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VII

I think that Haldar caught my cue of pity. For after a while, he said, "I will pay next, Lord Guide."

"Then you will pay soon," said the Guide.

We had run for some time through a deep canyon whose walls overhung and whose course was branched and mazy. The light on the river and the wide banks was dim and shadow-crossed. The hounds raged forward, tireless, like a destroying wave that comes pushing through miles of ocean. But the grey chasm mocked our speed by seeming endlessly the same.

We watched for changes at the Guide's hint, but at first saw only familiar things. There were huts with door-curtains of strung teeth still chattering from the denizens' quick hiding. (I alone heard also their rank breathing within, and the groans of their tightly muffled victims.) There were ghoulish smithies too, where toad-bodied giants hammered smoking limbs onto struggling souls stretched on anvils, and other shops as well where similar giants with pipes blew screaming dwarves into being from cauldrons of molten flesh. There were rat-men struggling in thickets of tarantula weed, and there were groves of dung-bearing trees with twisted trunks translucent like gut. Soulcreep's such as Shamblor inhabited these groves, grazing endlessly. Their drear whining said it was not by choice.

I was the first to sense the new thing ahead. I began to hear the guzzlings and growls of ten thousand carrion-eating throats. It was the noise of a great host, tearing and gulping.

My companions were alerted shortly after by the sooty cloud of birds swooping and wheeling beyond the next bend in the river. We flew through the curve. Before us a mammoth dyke stretched to the river from either wall of the canyon. It was a little mountain range of the freshly killed—fifty feet high and a hundred wide, they were piled. Jackals tugged and shouldered and fought all along the fringes of that wall, while its upper slopes were glittery black with birds. Necrophage insects hung thick as coal dust in the air, and I heard with intolerable distinctness the wet working of their mandibles.

On our bank there was a gateway through the heap. It was overlooked by a guard-tower made of bones. As we neared, something big could be seen moving in the tower. We could also see that most of the corpses in that wall were those of women and children. Their torn faces looked out everywhere from the black swarming of wings and jaws and pincers.

The tower was an insane jumble of the reknit skeletons of everything you could think of. In fact it was more a monkey's perch than a tower, and the giant that came swinging down from it moved more like an ape than a man. He bellowed as he came, with thick, fang-hindered speech:

"Skin! You've got living manskin, Guide! I want some!"

The guide reined up, crying, "Hail, War-father. We shall pay your toll."

The ape wore as a helmet the top half of a man's skull—a giant's, you understand, for the ape was as big as the hags and yet the skull's sockets came all the way down over its red eyes. The immortal also wore epaulets of braided human hair, but nothing else. It carried a battle axe with a bit as wide as an infantry shield. It rolled up to us, enlisting its free fist as a foot. Both of the hounds instantly leapt upon it. It pummeled them with vigor, but it seemed a long time before they lay still in their harness.

Haldar leapt down from the chariot. The Guide said: "What piece do you want, starving one?"

The immortal answered decisively. "I want an index finger." It shifted its stance restlessly, poised on feet and knuckles. Haldar held out his left arm, the finger extended.

The ape began an incredible preliminary dance of strokes and feints and flourishes. It hopped and postured in a great, dust-raising circle around Haldar, whooping with every loop it cut in the air. It dodged and ducked and parried and, at the climactic moment, took a soaring bound at Haldar, and brought the axe in an heroic arc down upon his finger.

Haldar was jolted through by the shock, but stood firm. The finger was clipped off as neat as a daisy at the base, the other knuckles not even grazed.

The ape rolled the finger thoroughly on the ground. "Best with dust," it growled companionably. It popped the treat in its jaws and crunched it with gusto for a long time. I helped Haldar bind his hand. He was drenched with the sweat of pain, as was I. Regretfully, the War-father swallowed the last of the finger and sighed.

"I wish I could take more," the immortal rumbled wistfully. "What do you say, fellow? Let me have one more finger, hey?" It poked Haldar cajolingly in the shoulder.

"No more, beast!" snapped Haldar. "Damn your greed!" The ape stamped furiously, and smote the ground so hard with its axe that the chariot rattled. I helped Haldar back aboard. The Guide stung the hounds, and we surged through the gateway. Our passage sent up a cloud of panicked birds and insects. For a time they hung seething above the dyke, like the black smoke of some great city's sack. Then they settled back down on the hill of torn faces. Soon we were driving for high ground.

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Framed