He swung around, unwilling to leave the minimal shelter of the tree. The attackers were hurling rocks at him from all sides with deadly and practised aim. A stone the size of his two fists took a divot out of the tree inches from his head; another one smashed his elbow, numbing his arm, and a third caught him painfully in the ribs. With more haste than efficiency, he shoved the sword through his belt - whose bright idea had it been to sling the scabbard on his back? -and jumped for the lowest tree branch, scrambling awkwardly upward and praying he wouldn't cut his leg off with the deadly, unprotected edge of razor-sharp steel. The dooic swarmed around the trunk, shaking it and screaming and flinging rocks at him. Rudy clung to the swaying branches and tried to remember how deep the roots of cottonwoods went. But none of the dooic attempted to climb up to get him. After a time, they subsided, their howls dropping to a fierce muttering snarl. They squatted down around the tree to wait.
Fantastic. Rudy settled himself cautiously a little more firmly into the main crotch of the tree and carefully altered the arrangement of his sword. / am not only lost and abandoned, I am also treed. If there is no such thing as random events, I sure as hell can't see the cosmic significance of this. It seems like a pretty pointless way to die.
He drew his left foot up and checked the gashes on his leg. The boot and legging were saturated with blood, but his foot was still mobile no tendon damage. Still, his leg would get infected if he didn't put alcohol on it or cauterize the wound somehow. At the moment, that didn't look real easy to do. He flexed his left arm and found it hurt like hell but would also move; he felt tenderly at his ribs and winced when one of them moved, too. Below, the dooic watched him with greedy eyes. He wondered how long they would stick around and what would happen if he fell asleep.
The cold afternoon dragged on. The dooic sat hunkered on the ground around the tree, occasionally wandering away in quest of lizards or grubs, the wind ruffling at their coarse, dark hair. Rudy disengaged his cloak and wrapped it about him for what little warmth he could get out of it. His leg throbbed agonizingly, making him wonder how long it took for blood poisoning to set in; this fear finally made him wedge himself more firmly into the crotch of the tree, unlace his boot and, sweating and sick, call fire repeatedly to the blade of his knife until the metal grew hot enough to sear the flesh. The process was excruciating and, since Rudy hadn't sufficient resolution to
make a one-shot job of it, lasted a long time. He ended up by dropping the knife and vomiting, hanging limply in the branches of the tree, wondering if he were going to faint and fall and be torn to pieces, anyway, and wishing he were dead.
He there remained until it was almost dark.
Twilight came early under the overcast sky. Half in a stupor, Rudy barely noticed the failing of the light until the sudden flurry of grunts from below brought him back to full consciousness.
The dooic were scrambling to their feet, whistling and coughing among themselves, their beady eyes alert and their stooped bodies taut with fear. From his point of vantage, Rudy could see a pair of tall, ostrichlike birds stalking silently through the twilight shadows of the sagebrush, almost unnoticeable, despite their size, because of their hairy, brownish-grey feathers and smooth, catlike tread. He had seen such creatures once in the distance and had found their tracks. Now he saw that they had enormous, hawklike bills and that their eyes were set forward in their skulls - the mark, Ingold had pointed out, of a predator.
The dooic had fallen silent. They began to fade into the brush until, even from his high perch, Rudy could barely see them. Keeping his own movements to a minimum, he sat up, tore a strip from the hem of his surcoat, and bandaged the swollen mess of his left leg, tying his boot together over it. He cursed himself as he worked; in letting himself be injured, he had halved his already minimal chances for survival. The thought of trying to walk on the leg made him sick, but so