Helgvor of the Blue River

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  The two hordes collided. Young and strong men left life. Heigoun, Kzahm, Helgvor, with the more muscular of the fighters, struck with clubs, breaking bones. Others, armed with stakes, aimed for the body, disemboweled their antagonists. Many used the spear, striking for the soft places. While the spring of the Tzohs appeared to triumph at first, the Ougmars soon were masters.

  Heigoun and Kzahm came face to face. Their bulks were alike. Both had the deep chest of the bear, monstrous shoulders and legs like oak branches. Their clubs clashed like rock on rock, and the impact was so terrific that both staggered back.

  Astonished, each now aware of the strength of his enemy, they hesitated, eyed each other, and planned clever strokes. Rasher, Heigoun resumed the fight, and his swinging club would have crushed Kzahm’s skull had not the other parried. The Black Boar swung on the flank, mightily. But an Ougmar warrior shoved the club aside, hitting Kzahm on the shoulder. Heigoun got home two blows immediately, one to the other shoulder, the other on the neck.

  Kzahm fell to the ground and Heigoun shattered his ribs and his limbs.

  The defeat of their chief discouraged the Tzohs, and only a few kept on fighting. The mass suddenly became as does under the claws of the leopards, like stags before the tiger, and perished without combat, struck down by the hatchets, the clubs and the heavy stakes.

  Akroun looked down upon the corpses and the bodies of those not yet dead. The women had come to greet their men, who dripped with fresh gore.

  “The Ougmars are mighty! The Ougmars have annihilated their enemies!” the chief proclaimed, tossing a spear into the air. All the warriors acknowledged his worth. His reputation would last a long time, for the hero of the day was much too young to command.

  “Akroun is a great chief!” Shtra declared solemnly.

  “Helgvor is a great warrior!” the chief replied.

  Heigoun, somber, sullen, eyed Helgvor steadily.

  The clan was taking the women back to the Red Peninsula, but Helgvor, with Iouk and Akr, sought Glava’s tracks.

  The left bank having proved fruitless, Helgvor had thought of the right shore and the islands, particularly of the tiny islets on which animals were scarce. Akr explored ardently, for he loved to seek for trails above all things, loved to direct the dog. Days passed without result, until one morning when Akr picked up a spear with a broken head. Poorly chipped, the stone point was not the work of Ougmar or Tzoh, while the Gwahs used only stakes and stones.

  Later, a second indice was found on an island. Helgvor, Iouk and Akr found ashes, a squirrel skin, the shell of a tortoise blackened with smoke.

  XVIII. Sacrifice to the Red Moon

  Glava waited with her limbs stiff with horror. Terrorized, the little jackal had fled. There were pauses, absolute silence, then crawlings, creepings, heavy breathing. Stake in hand, ready to fight, Glava was moved by the instinct of hunted beasts, and felt in advance the anguish of death.

  The attack was brutal as the leap of the leopard, sly as the onslaught of wolves. The Gwahs, springing together in a somber, moving mass, overpowered their victim. The only blow she contrived to deliver dropped a Gwah, but ten arms were around her like black reptiles, and collective strength vanquished individual vigor. Blows with sharp stones dazed her. Lianas were wound around her limbs.

  “The Gwahs are the masters of the daughter of the Blue River!” Ouak clamored.

  Because his ruses had succeeded, his authority increased. All the others thought merely of drinking warm blood, of eating flesh, but Ouak was sensitive to the mysterious allure of the tall, flexible maid, whose light complexion made her so startling among the black masks surrounding her.

  “The foreign woman must be killed!’’ one of the men said.

  “The Gwahs shall kill her,” Ouak agreed, “but she shall be offered in sacrifice to the Red Moon!”

  This was the most important of the rites performed according to ancestral traditions by the Men of the Night. The flesh of beings sacrificed to the Red Moon had particular virtues, and the mention of the sacrifice recalled evenings of absolute happiness. Even the greediest accepted the delay, and Ouak had gained time to think of some way to be alone with the captive.

  “The daughter of the River shall perish beneath the Pointed Rock!” he added.

  Then, four Gwahs carried Glava through the forest. She closed her eyes, unable to look at these men without frightened disgust. Perhaps she would have suffered less under the claws of the gray bear or the tiger. Racial instinct made the Gwahs more odious than Old Man Urm, than Kzahm with the bison’s head, than even that gigantic Ougmar from whom she had fled. She felt the end approaching.

  They passed between trees older than 100 human generations; grass died in their shade, in their clefts, large as caves, dwelt wild beasts. The trees grew scarcer, the soil was hard and red. Then they came to a pointed rock, in a cluster of black pines.

  Gwahs, men, women and children, emerged as if from the ground, howling hideously, clawing toward the prisoner. Glava thought her life was finished. The hot blood of youth revolted against destruction. Amhao seethed to float in the sky, together with the tall Ougmar warrior who had saved her, the memory of whom made the Gwahs appear more ugly, more sordid.

  The women, ardent as she-wolves, were for putting the captive to death at once.

  “Ouak has heard the voice of the Red Moon,” the chief said, to quiet them.

  The women accepted this explanation but watched over the girl with bloodthirsty jealousy. In vain Ouak used all his ruses but could discover no reason for being alone with the prisoner. In any case, as this was a ritual question, his prestige availed nothing against the opinion of the old men, in whose heads were kept alive the obscure legends.

  A stag was captured alive, and joy increased. It would be sacrificed at the same time as the foreign woman. And the time drew near when the Red Moon would swing into the sky.

  Two men unfastened the lianas binding Glava. Five others came, armed with sharp stakes, and the girl knew she was to die. An old Gwah started a ritual chant, monotonous as the dripping of rain on stones.

  “The Gwahs were born of the Night and the Red Moon yields them strength! The Gwahs are the masters of the forest, and those who walk on all fours fear the stakes and the sharp stones! When strangers come into the forest, the strangers must perish, and the Gwahs must drink their blood! The Gwahs were born of the Night and the Red Moon grants then strength!”

  The men brandished their stakes, the women yelped horribly, and all repeated in chorus, “The strangers must perish, and the Gwahs must drink their blood.”

  Then the old man indicated Glava, and resumed his chant,

  “That woman is a stranger. She shall perish!”

  The stakes menaced the daughter of the Rocks.

  There was a great silence; the Red Moon was about to be born anew. A pale light filtered among the western stars, a cloud was illuminated, and suddenly the Red Moon lifted her disk above the horizon.

  The old man chanted, “Red Moon, Red Moon, who made a pact with our ancestors, here is the stranger! Her blood shall flow before thee, and thou shalt hear her cry of agony!”

  He lifted both arms to give the signal, and his eyes dimmed with terror. Somber silhouettes had leaped from a clump of bushes, came on, numerous as the ants from a heap. Bellowing like bison, impetuous, they attacked.

  They were the Upper Gwahs, whose legs were longer than those of the Lower Tribes, whose hair was spotted as the pelt of the panther, but whose skins were also porous and sweaty. Their thick lips were drawn back on sharp teeth. Often, a generation would pass on without their appearance, but their hatred was eternal.

  Women fled, the males turned their stakes against the invaders, and the battle started, at the end of which the living would eat the dead. Alone beneath the Pointed Rock, Glava was paralyzed by surprise for a moment, then, understanding that her death had been delayed by fate, she sought cover.

  Nearby ran Gwah women, so frightened that they did n
ot recognize the stranger. But when they reached the shadows of the old trees, two of them instinctively leaped upon the daughter of the Rocks.

  She dropped the first one with a blow and, grasping the other by the hair, dragged her to the ground. Bewildered, the others allowed the prisoner to escape, and soon she was a long distance ahead, out of their reach. She no longer felt fatigue nor pain. Drunk with the joy of living, she crossed an immense stretch, and only stopped when tired out.

  The stars twinkled through the leaves, branches palpitated in the wind. She flung her arms wide and dropped to the soil. She slept there, at the mercy of prowling animals.

  When she awoke, the patient Moon had reached the zenith. A night bird flew away like an enormous, dark butterfly. Nearby, animals grazed, and Glava, sitting up, saw herself surrounded by monstrous shapes. The nearest one was as bulky as seven aurochs and resembled a boulder covered with reddish moss. The block of the head ended in a long snake, twisting between white horns, large as the horns of ten bison, which were tusks. Four cylinders, thick as tree-trunks, supported chest and belly.

  Glava recognized the mammoth. For thousands of years such beasts had not inhabited the Land of the Tzohs, and in the territories of Ougmars and Gwahs they grew rarer as the centuries passed. The daughter of the Rocks had first seen mammoths during her flight with Amhao. This one, standing in the moonlight, formed an imperishable image in the eyes of the fugitive.

  Dull fear seized her. She looked at the other mammoths, under the low branches, with the light of the Moon drenching their backs, and because they were so like the first, her amazement did not increase. But the impression made by this giant stirred her to active fear.

  Glava knew that she was in the center of immense forces, any one of which could crush her as she could crush a lizard. The formidable beasts were asleep, and she could hear the rhythm of their breathing. They feared nothing in the murderous forest, neither tiger, lion, gray bear, nor poorly armed Gwahs, and were endangered only when faced by the rhinoceros who occasionally clashed with them, and tried to pierce their bellies with his spike. But the mammoth more often than not crushed him beneath his tremendous weight. And those encounters were so rare that generations of mammoths knew nothing of them.

  For several thousand centuries the ancestors of the mammoths had lived in a dreamy peace. Now the time had come when, upon a warmer Earth, their number dwindled. Those who were to exist for a long time were far north, on plains where water became stone as early as autumn.

  The future did not exist for them: peaceful innocence filled their hearts. But the summers were becoming too hot for them, and on very long days, when the Sun consumed half the night, they plunged their hairy bulks into the river, into lakes, into pools, to refresh themselves. They felt better during the cool autumn months.

  Dawn broke, dimmer than moonlight, then day came, with its bird songs and colored clouds. Glava was no longer afraid. While she had slept, exhausted, still as death, one of the mammoths had investigated her. As she did not move, the instinct of the animal supposed that she lacked that life which troubles other lives. And he readily granted her the small stretch of soil she occupied.

  When the animals awoke, her scent was familiar. All that recurs without bringing annoyance or danger becomes indifferent or loved by the living. The mammoths accepted Glava as they would have accepted a tree or a stag.

  She also felt, although differently, the security of repetition. When the mammoths strode away to seek better pasture, she followed them because she feared the Gwahs, keeping nearest the one who knew her best. The others, as time passed, grew accustomed to her presence. And a whole day elapsed. She found nuts, roots and mushrooms which fed her, while they ate bark, tender stems, grasses or the tufts of aquatic plants.

  On the second day she circulated in the herd as if she had been with the mammoths for several seasons. Her scent was so well known that they forgot her. In all things they proved themselves better than men; none were inclined to kill her or to cause her suffering. They roamed at random through the forest and the marshes. The world entered through their tiny eyes, the hue of sod, and they had an intelligence special to them, which permitted them to know what was harmful and what was good.

  Glava lived more at ease while with them than she had among the Tzohs, where the weak were sacrificed, or among the Ougmars, where she had met Heigoun. She was sad, however, for she needed Amhao, and although she did not know it, she missed the tall, tawny warrior.

  Perhaps she could have become friendlier with the mammoths, by digging up roots for them or selecting tender twigs for offerings. But their bulk frightened her, that strange hairy snake swinging between the immense tusks, and their enormous legs which might crush her with ease. She kept her distance, and if they did not threaten her, they made no effort to know her better.

  They marched uphill through the forest, farther from the river each day, so that she soon realized she would have to leave them. This was a hard decision to make for she feared the Gwahs, the Red Moon, the evening fires, death.

  Nevertheless, she allowed them to go off without her one morning. The thickets screened them. Alone, she felt rising in her the horror of meat-eaters, and she hid a long while under branches. The numberless sounds, which she had not heeded when with the mammoths, resumed their ferocious significance. The shadows held lurking monsters. Armed with a clumsy stake and sharp stones, she traveled in this land of claws, of teeth and venoms, all her senses keyed for a brief future.

  As after her flight from the Ougmar camp, she found herself lacking fire. The flints she found produced small sparks, but she could not set flame to grass. She encountered the wolf, the hyena, the brown bear, the panther. None attacked her. But she saw no lion, no tiger, no gray bear, beasts that retreat before none save the mammoth, the rhinoceros—or fire.

  At last she reached the river and knew her way.

  She walked and walked. At night, she sought shelter. And fate spared her.

  At the end of a day, after seeking long, she selected a flat space on a steep rock, five arms’ lengths above the ground. The stars were out, she was tired, and she trusted herself to the night. Wolves, hyenas, jackals passed by, ascertained that they could not reach her, and went their way. Glava would awake, watch for awhile, fall asleep again.

  Toward morning a terrible life halted near the boulder. In the weak light seeping out of the east, by the lingering glow of the stars, the shape recalled that of the tiger. But it was a large, handsome lioness, full-grown and very strong. Her light-colored pelt, her eyes with round pupils were enough to distinguish her from the striped feline, the eyes of which are oval. But the manner was the same, that patient watchfulness in a huddling crouch.

  As her scent was poor, chance had caused her to stop near. A gust of wind had brought the smell of Glava to her nostrils. Having eaten the women and children of the Gwahs, she knew human odors. Of late, her hunts had not been successful. Accumulated hungers twisted her belly. And there was a prey upon the boulder which would sate her craving.

  But the needed leap worried her. If the prey fought, she would be in a bad position, and she recalled a blow from a sharp stick, flush on the nose, delivered by one of the women she had caught. With raging impatience, certain that the erect creature could not flee, she watched.

  Finally, trying to surprise Glava, she stood up against the side of the boulder. Glava had watched her without showing herself. And she saw no lane of escape. When the lioness leaped, Glava would die. She saw the beast prowl about the boulder, smell the wind. Occasionally she heard heavy breathing or a low dull roar. Immobility was her defense. But when the lioness reared her body against the rock, immobility became dangerous, and standing in her turn, the girl spoke in a strident voice,

  “The stake of Glava is sharp, it shall sink in the lioness’s jaws! Sharp stones will put out her eyes!”

  The animal, astonished, retreated as if to think the situation over. Glava had but one hope, that another life might pass, e
asier to catch. No life passed by, and the lioness sprang. The point of the stake broke off on her hard skull, and, one hip ripped open by a clawing stroke, Glava rolled helplessly from the flat surface down to the plain. She was helpless, closed her eyes, and waited for the lioness to devour her.

  A shadowy form appeared near the boulder.

  The feline, turning, beheld an immense and hideous beast. A horn jutted from its nose, another was planted in the middle of the ungainly head. Its skin was like the bark of very old trees, its eyes were tiny and stupid. Survivor of a formidable breed which had vanished almost altogether, evil-tempered and ferocious, the beast had probably been awakened by the noise of the struggle and had come to investigate.

  The ancestors of the lioness, recognizing a rhinoceros, would have fled without hesitation.

  But she was surprised, excited by the conquest of copious flesh, hesitated a moment, then it was too late. The enormous mass charged headlong. The lioness clawed at random, bit, but the rhinoceros, invulnerable, had but to pass. She was stretched out, ribs smashed in, entrails showing, moaning with pain. The huge animal turned, trampled her, scattered her bones, her flesh, her hide. Then, his rage vented, he trotted away, forgetting the other being.

  Glava had crawled behind the boulder. Her blood spurted. Her head was light, her eyes no longer saw; she fainted.

  XIX. Reunion

  When she came to, a man was staring at her.

  “Helgvor!”

  He had come out of the limitless solitude. And despite her pain, despite her weakness, she knew the unfathomable happiness of not being alone. Two other men were nearby. When with the Ougmars she had learned that Iouk was a quiet man, and she guessed that Akr, slight, almost frail, would obey the others. For a time she took joy in not being alone, and a great tenderness went from her toward Helgvor.