Allan felt his brain whirl; all things seemed to turn about him. But he fought off his faintness, and in a shaken voice once more demanded:
“What terms, H’yemba?”
“Slavery for you and yours! Your son shall be my serf; your woman my chattel! Ha, that woman! She has already fought me, like one of these strange woods-beasts you have made us kill! See! My hair is burned and my flesh blistered with her fire-beating! But when I hold her in these hands then she shall pay for all, the vuedma!”
Stern’s hand twitched, with the automatic gripped in the fingers, but the blacksmith cried a warning.
“Raise not that hand, slave!” he ordered. “You cannot shoot without the danger of killing this vile spawn of yours! And remember, too, the river lies far below, and very sharp are the waiting rocks!
“Fool that you are, that think yourself so wise! To leave this place with me! With me, skilled in all labors of metal and stone, strong to cut passageways—”
“You devil! You hewed a way into my house?”
H’yemba laughed brutally.
“Silently, steadily, I labored!” he boasted. “And behold the reward! Power for me; eternal slavery for you and all your blood—if any live!”
Insane with rage and hate, Allan nevertheless realized that now all depended on keeping his thought and nerve.
One single premature move and his son would inevitably be hurled over the parapet, down two hundred and fifty feet to the river-bed below. At all hazards, he must keep cool!
The smith, after all only a barbarian and of limited intelligence, had not even thought of the obvious command to make Stern drop his pistol on the floor.
Upon this oversight now hung all Allan’s hopes.
Even though the man’s retainers might rush the cave and slaughter all, yet in Allan’s heart burned a clear and steady flame of hot desire to compass H’yemba’s death.
And as the smith now loudly boasted, insulted, vilified, in the true manner of the savage, imperceptibly, inch by inch, Allan was turning his pistol-barrel upward.
Higher, higher, bit by bit it crept toward the horizontal. Unaccustomed to shoot from the hip, Allan realized that right before him lay a supreme test of nerve and marksmanship and skill.
To shoot and kill his boy—the thought was too hideous even to be considered. His father-heart yearned toward the frightened, crying child there in the traitor’s grip.
The unconscious form of Beatrice fever-burned and panting on the bed, seemed calling aloud to him: “Aim true, Allan! Aim true!”
For one false shot inevitably sealed the child’s death. To wound H’yemba and not kill him meant the catastrophe. If the bullet failed to enter brain or heart, H’yemba—though mortally hurt—would of a surety, with his last quiver of strength, sling the boy outward over the dizzying parapet.
Allan prayed; yet his prayer was wordless, formless and unconscious.
He dared not glance down at the automatic. His eyes must hold the smith’s. And he must speak, must parley, at all hazards must still gain another moment’s respite.
What Allan said in those last terrible, eternal seconds he could never afterward recall.
He only knew he was treating with the enemy, making terms, listening, answering—all with mechanical subconsciousness.
His real personality, his true ego, was absolutely absorbed in the one vital, all-deciding problem of that stiffening pistol-hand.
Suddenly something seemed to cry in his ear:
“You have it now! Fire!”
His hand leaped back with the crashing discharge, loud-echoing in the cave.
H’yemba did not even yell. But at the second when he seemed to crumple all together, falling as an empty sack falls, some involuntary jerk of his finger sent a bullet zooming into the cave.
It shattered beyond Allan in a little shower of steel and lead fragments, mingled with rock-dust.
Before these had even fallen Allan was upon him.
Neglecting for an instant the bruised and screaming child, who lay there struggling on the terrace-path, Allan seized the still-twitching body of the monstrous traitor.
With passionate strength he dragged it to the parapet.
Below, down the path, he caught a swift glimpse of grouped Folk, wondering, staring, aghast.
To them he gave no heed.
He lifted the body, dripping bright blood.
Silent, indomitable, disheveled, he raised it on high.
Then, with a cry: “See, ye people, how I answer traitors!” he whirled it outward into the void.
Over and over it gyrated through vacant space. Then, with an echoing splash, the river took it, and the swift current, white-foaming, boisterous, wild, rolled it and tumbled it away, away forever, into the unknown.
With harsh cries and a wild spatter of bullets aimed high above them, Allan drove the cowed and beaten partizans of H’yemba jostling, fleeing, howling for mercy, down the terrace-path between the cliff and parapet.
Only then, when he knew victory was secure and his own dominance once more sealed on them, did he run swiftly back to his boy.
Snatching up the child, he retreated into the home cave again; and now for the first time he realized his wan and sunken cheeks were wet with tears.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE COMING OF THE HORDE
Now that, for an hour or two at least, he felt himself free and master of the situation, Allan devoted himself with energy to the immediate situation in Cliff Villa.
Though still weak and dazed, old Gesafam had now recovered strength and wit enough to soothe and care for the child.
Allan heard from her, in a few disjointed words, all she knew of the kidnapping. H’yemba, she said, had suddenly appeared to her, from the remote end of the cave, and had tried to snatch the child.
She had fought, but one blow of his ax had stunned her. Beyond this, she remembered nothing.
Allan sought and quickly found the aperture made by the smith through the limestone.
“Evidently he’d been planning this coup for a long time,” thought he. “The great catastrophe of the landslide broke the last bonds of order and restraint, and gave him his opportunity. Well, it’s his last villainy! I’ll have this passageway cemented up. That’s all the monument he’ll ever get. It’s more than he deserves!”
He returned to Beatrice. The girl still lay there, moaning a little in her fevered sleep. Allan watched her in anguish.
“Oh, if she should die—if she should die!” thought he, and felt the sweat start on his forehead. “She must not! She can’t! I won’t let her!”
A touch on his arm aroused him from his vigil. Turning, he saw Gesafam.
“The child, O Kromno, hungers. It is crying for food!” Allan thought. He saw at once the impossibility of letting the boy come near its mother. Some other arrangement must be made.
“Ah!” thought he. “I have it!”
He gestured toward the door.
“Go,” he commanded. “Go up the path, to the palisaded place. Take this rope. Bring back, with you a she-goat. Thus shall the child be fed!”
The old woman obeyed. In a quarter-hour she had returned, dragging a wild goat that bleated in terror.
Then, while she watched with amazement, Allan succeeded in milking the creature; though he had to lash securely all four feet and throw it to the cave-floor before it would submit.
He modified the milk with water and bade the old woman administer it by means of a bit of soft cloth. Allan, Junior, protested with yells, but had to make the best of hard necessity; and, after a long and painful process, was surfeited and dozed off. Gesafam put him to bed on the divan by the fire.
“A poor substitute,” thought Allan, “but it will sustain life. He’s healthy; he can stand it—he’s got to. Thank God for that goat! Without it he might easily have starved.”
He tied the animal at the rear of the cave, and had Gesafam fetch a good supply of grass. Thus for the present one problem at least was solved.
>
Beatrice’s condition remained unchanged. Now and then she called for water, which he gave her plentifully. Once he thought she recognized him, but he could not be certain.
And day wore on; and now the hour of noon was at hand. Allan knew that other duties called him. He must go down among the Folk and save them, too, if possible.
Eating a little at random and making sure as always that his pistols were well loaded, he consigned Beatrice and the child into the old woman’s keeping and left the cave.
On the terrace he stopped a moment, gazing triumphantly at the bloodmarks now thickly coagulated down the rocks.
Then, out over the cañon and the forest to northward he peered. His eyes caught the signal-fires he knew must be there now, not ten miles away; and with a nod he smiled.
“They’ve certainly trailed me close, the devils!” sneered he. “Since the minute they first attacked my two men and me, trying to repair the disabled Pauillac in that infernal valley so far to northward, they haven’t given me an hour’s respite! Before night there’ll be war! Well, let them come. The quicker now the better!”
Then he turned, and with a determined step, still clad in his grotesque rags, descended toward the caves of the Folk, such as still were left.
Where all had been resistance and defiant surliness before, now all had become obedience and worship. He understood enough of the barbarian psychology to know that power, strength and dominance—and these alone—commanded respect with the Folk.
And among them all, those who had not seen as well as those that had, the sudden, dramatic, annihilating downfall of H’yemba had again cemented the bonds of solidarity more closely than ever.
The sight of that arch-rebel’s body hurled from the parapet had effectually tamed them, every one. No longer was there any murmur in their caves, no thought save of obedience and worship.
“It’s not what I want,” reflected Allan. “I want intelligent cooperation, not adulation. I want democracy! But, damn it! if they can’t understand, then I must rule a while. And rule I will—and they shall obey or die!”
Quickly he got in touch with the situation. From cave to cave he went, estimating the damage. At the great gap in the terrace he stood and carefully observed the wreckage in the river-bed below.
He visited the hospital-cave, administered medicines, changed dressings and labored for his Folk as though no shadow of rebellion ever had come ‘twixt them and him. The news of Bremilu’s death moved him profoundly. Bremilu had been one of his two most competent and trusted followers, and Allan, too, felt a strong personal affection for the man who had saved his life that first night at the cliffs.
Beside the body he stood, in the morgue-cave whither it had been borne. With bowed head the master looked upon the man; and from his eyes fell tears; and in his heart he felt a vacant place not soon to be made whole.
With profound emotion he took Bremilu’s cold hand in his—the hand that had so deftly and so powerfully stricken down the gorilla—and for a while held it, gazing on the dead man’s face.
“Good-by,” said he at length. “You were a brave heart and a true. Never shall you be forgotten. Good-by!”
He summoned a huge fellow named Frumuos, now the most intelligent of the Folk remaining, and together they directed the work of carrying the bodies up to the cliff-top and there burying them.
By the middle of the afternoon some semblance of order and control had become organized in the colony. He returned to Cliff Villa, leaving strict orders for Frumuos to call him in case of need.
Very beautiful the world was that afternoon. In the soft south wind the fronded palms across the river were bowing and nodding gracefully. Overhead, dazzling clouds drifted northward.
It seemed to him he could almost hear the rustle of the dry undergrowth, parched by the past fortnight of exceptionally hot weather; but, above all, rose the eternal babble of the rapids. High in air, a vulture wheeled its untiring spirals. At sight of it he frowned. It reminded him of the Pauillac, now wrecked far beyond the horizon, where the Horde had trapped him. He shuddered, for the memories of the past week were infinitely horrible, and he longed only to forget.
With a last glance at the scene, over which the ominous threads of smoke now drifted in considerable numbers, he frowned. He reentered the villa.
“No matter what happens now,” he muttered, “I’ve got to snatch a few minutes rest. Otherwise, I’m liable to drop in my tracks. And, above all, I must try to pull through. For on me, and me alone, now everything depends!”
He sat down by the bed again, too stupefied by the toxins of fatigue and exhaustion to do more than note that Beatrice was, at any rate, no worse.
Human effort and emotion had, in fact, reached their extreme climax in him. He felt numb all over, in body, mind and soul. A weaker man would have succumbed long ago to but half the hardships he had struggled through. Now he must rest a bit.
“Bring water, Gesafam!” he commanded. When she had obeyed, he let her wash his wounds and dress them with leaves and ointment. Then he himself bandaged them, his head nodding, eyes already drooping shut from moment to moment.
His head sank on the bed, and one hand sought the girl’s. Despite his wonderful vitality and strength, Allan was on the verge of collapse.
Vague and confused thoughts wandered through his unsettled brain.
What was the destiny of the colony to be, now that the Pauillac was lost and so many of the Folk wiped out? Were there any hopes of ultimate success? And the Horde, what of that? How long a respite might be counted on before the inevitable, decisive battle?
A score, a hundred questions, more and more illusory, blent and faded and reformed in his overtaxed mind.
Then, blessed as a balm, sleep took him.
A violent shaking roused him from dead slumber. Old Gesafam stood there beside him. She had him by the arm.
“Waken, O master!” she was crying. “O Kromno, rouse! For now there is great need!”
Dazed, he started up.
“What—what is it now? More trouble?”
She pointed toward the door.
“Beyond there, master! Beyond the river there be many moving creatures! Darts and arrows have begun to fall against the cliff. See, one has even come into the cave! What shall be done, master?”
Broad awake now, Allan ran to the door and peered out.
Daylight was fading. He must have slept an hour or two; it had seemed but a second. In the west the sun was burning its way toward the horizon, through a thick set of haze that cloaked the rim of the earth.
“Here, master! See!”
Stooping, she picked up a long, slight object and handed it to him.
“One of their poisoned darts, so help me!” he exclaimed. “Cast that into the fire, Gesafam. And have a care lest it wound you, for the slightest scratch is death!”
While she, wondering, obeyed, he hastily reconnoitered the situation.
He had felt positive the Horde, after his escape from it by devious and terrible ways, would track him down.
He had known the army of the hideous little beast-folk, that for a year now had been slowly gathering from north and east for one final assault, would eventually find Settlement Cliffs and there make still another attempt to crush him and his.
But, knowing all this, knowing even that the whole region beyond the river now swarmed with these ghastly monstrosities, the actuality appalled him.
Now that the attack was really at hand, he felt a strange and sudden sense of helplessness.
And with a bitter curse he shook his fist at the dark forest across the cañon where—even as he looked—he saw a movement of crouching, furtive things; he heard a dull thump-thump as of clubs beating hollow logs.
“You devils!” he execrated. “Oh, for a ton of Pulverite to drop among you!”
“Look, master, look! The bridge! The bridge!”
He turned quickly as old Gesafam pointed upstream.
There, clearly outlined against the s
ky, he saw a dozen—a score of little, crouching figures emerge from the forest on the north bank, and at a clumsy run defile along the swaying footpath high above the rapids.
CHAPTER XXVII
WAR!
At sight of the advance-guard of the Horde now already loping, crouched and ugly, over the narrow bridge to Settlement Cliffs Allan’s first impulse was one of absolute despair.
He had expected an attack ere night, but at least he had hoped an hour’s respite to recover a little of his strength and to muster all the still valid men of the Folk for resistance. Now, however, he saw even this was to be denied him. For already the leaders of the Horde scouts had passed the center of the bridge.
Three or four minutes more and they would be inside the palisade, upon the cliff!
“God! If they once get in there, we’re gone!” cried Allan. “We’re cut off from everything. Our animals will be slaughtered. The boy will die! They can bombard us with rocks from aloft. It means annihilation!”
Already he was running up the path toward the palisade. Not one second was to be lost. There was no time even to call a single man of the Folk to reenforce him. Single-handed and alone he must meet the invaders’ first attack.
Panting, sweating, stumbling, he scrambled up the steep terrace. And as he ran his thoughts outdistanced him.
“Fool that I was to have left the bridge!” choked he. “My first act when I set foot on solid land should have been to cut the ropes and drop the whole thing into the rapids! I might have known this would happen—fool that I was!”
The safety, the life, of the whole colony, including his wife and son, now depended solely on his reaching the southern end of the bridge before the vanguard of the Horde.
With a heart-racking burst of energy he sprang to the defence, and as he ran he drew his hunting-knife.
Reeling with exhaustion, spent, winded, yet still in desperation struggling onward, he won the top of the cliff, swung to the left along the path that led to the bridge, and—more dead than alive—rushed onward in a last, supreme effort.
Already he saw the Anthropoids were within a hundred feet of the abutment. He could plainly see their squat, hideous bodies, their hairy and pendent arms, and the ugly shuffle of their preposterous legs, as at their best speed they made for the cliff.
The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction Megapack 01 Page 105