Helgvor of the Blue River

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  He threw one last stone, then took to flight. His pace seemed to have diminished; the swiftest among his pursuers were gaining upon him, and the others, excited by the imminence of the capture, followed with great rapidity. At times it seemed as if the Oulhamr stumbled; sometimes again he appeared to make a great effort to gain ground, which he immediately lost. The chief was only 30 ells from the fugitive when he approached the spur which terminated the chain of rocks. The Chellians howled with triumph… Aoun, with a sort of lamentation, swerved and took refuge among the rocks. They formed a series of gullies, which all ended, towards the south, in a wider pass.

  The chief stopped, threw a rapid glance around, and commanded several warriors to bar the other outlet while he sent eight men in direct pursuit.

  A fierce laugh rang out, then a roar, and a huge body sprang down among the rocks.

  “The Dhole-Men are about to die!”

  The giant feline was already upon the Chellians. Three men fell, their bodies ripped up, a fourth rolled on the ground his throat torn open…

  Aoun and Zouhr had climbed a flat rock; their bows twanged; arrows pierced the enemy’s chests, their thighs and shoulders, while the carnivore emerged from the rocks, crushed one fugitive and tore another to pieces.

  Panic seized the Dhole-Men. Bewildering mystery mingled with the horror of death in their dull brains. The chief himself fled. Aoun had regained his full strength. Bounding like a leopard he overtook the rear guard, and his club crashed on their hard heads…

  When the Chellians got back to the circle of rocks there were only eight of them left: the others lay stretched on the grass, either dead or incapable of taking any further part in the struggle.

  “Let Zouhr stop the tiger of the Kzamms,” cried Aoun.

  Sheltered in their stronghold, the vanquished men again became formidable. Despair was upon them; wielded between the crenelations their spears might kill the brute.

  The giant feline allowed himself to be restrained. He saw his prey scattered all around. He calmly seized a dead body in his jaw and went towards his den.

  For a little while uncertainty held the son of Urus motionless. Then he said, “Zouhr will accompany the Kzamm tiger. He will then come back by the higher cave and tell the women to hold themselves in readiness!”

  The Wah and the giant feline disappeared behind the rocks: Aoun began to pick up the spears and to withdraw them from the bodies, then he went slowly towards the Chellians. He caught sight of them between the interstices of their wall; he could have killed several of them, but the soul of Naoh was in him, full of deep pity: “Why did the Dhole-Men attack the Hairy Men… Why did they want to kill Aoun and the Wolf-Women?”

  His ringing voice had a sad tone in it; the Chellians listened to him in silence. The deep chested chief rose up between two boulders and made as if he would attack him. The Oulhamr lifted his bow and went on, “Aoun is stronger and quicker than the Dhole chief! And he can kill him at a distance.”

  Up above them the women were uttering shouts of triumph. They had watched the vicissitudes of the struggle, the extraordinary apparition of the wild beast, and their souls were full of mystic confidence. Djeha was the first to go down, then Ouchr, then the others, except one who stayed to guard the cave.

  They clustered around Aoun, and gazed at the rocky circle with somber interest; remembering their sufferings they cast insults at the Chellians. The Dhole-Men remained silent, but they were strong and resolute, holding their long spears in readiness. Their position was impregnable; without Aoun’s presence, they would have been the strongest. With the exception of Ouchr, not one of the women could have resisted their attack; they knew it, and despite their hate, moved about with great caution.

  When the Wolf-Women drew nearer the fire, however, they took pleasure in throwing branches, brushwood and grass on it. It soon revived and the flames leapt up magnificently. The women brought wood from all directions, crying, “The Dhole-Men dare not fight! They will die of hunger and thirst!”

  Gradually, as the stars turned towards their setting, or rose in the east, anxiety and impatience began to grow. The besieged appeared more formidable. The besiegers feared a trap; none of the women dared sleep… Even Aoun and Zouhr began to think it would be necessary to fight.

  The Wah said, “We must force the Dhole-Men to leave their refuge.”

  By dint of hard thinking an idea had come to him.

  “They cannot resist fire… Aoun, Zouhr and the women will fling flaming brands at them!” he said.

  The Oulhamr gave an enthusiastic cry. Both of them began to cut branches and expose their points to the flames. Then they called the women, and the Wah having explained the proposed stratagem to them, they all took burning brands in their hands and flung themselves upon the stone circle.

  A rain of fire fell upon the Chellians… At first they resisted, but their chests swelled with fear and fury. Suffocated by the smoke, made giddy by their burns, little by little any peril seemed preferable to that which threatened to destroy them without giving them a chance of fighting…

  The thickset body of the chief rose up on a boulder, he bounded forward with a hoarse howl, and seven warriors rushed after him. Aoun ordered the women to beat a retreat. Twice the bows twanged and two Dhole-Men fell. Five of the remaining six charged the group of women and the Wah; the sixth rushed upon Aoun, who stood apart. The son of Urus flung a new spear which grazed his opponent’s shoulder, then, rising to the full of his magnificent stature, he waited. He might have fled, and so tired out his adversary; he preferred to fight him. It was the broad-shouldered chief, with a head like a block of granite, who advanced upon him. He brandished his spear and also an enormous horn. The weapon came in contact with the club, swerved, turned aside and returned to earth like a thunderbolt. Aoun’s chest was bleeding, but his club broke the chiefs bones. He fell on his knees and dropped his spear, with the resignation of a vanquished wild beast, knowing that his end had come. Aoun had picked up his club and did not lower it. His breast contracted with a strange feeling of disgust; that movement of pity which was his weakness, and the weakness of Naoh, came upon him…

  Below them two women lay stretched on the grass, but Zouhr’s spears and javelins had done their work: three Chellians groaned in the agonies of death; the Wolf-Women finished them off. A fourth, the youngest of the party, mad with terror, ran towards Aoun. When he found himself in close proximity to the enormous club, his muscles gave way and he fell prostrate.

  The women rushed forward to kill him; the son of Urus spread out his arms crying, “His life is in the hands of Aoun.”

  They stopped, their faces contracted with hate; then, hearing the groans of those who had been wounded in the first encounter, they went off to hack their bodies to pieces. Aoun listened gloomily to their cries of agony and vaguely rejoiced that Djeha had not followed her companions.

  XVIII. The Horde

  Aoun, Zouhr and the Wolf-Women remained for a month in the chain of rocks. Only one woman had died; four others were hurt; Aoun’s wound was not serious. Now that they were delivered from the Chellians they were masters of the savannah, the jungle and the river. The giant feline eliminated all other wild beasts by his mere presence. Thus life was ample and easy. Aoun and Zouhr tasted the pleasure of repose in full measure after all the perils they had passed through. Zouhr loved those dreamy hours when all kinds of remembrances and pictures surged up in his mind. His soul knew the sweetness of thoughts of the past which had been transmitted to him by a race destined to extinction. He only woke up to devise traps for game, or to gather edible roots.

  Even in repose Aoun was a prey to tumultuous instincts and to confused desires, which filled his whole being. His senses were continually surprised by the subtle curves of Djeha’s young body, by her lovely floating hair, and the changing lights in her eyes. Everything about her seemed perpetually to renew itself, like the early mornings on the river, and the flowers on the savannah. Sometimes a movement of revolt sho
t through the wanderer’s breast. He became like other men, and despised weakness; his instinct of tenderness changed to a rough and bellicose mood, and he turned towards Ouchr, prepared to ask her to celebrate the marriage rites of her race, by flinging Djeha on the ground and wounding her bosom with a pointed flint.

  The women asked for no other existence than their present one, which gave them such profound security. They lost the desire for liberty, and were content to place their destiny in the hands of the great Oulhamr. The future had no place in their limited imaginations; after their many misfortunes they desired nothing but the tranquil abundance which they enjoyed at present, and which was renewed every morning and evening. They even allowed Aoun to liberate the two prisoners. He had conducted them himself to the place where the stream and the river divided.

  The rainy season was now only five weeks distant. Aoun thought more often of his horde, of Naoh, the conqueror of the Kzamms, the Red Dwarfs and Aghoo the Hairy, of the evening fires, and of his rough companions, of whose ferocity, however, he did not approve.

  One morning he said to Ouchr, “Listen: Aoun and Zouhr are going to visit their horde; the Wolf-Women will choose a cave close to the mountains… After the cold weather, the Oulhamrs will come… They will be the Wolf-Women’s allies.”

  Ouchr and the other Wolf-Women felt the weight of impending destiny. They were on the plain near the bank of the river. They thronged around the son of Urus; the younger ones wailed… Djeha had bounded to her feet. Her breast heaved, her great eyes were full of tears. Aoun, deeply moved, regarded her for some time in silence.

  He said, “Ouchr has promised that Djeha shall be Aoun’s wife. Djeha will obey.”

  He turned towards Ouchr, and trembling slightly murmured, “Give me Djeha as my companion.”

  Ouchr threw Aoun a long melancholy glance, then she seized Djeha by the back of her neck and flung her on the ground. With a pointed stone she then made a long wound, which reached from the shoulder to the middle of the girl’s chest. Blood gushed out, and Aoun put his lips to it. Ouchr pronounced the words which their ancestors had used long ago, and which gave the woman to the man.

  The next day the little band started off. Aoun and Zouhr had left the giant feline sadly. The Wah felt the parting more than his companion, having no love of woman in his heart. His race would die out with him; he bitterly regretted leaving the cave and that alliance with the great wild beast which he had made. Nothing attached him to the Oulhamr horde; he was a stranger in it, and the young Oulhamrs despised him…

  They passed the place where the yellow lions had fled before the elephants; they passed close to the granite ridge where the saber-tooth had devoured the rhinoceros and where Aoun had killed the saber-tooth; then they came to the rugged promontory which the mountains threw out towards the land of the Chellians.

  From that high promontory they had discovered the river, and the strange red beast which lived before the time of the giant feline, itself a precursor of the lion and tiger. It was there that the Wolf-Women chose a spacious cave in which to pass the rainy season. Then they helped Aoun and Zouhr to find a way towards the mountain.

  The separation was a hard one. The women would no longer have near them that strength which had delivered them from the Chellians; they would be alone in a world full of dangers. When they reached the foot of the ravine, where the travelers were to leave them, they made a long lamentation. Aoun cried out, “We will come back to the banks of the great river.”

  His own heart was heavy. The land he was leaving was indeed full of ambushes and enemies, but he had triumphed, he had overcome the perils; men and beasts had given way before his strength. He was carrying off Djeha.

  Zouhr dreamed of no other joy than that of returning to the chain of rocks.

  One day succeeded another. Aoun, Zouhr and Djeha went up the rugged mountain paths. Aoun was impatient to see his horde again. Every stage they accomplished brought back the remembrance of former joys to his young soul.

  The time came when they found again the lofty defile through which they had passed when they left the mountain; then they arrived before the fissure. As it had grown larger they had less trouble in passing through it. The caverns were there, re-echoing the sound of water. In them they slept, and two days passed before they could find the horde.

  They found them at last at the decline of day, at the foot of a hill, under an enormous overhanging porphyry rock. The women were heaping up dry branches, which Naoh was to set a light to. Their watchers shouted, and Aoun was the first to appear before the son of the Leopard. There was a great silence. The women gazed at Djeha with malevolent eyes.

  Naoh said gravely, “A whole season has passed since you went away.”

  “We have crossed the mountain and we have discovered vast hunting grounds,” replied Aoun.

  Naoh’s face lit up. He remembered the fierce days when he set off with Nam and Gaw to reconquer fire; he lived over again his battle with the gray wolf and the tigress, his pursuit of the Men-Devourers, his alliance with the chief of the mammoths, the perfidy of the Red Dwarfs and the gentleness of the Wahs, the forest of the Blue-Haired men, the surprise of the Bear of the Caves, and, on their return, the terrible encounter with Aghoo the Hairy… He had brought back fire, and the secret of extracting it from stones, which he had learnt from the Men-without-Shoulders.

  “Go on,” he said, “Naoh listens to the son of Urus.”

  He set fire to the pile of branches and encouraged his son to speak.

  Gradually, as he heard the recital, his adventurous soul became excited. The red beast filled him with surprise, but he revolted when Aoun maintained that the elephants were bigger than mammoths, “No beast is bigger than the mammoth, with whom Naoh lived in the country of the Kzamms.”

  He recognized the wild beast which lived among the chain of rocks, and asked Aoun, “Does he not kill the tiger as easily as the lion kills the panther?”

  He was full of enthusiasm over the alliance with the giant feline. He turned his benevolent face towards Zouhr and said, “The Wahs were the most clever among men. It was they who found out the secret of obtaining fire from stones. They could traverse rivers by means of interlaced branches, and they knew the waters which flow underground!”

  His breast heaved with excitement as they told of their fights with the Chellians; his eyes sparkled, he laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder saying, “Aoun has the heart and the strength of a chief!”

  The Oulhamrs around them were listening, but they remained full of distrust; they were thinking that Naoh had reconquered the secret of fire, and saved the horde when they were dying of cold on the rocks, while Aoun had only brought back a strange girl with him, and that weakly companion whom no one liked.

  Khouam, son of Aegager exclaimed, “Did not Aoun say that those lands were much hotter than ours?… The Oulhamrs will not be able to live in them… When we traversed the Burnt Plain, the warriors and women died like grasshoppers in autumn.”

  Dull voices approved his words. Aoun understood that the horde loved him even less than before he went away.

  For a week, the son of Urus tasted the sweetness of being among the men of his race. He hunted with the others, or else stayed near Djeha, to whom the women of the horde would not speak. Little by little sadness took possession of his breast. He felt he had accomplished a task which was as great as that of Naoh, for though he had not brought back the secret of fire, he had told his horde that an immense land, teeming with animal life, existed beyond the mountains. He knew himself to be superior to all the young men, and as strong as the chief. He could see that the Oulhamrs did not admire him at all. All of them preferred Khouam, whose club and spear could not have fought against those of Aoun. Khouam would be chief if the son of the Leopard died, and he would have to obey Khouam. That would be hard for Aoun, for Khouam would incite hatred towards him, Djeha and Zouhr, which would grow rapidly.

  Even before his departure they had reproached the son of Uru
s with preferring the Wah’s company, and now he had united himself to a maiden from a country into which they had never penetrated. Thus he became a stranger to them. The women especially hated him. They turned away from Djeha with insulting words, and when several of them passed her together a hoarse murmur showed their dislike. Even Aoun’s sisters fled from her.

  When he found himself alone in the twilight with the young Wolf-Woman and the Wah, Aoun felt his humiliation most keenly. Terrible impatience burnt in his veins.

  After a few days he revolted. He no longer tried to draw closer to the others, but obstinately isolated himself with Zouhr and Djeha; when they were hunting he went off alone whenever he had received no special order from Naoh to stay with the horde. He wandered for days together near the underground river, and often, compelled by an impulse which was too strong for him, he found himself again by that fissure which led to the land of adventure.

  One morning he set out in pursuit of a leopard. Leopards abounded in the neighboring forests. Powerful, circumspect and audacious, voracious and active, they exterminated the deer, antelopes and onagers, and even killed young aurochs. Naoh did not hunt them, being bound to them by an obscure totemism; many Oulhamrs feared them because they de-fended themselves madly when wounded; few solitary hunters dared to attack them.

  Aoun prowled for a long time in the forest without finding the trace of one. A small water course trickled on a flinty bed; the wanderer became aware of the smell of a leopard. He lay down among the ferns and waited, motionless.

  He noticed upstream, under long leafy arcades, a little rocky eminence, the advanced part of which formed a sort of cave. A beast lay asleep there in profound security, its head on its paws. Despite the distance and the waning light, Aoun could see it was a leopard. About 1200 ells separated the man from the beast. The warrior advanced 800 ells before the beast was disturbed from its slumbers. As he plunged into a tangle of high grass, the round head was raised, two fires of amber and emerald were lit up in the shadow of the rocks.