Fiction complete, p.46
Fiction Complete, page 46
“It’s like the old legends,” he murmured, standing up and taking the cylinder out of his pouch to lode at it again. “Things like this always happened to the ancient heroes. They even flew among the stars—huh! That’s a likely tale! But this . . .?”
Once again, as he had learned, he twisted the end of the cylinder. The other end glowed with a-blue-green light.
Yorgh shook his head in wonder, and returned the object to his pouch. He went ahead at a relaxed but steady pace. In a few minutes, the sound of voices through the undergrowth brought his head up sharply. He went on, parting the bushes silently. Presently, he grinned as he peered out at a wide pool.
Five of the younger women were swimming or splashing in the shallows. Piles of wet clothing on die bank indicated the task that had brought them to this sheltered eddy in the creek. Yorgh looked hopefully for the red-gold tresses of Vaneen, the shapely—if too haughty—daughter of Chief Tefior, but vainly.
Let me see, he pondered, shall I be a clumsy kromp snorting through the trees, or a meat-eating ponadu?
Raising his hands to his mouth, he emitted a wailing cry that was the trademark of the only prowling killer on The World large enough to hunt a man. The splashing in the creek ceased immediately.
YORGH ducked his head lower and wailed again. For good measure, he added a few guttural coughs, as if the animal had scented game. The splashing resumed for a second amid low cries of alarm, then was replaced by the hasty pat-pat-pat of bare feet along the bank. Yorgh peered after the wetly gleaming figures, and doubled up with one hand firmly across his mouth.
Taking time only to refill his water-skin, he followed the trail along the creek at a good pace. Just as he sighted the outlines of tents through the thinning trees, a handful of hunters ran pell-mell up the trail toward him.
“Hold! What’s this?” snapped Chief Tefior, raising his spear to halt those trotting behind him. His gray-streaked beard bristled as he eyed Yorgh suspiciously.
“Yorgh, your best hunter,” answered Yorgh, casting his eyes modestly downward. “I would have returned last night, had not my wolly run off in a sandstorm.”
“About you, I do not worry!” retorted Tefior, fingering the haft of his spear. “The girls just ran into camp shrieking that a ponadu was stalking the woods.”
“Panting, wide-eyed, and in all the glory of their rather damp tresses,” added a dark young bowman named Kwint, hiding a grin behind his hand as he examined Yorgh’s innocent features.
“I thought I heard something,” admitted the latter.
“Come then, Father!” half-grown Puko asked. “You’ll help, won’t you, Yorgh? Here, take my spear!”
Yorgh was half-inclined to let them go. He liked the sort of joke that brewed a while, gaining savor, like the time last spring when he had the luck to knock a ponadu unconscious with the butt of his broken spear. He still dreamed of having another such inspiration as that which impelled him to tie a dead log to the creature’s hind legs, and then lead a group of young hunters into that part of the woods on the way to their nightly courting.
They had been enraged at spending half the night up trees, not daring to venture down in the dark with only their bronze knives. But they had been unable to prove that Yorgh had done anything worse than run faster than they, and he had enjoyed a unique evening being wined and fed and listened to with respect due the only man present, while the others waited for the disgruntled beast to free itself and slink unhappily off.
Yes, it would be good fun to let them go on, but Yorgh could not think of a quick excuse to separate Puko from the band. The boy was his favorite, perhaps because he so admired Yorgh’s feats of fun and strength, or perhaps because his brown eyes so resembled those of his older sister.
“Well, truthfully,” said Yorgh, “having only a knife in my belt, I broke off a branch and yelled aloud to scare the slinking thing. I distinctly heard it rim off up the creek.”
Some stared at him; other glanced sidelong at each other.
Yorgh grinned good-naturedly, until he saw Tefior’s scowl.
“Well,” growled the chief, “I think we are too late to catch whatever it was, much as I would have liked to!”
Yorgh widened his eyes to their most innocent expression at the pointed emphasis of the last phrase.
“You, Puko!” added Tefior. “Run back to camp ahead of us and find the fathers of those silly wenches. Tell them I said two or three are to go back with the girls to get the wash, and to smack their bottoms for going so far without even small bows!”
The tramp back to camp was made in silence, save for subdued snickering at the rear of the file, where Kwint and others whispered of the winter camp. The Sea People there still told stories of sea monsters, remembering the great, black, slippery thing that had been shot full of arrows and hauled up on the river bank before it was seen to be a kromp skin mounted on a frame of boughs. No one had admitted creating the “monster,” but Kwint thought he knew the maker.
Despite Tefior’s disapproving glare when Yorgh appeared before the chief’s tent at suppertime, the customs of hospitality suffered no greater breach than that the tribal leader stamped off to inspect the picket line of wollies below the camp immediately after finishing his bowl of stew. Yorgh allowed Puko to shame Vaneen into offering a fourth helping, on grounds that he had not eaten during his desperate trek through the burning sands. He watched her move about the fire.
II
SHE wore a dress of blue wool, dyed and woven by the Sea People into finer material than was made by the Hunter tribe. It tended to cling as she moved; and once Yorgh considered complimenting her on the way it revealed the curve of her breast, but decided she might not laugh like some of the other girls.
“And then,” he finished telling his story to Puko, “when the sand stopped blowing, I pulled myself out and came home.”
“And the Old One is still there in his gully!” exclaimed the wide-eyed boy. “Will you take me out to see, Yorgh?”
“I doubt he will,” said his sister, reaching out to place Yorgh’s bowl with the others. “Yorgh will do no riding till he earns a new wolly. Moyt says he caught a saddled animal trotting out of the hills this morning, and that it belongs to him now.”
“That Moyt!” Puko sprang up indignantly. “Why do you let him come to our fire, Vaneen? I have heard him say he courts you only because Tefior is chief.”
“Moyt is a good hunter,” retorted Vaneen, frowning, “and more trustworthy than some I could name. Maybe if Yorgh could borrow a bow, he could bring down a kromp tomorrow and earn a new wolly.”
“He can borrow mine,” cried Puko, “and I’ll help him. Then he can make a new bow of the horns.”
Vaneen laughed.
“Yorgh, naturally, would never have the bad luck to get a kromp without perfect horns. Well, anyway, he would be safer out of camp. Ahnee and some of the other girls are angry.”
“With me?” demanded Yorgh. “I must stay and hear their complaints, since Moyt has already given me back my things. As I pointed out, my bow would be too strong for him to draw, especially with a broken arm.”
“He has a broken arm?” cried Puko, leaping up in delight.
“Well, no. But he would have, had he not persuaded me to let go by turning temporarily honest.”
Yorgh’s laugh trailed off when Vaneen gave no sign of being amused, but Puko continued to crow for some minutes.
“Then we can go tomorrow,” he said at last.
He sobered at the expression on Yorgh’s face.
“Don’t say it was just one of your stories, Yorgh! That the sand blew in till it filled the gully again!”
The big hunter nodded sadly.
“This morning, on the crest of the hills, I even climbed a tree to look back, but the sand is like waves of the sea.”
The firelight glinted in Vaneen’s hair as she laughed scornfully.
“You don’t believe me?” he asked.
“There are over three hundred men, women, and children in the tribe,” said the girl, stretching nonchalantly and smoothing die blue dress over her hips, “and even the tiniest babes in their mothers’ arms will tell you that Yorgh seldom speaks in earnest!”
“That was unkind!” said Yorgh, pulling down the corners of his mouth. “But you always were too proud to be considerate, as is common with beautiful women. Will you bet a kiss that I he?”
“A hundred!” Vaneen waved a hand contemptuously. “And that is a bet I would not make lightly with an honest man!”
Yorgh fumbled in his pouch for the shiny metal stick and held it up. Puko watched eagerly.
“Well?” challenged Vaneen, watching him warily.
“As I told you, I picked up the thing that lay shining between the feet of the skeleton. After chasing the wolly, I found it stall in my hand. Here is my proof!”
Vaneen peered at it suspiciously, being careful not to come too close to Yorgh.
“Where did you really get it?” she asked.
“Have you no ears, woman? I just now told you that—”
“It’s one of your tricks,” said Vaneen, putting the fire between them.
“Look, then!” said Yorgh. “Come around a little, so you can watch the stick against the dark.”
She moved reluctantly, and Yorgh twisted the end of the metal cylinder. The other end suddenly glowed blue-green, bringing breathless exclamations from Puko and Vaneen.
With an air of mastery, Yorgh turned the light off and on several times before yielding to Puko’s awed plea to be allowed to touch it. Even when the boy, at Yorgh’s instructions, also worked the light, his sister remained dubious.
“Enough!” declared Yorgh, grinning in anticipation. “You questioned me once too often, Vaneen. Come here!”
He reached out one huge arm and swept her to him, but it suddenly seemed he had taken hold of an untamed wolly. A hard little elbow thudded into his stomach and he let go. That was his second mistake, he saw a second later as he staggered back with his left ear ringing from a man-sized slap.
Vaneen, with a swirl of blue skirt about her tanned knees, reached for the wood-pile. Yorgh changed his mind about grabbing her again to exact his “winnings” when he saw the billet of wood in her hand.
“Your sister is a poor loser,” he told Puko, rubbing his ear tenderly.
“I don’t know how you made it light up,” snapped Vaneen, “but as far as I’m concerned, you haven’t proved anything yet!”
“Here, you try it!” offered Yorgh. “There is no trick.”
“I don’t want the thing. Put it back in your belt and go show it to the simple-minded!”
“All right,” said Yorgh, with dignity. “Here—you may keep it, until you believe me.”
He tossed the metal object to the ground at her feet.
“One hundred—remember!” he warned. “Or I’ll tell every young hunter in the tribe that you are a cheat!”
He loved the way her eyes flashed at that, but did not let the sight bemuse him when the billet of wood came whipping across the fire at his head. He reached up one big hand and plucked it out of the air, to Puko’s admiring grunt.
“Well, if that’s the way you feel . . .” said Yorgh. “I’ll go see just how angry Ahnee is with me. I believe you made that up, out of jealousy!”
He tossed the wood airily into the fire and walked away as Vaneen clenched her fists in wordless rage.
Which, in a woman, means she’s really mad, he reflected.
He turned sharply into the shadows of the nearest tent, lest another length of wood come spinning past his ear to ruin the dignified impression he had left behind him. Then he made for the two-wheeled carts shared by the unmarried men, located his own tent bundle among the baggage, and made himself comfortable for the night.
THE next day, he rode out with Kwint, Puko, and two others. They headed toward where the kromp herd had been reported, hoping for horn trophies that might be traded to the Raydower tribe of the great mountains. As with the Sea People, the Hunters relied largely upon wool from their wollies for trading, but other items helped. The Raydowers were sometimes difficult to get along with because of their bent toward mysticism, but they made knives and buckles of hard bronze.
Toward noon, they brought down a loppa, a fleet animal smaller than a wolly but excellent eating. Yorgh lost when they drew straws, and stayed to do the skinning as the others hunted back along a brook toward camp, having promised to send him the first cart. The plain thereabouts was dotted by clumps of thick brash, and Yorgh decided to have a steak after he had ridden over to the brook, two hundred yards away, to wash up. He got out his sparking stones from the mountains and made a fire.
He had just wiped his mouth on his wrist, careful not to soil the sleeves of his prized crimson tunic, when a drumming thunder rolled across the flatland. He leaped to his feet.
“Kromps!” he exclaimed.
It was the herd he had seen the day before. Something had aroused them, and they pounded across the grassland in a black mass studded with sweeping horns. They would go for miles, leaving a trail like a dozen tribes on the march with all their wagons.
They’re heading for the brook, Yorgh thought. If they don’t cross, but swing and follow it down to the creek and the camp—
He reached his grazing wolly in three bounds and vaulted into the saddle. The animal protested bleatingly at the impact.
As Yorgh grabbed the end of the guide rope he saw the frenzied kromps swerve away from the glint of water and turn parallel to the brook.
“Can’t gain fast enough to ride ahead,” he muttered. “Why in the name of the Three Moons do they act so scary, when every other thing on The World is scared of them?”
Reaching down from the saddle, he pulled up a handful of the long grass already turning brown from the summer rays of The Star. When he held it over the fire, it flared into ashes too quickly.
With one hand, Yorgh tore loose the cloak rolled at the back of his saddle; with the other he unslung the spear hanging down beside his mount’s first pair of shoulders.
The cloak took fire and burned well as he forced the reluctant wolly into a dash for the brook. With fifty yards to spare, he crossed in front of the kromp herd and rode ahead of it.
Occasional branches of trees growing along the brook whipped across his chest or face, but Yorgh hardly felt them. He was trying to judge how long his cloak would last. He slowed the wolly, which now displayed commendable willingness to run.
The kromp leading the side of the charge nearest the brook was a young bull whose rear pair of horns had not yet grown to sweep out and forward around the smaller pair. Yorgh hoped that he might not be as stubborn as an older specimen.
He held the flaming cloak out on the head of his spear as the animals came up with him.
The young bull snarled at him, almost like a ponadu. Kromps did not bleat like the loppas and wollies they resembled in many other ways.
Too mean, decided Yorgh. He doesn’t like this, though!
The young bull edged away from the flame. A branch snapped across Yorgh’s leading shoulder, and he almost lost his grip on the spear. Then he missed the rustle of the bushes, and realized that the herd had swerved very slightly away from tire brook.
He waved his disintegrating cloak before the eyes of the young bull again, and was sure the direction of the charge shifted a bit more. The kromp rolled reddened eyes at him and snarled again.
Seeing that the last shreds of the cloak were slipping from the spearhead, Yorgh wiped them off across the muzzle of the beast, and let the kromp have a smart jab behind the second pair of legs as it passed him.
He started to pull up, but suddenly saw that he was not entirely in the clear. An old bull, lumbering among the dust to the rear, had veered wide of the herd and was outside Yorgh. It panted up alongside, and the hunter’s wolly lost its head and tried to run with the kromp.
Yorgh gripped the point of the rough, battle-chipped horn that suddenly appeared beside his ribs, and leaned his weight upon it in hopes of guiding the bigger animal past. Then he caught a fleeting glimpse of a dense clump of scrub growth thrusting out from the vegetation screening the brook.
Before he could shift his weight, his wolly swerved to the right. Yorgh found himself supported in the air by only a one-handed grip on the kromp’s horn.
He let his feet bounce against the ground once, reaching for the horn with his other hand. Then the bull tossed his heavy head, and the man sailed high into the air.
TIME hung motionless for an instant, during which there floated to his ears the irritable sounds made by the kromp as it blundered at full speed through the brush.
Then Yorgh crashed into the dense thicket on his back, with a ripping and tearing of cloth and a loud yell as some thorny shrub raked his ribs. He thudded straight through to the ground, but with his speed fortunately reduced.
“By Kioto, by Lax, and by the seldom-seen Atrop of legend!” he swore. “And if The World has any more moons, by them too! I had done better to stand squarely in their path!”
He wiped blood from his left cheek and wriggled about until he thought all bit clothing was free. The dark red tunic was shredded, and the heavier wool of his pants was gashed and torn.
He loosed a pronged burr from his beard, pulled out a long splinter lodged in the back of his right thigh, and squirmed through the undergrowth on hands and knees until he came to an open swath trampled straight through the hundred-foot dump.
The kromp bull had not permitted a little jungle to hinder him.
Yorgh pulled himself to his feet and limped back along the freshly made trail to the open. In the distance, he could hear the herd still stampeding. He hoped he had turned it enough so that the kromps’ propensity for straight-line charges would cause them to miss the camp.
“Well, I’d better see to myself,” he sighed. “Left on foot twice in three days! Some will have a good time with me over that. Ouch! That knee feels skinned.”
He made his way to the brook, where he stripped and bathed. As the water stung them, he discovered nicks and scratches he had not known he had, but he felt better after dressing again.
