His right hand quitted its hold on the big axe, which remained fast to his wrist by the looped thong. Reaching up and back as he fell, he seized the Stymph by its snaky throat and with a single powerful jerk freed it from its grasp upon his ribs and brought it under him. Its striving wings were slowing the fall somewhat, though it could not rise with his weight. A moment afterward, the two of them crashed into the mass of twigs and leaves, hit an out-thrust bough heavily.
The Stymph, underneath, took most of that shock. Its ribs must have been shattered. At the instant of impact, Hok had presence of mind to quit his grip upon its neck, and managed to fling his arm around the branch. He clung there, feet kicking in space, while the Stymph fell shrieking into the middle branches.
Again he was momentarily safe. He looked up. The Stymphs, where they were visible through sprays of greenery, were questing and circling to find him, like fish-hawks above the water’s surface.
“Ahai! Here I am, you bird-snakes!” he roared his challenge, and climbed along the branch to a broader fork, where he could stand erect without holding on. And here he found shelter, even from those ravenous beaks and claws.
A great parasitic growth, allied to giant dodder or perhaps mistletoe, made a great golden-leafed mat above him, circular in form and wider across than the height of two tall men. It could be seen through, but its tough tendrils and shoots could hold back heavier attacks than the Stymph swarm might manage.
“Come on and fight!” he taunted again. “I have killed many of you, and still I live! Ahai, I am Hok the Mighty, whose sport it is to kill Stymphs and worse things than Stymphs!”
‘The flattened, darkling brains of the Stymphs understood the tone, if not the words of that defiance. They began to drop down on winnowing scaly wings, peering and questing for him. “Here, just below!” he cried to guide them. Then he slung his bow behind him, and poised his axe, spitting between hand and haft for a better grip.
They settled quickly toward him, wriggling and forcing their way through the upper layers of small twigs. He laughed once again, and one of the Stymphs spied him through the tangled matting. It alighted, clutching the strands with its talons, and with a single lancing stroke of its tight-shut beak drove through a weak spot in the shield. Hok stared into its great cold eyes, and shifted his position to avoid its snap.
“Meet Hok, meet death,” he said to it, and chopped off that ugly head with his axe. The body flopped and wriggled beyond his jumble of defending vegetation, and three of the other Stymphs came down all together to feast upon it.
That was what Hok wanted. “So many guests come to dine with Hok?” he jibed. “Then the host must provide more meat.”
He laid his longest arrow across the bow-stave. For a moment the three fluttering bird-snakes huddled close together above the prey, almost within touch of him. Setting the head of his arrow to an opening among the whorls and tangles, he loosed it at just the right moment.
A triple shrillness of pained screaming beat up, and Hok was spattered with rank-smelling blood. Skewered together like bits of venison on a toasting-stick, the three Stymphs floundered, somersaulted and fell, still held in an agony of conjunction by Hok’s arrow. For the first time, unhurt Stymphs drew back as in fear. Hok made bold to show himself, climbing up on top of his protecting mat.
“Do you go?” he demanded. “Am I as unappetizing as all that?”
They came yet again, and he dodged nimbly back into safety. More arrows—he had a dozen left. These he produced, thrusting them through broad leaves around him so as to be more quickly seized and sped. Then, as the Stymphs blundered heavily against his shield of natural wickerwork, he began to kill them.
Close-packed as they were, and within touch of him, he could not miss. By twos and threes his arrows fetched them down. Even the small reptile-minds of the flying monsters could not but register danger. Survivors began to flop upward, struggle into the open air above the branches, retreat into the mist. Hok hurled imprecations and insults after them, and once more mounted the mat to kill wounded wretches with his axe, and to drag his arrows from the mass of bodies.
Well-mannered as always, he took time to thank the curious tangled growth that had been his bulwark. “My gratitude to you, who made me a shield from behind which I won this victory,” he addressed it. “You were sent from the Shining One, whom I worship. He knew I needed help, down here in the mists beyond the reach of his rays. My children shall never forget this kindness.”
From below came an awkward scrambling, and Krol, the chief of the tree-folk, mounted upward into view.
“Greetings,” Hok chuckled at him. “See what sport I have made with your friends, the bird-snakes.”
Krol might have feared the huge, blood-smeared chief of the Flint People, had he not been so concerned with the retreat of the Stymphs overhead.
“They will go,” he chattered. “They will never come back, because they fear you. If I had known—”
“If you had known, you would not have hung me up for them to eat,” Hok finished for him. “As it is, I have driven off your ugly allies, by fear of which you ruled your people. That fear will be gone hereafter. So, I think, will you.”
Hok swung down to a branch above Krol and feinted a brain-dashing blow with his axe. Then he laughed as the tree-chief let go all holds, dropping six times his own length through emptiness. He caught a branch below.
“You and I are enemies!” he snarled upward. “Though you have beaten my Stymphs, there remain other things—even Rmanths! I shall see you dead, and your body rended by the tusks of Rmanth, Hok the Meddler!”
And then, though Hok began climbing swiftly downward, old Krol was swifter and surer. They both descended through thickening layers of foliage, to the woven living-place of the tree people.
CHAPTER VIII
The Dethroning of Krol
By the time the slower-climbing Hok had come down to that mighty hammock-like footing, Krol had had precious minutes to gather his followers and howl orders and accusations into their ears.
“Ah, here he comes to mock us, the overgrown invader!” Krol yelled, and shook a furious finger toward the approaching Hok. “He has slain the Stymphs, who protected us!”
“I have slain the Stymphs, who feasted on any tree-man daring to climb as high as the open air above the forest,” rejoined Hok, with a lofty manner as of one setting Krol’s statement right. “I have helped you, not injured you.”
Krol glared with a fury that seemed to hurl a rain of sparks upon Hok. “You biggest men,” he addressed the other tree-folk out of the side of his broad, loose mouth, “seize him and bind him a second time.”
Hok set his shoulder-blades to the main stem of a tree. He looked at the tree-men. They seemed a trifle embarrassed, like boys stealing from a larder. Soko, the biggest among them, was plainly the most uneasy as well. Hok decided to profit by their indecision.
“You caught me once because I was playful among you,” he said. “Hok never makes the same mistake twice. Standing thus, I cannot be knocked down from behind. Meanwhile,” and he quickly strung his bow, notching an arrow, “I shall not only strike my attackers, I shall strike them dead.”
“Obey me!” blustered Krol, and one of the men lifted a heavy milk-nut to throw. Hok shot the missile neatly out of the hand that held it.
“No throwing,” he warned. “Charge me if you will, but make it a fight at close quarters. Those who survive will have a fine tale to tell forever.” He glanced sideways, to a gap in the matting. “But the first man to come within my reach I shall cast down there. Krol, is your other ally, Rmanths, hungry?”
The half-formed attack stood still, despite Krol’s now hysterical commands to rush Hok. When the old tree-chief had paused, panting for breath, Hok addressed the gathering once again:
“You cannot hope to fight me, you slender ones. Th
e Stymphs, who have held you frightened for so long, fell dead before me like flies in the frost. Of us two—Hok or Krol—who is greatest?”
“Hok is greatest,” announced Soko suddenly.
It was plain that none had dared suggest rebellion against Krol since the beginning of time. Krol was as taken aback as other hearers. Soko turned toward Krol, and the old chief actually shrank back.
“He admits killing the Stymphs, he admits it!” jabbered Krol, flapping a nervous paw at Hok. “If they are gone, how shall strangers be kept out of this land of ours?”
Hok guessed that this was an ancient and accepted argument The tree-folk naturally feared invasion, must have been taught to think of the Stymphs as their guardians against such a danger. He snorted with scornful amusement.
“The old liar speaks of ‘this land of yours,’” he repeated. “How is it your land, men of the trees, when you can neither tread its soil nor look into its sky—when bird-snakes prey on you above, and an elephant-pig prowls below, so that you must dwell forever in this middle-part like tree frogs?” He paused, and judged that his question had struck pretty close to where those folk did their thinking. “I have been your benefactor,” he summed up. “The open air is now yours, for Krol says the Stymphs have fled from it. The next step is—”
“To kill Rmanths?” suggested someone, a bolder spirit among the hearers.
“The next step,” finished Hok, “is to get rid of that tyrant Krol.”
Krol had drawn back into a sort of tangle of branches and vines, which would serve as a partial screen against any rush. He snarled, and hefted his ivory-bladed axe in one hand.
“You speak truth, Hok,” put in Soko, more boldly than before. “Go ahead and kill Krol.”
But Hok shook his golden shock-head. “No. I could have done that minutes ago, with a quick arrow, or a flick of my axe. But I have left him for you yourselves to destroy. He is your calamity, your shame. He should be your victim.”
Krol made play with his axe. “I will hew you all into little shreds!” he threatened in a high, choked voice. Soko was the first to see how frightened the old despot was. He addressed his fellows:
“Men of my people, if I kill Krol, will I be your chief?” he asked. “Such is custom.”
Several made gestures of assent, and Soko was satisfied.
“Then I challenge him now.” With no wait for further ceremony, Soko put out one lean, knowing hand and borrowed a weapon from the woven girdle of a neighbor. It was a sort of pick, a heavy, sharp piece of bone lashed crosswise in the cleft of a long, springy rod. He approached Krol’s position.
“Come and be killed,” Soko bade his chief, in a sort of chant. “Come and be killed. Come and—”
Krol came, for he was evidently not too afraid of anything like an even battle. Hok, a giant and a stranger, had terrified him. The repudiation of the whole tribe had unmanned him. But if Soko was alone a challenger, Krol intended to take care of his end.
There was still pith in his pudgy old arm as he swung the ivory axe at Soko. The younger warrior parried the blow within a span’s distance of his face, missed a return stroke with the pick. A moment later they were fencing furiously and quite skillfully, skipping to and fro on the shaky footing. Hok, who had a fighting man’s appreciation of dueling tactics, watched with interest.
“Well battled!” he voiced his applause. “Strike lower, Soko, his guard is high! Protect your head! Don’t stumble or—Hai! Now he is yours!”
Indeed, it seemed so. Krol had feinted Soko into a downward sweep with the pick, and had slipped away from the danger. With Soko momentarily off balance, Krol struck with his axe; but a quick upward jerk of Soko’s weapon-butt struck his wrist, numbing it. The axe fell among the trampled leaf-mold on the branchy mat. Krol was left unarmed before Soko.
Now despair made the challenged chief truly dangerous. Krol sprang before Soko could land a last and fatal stroke. He threw his arms around Soko’s body, and sank his sharp fangs into Soko’s flesh at juncture of neck and shoulder. The two scrambled, fell, and rolled over and over, perilously close to a terrible fall. The chattering onlookers danced and gesticulated in pleased excitement.
Hok, whose own teeth were far too even for use as weapons, was about to remark that biting seemed grossly unfair, when the issue was decided. Soko tore loose from the grip of Krol’s jaws and turned the old man underneath. Krol doubled a leg and strove to rip Soko’s abdomen open with the nails of his strong, flexible toes, but a moment later Soko had hooked his own thumbs into Krol’s mouth corners. He forced his enemy’s head back and back, until the neck was on the point of breaking. With a coughing whine, Krol let go all holds, jerked himself free, and next moment ran for his life.
At once the spectators gave a fierce shout, and joined the chase. Hok, following over the swaying mass of boughs, could hear a hundred execrations being hurled at once. Apparently every man and woman, and most of the children, among the tree-folk had a heavy score to settle with the fierce old fraud who had ruled them. Soko, leading the pack, almost caught up with Krol. But Krol avoided his grasp, and disappeared into something.
Hok came up, pushing in among the yelling tree-men. He saw a new curiosity—Krol’s fortress.
It was made like the nest of a mud-wasp, a great egg-shaped structure of clay among the heavier branches of a tall tree. Apparently Krol had spent considerable time and thought on his refuge, against just such an emergency as this. Hok judged that within was a baskety plaiting of chosen branches, with the clay built and worked on the outside thickly and smoothly. The whole rondure was twice Krol’s height from top to bottom, and almost the same distance through. It was strongly lodged among several stout forks, and had but one orifice. This was a dark doorway, just large enough for Krol to slip through and perhaps a thought too narrow for shoulders the width of Soko’s.
“Krol’s nest is well made,” Hok pronounced, with frank admiration. “My own tribesmen sometimes make their huts like this, of branches with an outer layer of earth. Why are not all your homes so built?”
The yelling had died down. Soko, his big eyes watching the doorway to the mud-nest, made reply: “Only Krol could fetch clay. We dare not go to the valley’s floor after it.”
“No,” rejoined a grumble from inside. “Nor do you dare go after—water!”
That reminder plainly frightened every hearer. They drew back from the den of Krol, looked at each other and at Soko.
“What does he mean?” demanded Hok. “Water does he say? When it comes to that, where do you get water?”
Soko pointed to the opening. “He gets it. Krol.” Soko’s throat, still torn and chewed from the battle, worked and gulped. “We should have thought of that. Without Krol, we can get nothing to drink.”
One or two of his hearers made moaning sounds and licked their mouths, as if already dry and thirsty. Hok questioned Soko further. It developed that the tree-folk had big dry gourd-vessels, fashioned from the fruit of lofty vines, and these they let down on cords of fiber. Krol, the single individual who would venture to the ground level, scooped up water from a stream there, and the others would draw it up for their own use. Hok nodded, praising in his heart the wisdom of Krol.
“It is yet another way in which he kept his rule over you,” he commented. “Yet Krol must die some day. How would you drink then?”
“When I die, you all die,” pronounced Krol from his fastness. “I declare you all in danger. Without me to guide your gourds into that stream, thirst will claim you one by one.”
Silence. Then a wretched little man attempted a different question:
“What is your will, mighty Krol?”
Krol kept majestic silence for a moment. Finally:
“You will all swear to obey my rules and my thoughts, even unspoken wishes. You will range far to pluck all the fruits I like, and bring th
em to me. You will yield Soko up as a victim—”
“Wait, you tree people!” burst out Hok in disgust. “I see you wavering! Do you truly mean to let that murderer destroy Soko, who is the best man among you?”
Nobody answered. Hok saw them stare sickly. Krol went on:
“I have not finished. Soko as a victim, I say. And also this troublesome stranger, Hok. Their blood will increase my walls.”
CHAPTER IX
The Hot Hunger Obliges
For a moment Hok had an overpowering sense of having guessed wrong.
He had spoken the truth when he announced that the killing of Krol was the tree-men’s responsibility, not his. Violent death was no novelty in his life, and he had inflicted enough of it on large, strong foes to be hesitant about attacking weak, unworthy ones. Too, he had no wish to take on the rule of Krol’s people as an additional chore. If Soko, who seemed a fair chieftainly type, did the killing, then Soko would confirm himself as leader. Hok could depart from this Ancient Land with a clear conscience.
But just now his half-languid forbearance was shunting him into another nasty situation. Three or four of the men were murmuring together, and there was a stealthy movement of the clan’s whole fighting strength in the direction of Soko. At once Hok pushed forward at and among them. Quick flicks of his open hands scattered them like shavings in the wind.
“Fools!” he scolded them. “Weak of wit! You deserve no better than a life roosting in these trees. Soko and I have brought you to the edge of freedom, and you cannot take advantage!”
“That is good talk,” seconded Soko, with considerable stoutness. “Krol has fled before me. Since he will not fight, I am chief. Let any one man among you come and strive with me if he thinks otherwise.”
The half-formed uprising was quelled. One or two men fidgeted.
The Adventure Novella MEGAPACK® Page 33