Liberator Of Jedd

Blade was wrong. He stared as the apemen stopped short of the forest's edge. They peered into the trees and made signs and chattered to each other, but they did not venture any closer to the trees. Slowly, making gestures of hate and rage, they backed off. Blade smiled and understood, at least in part. The apemen were afraid of the forest. Deathly afraid of it. Taboo!

He wished the young slave well, though he did not think highly of her chances. The forest had its own terrors. He studied the dark vista where she had entered. Not a twig stirred.

While the light lasted he watched the apemen. As the sun sank from view the slaves, male and female, were rounded up and herded into basket boats and transferred to a stilt hut larger than the rest. Men and women were shoved into the hut together, guards posted, and food brought by other male slaves who appeared to be trustees. Blade watched one of these trustees, his chores dispatched, return in a boat to one of the huts and be greeted there by an apewoman. So that was it. There was a shortage of apemen and the male slaves, under certain conditions, were acceptable as mates. He pondered this as he prepared for sleep. No matter the dimension — sex always found a way.

Blade slept in the skull chamber that night, soundly and undisturbed, and as the gulls began their hoarse crying with the first light he was on his way. He made a wide circle around the lake, staying deep in the forest, finding water where he could and noting that the terrain once again began to slant upward.

The forest began to thicken again. The giant hares on which he had been depending for food suddenly vanished. All that day he did not see one of the creatures. He still had a pouch full of meat and did not worry too much — especially as he found a natural salt lick, a saline spring bubbling from a rock and evaporating to leave coarse salt lying on the ground. Blade concealed himself in a thicket and waited patiently.

The wait was long, but in the end he was not disappointed. He was careful to remain downwind and, after three hours, a tiny deer left cover and timidly approached the salt lick. Blade, who was in truth getting a bit tired of hare, watched with great interest. The creature was not much bigger than a large cat, with a dun hide and darkish yellow rosettes. The ears were mule-like, it had no antlers and, instead of hooves, it had three toes on each foot. Blade cared nothing for all this. What did the flesh taste like? he wondered.

When the deer had had its fill of salt and left, Blade followed it at a distance. He soon found tracks, well worn, beaten smooth over the years by the little three-toed beasts. He came suddenly on a herd of them grazing off to one side. They bounded out of sight in an instant, but Blade did not mind. Their traces were everywhere. His food problem was solved for the immediate future.

It was an hour before sunset when he first knew he was being followed.

Had it not been for the eternal brooding silence he would have missed it. He paused for a breather or, as he admitted, a loafing period, for he had by now fully recovered his strength and replaced the blood drained by the leeches. But it was his habit, while in Dimension X, to pause every now and then and conceal himself to watch and listen.

The sound came from somewhere behind him, on the deer trace, and it was very faint and did not come again. Whoever had made the sound was nearly as expert as Blade himself at moving through the forest. Yet a stone had been dislodged. It rolled and struck another stone. That was all Blade needed.

Whether or not he was in view of the follower he had no way of knowing. He presumed that he was and feigned ignorance. He continued on his way, halting now and then to study the deer tracks while listening and studying his back trail without appearing to. Nothing. The sound did not come again. Yet he was still being followed. The watcher was still there.

As night fell he built his fire. He made snares of vines and saplings and placed them up and down the path with great ostentation, wanting the spy to see them. As full darkness closed down, Blade left his fire and, vanishing like a shadow into the shadows, constructed two larger snares on either side of the path. He put himself in the watcher's place and knew that he would not approach along the path; he would circle out into the forest and come in from the side.

He cooked his meat longer than usual that night, holding it out of the fire so the faint breeze would carry the savory smell to the unknown lurker. He built two more smaller fires, each at a point where the trace led into the clearing and left it. He kept his weapons with him and was careful not to sit with his back to the forest. And he waited.

Hours passed. Blade pretended to doze between his fires, his hands never far from his weapons. Then it came.

First the snapping crackle of the bent young tree he had used as a spring, a whistling sibilance as it was triggered. A muffled scream. Blade snatched a torch from the edge of the fire and ran toward the sound, spear under his arm and stone knife in his hand. He had caught something.

She was well and fairly caught. The thick vine clutched her by shapely ankles as she dangled five feet off the ground, head down. Naked. It was the female slave whom he had watched escape from the apemen. Blade held the torch high and moved in for a closer inspection. She screamed at him, spat and, as helpless as she was, tried to claw his face with her nails. Blade moved back a pace or two. The girl was as wild as any animal. And terrified out of her wits. Now that Blade had her he did not know exactly what to do with her.

For the moment he did nothing. He stared at her, neither smiling nor scowling, feigning more bewilderment than he actually felt. She had escaped, she was traveling — ergo, she must be going someplace, must have a destination. She was of this Dimension X, as poor Ogar had been, so perhaps she could take his place as a guide and mentor. If he could tame her and gain her trust.

He continued to stare, saying nothing. The girl stopped her struggles and stared back at him. In her wild disheveled way, upside down and stark naked — a fact of which she did not seem aware — she was beautiful. Her teeth were white and even, lovely even when she snarled at him, and he could visualize what her mass of thick, dark hair might be like when it was clean and free of burrs and leaves. She was young, certainly in her teens, and here again he could see beauty beneath the matted grime that now caked her regular features. Her eyes, narrowed at him and glittering green in the torchlight, were well spaced under luxuriant dark brows. Her superb breasts, even as she dangled in this undignified position, did not droop or flop. They were as round and firm and plump as partridges on the wing, with only the tiny red nipples flaccid and inert. Her body, deep-ta

At that moment the breeze backed around a point or so. Blade stepped back a pace and sniffed at it — her odor was that of musky female secretions, natural, not subject to the lavage of H-Dimension antiseptics. He sniffed again and felt desire rise in him. And knew that he was, at last, fully adapted to this particular X-Dimension.

The caught girl said, «Who are you? Why did you trap me like this? You are not one of them.»

Blade gave her a tentative smile. «I'm not? Who is them?

She frowned and stabbed her finger in the direction they had come from that day. «Them. The hairy people. The beastmen. You are certainly not one of them. And you are not one of us.»

He smiled again and advanced a pace. She showed her teeth but did not attempt to claw him with her nails.

«Who,» said Elade, «is us? Who are you?»

For a long moment, she studied him. Her snarl faded and became a half smile, a cautious smile. «You really do not know?»