape, sculptured in some manner by the Blast but free of radiation. Shrubs and stunted trees approached the base, but only weeds and lichen ascended the mountain itself. -
Sos peered up but could not see the top. A few hundred yards ahead, great projections of metallic material obscured the view, asymmetrical and ugly. Gliding birds of prey circled- high in the haze overhead, watching him.
There was wind upon the mountain, not fierce, but howling dismally around the brutal serrations. The sky above it was overcast and yellowish.
This was surely the mountain of death. No one could mistake it.
He touched his fingers to his shoulder and lifted Stupid.
The bird had never been handsome; his mottled brown feathers always seemed to have been recently ruffled, and the distribution of colors remained haphazard-but Sos had become accustomed to every avian mannerism in the time they had had their association. 'This is about as far as you go, little friend,' he said. 'I go up, never to come down again-but it is not your turn. Those vultures aren't after you.'
He flicked the bird into the air, but Stupid spread his wings, circled, and came to roost again upon his shoulder.
Sos shrugged. 'I give you your freedom, but you do not take it. Stupid.' It was meaningless, but he was touched. How could the bird know what was ahead?
For that matter, how could anyone know? How much of human loyalty and love was simply ignorance of destiny?
He still wore the rope, but no longer as a weapon. He caught a languishing, sapling and stripped it as Sal had done, making himself a crude staff for balance during the climb. He adjusted his heavy pack and moved out.
The projections were metal-enormous sheets and beams melted at the edges and corners, securely embedded in the main mass, the crevices filled with pebbles and dirt. It was as though a thousand men had shoved it together and set fire to it all-assurning that metal would burn. Perhaps they had poured alcohol upon it? Of course not; this was the handiwork of the Blast.
Even at this terminal stage of his life, Sos retained his curiosity about the phenomenon of the Blast. What was its nature, and how had it wrought such diverse things as the invisibly dangerous badlands and the mountain of death? If it had been unleashed somehow by man himself, as the crazies claimed, why had the ancients chosen to do it?
It was the riddle of all things, unanswerable as ever. The modern world began with the Blast; what preceded it was largely conjecture. The crazies claimed that there had been a strange other society before it, a world of incredible machines and luxury and knowledge, little of which survived.
But while he half believed them, and the venerable texts made convincing evidence, the practical side of him set it all aside as unproven. He had described past history to others as though it were fact, but it was as realistic to believe that the books themselves, along with the men and landscape, had been created in one moment from the void, by the Blast.
He was delaying the climb unnecessarily. If he meant to do it, now was the time. If fear turned him back, he should admit it, rather than pretending to philosophize. One way or the other: action.
He roped a beam and hauled himself up, staff jammed down between his back and the pack. There was probably an easier way to ascend, since the many men who had gone before him would not have had ropes or known how to use them, but he had not come to expire the easy way.
