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The Rare Beast came ru
Sharts told him.
"Where's Bargma?" Hank said.
"Gone hunting. She'll be back just before dawn."
Hank did not think that Terrestrial owls went hunting in such foul weather. They would not want to get wet, there was so little light that even an owl could not see well, and the prey would be staying out of the open. But here the animal kingdom did not behave exactly as on Earth. Bargma could be walking through the woods now, trying to find some holed-up rodent. Her sentiency would enable her to hunt in a ma
Sharts sent Blogo after some food and hot berry juice. When he returned with a large basketful, he said, "They're gone."
Sharts said, "You sound as if you'd like to go with them."
"Not me!" Blogo said. He thumped his barrel chest with a fist. "You know me. Did I ever run away from a fight? Hell, boss, you and I have taken on and licked twenty men! And look at what havoc we worked among the Gillikins tonight! They must be filling their britches just thinking about tackling us! Maybe I ought to go down the road and tell them who we are! That'd shake them up!"
"Yeah," Hank said. "All ten thousand of them."
"Numbers don't scare me," Blogo said.
Hank had to listen to much more boasting. He was tired of it, but it did keep him awake. That and his mental images of how he would like to kick the two in the rear while they were bent over looking down a cliff.
When dawn was almost due by his wristwatch, the sky was still black. Moreover, the thunder had come hack, and lightning was ru
Carrying the lantern, Hank walked on the down-slanting road. When he came to the level ground, he cut across the field. He stopped under the oak tree and said, "How are you, Je
"Fretting and fuming, very worried. I knew that three of you had gotten back because I asked Blogo when he went by. But he wouldn't tell me what had happened."
She sounded hurt.
"Sorry," Hank said. "We've been very busy."
He sketched the raid and then said, "I'm going to untie you even if the wind is still strong. We'll take off at dawn or a little after. We don't have any choice. I'll let you handle the taxiing and the takeoff, but when we're ten feet off the ground, I'll take over. Understand?"
"Yes," Je
"Some action. Maybe."
He patted her cowling and returned to the gate. By then the east was paling, though not much. Hank could see a dark mass of men a half-mile away on the road. He supposed that there were many more under the trees along the road.
Two minutes passed before what he had been waiting for came. A hundred or so hawks and eagles appeared. They did not attack, but settled down a quarter of a mile away on the branches of the oaks to Hank's right and left. One hawk flew back along the road. She would be reporting the number and location of the defenders.
"I'll bet that Erakna is here, directing the army," Hank said. "She'll be furious because of what we did, her narrow escape and all. And she'll want to make sure that her soldiers don't screw up again."
Blogo said, "I hope she doesn't use her magic against us."
"She shouldn't think it's necessary," Sharts said. "She'll want to save her energy."
Hank pointed at the birds sitting quietly but glaring at the three men. He said, "You agree, Sharts, Blogo, that we don't have a mammoth's chance on thin ice of getting off the ground while those birds are still there?"
The giant looked narrow-eyed at Hank. "They'll swarm over us as soon as we get into the cockpits. You can kill a lot of them, but they'll keep coming."
"Yeah, and as soon as I run out of ammunition, which will be quickly, we'll have had it."
"It's evident you have a plan," Sharts snapped. "What is it?"
Hank reached into the knapsack and brought out the hemisphere. Sharts's and Blogo's eyes widened.
"The Golden Cap which controls the Winged Monkeys," he said triumphantly.
Sharts should have been happy, but he frowned and bit his lip and began whistling. He was reproaching himself for not having seen it.
"Wow!" Blogo said. "Maybe we could trade that to the queen for an immediate pardon!"
"I think they call you the Rare Beast because you're rarely intelligent," Sharts said. "Why should she bargain with us when she can get it at the expense of a few lives?"
"Sometimes, I think you don't like me," Blogo said. "But... yes... I see what Hank is getting at. I think."
"This is the main reason why Erakna will be personally commanding the army," Hank said. "She knows what we'll do with it if we have any brains. O.K. Here goes."
The inscriptions inside the rim of the Cap were unreadable by Hank, but he did not need to have to decipher them. At least, he hoped he wouldn't.
"Memory, don't fail me now!" he muttered.
He put the Cap on his head. It was too small to stay on without a helping finger. Feeling silly, he lifted his right leg and stood on his left foot.
"Ep-pe! Pep-pe! Kak-ke!"
"That's from the language of the Long-Gones," Sharts said to gape-mouthed Blogo.
Hank stood on his right foot.
"Hil-lo! Hol-lo! Hel-lo!"
Hank planted both feet firmly on the ground.
"Ziz-zii! Zuz-zii! ZIK!"
Though the anticipated happened, Hank still had difficulty believing that it had. He was facing the west, and there suddenly appeared before him in the air a multitude of winged creatures. It sounded like a vast shooting gallery as they came out of nowhere. The air abruptly displaced by their presence made small explosions, a detail which Baum had neglected to describe when he wrote the first Oz book. Or perhaps he had forgotten it.
The entire horde must be here; it speckled the sky before him as if God had dumped a vast pepper shaker. The chattering and the yelling were terrifying. It shook the three men, and it scared the watching hawks and eagles from their perches.
Glinda had told him that each of the four rows of inscriptions commanded a different type of operation. One called the Monkeys in a limited number to the operator. The second summoned all the Monkeys no matter how widely scattered they were. The third could send the Monkeys in a limited number to a certain spot if the operator had been there. The fourth would send the whole horde to a certain area if the operator had once been there.
Hank knew only one, and that was because he had read the operation directions in Baum's book and his mother had also told him about it. When he was young, he had played at being in Oz and had gone through the ritual with a paper Golden Cap many times.
Baum had mentioned only one row of inscriptions, and he had said that Dorothy could read that. Actually, Dorothy had managed to surreptitiously read the directions in the notebook of the West Witch. The Witch had been very old, and her memory had been drying up as fast as her body. She had had mnemonics all over the castle.
Hank glanced at Erakna's birds. One was flying off to bring the news of the Monkeys to the queen.
A big Monkey landed near Hank and walked up to him.
"I am the king," he said. "King Iizarnhanduz the Third, you son of a bitch."
The king had to obey Hank, but he did not have to like it. It was evident from the loud and bitter complaints of his subjects that they, too, did not care for their sudden displacement. Whatever they had been doing, sleeping, eating, excreting, mating, playing, they had been snatched away to do some hard and probably dangerous task. It must have been very disconcerting to be snoozing away and suddenly find oneself a thousand miles away and falling through the alien air.
Hank told him exactly what must be done.