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An hour after dawn of the following day, they passed an enormous symbol carved out of stone. It was a great X inside a broken circle. This was the symbol of Nesh, the ancestral eponymous god of the Neshgai, Ghlikh said. This carving, which could be seen for many miles out to sea, marked the western boundary of their country.
"You will see a good harbour soon," Ghlikh said. "And a town and a garrison of troops. And some merchant ships and some swift naval vessels."
"Merchant ships?" Ulysses said, ignoring the threat in his tone. "With whom do they trade?"
"With each other mainly. But some of their great ships sail far around the coast to the north and trade with the peoples there along the coast."
Ulysses began to feel excited. This was not so much from the danger of confronting the unknown as from a new idea. Perhaps the Neshgai did not have to be his enemy. Perhaps they would be friendly, and they would help him. They certainly had a common interest in combating the great Tree or whoever was using The Tree. And possibly they might be working with the humans, not making the humans work for them. Who knew what lies the bat-people had fed him?
Presently the shore curved deeply inward, and then he saw a breakwater to his left. It was composed of huge blocks of stone which extended for several miles. More than just a breakwater, it was a high wall to protect the harbour and the town within from hostile ships. On the tops of the cliff he could see some huge grey buildings and then, as he went by the first of the entrances, a number of ships and a town on the slope of the hill behind.
They had passed a tower on top of the break-water and seen figures behind some of the narrow slits of windows. Something roared, and he looked back to see a giant form on top of the tower. It was holding an immense trumpet to its great mouth. The elephantine proboscis was lifted above the instrument as if it, not the instrument, were trumpeting.
Ulysses decided that it would look better if he went in to meet them instead of them coming out. Surely they would not believe that this small ship would be entering to attack. He took the ship in between the wide gates of the breakwater. He waved at the people in the tower and was surprised to see that most of them were humans. They wore leather helmets and carried shields which he supposed were of wood. They brandished spears— stone-tipped, of course—or held bows and arrows on him. Behind them towered the grey- ski
There was no fire from the towers. They must have thought as he did, that one small ship could not be entering with belligerent intent.
He was not so sure a moment later when he saw a large vessel, a long low galley-type craft, moving swiftly toward him. It was ma
His eyes widened then, and he had the sickening feeling that he had just stuck his head into a guillotine. He had seen or heard nothing to indicate that the Neshgai were so advanced technologically.
But when the galley swung around behind them and then came partway alonside to ride herd, it emitted no sound other than the hissing of water cut by the sharp bow and the slap of waves on its side. If the craft held an internal combustion motor, it also had excellent noise-repressing devices.
"What drives that?" he said to Ghlikh.
"I do not know, Lord," Ghlikh said.
His emphasis of Lord indicated that he believed that Ulysses' day as a god was about over. But he did not seem particularly glad. Perhaps the bat-people were in danger of being enslaved also. Yet, this did not seem likely, since Ghlikh had said that the Dhulhulikh traded with the Neshgai.
He stared at the ship. How to reconcile its advanced method of propulsion with the primitive weapons of its perso
He shrugged. He would find out in time. If he did not, he would have more important matters to concern him. Patience had always been a virtue of his, and he had strengthened it enormously since awakening. Perhaps his unimaginably long "stonehood" had enabled his psyche to absorb some of the endurance of inert and hard matter.
His ship lowered sail, and the oarsmen back-oared to slow the ship down, then raised them as the ship began to slide in alongside the dock to which an officer on the galley had waved them. Humans clad only in kilts took the ropes thrown out by the furry crew and brought the vessel alongside many rubbery-looking bags. The galley slid in a minute later and then reversed its invisible noiseless engines and stopped an inch from ramming into the structure before it.
Ulysses got a close view of the Neshgai then. They stood ten feet or over and had short heavy columnar legs and big feet that splayed out. Their bodies were long—he would guess that they had much back trouble among them—and their arms were thickly muscled. Their hands had four fingers each.
The heads were much like the carved head he had seen in the Vroomaw village. Their ears were enormous, but much smaller in proportion to the head than an elephant's. The forehead was very broad and knobbed at the temples. They had no eyebrows, but their eyelashes were very long. The eyes were brown, green or blue. The ski
Their skins were varied from a very light grey to a brownish-grey.
They wore peaked leather helmets with four flaps, much like Sherlock Holmes' deerstalker cap, Ulysses thought. They wore enormous beads, stones of various sorts strung on leather cords, around their thick necks. Heavy breastplates of bone painted in red, black and green covered their relatively narrow chests. Their only clothing—universal among humans and Neshgai alike—was a kilt. The officers' legs were bound in green puttees, and their enormous feet were shod in sandals. Some wore cloaks of a heavy cloth with great white feathers sticking out of the hems.
To Ulysses, these creatures combined a somewhat repulsive alie
A magnificent Neshgai stood apart and ahead of the others on the dock. It was he who spoke to Ulysses while everybody else listened respectfully. He trumpeted shrilly through the long nose—a salutation, as Ulysses would learn—and then delivered a short speech.
Though he knew it was in Ayrata, Ulysses could understand little of it because of the strange sounds. He asked Ghlikh to translate, warning him not to lie.
"And what will you do to me, Lord?" Ghlikh said, looking sidewise at him with undisguised hate.
"I may kill you here and now," Ulysses said. "Do not start gloating yet."
Ghlikh snarled wordlessly at him and then repeated in more intelligible Ayrata what the official, Gooshgoozh, had said.