The blackened plain was broader than it had seemed from the forest. I trotted briskly over it, avoiding the stinking pools, and on all its grim surface nothing moved except myself. The pugmarks of Halfspoor went straight as an owl’s death-strike toward the broken cairns and ragged rocks. Biting my lips with determination, I followed them. I was in a strange state of single-mindedness, like a man drunken on fermented tree fern sap who knows only that he wants to do one thing and that, no matter how ridiculous it may be, nothing will stop him from doing it.
* * * *
Already I had gone a thousand paces farther than any man of my race—save the guardians—had ever gone before. The earth beneath my bare toes was gritty, almost like powdered stone, and I did not wonder that nothing grew here except in the scummy pools of stagnant rainwater.
Now the first of the queer cairns was before me. Halfspoor had gone around it. So did I.
A shadow moved in the far corner of my left eye. I gazed swiftly toward it, but it was gone.
A shudder ran up the back of my legs and quivered across my shoulders till my hands shook. Yet my stalking-madness would not let me be long afraid.
Here was a plot of ground between two walls of unevenly-piled rocks. Trails of jackal-rats threaded its smooth surface, and across Halfspoor’s prints ran those of a big lone dogwolf. I was bewildered. Could this be the country of The Nameless, over which even the eagles feared to soar? Or did it lie, perhaps, beyond those bleak cliffs yonder?
Here Halfspoor had caught himself a jackal-rat. Said I not that he was a foul feeder? He had torn the scavenger in two and spent five or ten minutes in wolfing down the tenderer portions.
Where was he heading, this temerarious bear? What curious siren call was luring him (and quite possibly me) to destruction?
I paused by a wall, to pick out with the point of my knife a thorn that had been working its way into my heel. This wall, now: it appeared to have been built a-purpose. The base was straight and made of thick square blocks, the upper rows knocked a little out of line but still fairly even. Between the stones was a crumbly, grainy material, and in places it still adhered to the rock in lumps and patches. I scratched my head over it, forgetting Halfspoor. Suppose, now, a man wanted to build a wall of such huge stones—provided he found a way to move them in the first place, for they were enormously heavy—would he not concoct some gummy or cohesive substance with which to hold them together? And in the course of time, of many moons and years, would this substance not possibly harden and then decay, leaving traces such as I now pried away with my thumbnail?
But what would a man want with a wall like this?
* * * *
A light shone in my mind. Why, if he had such a wall erected across one end of a glen, it might keep the carnivores from his tribe’s trees, and there would be no need for more than one or two night watchers!
If I lived to return to our valley, I would lay this idea before my people. It was amazingly simple, and yet new. Surely no one had ever thought of it before.
Well, I went on through the rocky ruins.
Halfspoor was heading for the cliffs. In this bad unfamiliar soil it was hard to judge the age of his traces, but I thought he could not be more than half an hour ahead of me now.
Again a shadow moved just beyond the range of my vision, and again when I looked around it had gone.
I thought of Laq. I should have traced his footprints at the edge of the wood and discovered the truth concerning that arrow.
Shadows....
I was not exactly happy. But I traveled on over Halfspoor’s trail, committed to the rash impulsive adventure beyond recall. At one point I passed a lair, dug out beneath one of the shapeless cairns and lined with torn fur, which stunk of dogwolf; the bones of many big hares littered the ground before its mouth, but there were none of the fierce occupants at home just then, and I passed on. There were more signs of beasts hereabouts than one could find in all the valleys back beyond Sunset Fields, and my amazement grew within me. This was not what the guardians had told us concerning the country of The Nameless, they who were doom and destruction to everything that drew breath.
Here was a place where Halfspoor had seated himself to rest, in a corner of the ancient walls. Tiny tufts of grizzled fur were left sticking to the rough surface, where the bear had rubbed his back contentedly over the stones. I inhaled deeply of his scent. He was not far ahead now!
* * * *
Indeed he was not; less than two hundred cautious paces had I gone when his mighty frame rose before me, towering up beyond a rock so abruptly that I thought he must have heard me and lain in wait. Then I realized, even as my fingers flew in a panic to my quiver, that his back was toward me and he was staring forward and up, making a guttural pleading sort of noise in his chest. I could scarcely shoot him in the back (it would only have enraged him anyway), so I slipped off to the left and crept along behind a low broken wall until I judged I was opposite him. Carefully I raised my head. There he was, all fourteen feet of him, his monstrous head tipped back and his mouth open, so that his twin fangs in profile seemed but a single terrible yellow tusk. I might have lanced an arrow through his cranium then, but ... well, Ahmusk the hunter is no assassin. When the day comes on which I dare not fight fairly, even with a knifetooth bear, then I shall break my bow and take to garland-weaving.
I stared up to see what he was moaning at. Before him at a little distance rose a thing like a flat-faced precipice, which I had been watching and wondering about for some minutes. It appeared to have been constructed, like the low walls I had examined; but its stones were even larger than theirs, and its overall surface much smoother. At regular intervals, and in series of evenly spaced lines, across this uncanny cliff, there ran large square openings, like many blind eyes in an ogre. There were five of these horizontal lines of holes, rising up until the top of the cliff all shattered and craggy put an end to them. I would say this strange erection was more than seventy feet high.
Framed in one of the holes on the second level sat another knifetooth bear, deep brown where Halfspoor was grizzled, smaller than the old scoundrel by a third of his bulk, and—my word on it!—an expression of coyness about her shaggy face that nearly made me burst out laughing. This was the lodestone which had dragged him inexorably over the brooks and through the Fearful Forest, even into the land of The Nameless. A female! A bear-wench!
She glared at him sidelong, her black nose pointed down and her comparatively short two-foot fangs digging into her shoulder; while Halfspoor, giddy and fatuous with love, made his drooling noises of courtship.
* * * *
I sat down with a bump—he was oblivious to me and to everything but his light-o’-love—and chuckled helplessly. Then I frowned. What should I do? Leap up and dance to attract his attention? Or leave him to his wooing and trust to run across his trail another day? You will understand that my stalking-fever, which even the country of The Nameless had not been able to dispel, was misted away by this development as though it had never been. Poor old Halfspoor! It would be a scurvy trick to interrupt him now with death.
And even as I thought these comradely thoughts, the whine of an arrow came from nowhere and on its heels the angry squall of the giant bear. I twisted round and looked over the wall. There was a shaft, fleshed in his furry thigh; and Halfspoor was gazing at me with no friendliness whatever.
It was no time for idle wondering as to the source of that arrow. Indeed, I think I knew instinctively who had sent it over my head into the courting bruin. But as I leaped the scattered rocks and dodged the higher walls of that ruinous place, I was seeking only an advantageous battleground, not the stealthy prowler with the bow. At my back I could hear the wrathful snorting of the knifetooth bear, the swift thud-thud of his enormous paws, and the rattle of stones dislodged by his whirlwind passage.
My bow was in my hand, a lean arrow nocked on the cord. Hastily as I ran I gripped two others between the fingers of my left hand. Skirting a heap of gray
lichen-grown rubble, I whirled on my toes and sent the first missile back at him. When I could risk a glance again, he had fallen a little behind, being some forty long paces in the rear, and was swatting impatiently at the broken shaft protruding from his thigh. I think my own shot had missed him, and considering my haste, I was not surprised.
I halted and taking a decent aim I loosed one at his head. At the same moment he roared loudly, opening his immense mouth to its full extent. Luck not being with me, the arrow glanced off one of his overgrown fangs with a sharp click, which appeared to startle Halfspoor considerably, because he stopped dead and blinked down his muzzle in a quaint way. I shot the third of my arrows and tore a long red furrow up one gray-sprinkled cheek. Then, as he was nearly atop me in four sudden raging bounds, I fled like a hare amongst the ruins. His coughing and bellowing echoed like implacable thunder in my ears.
* * * *
There was a deep and narrow gut of a trench that ran between two high stone walls. In jumping it I had an idea; doubled back, narrowly missed being decapitated by a swipe of one savage paw, and dived over the rocks into this curious thoroughfare. Scuttling like a jackal-rat, I went on toes and fingers off to the right, with Halfspoor’s vociferance threatening to crack my eardrums. Two or three times he reached down for a blow at my back, and I actually felt the wind of his pad’s thrust on my nape. Then he darted ahead, if such a titanic monster may be said to dart, and leaning over one wall he waited for me. Clever brute! He would scoop me out of my ditch like a fish from a runlet, would he? I vaulted the wall opposite to his side and after one hasty shot flew into a crazy labyrinth of ancient ramparts and disintegrating inclosures. An insane bawling told me I had probably hit him again. I had ten arrows left. My confidence was growing. Only let me find a tall cairn to scale, and I would make Halfspoor into a positive porcupine with those ten missiles.
A sun-blind owl sat in a filthy nest among fallen blocks of stone. As I dashed past, it blundered out and flew into my face, beating its heavy wings and jabbing furiously at my eyes with its little hooked bill. I fended it off with the bow, gripped my bone-headed hatchet and with a long-armed glancing swing hit it under one of the big dazzled eyes. It fell away, screeching, and I ran on. Halfspoor’s grunt was close behind.
Then, some distance off, I caught the sound of howling, and knew that a pack of fierce dogwolves were running on a scent. I hoped they would not come here to complicate matters.
* * * *
There was a place where broken walls flanked a row of stones which rose gradually upward, somewhat like a ladder placed halfway between horizontal and vertical; that is, a man could step on one stone, then up on the next, then the next, and so on, until he found himself quite high in the air. The row ended on a flat floor open to the winds of heaven, some twenty-odd feet from the ground; and here and there around this flat place irregular rocky projections rose. I had seen enough of this country by now to know that the projections must once have been another wall, rising to enclose this flat floor. Why someone, or something, had gone to so much trouble to make these ancient walls, I could not imagine. At first I had thought it must have been a truly gigantic being, to lift the huge stones. Now I had seen so many inclosures roofed over (as we roof over our platforms with thick fronds during the brief weeks of the winter) at a height of no more than nine or ten feet, that I could not believe a giant had made them. Why should he make a place in which he would have to lie down, never standing? But on the other hand, that may have been the case. It was hardly the time for philosophical speculations. I trotted up the stone ramp briskly and cast my eyes about for a good shooting-nook.
Halfspoor was hot after me. He dropped to all fours and came up the graduated stones as though he had been using such conveniences all his life—and it was not truly so different from climbing a rocky hill, except that this was smoother going. I dashed for a heap of rubble at one corner. Leaping this, I crouched down as Halfspoor hit the top at a run. I shot at him and my ill luck was still with me, for again my shaft glanced off one of his frightful tusks. Surely an evil fog lay over my eyes that day! He charged in my direction and I had time for but one more swift arrow, which I had the good sense not to aim at his head. It buried half its length rather low in his shoulder and he squalled resentfully. Then I slipped over the edge and dropped to the ground.
* * * *
I had calculated the drop well. It was too much for his bulk. He loomed above me, raging. I put an arrow in his cheek, and he bit down hard and spat out the head and part of the shaft. I drew a good bead on his eye but he turned much more quickly than I had anticipated and the missile whined away in the sky. He headed back for the climbing stones. I looked about me. There was a broken inclosure nearby in one wall of which was an entrance like a cave mouth, perhaps seven feet high by two broad: it seemed as good a place as any to dodge into, and I did. There I awaited his coming, controlling my breathing as best I could in order that my next shots would not be so shamefully wasted.
Then I heard the dogwolf pack much closer. They yapped and yowled, and mingled with their excited noise was the petulant grunt of Halfspoor. Still I waited, but he did not come. Then I knew by the sounds that the dogwolves had surrounded him. Here was an odd happening! Certainly no dogwolf would attack a knifetooth bear, even though he ran with five score other canines. Only a very silly human hunter would pit himself against old Halfspoor.
But, by my love for Lora, they were shepherding him across the ruins! I caught a glimpse of the old devil backing reluctantly up a mound, and then as I gaped he turned and shambled off down a black ravine, complaining and waving his forepaws angrily. In a great circle they followed him, nipping at his heels, leaping out of range, and keeping up an incessant clamor that sounded like boys teasing a captured cave cat kitten.
I counted the arrows in my quiver. There were six now. Ill luck rode my shoulders that day. Halfspoor should be bleeding to death with eight shafts in his chest and head; instead he had four or five inconsiderable wounds, one of which I had not even given him.
I spat on the ground, wishing I had a drink of water. Ahmusk, mighty stalker of knifetooth bears! I laughed without mirth. Ahmusk, desperate invader of the land of The Nameless. There, now, was a title for a brave man; but I had come here in the grip of hunting-fever, and so little credit attached to me for the deed. I was in a mood to revile myself aloud. I smote my bare thigh and swore heartily. What should I do now about Halfspoor? There was no profit in advertising my presence to the dogwolf pack. They had been known to pull down men if they were hungry.
* * * *
I put my hands to my ears and rubbed them roughly, for of a sudden they were tingling and prickling. It was as though I had heard a high unpleasant sound; but except for the distant uproar of Halfspoor and his annoyers, there was nothing. The country was bewitched, that was it. There was a pause, and then my eardrums thrilled briefly again to something I could not locate or analyze.
I glanced behind me at the inclosure. Roofless, I had the feeling that it must once have been roofed; there were low piles of rock trash all about, as there would have been had the roof—fallen now—been somehow impossibly made of stone. What prodigies of strength and skill had wrought these incredible walls? I shook my head, and turned back to the entrance.
There was something approaching slowly over the ruined structures to my right. I looked at it with widening eyes. It was about a hundred paces off. For one sickening moment I believed it to be some horrid kind of ogre, made of muck or rotted flesh or some such grisly matter; it seemed slimy and dead....
Then the sun struck it, and I decided that it was simply covered with long trailing dark hair, which glistened wetly in the rays of the dying sun.
It came on, and my knees smote together while my tongue stuck to the roof of my sudden-dried mouth.
In form it was like a man. Indeed, had a man been smeared with black mud, and then been given a coat of heavy hair, oily or permanently damp hair, he might well have resembled
this creature. I judged it to be about six feet or a little over, my own height; and so later it proved to be. It moved oddly, with a sort of halting gait, weaving its arms to keep its balance on the jagged rocks. I could see two deep blackish pits in its head where its eyes would be, and matted straggly hair fell lifelessly from its crown. It was naked, like an animal.
I thought of my mother’s old songs of the ogre-breed, which can take all manner of shapes, but often emulate mankind, building their frames magically from dead beasts or from the masses of decomposing vegetable matter in the forests. Maybe my first idea had been right, and this was an ogre of mire and pelts, all wickedness.
At any rate, it was coming at me, if rather slowly; and so I put an arrow to the string, being minded to die bravely as becomes a hunter of the glen-folk.
Seeing me raise the bow, it waved at me in protest, and with so human a gesture that I could not shoot it, but only held my weapon ready. It then raised one hand to its face, with something bright in its fingers (it had fingers, I could see, like a man’s), and my ears tingled again to the unheard sound or vibration which had bothered me previously.
* * * *
From the ruins behind it rose the noise of dogwolves barking. It nodded, like a man who would say to himself, That is good. Then it came on with its slow, almost apologetic pace. I lowered my bow. Somehow I felt that it meant me no injury.
When it was no more than half-a-dozen feet off, it halted; and we stared at each other curiously.
It was a hairy brute, to be sure, but evidently no ogre. Its thatch glistened darkly, and seemed of the consistency of a cave cat’s mane, but without curls; lank, long, and thick. In the places where this mantle did not grow, as on the cheeks and forehead and on the rounded portions of the limbs, there was a short dusky shag, a nap like that on a knifetooth bear’s muzzle. The effect was startling, but on close inspection not really ugly, and wholly without the impression of terror which my first sight of it had brought. It appeared to be watching me steadily, though its eyes were entirely hidden in their sunken shadowed wells. Finally it put up its right hand to the level of its waist and held it there. I could not see the significance of the gesture. After a moment it thrust the open hand out to me in several short jabs. The motion was entirely without menace. I could make nothing of it.
The 53rd Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK; Geoff St. Reynard Page 13