Guin shakes his head thoughtfully.
"If you do that, you'll run out of material--oh, you've done it."
The rest of Raku's ten men, who had retreated to the back of the room to work on something, came to Guin with a sense of urgency.
"All right, then, you guys hurry up and get across."
Guin says. By then, most of the forty or so Rak warriors had already crossed over to the other side.
"How many fell? Six. Well, I'd say we're lucky to have so few."
Guin shook his head. He followed him to the rope and watched as the last ten men crossed one after the other.
"Hey. Is the rope okay?"
He put his hand over his mouth and called out.
"There's a little bit of a break in the middle where it rubbed against the rocks, Reardon, but otherwise it's fine."
"The part that's about to run out is pretty dangerous, huh?"
"We'll make it.
"Hey."
Istvan said with a frown, not understanding the meaning of the Semitic exchange.
"Now that the monkeys have gone to safety, what's going to happen to us, me, ...? You mean..."
"It's a little better than that, I guess."
Guin said, and pointed to the last two Rak, who were now about to take the rope.
They had a rope of some kind tied round their waists. It seemed to be the last rope which they had made of all the remaining belts and arrows and whatever they could join together, and as they went along it, it stretched out, and now the feet of Guin and Istvan, the only two left, were lifted up by it. And what they had left at the feet of Guin and Istvan, now only two, was lifted up little by little with them.
It was like a big net, woven very easily.
"What the hell is this?"
"Istvan, take this. Our weight is too heavy to support ourselves on this rope with our hands, but if we support ourselves with this and hold on to it with both hands, and if the raks pull us along with this rope from the other side, we should be able to make it."
Guin pointed it out.
The raks did their work so well and so quickly that it was surprising that it was done on short notice. The net, which resembled a handbag with its top squeezed tightly, was passed through the original taut rope at the top, and the other end of the rope, which had been stretched out by the raku who had crossed earlier, was tied to one of the rings, so that the other side could be traced.
The tall, Valakian-born deserter looked at the contraption with an indescribably puzzled, suspicious look on his face.
"So now I can pass over the Idols! By the sulphurous flames of Dole's breath!"
Stretch out your hand and give it a tug.
"I used to carry things like this from one side to the other. I was a pirate on the Lenten Sea, and I had to carry plundered cargo and sometimes even slave girls between two ships because I couldn't afford to carry them across the borders.
He still purses his lips in complaint,
"Bags of sugar, bags of liquor, money in leather bags, clothes, food--they'd get on the other boat, tie a rope round the bag of loot, and hook it to the rope across the gangway. Then they'd say, "Here it comes!" and they'd pull it in. In the name of the Holy Dragon Triton, god of the sea and pirates, who would have thought that I myself would be treated like a cargo in the mountains of Nosferus! And on top of that--"
He added pathetically, somewhat dejectedly.
"And down below is a mother sea of blue and wine, a sea of gnarled, gnarled id trying to make me a late supper! Oh, all right, all right. Just get on."
Even at this moment, Guin could not help but let out a howling laugh. This Valakian-born "demon warrior" and "red mercenary", a young man who had barely turned twenty and was a mixture of a naughty boy and a worldly mercenary with a great deal of worldly experience, sometimes laughed at Guin unnecessarily. Sometimes the young man, a Valakian-born "demon warrior" and "red mercenary", could not help laughing at Guin, though never mockingly, coldly or irritatingly.
Istvan looked reproachfully at the laughing leopard-headed warrior. But suddenly he cheered up,
"But there's no way I'm going to end up being eaten alive by these id people... after all, I'm the 'Demon Warrior' Istvan. When I was born, I had a boulder in my palm, so the witch told me I'd be a king and gave me this name. Istvan. But I'm not king of any kingdom yet.
That means I'll survive in any danger until I become a king somewhere, and that means I won't just break the rope here and end up in the middle of a bunch of rats. All right, all right, I'll be a package, a fish in a net, whatever!"
With a strange logic, he convinced himself and climbed up the rock carelessly and tried to climb into the bag. And..,
"Wait."
Guin stopped it.
"What the fuck?"
"You'd better take off that armor and leave the sword alone. Raku said the rope was about to break. Let's take what we can and lose as much weight as we can."
"..."
The mercenary looked at Guin with an indignant look, like a maiden who has been called out for something unkind.
But he remained silent and began to tie the knots of his black armor. One by one, Gora's tailored armor, shin guards, and cuirasses were thrown to the ground, and his slender form soon stood there with only a tight-fitting body suit, short trousers, and leather shoes under his armor.
"I hope you don't mind if I bring my sword. Without the sword, I feel more naked than bare."
Istvan said with a full face, and dived into the net as if he were a great fish that had been caught.
"Moss, Silenos, whatever, pray for your god's blessing!"
At the end, you say a discarded line, hold on to the rope firmly, and pull the other rope lightly to give a signal.
Then the rope, which had slackened under his weight, was pulled up again, and with the force of all the raks on the other side, and the momentum of Istvan's hand on the net to pull the upper rope, the rough-hewn ropeway began to move forward.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hey, watch where you're pulling!"
The rope pulled by the Raks shook so violently that the mercenaries, who had nearly toppled over, ranted and raved. His eyes widened as if he were about to jump out of his skin, and he looked down at the horrible creature that was spread out not more than two meters below him, writhing and groaning. His weight, though much less than Guin's, was certainly twice that of Shem's, and since the rope had already supported the weight of forty Shem's, the new added weight caused it to flex greatly, and if he were not careful, the tip of the id, which had come up so far, might at any moment touch the tip of his foot. If he was not careful, the tip of the rope could have touched the tip of his foot.
"Ugh, I don't want to go through this again with Ilana the Seven-Tailed. Besides, I don't really get along with this Ido guy."
Istvan mumbled and his feet went up in a panic.
There was an unpleasant murmur among the Idols. These sacrifices, which had already consumed Sarai, who had sacrificed herself to make way for her companions, and some of the Rak who had slipped on the rope and fallen, were only intended to stir up rather than to appease the eternal hunger of the Idols, and to make them crave madly for more food. But these sacrifices were only for the purpose of stirring up rather than appeasing the perpetual hunger of the idols, to make them madly thirst for more food.
The Ides were now, so to speak, fully awake, and began to move violently, buzzing, buzzing. It was a great and dangerous movement, incomparable to the undulating and rippling movements they had just made.
They do not have any sensory organs to directly detect the presence of food - the id is a creature that remains at such a primitive stage. Instead of eyes and ears, however, it used all of its fuzzy body, so to speak, to accurately distinguish between food and indigestible things such as rocks and wood by the slightest change in temperature or texture in the air.
The only impulse driving them - a fierce, ferocious, blind, black hunger - drove them to stretch out, crawl to the rocks beside them, and spread their bodies in all directions with mute menace, as if in a rage.
Istvan's sallow face twisted in disgust. He was so disgusted with the slow movement of the rope through the disagreeable place that he looked upward with a sullen face, and then his countenance changed.
"Whoa! The rope is cut!"
Out of his mouth came a terrified scream.
"Oh my God, help me, I'm falling!"
His obsidian eyes were wide and round as he stared at the only lifeline, the one place where he had given up his body in the middle of the Sea of Id.
Yet, he had barely crossed two-thirds of the Valley of the Id - there was still a long way to go to reach the other end, where the warriors of Raq awaited him in safety.
And then, right before his horrified eyes, the rope that had held him in place loosened, and finally snapped!