by Chad Oliver
When the Danequa had cut all the meat and hides that they could possibly carry on the return trip, they loaded it all on devices they used for transporting their belongings. These contraptions were quite simple, since the wheel was completely unknown to them, and they consisted of two long lean-to poles, which crossed at one end to form a V-shaped frame. The hides were fastened to this frame, and the meat was piled on the hides and tied in place. These were pulled with the open end of the V dragging behind, and were quite helpful. Mark had seen similar devices among the Indians, where they were called travois. He remembered that the Indians, in times past, had used dogs to pull small travois, and he tried to hook a small one up to Fang. Fang, however, whose knowledge of history was cheerfully less than Mark’s, refused to cooperate, snapping at his improvised harness and looking at Mark with pleading eyes. Mark turned him loose.
“Guess it just doesn’t pay to tamper with history, old boy,” he said, scratching Fang’s ears and giving him a chunk of meat. “You’ve done enough work for this day anyhow.”
Fang wagged his bushy tail happily and nuzzled Mark’s hand. Mark could not help thinking that here was a concrete example of a problem he had often wondered about. Could you change history, if you went back in time? The Danequa had not used any animals for transportation purposes, and his brief attempt to change that had failed. Had Mark changed anything, in any fundamental way, in his weeks with the men of the dawn? He doubted it, and doubted that he could even if he had worked at it. He was beginning to realize that there was more to changing history than just coming along with a new or original idea. A people and their culture had to be receptive to the idea. In his own time, politicians and others had found that out, although they expressed it in different words. They said that “the time had to be right” for change.
Leaving three warriors behind to guard the meat they could not carry, the Danequa moved out across the plains for home, their travois loaded with meats and hides from the hunt. Old Roqan walked in the lead, his slight limp hardly noticeable—and, indeed, he would have been furious if anyone had noticed it in his presence. Behind him walked Mark, Tlaxcan, and Nranquar, side by side.
The moon was full, a silver world of ice swimming through the star-flecked reaches of the universe. The pale moonlight bathed the procession in soft radiance, lighting their way across the plains. Mark felt strangely proud and humble, and something in the darkness of the shadows whispered to him that this night would live forever in his heart.
Behind him, a few scattered voices started a chanting song. Others took it up, their voices carrying eerily across the moon-drenched plains. Mark listened intently, trying to learn the song, not sure whether he should join in or not.
The song was not difficult, once Mark caught on to what the singers were doing. Not every line of the chant had meaning, he soon realized. The lines of the song were mixed in with lines of pure sound, sung for their music alone. Nranquar looked over at him and smiled, urging him to join in the singing.
Mark took a deep breath, and there under the full moon in the dawn of man, singing carefully so as not to destroy the rhythm of the music, he joined the Danequa in their weirdly beautiful chant:
O he o-yo o-yo he o-he
O he o-yo o-yo he o-he o
O he o-yo o-yo he o-he he
O he o-yo o-yo he o-he O he o-yo! House of the night
House of the moon
Darkness walks with us
On the hunt
In life, in death
In the moon-rays it is finished
In the moon-rays it is ended.
O he o-yo o-yo he o-he
O he o-yo o-yo he o-he o—
Mark Nye smiled happily, knowing that he belonged at last. He was no longer alone.
Chapter 16 Ambush
The next evening, after sleeping a few hours in the valley of the Danequa, Mark and Tlaxcan hit the long trail back to the cliff. The rest of the tribe was busy drying the meat, and storing some of it under the snow in nature’s icebox. They would head back for another load the next day, and in the meantime Mark and Tlaxcan were going to relieve the three guards who had been left behind with the dead mammoths. Fang trotted along beside them, and the wolf-dog had now been tamed to the extent that he permitted Tlaxcan to pet him occasionally, and the two actually seemed to be quite fond of each other.
Mark still carried his .45, together with a spear. Tlaxcan had his bow and arrows and the stone knife he was seldom without. They did not anticipate trouble, but they were alert and ready for anything. The night was always full of hidden dangers, and the cold wind of death lurked behind every rock and shrub.
The night passed without incident, however, although along toward morning they spotted a curious animal that instantly reminded Mark of the one he had briefly seen when he had first stepped out of the space-time machine. The beast looked like a giant rhinoceros, with a wicked horn on its snout, but he was covered by the same yellowish-brown wool Mark had seen on the mammoths. He was an unpleasant-looking customer, and Mark noticed that Tlaxcan gave him a wide berth. The woolly rhinoceros did not bother them; he was content with planting himself like a rock on the plain, his eyes stating quite plainly that he would be a good animal to leave alone.
All through the day Mark and Tlaxcan continued on their way, eating the dried meat mixed with berries and sealed by animal fat—called berry pemmican when used by the American Indians—when they were hungry. They were approaching the cliff from the southwest, and it was early evening before they sighted the rocky hills that surrounded the mammoth trap. Mark was surprised to see how easily he could make out the trail that had been left by the Danequa on their return trip to their valley home; the streaky tracks left by the heavily loaded, dragging poles in the grass were plainly visible to him. He was sure that he could have found his way to the cliff without help, and he was proud of the fact. He was learning, slowly but surely. But there was much to learn in this strange new world . . .
Nearing the cliff just as the sun was fading in the west, Tlaxcan shouted to warn his three friends that he was coming. His voice echoed hollowly through the hushed silence of the rocks, but there was no reply.
“Sleeping on the job, perhaps.” Tlaxcan smiled. “It’s lucky that Roqan is not here. He would skin them alive.”
“It’s not like them to sleep at a time like this,” Mark said, a questioning note in his voice.
Tlaxcan looked at him. “No, it isn’t,” he said quietly, and Mark realized that he had feared that something was wrong from the first. It was hard to get used to Tlaxcan’s habit of speaking lightly no matter what was on his mind. It did not pay to take him too literally, and Mark wondered idly how many men and animals had died, their last sight a glimpse of Tlaxcan, his smile calm and unruffled even with death in his hand . . .
“You there!” shouted Tlaxcan. “Where are you?” No answer.
“Is everything all right?” Silence.
“I don’t like this,” said Mark, loosening his .45 in its holster and taking a fresh grip on his lance. The cool evening breeze whipped across the plains, and its moan was the only sound in all the world. It was too still; the very air seemed to whisper danger. The two men moved forward cautiously, Tlaxcan slightly in the lead. Tlaxcan fitted an arrow to his sinew-backed bow, and unconsciously his body assumed a fighting crouch. He sniffed the air, his sensitive nostrils flaring wide.
As if guided by instinct, Tlaxcan changed his course a trifle so as to mount a near-by rise in the land. Clearly, he was uncertain about the wisdom of following the well-marked trail too closely until he found out exactly what was going on. They hurried up the hill, their light footfalls sounding unnaturally loud in the ominous quiet. Mark thought that he had never heard the land so still; there was not the rustle of an insect, not the chirp of a bird, nothing.
Sticking to cover without quite knowing why—for surely they had been spotted long ago if enemies were indeed about—they wormed their way up to a pile of jagged rocks and lo
oked over. All was almost as they had last seen it in the little valley at the bottom of the cliff. The huge carcasses of the dead mammoths, chopped and carved as they had been by the Danequa hunters, still lay on the rocks, their remaining tusks gleaming whitely in the dying rays from the sun. The three guards left behind by the Danequa were still there too. But it was obvious enough why the three warriors had not answered their calls. The guards were as dead as the mammoths they guarded.
Mark looked down into the pit of death, Ins throat choked with horror. The hushed silence shrieked in his ears. There was something decidedly odd about the scene before them, something above and beyond the spectacle of their three friends lying dead and cold across the massive bodies of the quaro that they themselves had slain. For a long moment, Mark could not quite put his finger on what it was. Then he saw it.
“The vultures,” he whispered to Tlaxcan, pointing into the gray air. “There are no vultures.”
That was it. With the great hulks of the mammoths beginning to decay after a day in the sun, and with the three guards dead, the sky should have been alive with the ugly black vultures that fed on the dead. Moreover, there should have been carrion-eaters gnawing on the dead flesh—wolves, dogs, something. Fang’s hackles bristled, and Mark’s own neck felt a curious, nervous tingling. If there were no men around, there; should have been vultures. There were no vultures. Therefore—
“Run for it!” hissed Tlaxcan, sniffing the air. “The Mroxor.”
The Mroxor, the half-men . . .
Mark needed no second invitation. Desperately, he sprinted back the way they had come, with Tlaxcan by his side and Fang racing on ahead. They still had seen nothing, and the world was hushed, waiting. Perhaps they had avoided the ambush by veering off from the main trail, perhaps Tlaxcan was wrong!
Tlaxcan was not wrong.
Seeing their prey racing out of the trap, the half-men burst from cover. A chorus of blood-freezing screams and snarls split the silence of the evening, and Mark felt his heart leap convulsively in his chest. He would never forget those chilling snarls, the snarls and grunts that had pursued him through the nightmare of his first days in the Ice Age. The bestial Neanderthals held a very personal terror for him, and it was all he could do to keep himself under control.
The half-men had been waiting for them along the regular trail, and Tlaxcan’s unexpected turning had destroyed their neat ambush. They had been filtering across to catch them on the hill when Tlaxcan’s keen nose had caught wind of them, and now they were mostly behind the two men, charging along in their shuffling, animal-like run. Mark did not turn to look, but he could tell that there were plenty of the hideous Neanderthals. Enough to overpower three of the fighting Danequa, certainly, and from their snarling shrieks there must have been a horde of them.
Mark and Tlaxcan cut back toward the southeast, where a low range of mountain foothills was visible in the gray light of evening. Tlaxcan seemed to know where he was going, and Mark had no choice but to follow him in any event. They were running with the speed and endurance that only fear can give to a man’s feet, but the half-men were hot on their heels. Mark remembered all too well their clinging, endless pursuit. You could never outrun a Mroxor for long in a straight dash, for they were absolutely tireless. Still, if they could make the hills—
With the sudden shock of a nightmare, two of the half-men popped up behind a boulder and barred their way. They were almost unbelievably ghastly; they were so horrible, with their crouched, hairy bodies and their brute mouths and eyes, that you felt that if you blinked your eyes they would surely be gone. They were too awful to be real.
But they were real, and they were definitely not going away. They gripped their crude stone axes, eyes gleaming, their puffing lips drawn back from their wet teeth, ready for the kill.
There was no time for anything but swift action. The Neanderthal horde was right behind them, and the two half-men were right before them. Without even breaking stride, Tlaxcan loosed an arrow which thunked completely through one of the monsters, dropping him like a stone. Mark had no time to draw his gun; he simply ran full speed at the other half-man and ran him through with his spear before he ever knew what hit him. The smell of the Mroxor was overpowering, and the others were too near to spare a second. Mark left the spear in the body and raced after Tlaxcan across the grassy plains. He had a terrible, dreamlike impression that the interlude with the Danequa had been but an unreal fantasy, that he had always been running with the fearful Neanderthals behind him, eternally, forever, for the rest of his life.
For the rest of his life. That might not be very long.
But the paralyzing fear abated slightly, and he saw that the half-men were not gaining on them. Actually, it was easier this time than it had been before. He was in far better condition, he was not alone, and the world was no longer so strange to him as it had once been. But all that would be scant comfort if that snarling pack of man-things ever caught up with them, and catch them they would, eventually, unless Tlax-can knew his stuff.
Tlaxcan had no breath to waste in talking. However, sensing his friend’s thoughts, he managed a quick smile of reassurance that picked Mark up amazingly. Mark knew that if anyone could get them through, it was Tlaxcan. That, of course, was the question—could anyone?
Mark stopped thinking. He realized that Tlaxcan knew the country better than he could ever know it, and his job was simply to follow his lead. Mark was intelligent enough to recognize a real leader when he saw one, and he did not foolishly try to exert his own influence in a situation he was not equipped to deal with. And he did not want to think about the snarling half-men behind him; above all things he must not permit his muscles to become constricted with fear. In New Mexico, he had once seen a bird frozen with fear at the sight of a snake slithering toward it. All the bird had to do was to fly away, but it simply could not move. It stood rooted to the spot, staring, until it no longer had eyes with which to see.
Mark tried to imagine that this was just a race he was running, a cross-country marathon. He kept his eyes on Tlaxcan’s broad back and matched him step for step. He was dimly aware that night had fallen, and he was seeing by starlight. He felt the grass under his feet turn to rock as they raced into the mountains, and he was conscious that the grunting snarls of the Neanderthals were fading behind him.
Finally, there was only the pounding of their own feet, the dry gasping of their own breathing. They were alone—they had shaken them! Tlaxcan stopped, and Mark sat down to catch his wind. Tlaxcan instantly pulled him to his feet.
“Do not be a fool, my friend,” he panted. “One does not escape from the Mroxor so simply. The night has confused them for a moment, that is all.”
Mark shook his head, ashamed of his own stupidity. “That is what happens when you turn off your mind,” he apologized. “What do we do now?”
“We build a fire,” Tlaxcan answered surprisingly, “and we do it fast.”
Mark looked at his friend in amazement, but there was no time to discuss strategy. If Tlaxcan said to build a fire, then that was what they were going to do. Mark pitched in with frantic speed, gathering some dead and rotten pine. He split the shavings with his knife, and he and Tlaxcan piled kindling and boughs together in record time. Mark knelt with his precious matches, and eyed Tlaxcan questioningly.
“They will see the fire,” he said logically. “They will find us and come here.”
Tlaxcan smiled. “They will find us anyway,” he explained. “They will come, but we will not be here.”
Wondering, Mark lit the fire. It blazed up brilliantly, and Mark reflected that he was getting to be an expert at building fires. If he ever got home, he knew that he would never again waste more than one match in starting a fire.
“Now,” said Tlaxcan hurriedly, “we need torch branches—all we can carry. Be quick, we have little time.”
The two men searched through the night and managed to locate six dead branches that would serve as torches. They lit just one o
f them, which Tlaxcan carried, and then they left the fire and climbed on into the hills. In a short time they came to a dark cave, which had evidently been Tlaxcan’s destination, and they were not a moment too soon. A chorus of snarling shouts below them told them that the half-men were already at the fire.
The cave mouth was dark and unwholesome-looking. Damp, faintly foul air rose out of its depths and Mark felt an unreasonable shudder pass through him. Caves, like houses, had personalities of their own. Some were warm and cozy, good places to sleep in. Others were vastly mysterious and hinted of scenic marvels underground. And still others were dank and evil-smelling, with a nameless dread dwelling in their subterranean caverns, crawling with wormy horrors that had never known the light of day.
It was not an inviting place to enter. Mark quickly saw, however, the wisdom of Tlaxcan’s move. They could not elude the Neanderthals for long, even in the mountains; it would not do to count on another streak of luck such as had saved Mark the first time. Sooner or later, they would have to stand and fight. If they had to fight, it was best to do it before they were too exhausted to give a good account of themselves. And what possible location could give them a better advantage than a cave? There, in the narrow tunnels deep in the earth, they could take the half-men on one at a time; and it was altogether possible that the Mroxor would not dare to follow them at all. They were not fools, and they would know that plunging into a dark cave after two cornered Danequa was not far removed from suicide.
Of course, getting out again would be another matter. But there in the coldness of the night, with the bestial half-men snarling furiously as they raced toward them, there was but one way to go—forward.