The 53rd Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK; Geoff St. Reynard

by Geoff St. Reynard

  It clasped its hands together and shook them. Then it stuck the right one toward me again. I realized that it wished to touch my own hand!

  I shifted my bow to my left hand—so sure had I grown in these few brief seconds that it meant no harm—and touched its hairy fingertips. Instantly my hand was enfolded in a firm hearty grip, and moved rapidly up and down. I cannot explain how or why the emotion swept over me, but immediately I felt a warm friendship for this shaggy being, such a feeling as I had never held before for anything save my fellow men and women of the valleys.

  And there was something else. The gesture felt ... felt natural, and proper, and almost familiar, as though I had done it many times before!

  Mystified, I drew back my hand as he released it; and once more we stood staring at each other without sound.

  * * * *

  A movement at last caught my eye, and staring over his shoulder I saw two great dogwolves breast a wall and come loping toward us. With a warning cry I threw up my bow. In the time it took me to change hands on it, he had peered back; then he gave a cry, remarkably manlike in tone, and waved urgently at my face. Scowling, I dodged back to get a shot at the foremost brute. At once the hairy thing knelt, as if pleading, and the pair of dogwolves, coming up, fawned on him with lolling scarlet tongues.

  My jaw dropped and I gasped, dumbfounded.

  The fierce beasts were his friends!

  I slung my bow over my shoulder, but took the precaution of grasping my bone hatchet. The dogwolves stared at me, their hot eyes as puzzled as no doubt my own were; but they made no move toward me.

  The hairy being stood up and came forward to touch me lightly on the chest. Then he shook my right hand up and down again. The dogwolves crept on their bellies to our shadows, and one of them, a giant of a fellow, touched my foot with his wet nose, whining a little.

  If there has ever been a more astonished person than I was at that second, he must have fainted away with his wonder. I know I grew quite giddy. Now, I said to myself, if Halfspoor were to amble up to me and ask for the loan of my knife, I think he would get it without a question or a raised eyebrow!

  The big carnivores lay panting beside us, and the dark rough-coated manlike creature rubbed his chin and stared at me from those deepset eyes; which I could make out now, as they were glittering in a stray beam of sunlight that fell across his strange face.

  He said something to me. It was not an animal’s noise, but a reasonable imitation of human speech, except that none of the words were familiar.

  At once I remembered the young hunter who had come to our glen several years before, from a country far to the north. His language, while much the same as ours, had words in it which we had never heard; and the elders of the tribe said that probably other folk, living in other isolated places, must have developed words of their own too.

  * * * *

  This being, of course, seemed to me at first no more a man than were the dogwolves at his feet. He had the same general form, yes, and perhaps even the exact conformation of features under that mat of hair; but what human by any stretch of the imagination could ever grow such a pelt?

  Nonetheless, his voice was pleasing enough to the ear, and his speech seemed separated into distinct words, though as I have said, none of them were familiar to me.

  I said, “Friend what-is-it, you undoubtedly know what you’re talking about, but I do not. I would give a new set of hunting arrows to be able to understand you.”

  He uttered more words, pointing off to the west where the tall raw cliffs were even now shutting off the lower half of the sun.

  “Yes,” I said, “evening comes on, and you’re afraid I’ll wander over into the country of The Nameless. Is that it? Never you fear, my friend, I’ll not go a step farther in that direction.”

  But he took my hand, hesitantly and as though afraid that I might be offended; and he tried to lead me westward.

  I hung back, and the dogwolves growled a little, but desisted when he spoke to them. Then he signed to me, as plainly as one could imagine, that there was food where he was taking me; and so because of my grumbling belly I suffered him to lead me off among the ruins of this fabulous place.

  As we walked I thought of Lora, and her distress in the morning when she would find me still away; but not for anything would I tread the paths of the Fearful Forest at night. I must find a sleeping place nearby.

  We passed the flat-faced precipice with the five lines of square openings, where Halfspoor’s brown lady had been sitting. I pointed up and said, “Knifetooth bear!” He cocked his head at me. I hunched my shoulders, put two fingers athwart my lips for fangs, roared like a bear and said, “Knifetooth!” again.

  The hairy one stopped, opened his mouth—he had teeth as even and white as my own—and out of his throat came the exact duplicate of old Halfspoor’s battle cry. The dogwolves leaped and barked excitedly. I nodded agreement and said, “Bear!”

  He said something guttural that sounded like oorsa. I made him repeat it several times. It occurred to me that ursus is another of our names for old knifetooth; and my wonder grew apace.

  Pointing to myself, I then exclaimed, “Ahmusk!”

  He said my name with no difficulty, and then seemed rather confused; for he tapped his own black chest and said, “Ahmusk?”

  I tried again. I touched the bigger of the two canines and said, “Dogwolf.”

  He mastered that more or less, and in return gave me his name for the brute, which was poort or spoort, I could not tell which. His sibilants were tongued so lightly that they were difficult to hear.

  * * * *

  I indicated myself and said, “Man.” I prodded him and repeated it. Then I realized consciously for the first time that I was now regarding him as a species of human. He had taken me for kin before, as his former use of my name as a generic term plainly proved.

  “Ahmusk,” said I once more, beating my bosom.

  “Ahmusk,” said he, pointing; and then, laying a shining-haired paw on his own breast, “Dy-lee!”

  “Dy-lee,” I said, charming him no end, for he capered grotesquely and nodded his head till the lank thatch flew.

  Well, now we were acquainted. My pleasure at finding this strange brute-man was out of all proportion to its apparent importance. I suppose it was reaction to my hours-long suspicion that I had played the complete fool in coming into this country, in following the terrible Halfspoor, in ignoring the age-old forbiddance against crossing into the land of The Nameless.... Now all seemed to have come out well. Halfspoor, who had been proving more than a match for me, had been harried off, evidently on orders from this Dy-lee creature, by a pack of dogwolves. The Nameless were nowhere in evidence. Food and possibly a tree for the night were in the offing. And I had made a wonderful discovery, a brain-shaking find; for if I was right, I had chanced upon a new branch of the family of men.

  Through the ruins we went, the dogwolves at our heels; and we were as delighted with one another as two boys who have been given their father’s old bone hatchet to play with.

  * * * *

  The silver dusk came up from the earth, spawned from the shadows of the many ruinous walls and ramparts; and far ahead I saw a scarlet eye wink out at us from the darkening cliff. I clutched Dy-lee’s shaggy arm involuntarily, and hissed at him, as though he understood the words, “The Nameless!”

  He understood, at any rate, that I was frightened; for he patted me awkwardly on the back two or three times, and said something in his language meant, by the tone, to be reassuring.

  A hunter could not hang back where a brute-man like this went on. He obviously knew what the scarlet eye was, and seemed utterly without fear. And so after a time we had come near enough to it for me to see that it was no ghastly orb of a Nameless ogre, but the mouth of a cave, fairly high up the raw cliff, shining with the reflection of a fire deep within it.

  Evidently Dy-lee meant to go into the cave, for soon we had struck a well-worn path and were traveling upward.
I imagined that there were friends of his there, with whom he would eat before seeking his tree for the night. Overcoming my dislike of caves with a wrenching effort, I followed him up the path and stood on the threshold of the grotto, having a last look about me. From this vantage point I could see the glimmering of fires from several other great holes which had been hidden from the plain.

  Then I went into the cave of Dy-lee the hairy man.

  * * * *

  The fire, leaping merrily within a ring of stones, heated the long tunnel-like cavern for many paces on all sides; and about it, some cooking meat, some engaged in low-voiced conversation, and some making or repairing noose-traps, snares for rabbits and birds such as our children often play with, were a score or so of the long-maned people. My last doubt as to their humanity vanished at sight of the flames, for no animal can control fire. Except for their pelts, these folks might have been my own.

  Some of them sprang to their feet as we entered, waving their arms and shouting. Dy-lee quieted them with a crisp word, and putting his hand on my shoulder he made a speech at which they all came crowding around, each one wanting to shake my hand up and down. It was all wonderfully friendly and heart-warming. Instinctively I loved these people, and pitied them a little, too, for that they must live so close to the terrible country of The Nameless.

  At thought of those malignant beings, I remembered Laq the guardian, whose arrow (I felt sure) had goaded the bear Halfspoor into attacking me; but at once I put the bitter thought from me, and shaking the hand of one dark fellow while grinning amiably into the almost featureless face of another, I moved to the fire and was given a haunch of hare, all smoking and hot from the spits above the flames. After I had wolfed this, while the whole company stared at me and chattered among themselves. Dy-lee handed me some meat off the brisket of a doe. I wondered how they managed to catch deer, for the only traps in evidence were the small rabbit-snares, while none of them carried lances or bows or even metal knives, but had some crude flint daggers with which they made shift to cut up their meat. Then my eye fell on several of the tame poorts, or dogwolves, lounging insolently about among the hairy folk; and I recalled their pack chivvying Halfspoor over the ruins. There was the answer! Incredible though it was, these men must have trained their four-footed companions to pull down deer—even stag and bison for all I knew—for the masters’ larder.

  * * * *

  I sat down on the floor by the ring of firestones, weary with tracking and fighting and surprises. At once all of them came close to me and seated themselves too, clamoring good-humoredly for their dinner. They still peered curiously at me, but with such a friendly air that no offense could be taken. As we ate, Dy-lee pointed to various members of the group, or family, as it possibly was, and told me their names, which I did my best to master. The oldest of them, a seven-foot giant of a man with very long grizzled-silver hair falling in cascades all over his body, was called Dy-vee, or Dy-veece, I could not be sure which. He seemed to be the chief, or the grandfather, for when a bevy of young females began to giggle loudly together, he spoke to them with authority and they were hushed.

  The woman whom I took to be Dy-lee’s mate was a slim, high-breasted she, whose hair was sleeker and finer than his, and on whose face the shag was lighter and not of so matted a nature. It was on this shy creature that I first perceived the color of the cave folk’s skin; when I was told her name (which was Zheena), she put back the long hair of her forehead with a very feminine gesture, and I saw that just around her eyes, less deepsunk than the males’, there was no fur at all. The skin was white, like a winter’s baby before it is tanned by the sun, and seemed smooth and firm. I resolved, when I should know Dy-lee better, to have a try at burrowing in the nap of his face to see if he too were white beneath it.

  So we got through the meal somehow, between introductions and polite gestures and much high laughter at our mispronunciations and general inability to understand each other. When I had eaten all I could hold, I leaned back against a wall of this cheerful cavern, with my hands pillowing my head, and because my stomach was full and my heart light, I began to sing.

  The effect was that of a lightning bolt striking among them. They stood petrified for long seconds, and then came swarming from everywhere to hear me; and I, whose voice is admittedly like that of a wounded bison bellowing to its herd, stopped my song with a grunt and stared openmouthed at the shaggy people. Dy-lee made quick eager motions to me, opening his mouth time after time, and presently it was borne in upon me that they wanted me to sing again. They wanted Bear-throat to sing!

  * * * *

  So I sang. I caroled a love ditty, which made all the females roll their eyes and sigh; and I chanted a song of the hunt, which set all the bare hairy toes to beating on the rock floor. I sang all the songs I could recollect of my mother’s repertory, the rollicking ones and the sad ones, the lullaby tunes and the haunting melodies that told our legends of the far olden times. For the space of at least two hours I sang to them, and when at last I stopped, for lack of breath and rawness of throat, and because I could not remember another song to save me, you would have thought the cave was falling in, such a noise they made. I saw then that many, many more had pressed into the place, until it was packed with scores of the hairy folk, and there was no vacant space anywhere in the grotto except for the little cleared place on which I sat. Even their great dogwolves were lying about watching me with quizzically cocked heads, and looking as though they enjoyed it.

  They liked my singing! The all-but-tuneless caterwauling of Bear-throat the hunter enchanted them to immobility! I could scarcely believe it, even though they had listened to me for so long.

  I pointed at Dy-lee and by gestures, asked him to sing. He shook his head and shrugged, an especially human movement; as plain as if he had said it in words, I knew that neither he nor any of the others had ever known what it was to lift the voice in song. They were a people wholly without music. No wonder my bawling had enthralled them!

  Gradually, the cavern cleared; although they obviously wanted to stay and listen to me, and gaze wide-eyed on my bronze hairless skin, old grizzled Dy-veece shepherded them out into the night with gruff barks of command. When only the family, or whatever this group might be, was left, he came to me and after patting me a few times and shaking my hand up and down, handed me a sleeping fur. It was cave cat, and very like my own blankets at home. I looked to be led out to a tree then, but saw that the folk were one by one lying down near the fire, wrapped in their furs and evidently intent on sleeping in the cave. I think this astonished me as much as anything I had seen in all that strange day, for who ever heard of sleeping anywhere but on a tree platform? Nevertheless, I could scarcely wound the feelings of my hosts by going out alone and thus refusing their hospitality; so with a weak smile at Dy-lee and his mate, who were watching me anxiously, I spread the great yellow pelt on the bare rock, laid myself down on it, flipped the edges over me, and closed my eyes with the certainty that I would not get a blink of sleep all that night.

  * * * *

  The next thing I knew was that I was very warm and drowsy, and that something was pressing cozily against me from both right and left. I opened my eyes, yawned, and found that I was flanked by a pair of the tame dogwolves, who were snoring gently into my ears. The fire was crackling under half-a-dozen spits loaded with meat, a number of the dark-haired people were moving about quietly, and the sun was beating straight in the door of the cavern with a cheerful orange light.

  Dy-lee, seeing that I was awake, brought me water in half the shell of some great nut which I did not recognize; and Zheena, his mate, presented me with a choice of fruits set on a wooden slab that had been rounded and cleverly decorated with bright dyes.

  After rinsing my mouth and eating an apple, I rose and stepped over a dogwolf to go to the opening and look out on a beautiful autumn day, crisp and clear as the one before had been. Then, after a few deep satisfying breaths, I returned and made a hearty breakfast of meat
in company with all the cave folk.

  When we had finished, Dy-lee led me down the path to the place of ruins. By the vivid sunlight I could see that the walls at the base of the cliff were somewhat less shattered than the first ones I had come upon; and also that they were definitely no accidents of nature, but constructed. I asked by gesture if his race had built these walls, and he signed to me, No.

  Shortly we came to an enclosure that still bore its roof. I went and peered into this strange square place, and Dy-lee kindly handed me a long torch of bound reeds soaked in black oily matter and lighted, the purpose of his carrying which on this bright morning I had not hitherto understood. Now I realized that he meant me to see everything there was to be seen, whether open or hidden from the light; and I smiled my thanks as I took the brand. Dy-lee and his two dogwolves followed me into the place.

  The roof was of stone, or perhaps of a stone, for I could detect no crack or joined place in all its surface. It was shored up by lesser stones, long and thick and ornamented with carvings that resembled the tendrils of the burrowflower. These must have been scratched into the rock with a metal tool, I think; though it certainly would have taken the whole lifetime of a man to accomplish all the carving I saw there. I had never seen or heard of anyone carving deliberate designs in anything before. The effect was lovely, albeit startling. Our glen-folk decorated many things with dyes made of vegetables and roots and minerals; but none had ever thought to adorn wood or stone with carvings. And here again I was astonished, for after the first moment or two, it seemed a natural and beautiful thing to do. It was like the shaking of the hands, something that was surprising only at the first acquaintance.