Free The Island Under the Earth by Avram Davidson

under great-bolled trees and through open grassland and through trampled thicket. There were shadows now, and birdsong, and all seemed so natural that almost the two were able to avoid perplexing themselves with a wonder as to what the other
us
were doing on this today which was simultaneously yesterday … and, equally perplexing and more than a shade more alarming, if the other
us
were forever bound to live or relive the same lives being lived by the this-
us
… only one day behind … or … or …
    It was better to let that drift as far as it would drift, and to concentrate on the turfs loosened by driving hooves, the occasional and still-smoking heaps of dung, the fresh-torn branches, here and there flies about drops of leaked wine. It was better, when coming near enough to hear the braying of the beasts or the hueing of the sixies, to drop behind and seek a concealment, lest one of the asses break away and double back and be pursued — and the four-limbed pursuers be discovered, and themselves pursued … or worse. On one such wait-a-bit they diverted themselves with the find of a semi-cave, a sunken ledge beneath an overhang of lichen-spotted rock, the floor conveniently deep in soft moss. Here they lay down a while until the sounds ahead should diminish; meanwhile, the rest was grateful.
    Low-voiced, the bosun asked, “How much longer do you think they’ll go?” Stag shrugged. “As far as they went yesterday, I suppose….” and winced before finishing, regretting he had given voice to the unhappy and confusing notion. He gave his head a great shake, then shrugged, put a sprig of sweet grass in his mouth, lay on his side. Thus they waited, and, perhaps against their will, dozed a bit. It was warm without being too warm, it was cool without being too cool, and they had come a long, rough way.
    They came awake with a start together. The voices of the sixies now predominated, but they seemed neither nearer nor farther away. And the shadows were visibly longer. Stag frowned. He slid out. Circumspectly, they made their way in hopes of seeing without being seen. And found that they might have done this a while earlier.
    They found themselves looking down into a great, grassy, bowl-shaped depression. Some of the onagers below had still not been unladen. The sixies — there were about twenty of them — had however unshipped a part of the cargo and piled it together. A few pair were still grooming each other, rubbing haunches with pads of grass, plucking burrs out of tails, and untangling elflocks in manes. Most of the others had already done with these delicate attentions and some of them began a rough, discordant singing or chanting in the centaurs’ language, all buzzes and drones. Now and then they moved in a line and lifted each a foreleg in something like unison.
    The chorus stopped abruptly as a chestnut-colored sixy lifted a leather sack and held it up before his mouth in both hands. The next one snatched it from him, and was at once attacked — but not before the wine-skin, rescued in mid-air, had been pressed by another pair of hands, and, in an instant, the wine-stream directed into another mouth. Nor was the victor allowed more than a few swallows, and, even while he was guzzling them, two of his fellows charged straight at him, heads down, fists flying. Eyes wide and mouth still open, throat working hard on the wine, he turned to avoid them. One, he might have managed to drive off with his midlimbs while he danced on his hind ones, but two were too many, and he lost the wine. It was hard to tell, from where the four-limbed one lay concealed, what was wine and what was blood. And so the mad game went on: now they did their rude dance and now they fought for the wine-skin, now they sang and stepped together, now they fought each other, now they drank.
    “If they had sense to see,” Stag grumbled, after several sundry curses at the sight of his good vintages going down such savage throats, “there are