"Now, brother," he said, "lead on. You may be mad, but I go to death with you."
"And I also, John," added Balderston calmly.
"Declined with thanks, Frank," I replied, grasping his hand. "You stay here and keep an eye on the other royal brute. Smider, I suppose, must come, though I do not need him."
"All right, then. You know what you're about."
"Sure. Some danger, of course; but I've been there before. Don't fret."
With that, I started off, followed closely by Smider, who carried his sword in one hand and a heavy stabbing spear in the other. As I looked at him, I felt a thrill of proud joy that such a man should be my foster-brother. Though he was going, as he supposed, to certain death, he bore himself with perfect nonchalance, and a grim smile curled his stern lips.
Without a word, we walked straight to the place where the tiger had entered the jungle. Before us rose a mass of shrub mosses, whose graceful foliage curtained the surrounding glow from their unlighted recesses. Within the thicket no fire-flowers blazed among the branches - not a solitary fungus sent up its pale light from the ground. However, I had expected as much. I crouched down at once, and pausing only to fasten a bit of luminous fungus on my rifle sight, I crept straight into the thicket. Smider followed me silently, and in a moment we were swallowed up by the black night.
For three or four yards we pushed in under the dense foliage, straining every nerve to catch the slightest sound which might betray the tiger's presence. At last our efforts were rewarded. Smider tapped me on the ankle as a warning, and I stopped. For a moment all was perfect silence; then, through the thicket to the left, came low mumbling growls and the horrible sound of rending flesh. It was the tiger devouring his prey.
Turning aside, I advanced again until the bones we felt under foot told us we had reached the monster's den, - evidence confirmed by the stench of decay and the powerful catty odour. Here it was I had expected to come upon an open space, and I peered into the blackness before me in search of the beast's eyes. I was not mistaken - the den was clear of leaves to the height of a man. But as I stared across the bone-strewn space, a sudden terror seized my heart in its icy grip. There in the darkness blazed - not one pair of emerald eyes - but two! The tiger had a mate.
For a little I crouched motionless, so frightened that I could not think. But the fit passed, and I steeled myself for the attack. It was too late to retreat. The monsters had ceased eating, and it was evident they scented us. Our only hope of escape was to attack at once. From the position of their eyes, I guessed that one of the tigers stood facing us, while the other held his head half averted. Instantly I raised my rifle until the luminous sight was in line with the nearer eye of the latter beast. I pulled the trigger; then swung the gun a little and emptied the second barrel at the invisible figure beneath the first pair of eyes.
The flash of the two shots, one upon the other, lit up the blackness like a double stroke of lightning. It showed the ghastly bone-paved den, the half-devoured corpse of the last victim, the vast, gaunt forms of the monster brutes, inky black against the pallid vegetation, - and in the flash we too stood revealed.
"Fall flat!" I yelled, and I flung myself down sideways. Then an awful roar stunned my ears, and a great shadowy form crashed down on the spot where I had stood, rending the foliage and branches in a paroxysm of fury. I rolled farther away, just in time to escape a stroke of the great talons which tore up the ground at my side. The tip of the lashing tail struck me on the arm with the force of a heavy rope. I had drawn my revolver, but could not see the tiger's eyes in the whirl of mould and leaves. Every moment I expected to feel the bite of the terrible sabre teeth, - every moment I thought to hear Smider's shriek above the tiger's roar.
But not without reason was Smider called the second hunter of Updal. Suddenly a howl of anguish mingled with the mighty roars, and I caught glimpses of fiery green eyes, as the tiger whirled round and round, biting at the spear in his flank. Smider had drawn aside in the thicket, and as the tiger passed, drove his heavy stabbing spear half through the beast. Then, like myself, he had thrown himself sideways beneath the foliage, leaving the tiger to vent his fury on the spear shaft.
In his frenzy the monster leaped and crashed about through the thicket as though crazed, and most devoutly I prayed that he might sheer off and give us a chance to crawl back into the blessed light. I had my fill of Machairodus latidens.
Suddenly the furious turmoil lulled, and my heart leaped with wild hope. The monster had not bounded off - of that I was certain. Could it be he was dead or dying?... Even as the welcome thought flashed into my mind, something soft and gigantic bore the branches down across my body and pressed upon my chest with crushing power. Above me loomed a shadow blacker than night. I was under the paw of the tiger!
Paralysed, half dead, I lay inert while the monster's triumphant roar shook the earth. The mighty paw on my breast moved, - the steely talons drew out from their velvet sheaths, to sink their tips into my flesh. I was now past fear or pain. In my apathy I scarce felt the piercing claws. Yet their touch roused in me a sort of dull fury. Very deliberately, as it seemed to me, I raised my revolver until my hand touched one of the great sabre teeth. Guided by the touch, I pressed the muzzle of the weapon up under the beast's jaw, and pulled the trigger.
The next I knew I was lying out in the open game trail, surrounded by all our party. Every face wore a look of deep concern. Smider, I saw, was pale with anxiety, and I guessed that the trembling hand on my head was Thyra's.
"Is he crushed, lieutenant?" I heard Thord ask, and Balderston, tearing open my shirt, answered with a sigh of relief: "No; thank Heaven! Only some slight flesh wounds."
Then Black passed me a flask of palm wine, which sent the life tingling through my body.
"I'm all right," I declared, a little unsteadily. "Did we get both? Only bargained for one. I'm thinking Number Two nearly did for us. He tried his best to push my chest in. It smothered me. I must have fainted."
"Sure! But you got him first, old man. Brace up and look at them. You plunked the first straight through the eye. I doubt she moved a yard."
I sprang up and caught Thyra in my arms. As she drew herself away, happy and blushing, I still further shocked Norse propriety by hugging Smider. Then I wheeled him about to inspect the two huge black bodies which lay outstretched behind us. The female had been instantly killed by my first shot. The bullet, entering her left eye, had pierced the brain and burst out through a gaping hole in the skull. My second bullet had shattered a foreleg of her mate, which accounted for the great pressure of his uninjured leg on my chest and his failure to rend me at once.
The forepart of Smider's broken spear, still buried deep in the beast's flank, was a sting which in time would undoubtedly have proved fatal. Indeed, Rolf and the Thorlings had laid the animal's death to this injury, until Balderston found and showed to them the hole made by my revolver shot. The bullet had pierced up through the lower jaw, the tongue and the roof of the mouth, and buried itself in the brain.
King Hoding was examining the dead monsters with the zest of one to whom sport is half of life. At sight of me, he rose quickly and stretched out a hairy fist.
"Grip hands!" he cried heartily. "Warlock or god, you are at least a kemperman."
"Therein does Hoding speak true," assented Bera, no less heartily.
Chapter XIV. Bos Latifrons.
With remarkable dexterity, the Thorlings stripped the silky black skin from the bodies, including the paws and the monstrous heads with their terrible serrated tusks. Meantime, others of the party, with fire-flowers for lamps, re-entered the thicket to bury the remains of their unfortunate comrade.
Black went with these men to look for my rifle. He found it uninjured, - a very agreeable surprise to me. Thord's express was a hopeless wreck. He flung it aside, and borrowed a spare axe which one of the men carried for the king. As he swung the weapon on his shoulder, Bera nodded approvingly and stepped to his side.
"You may be my journey-mate," she said, with a slight air of condescension.
Thord laughed, and looked straight into the proud eyes of the giantess.
"Bera will be my journey-mate," he retorted.
The giantess started and reddened with anger. Never had even Hoding himself spoken to her in such a tone. To every Thorling in the pit she was the warrior-woman, before whose might all trembled - and now this outland wanderer dared to question her supremacy! But Thord met her angry stare with a look which compelled her to admit that she had met her master. To the woman he was willing to bow, - the Amazon must bow to him. It was a novel experience for Bera of the Orm; but as she realised its meaning, her anger gave way to a sort of elephantine shyness, and she started off with Thord, blushing like a young maiden.
"Golly! Mistah Thod am kotin' de big gal," ejaculated Black.
"If he is, it will certainly be a big affair," I observed.
"Big? Yes, and in more ways than one," said Balderston. "But we had best keep our mouths shut. Ah, here is Jofrid's litter."
As Balderston helped the Vala into her palanquin, our Updal party fell in about it, and the march down the game trail was resumed. Some of the Thorlings dropped behind as a rear-guard; others, with their king, joined Thord and Bera in the van.
And so we journeyed along the glowing forest archway, straight into the heart of the Ormvol. Within a mile we came to a fork in the trail, where a family of Thorling hunters had made a dwelling in the hollow of a giant tree. A comely woman and half a dozen children rushed out to meet us; but King Hoding, after a few words with the maimed old hunter in the doorway, led us on into the trail to the left.
"The Niflheim Street," muttered Smider. "Both lead to the Orm; but this winds around close to the brink of Niflheim. Rolf and I returned this way last Yule, when we went as heralds to the Thorling court."
"Game?" questioned Black.
"Both trails swarm with beasts, but on this one we may also see monsters from Niflheim."
""T trust we may not," murmured Thyra.
"What are they like?" asked Balderston.
"While Smider slept, I saw one soar over," replied Rolf. "But the light was very dim. I cannot tell the thing's shape. Ask Jofrid."
The Vala shook her head dubiously. "Seldom do the Loki-fowl soar above Hela Gard. They wheel up, only to glide back into the depths of Niflheim. But once, in the midnight, I saw one swoop close around the Orm's head. Its vast wings seemed featherless, and its head was a gaping maw, full of hooked fangs."
I looked at Balderston, and he looked at me.
"Giant bat," he muttered.
"Or pterodactyl!" I rejoined. "At this rate, we'll soon have to swallow Nidhug."
Balderston shrugged his shoulders and stared out into the gloomy forest caverns which yawned on our right. The trail here wound around the edge of a great peat bog, from whose quaking surface giant swamp trees towered up in gnarled columns to support the leafy roof. There was very little undergrowth, and so, though the luminous fungi were absent, the fairy glow of the fire-flowers was sufficient to shed a sort of twilight through the obscurity.
In the air flitted vague bird forms; the black pools rippled with the movements of shadowy figures; amphibious creatures glided to and fro over the treacherous bog. The swamp abounded in life. More remarkable still, it was a vast generator of oxygen. Instead of the miasmas we had expected, we were astonished to find ourselves breathing fresher and purer air. We tested the gas rising slowly in bubbles to the surface of the black pools. It was oxygen, liberated in the depths of the bog, - probably by the chemical action of mineral waters on the peat.
Invigorated by the tonic atmosphere, our party swung along the game trail at a swifter pace, giving little heed to the small creatures which darted into the jungle before us, or peered down from the overarching branches. Once a hippopotamus, with long yellow hair, waddled across our path, and a sounder of hideous swine grunted at us from the edge of the jungle. But Hoding and Bera kept on without a pause, until the bog fell away behind us and the trail wound across hilly land, whose open glades gave us glimpses of the blood-red sun.
When, in one of these glades, we passed, within easy bowshot, a herd of giant elk, an explanation at last occurred to Varin.
"The king's chase!" he exclaimed. "Hoding has heard of visund. He will stop for nothing else."
"Ay, it is visund," said Rolf, and he pointed to the trail. I could see nothing, but Smider and the Thorlings grunted assent. Visund,
I remembered, had been the old Norse name for the aurochs, and I therefore concluded that we were trailing some species of wild ox.
Black had just asked Rolf to describe the intended quarry, when our three giant leaders halted on an open ridge before us, and hid themselves behind a clump of ferns. As we hurried up, the king turned with a gesture which sent all the Thorlings but Hervard into the thicket on our right. Silent as shadows, the men vanished among the trees, and we climbed up on the ridge.
"What's up, Thord?" asked Balderston.
The Icelander looked around with sparkling eyes.
"Bison!" he answered - "white bison, and big!"
I drew Thyra up beside Bera, and together we peered through the feathery fronds. Below us was a narrow open ravine, which ran up to the right to a small glade. The sunlight was filtering into the vapoury depth of the pit with unusual clearness, so that every object in the open was plainly visible. Following the gaze of Bera and Hoding, we saw at once the herd of immense creamy-white bison grazing down the glade. I had in mind the German aurochs as described by Tacitus, but these creatures were far larger, and the event proved that they were no less fierce.
King Hoding now turned to us, axe in hand.
"Let the maids and bairns stay here," he said jeeringly. "Those who like kemper play, follow me. I will show how men in the Ormvol meet the visund."
"Lead on. We follow," replied Thord, and twirling his borrowed axe, he stalked nonchalantly after the king, over the ridge and down into the ravine's bottom. Bera followed the two, and stationed herself with them in the centre of the ravine. Smider, Rolf and Hervard, not being armed with axes, took their places partly up the opposite slope, whence they could use their lances to advantage in a flank attack. Balderston and Black stopped with me half up the near slope. Though the girls were in a sheltered position, we wished to stay where we could protect them from possible danger.
Our arrangements were made none too soon. Loud shouts told us that Varin and his companions had reached the head of the glade. At first the huge bison seemed disposed to attack these audacious disturbers of their pasture. They gathered promptly in solid phalanx, and stood at bay, bellowing and tearing up the soil with their ponderous hoofs. The Thorlings, having failed in their first attempt to stampede the herd, sprang back at once into the thickets. We were surprised that they should so soon abandon the attack. But they knew their business. Hardly had they disappeared, when the bison lifted their heads and sniffed the air, bellowing uneasily.
"The Orm-scent!" exclaimed Jofrid.
As she spoke, the herd leader, a gigantic old bull, wheeled about and led the retreat down the ravine. After him followed the herd, their slow trot jarring the ground to where we stood. Soon the herd entered the ravine, and came thundering down upon us in a wide, dense column. Not until then did we fully realise the colossal size of the animals. To set ourselves in the path of such a living avalanche seemed the height of folly.
"Here's sport - with a vengeance!" muttered Balderston.
"I should say so, Frank. Might as well be elephant herd."
"I say, sah, dah's a big tree on de right flank, sah," suggested Black, a trifle nervously.
"Good, sergeant. We'll keep an eye that way," replied Balderston. "I'd like to see how the world looks from it now, but presume King Hoding desires our company."
"We can stand it, if he can. But here it comes. Look to your rifles!" I cried sharply.
It was indeed high time. The herd was ploughing
through a bank of shrub moss not a hundred yards away.
Here goes," said Balderston, and he let drive straight between the eyes of the huge bull. He might as well have fired at a stone wall. The soft-nosed bullet struck a little high in the massive thickness of horn and bone, and flattened without penetrating. The colossus paused for an instant, more in surprise at the report than from the shock of the bullet. Then, catching sight of our party, he charged, bellowing with fury, and after him galloped the whole herd.
"Steel point would have been better than shot," muttered Balderston.
"Bad shot for any bullet," I replied, and I took chance aim for the bull's spine. It was a lucky shot. The giant beast crashed down in his tracks, without so much as a moan.
The fall of their leader brought the mass of the herd to an abrupt halt, and we breathed easier despite the five gigantic bulls which came thundering on. It was now the sergeant's turn, and he did well, repeating my shot. Before Balderston or I could fire again, we heard Thord and the king shouting for us to desist. But one of the four bulls turned directly our way, and we fired, all three together. The beast was almost upon us, and each sent his bullet over the huge head, through the thick of his shaggy neck. Two shots pierced the beast's lungs, and the third struck him to the heart, yet only the quickest of dodging saved us, as he lunged forward into our midst, ploughing up the soil of the ravine with his monstrous horns.
We were far too closely engaged for the moment to have eyes for the other visund. But above their hoarse bellows we heard a great shout and the crash of weapons. Then we leaped about from our dying prize, and saw Hoding and Thord before two dead bulls. Each had split the skull of his colossal opponent by a single axe-stroke. The helve of Thord's weapon was shattered by the tremendous shock.
Bera, less fortunate, had struck an instant too late, and the gigantic horns of the third bull had caught her in their sweep as she leaped aside. Dashed violently to the ground, she lay senseless, almost beneath the forefeet of the wounded bull. Shaking off the blood which gushed down his horny forehead, the colossus drew back that he might see to gore the prostrate huntress. It was a question of seconds.
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