He spun around and set off at a run, his eyes searching the plain for the tracks of his enemies.
CHAPTER II
SHANG, the great cave-bear,[4] had scented food earlier that day—tender meat, human meat—and had followed it hungrily up wind. The first chill of autumn, that had turned the leaf-thickets thrown and yellow and crimson, had been felt by Shang. He had been eating nuts, adding layers to the store of fat that covered his powerful frame against the long winter sleep in his cavern, and the flesh of man would prove a welcome variant. But there had been too many men, all armed and close together. Shang had watched them from a distance, his big brown body hidden in bushes—dark, bearded males, with among them one woman and one boy, these bound and guarded. Shang’s mouth watered for the boy in particular, but he dared not charge the whole throng. Men had a way of fighting as an aggregation. And so he let the horde go by, dolefully and grumpily watching.
It was only a little later that he smelled man again, then sighted him. A straggler? No, for this was of another sort—big and blond and ruddy, this one, and his eyes were on the tracks of the previous party. Shang, wise in animal divination, recognized that he was a stern fighter and a brave one. But Shang did not fear one human being, even as big and resolute-seeming a one as this. He waited until the solitary marcher came within six bounds of the hiding place in the bushes; then, with a deafening cry that was half cough, half roar, he charged.
Hok took one glance at the apparition—a shaggy dun monster almost as large as a bison bull, with an open red mouth that could have engulfed his head at a single snap—and quickly sprang aside. As Shang blundered past and wheeled for another rush, Hok swarmed up the nearest tree, a thriving young beech, and came to rest in the main fork.
Howling and snarling, Shang reared his bulk to a height half again that of a tall man, and with claws like daggers he ripped and tore at the bark of the tree.
But he could not climb after Hok, as a smaller and more active bear might, and the fork was well out of his reach.[5] Slavering hungrily, he circled the tree and flourished those immense armed paws.
HOK gazed at him, then away toward the west and south. In that direction led the trail of Djoma and the Fisher war party—and Oloana and Ptao. He himself was safe from the ravening beast, but only as long as he remained stranded. What would happen meanwhile? Leaning down, he addressed the big cave-bear:
“Hai, Shang, who would eat me—what if I come down to dispute the matter with you?” He twiddled the sword, that had never left his hand. “I am but one man against your paws and teeth, but the Shining One has given me a fang to match yours. Hai!” he ejaculated again. “I will wait no longer. Prepare to fight for your dinner, Shang.”
He paused only to slash away a thick branch of the tree and trim its foliage. The heavy, sharp sword clove the wood as though it were a grass-stalk. Hok grunted his approval, and suddenly tumbled himself out of his perch, landing upright on his moccasined feet, sword and branch lifted in his hands.
“Come, Shang, and eat Hok! He has proved a tough morsel for hungrier beasts than you.”
As though he understood the challenge, Shang heaved himself upright on his rear legs again. Monstrous, grossly manlike, he lumbered forward to strike this impudent human thing to earth. Hok laughed, as always in the face of deadly peril. His right hand advanced the sword.
Shang dabbed at the shiny thing the man was holding out. In times past he had encountered weapons, and had knocked their wooden hafts to splinters with sweeps of his paws before descending upon the unarmed wielder. But he barely touched the iron, then snatched back his big forefoot with a howl of pain. The edge, whetted assiduously by Hok, had laid open Shang’s calloused palm to the bone.
“You taste the Widow-maker, Shang,” Hok taunted him. “Come, try with that other paw.”
Shang was not one to give up for one wound. He tramped closer, both arms lifted, his mouth open and steaming. Hok gazed for a long, meditative moment, down that gaping throat. Then he suddenly sprang to meet the huge beast.
His left hand thrust with the branch, jagged butt foremost. It went between the open jaws, stabbing the gullet cruelly. A strangled yell rose from Shang’s deep chest, and both paws struck at the stout billet of beechwood. Hok, safe for the moment from blow or hug, struck with what he held in his right hand.
The gleaming gray blade, swift as a serpent’s tongue, pierced Shang’s broad belly. As it went home, Hok ripped upward with all his strength, drew his weapon clear and sprang backward as far as he could. Shang, still erect, stared and gestured stupidly. Then he toppled forward, with an abrupt thud that shook the earth.
Hok waved the sword, now running blood to its hilt.
“The gift of heaven is a great marvel and magic,” he exulted. “What spear or axe could have slain Shang so swiftly?”
From his head he stripped the hawk wings and tossed them on the subsiding body of the bear. If Zhik rallied the warriors and led them after him, they would come upon this evidence of Widow-maker’s deadliness, would see by the hawk wings that Hok was the single-handed slayer. It would give them heart after their defeat.
Meanwhile, Hok took up once more the trail of Djoma’s band.
“WOMAN,” said Djoma haughtily, “there is no need for you to look back. You will not see that country again.”
Oloana, bound and dishevelled in the midst of the marching Fishers, faced him with an air fully as haughty as his own. So did the lad Ptao, who trudged at her side with arms trussed but with frost-yellow head flung desperately high.
“Hok the Mighty is my husband,” said Oloana with murderous dignity. “He will follow and take revenge. Even now he may be on your heels.”
At that word it was Djoma who glanced back, suddenly and with furtive excitement, as though Oloana had conjured up a great honey-haired menace. But the back trail, through thickets and over knolls, was empty of any hostile figure. Recapturing his boldness. Djoma sought to wither her:
“I say again that Hok was stricken dead, by the fire-ball sent by his own angry god. He alone dared stand up before it, and in punishment he was slain.”
“We passed the place of the battle,” reminded Oloana. “I saw other dead, and on the ground lay Hok’s bow and his axe, but not his body. He lives and follows. Prepare your skull for smashing, because he will not spare you.”
“If he was gone, the angry Shining One carried him away,” insisted Djoma. “In any case, my god is stronger than yours—he is the Sea-Father. Did he not give me victory? Did he not send rain at the moment I captured you, to show that you were his gift to me? Let Hok come, if he still lives. I will shed his blood with this spear.” He flourished the weapon boldly, and his men, hearing the vaunt, yelled approval.
“My father will pluck you to pieces like a little roast sparrow,” spoke up the proud young voice of Ptao. “When I am grown—”
“And when, cub, will you be grown?” jeered one of the men who marched as a guard beside him. “We will take you to our place by the sea, and there we will eat you.”
“I would sicken your narrow stomach,” snapped the boy. “Eat fish, and leave strong meat alone.”
One or two of the captors laughed at this repartee, and the guardsman growled. The march continued in silence.
THE young son of Djoma, a towering youth with a downy black beard that grew in two points, came close to his father. “I am old enough to marry,” he ventured. “Let me have this woman we took from the enemy. See, she has dark hair, like our own people. And she is strong and brave and good to look upon. To judge from that sharp-tongued son of hers, she would give fine warriors to make the tribe mighty.”
“Speak of this another time, Caggo,” bade Djoma gruffly. His own eyes were bright as he studied Oloana sidelong. She strode free and proud, for all her plight. Djoma was remembering that he, too, was without a mate since Caggo’s mother had been snapped up by a shark while swimming a year ago. If Oloana had been the mate of one mighty chief, what more fitting than that
he take her for himself? “Such things as concern captive women are to be decided by council of the elders,” he elaborated. “Wait until we get home.”
Caggo nodded acceptance, but contrived to walk near the prisoner, admiring her frankly. She spat once between his tramping feet, and took no other notice of him.
“We have heard little of you Fishers, for we never troubled ourselves about your country or possessions,” she told Djoma balefully. “But now Hok will give you his attention, and you will not find it welcome. I think that stealing me will be the worst day’s work you have ever done.”
“We will see, we will see,” said Djoma darkly, but once again he glanced hurriedly backward. His eyes dilated with sudden panic. Was that a human figure, that thing showing itself briefly among bushes far behind? If so, what did it bear that gleamed like sun on the sea? He looked hard, but saw nothing else. The thing had ducked from sight, if indeed he had really seen something. Djoma cursed himself roundly for letting his nervousness create visions. Perhaps some beast of prey, coming to the deserted battlefield, had dragged away the corpse of the Flint People’s chief, because it was the largest there. In any case, Hok was dead. He, Djoma, had seen the fellow fall. And Djoma must remember in the meanwhile his own position as a leader. There must be no appearance of fear.
Yet the feeling could not be rationalized away. That night the band camped by a grass-collared spring, and ate in serious silence its ration of sun-dried fish. Oloana and Ptao, tied by the feet to a sapling, refused with disgust offerings of such food,[6] and talked loftily to each other of the vengeance to be taken upon the impudent raiders who had dared use them thus.
But as night fell, Djoma looked once more along the back trail that was now too dim to be seen, and gave an order. Some of his warriors unslung the foot-lashings of the prisoners and herded them well away from the camp, binding them again under some low brown bushes. Djoma camped there also, with Caggo and one or two others. They spent the night without a fire—dangerous to do in strange country, but Djoma felt somehow that camping with a fire would be more dangerous still.
There were yells in the night. At dawn, Djoma returned to the main bivouac and learned that at dead of night something had struck down two of his sentries and raged through the camp, killing a third man and injuring five more before it was driven away. Nobody was sure who—or what—the attacker was. The wounds it had dealt were strange enough; deep, clean slashes, terrible to see, and one almost delicate stab.
Djoma ordered a forced march home.
CHAPTER III
THUS Hok, following on their heels, was not able to raid a second night camp, for Djoma marched all that night. He and his men were back in familiar country by now, and made better progress than their lone pursuer, who furthermore had a close call with a black leopard in a little glen between two of the wooded hills. By the next dawn, Hok was far behind in his chase. He wiped Widow-maker clean of leopard blood with a handful of coarse ferns, and studied the trail.
“Here among the warriors marched Oloana,” he decided, picking out certain narrow footmarks. “Yes, and here went Ptao beside her—not faltering, but striding out like a warrior. O Shining One!” and he raised his anxious face to the rising orb on the eastern rim. “Keep my wife and son alive until I come at their captors with Widow-maker, your gift. Keep that chief of the Fishers alive, also—let nothing befall him save at my hand.”
He trotted ahead on his grim lone hunt.
In the early afternoon of this third day, he came out from among heights, hills and thickets upon a rocky stretch of plain. Beyond was a ridge of gray granite, with a gnarled oak tree growing at its foot, the leaves turning tawny with autumn’s first frosts. The multitude of footmarks, so easy to trace across the soil of forest or meadow, was all but lost on this hard surface. Hok went more than half by guess, up the ridge to the backbone of rock at the top.
It was hot underfoot, with a heat more than that of the autumn sun. Hok paused, looking this way and that. Beyond was more timber, but sparse-grown and stunted by the wind that blew from the sea—he could see that, too, on the horizon, a chill gray gleam like the light reflected from Widow-maker. To his right rose a shimmer in the air, as from a great fire. Hok scowled.
“Have men camped here?” he asked himself, looked again, and crossed the rocks to investigate. The footing grew hotter to his moccasins, but he did not see the cause until he was almost upon it—a deep pit, round and as wide across, perhaps, as a man is tall. That pit was filled with fire, blue and orange, with. no discernible bottom or source of fuel supply. Hok came as close as he could, gazing down.
“The Lair of Fire,” he said aloud. “I have heard of this place from traveler guests at my cave. It has always been thus, though nobody knows where the fire gets its fuel’—fire cannot bum rocks and earth.[7] It is a strange matter.” He peered into the Lair of Fire again. “It is a good omen that my path should cross here, for fire is of the Shining One, who watches over me at this place.”
Silently the blue-yellow flames fluttered, and one of them rose momentarily, pale and lean as the blade of Widow-maker.
“The fire makes me a sign—a sign concerning my weapon,” Hok decided. “What is it that you wish to say, fire?”
There was a rose-tinted swirl in the blue heart of the glow, and several flames sprang up, seeming to pen like begging fingers toward him. Hok drew away.
“You want your gift again,” he said accusingly. “No, fire. Widow-maker is a gift from the Shining One, not a loan. I need the gift to win back what the Fisher chief dared to steal from me.”
The pit glowed redly, as if with sudden anger, and Hok made hasty departure. Going down the other side of the ridge, his feet gratefully found cooler earth. But his mind remained troubled.
Why had there been a sign at the Lair of Fire that he must give up his sword? Did the Shining One repent of his generosity? Was Hok to be warned from the adventure he had undertaken? The big man scowled and wagged his golden head, as though to banish the disturbing mystery from his thoughts. He picked up the trail of Djoma once more, and made speed upon it.
NIGHT had fallen, nippy and moon-less, upon a broad bay of the ocean where Djoma and his followers had their habitation. To seaward flickered a multitude of red lights, the supper-fires of the village, seeming to float on the surface of the quiet water. On shore, just above high tide mark, burned a single blaze of driftwood, with a greenish tinge to it because of the crusting of salt on the sticks. Near by a dugout canoe had been dragged up. Within the circle of light squatted two black-haired sentries, each with his spear thrust into the sand beside him. After the manner of sentries since time’s beginning, they grumbled at extra duty.
“How can this pursuer, if he is but one man as it seems, be a threat to our entire people?” demanded one. “I think that Djoma is too easily frightened.”
“Do not let him hear you say so,” councilled his companion, “or he will prove his courage by dashing out your brains with his axe. I saw that sunhaired giant at work the night he raided our camp, and he is a fierce one. Perhaps Djoma is right to leave a guard on shore here, where he must come if he is to attack our village. Yet I wish it was another than I who sat here with you.” The warrior stretched and yawned. “I am weary from much marching and fighting.”
The first speaker sat up more alertly, his ears seeming to prick. “What was that?” he demanded sharply. “It sounded like a scraping or crawling upon the beach, just there beyond the firelight.” And he pointed.
The other laughed. “You hear strange things because you are young and nervous. When you are my age, and have stood many night watches, you will be calm and brave. That noise was a snake, or a nesting bird.”
The younger man had forgotten his criticism of Djoma. “If the stranger comes—” he began.
“We will both stay awake,” his comrade comforted him. “The light of our fire will shine on that strange weapon as he comes. We will both yell, and charge him from either side. Help will co
me to us at once, many men in canoes from the village.”
The plan recommended itself to the nervous one. “We might kill him before any came,” he suggested. “Then Djoma would praise us, perhaps make us sub-chiefs. Listen! I heard the noise again.”
His more sober companion had heard it likewise. They both rose swiftly, seizing their spears.
“It came from directly landward of our fire,” whispered the less agitated warrior. “Let us move forward a little distance apart, so that we can come up on any stranger from both sides. Then, if he attacks one of us, the other can stab him in the back.”
“Well said,” muttered the youth approvingly. They advanced with stealthy strides, weapons poised. Again the cooler head of the two was struck with an idea. He snapped his fingers for attention, then pointed with his spear toward a great tussock of broad-leafed vegetation that thrust up from the sand, the only nearby cover that might shelter a man. The two tightened their grips on their weapons, and charged.
AS one they hurled themselves upon the tussock, as one they plunged their points into its heart—just an instant too late.
For Hok, within that shelter, had divined their purpose. He had leaped back and up, just as the spears crossed in the tangle of leaves and drove deep into the sand on which he had been crouching. Next moment he shot out his two long arms in opposite directions, fastening a hand on each of the swarthy throats of his would be slayers.
Two hairy mouths fell open to scream for help, but Hok’s quick grip had been sure and tight. No wind could come from panting lungs to give those mouths voice. Letting go of their spears, the two men strove frantically to tear away the giant fingers that strangled them. But Hok, strongest man of his time and country, laughed harshly, while his double clutch tightened as mercilessly and progressively as rawhide lashings in a hot, dry sun.
The Complete Hok the Mighty Page 21