HOK made a quick pincer-like clutch with his legs. He caught Soko between his knees, as in a wrestling hold. His single hand hold on the vine was almost stripped away, but he grimly made it support the double weight. The bone dagger he set between his teeth. Then, still holding the senseless Soko by pressure of his knees, he over handed himself upward again. He achieved a seat on the larger branch, and laid Soko securely upon a broad base of several spreading shoots.
Soko bled, but not too profusely. Krol had struck hastily for all his vicious intent, and the knife had pierced the muscles of chest and armpit, just grazing the ribs without hurting a single vital organ. Hok quickly gathered handfuls of leaves, laying them upon the double wound and letting the blood glue them fast for a bandage. In the midst of these ministrations Soko’s wide eyes opened again.
“You saved me, Hok,” he said in a voice full of trembling gratitude. “That makes twice or three times. Krol—”
“He still lives,” rejoined Hok grimly, repossessing himself of his weapons. “Perhaps he steals upon us even now.” Soko’s brilliant eyes quested here and there in the night. “I think not,” he said. “I have command of myself again. Shall we go upward?”
His wound was troublesome and he climbed stiffly, but he was back to the side of the dying fire well before Hok. “I thirst,” he complained.
“Because you have lost blood,” Hok told him, and took a fiery stick to light the inside of Krol’s abandoned den. Among the great quantity of possessions he saw several gourds. One of these proved to be full of water, warm but good. He gave it to the thankful Soko.
Soko drank, and passed the gourd to Hok. “How can we kill Krol now, my friend?” he asked. “Because we must kill him. You understand that.”
Hok nodded, drinking in turn. “You shall do it without my help, so as to be chief according to custom. My task will be to destroy Rmanth, and roast him for your people. I made such a promise.”
“Promise?” repeated Soko. “Who can keep a promise like that?”
“I have never broken a promise in my life, Soko. Here, help me put out this fire, lest some coals destroy the jungle. And tell me how we shall find Rmanth.”
Soko could not do so. His only ventures to the ground had been by way of the vine-spiral tube in which Hok had first found him. He reiterated that Krol, and Krol alone, possessed the courage and knowledge to face Rmanth and come away unhurt.
“Well, then, where do you let down gourds for water?”
“Near the hollow tube. Why?”
“Tomorrow all the tree-dwellers shall have fresh water. That is another of Hok’s promises. Will you watch while I sleep, Soko? Later waken me, and sleep yourself.”
SOKO agreed, and Hok stretched out wearily upon ferny leafage. He closed his eyes and drifted off into immediate slumber.
Sleeping, he dreamed.
He thought he saw a marshalling of his old enemies. He himself was apparently arrayed singly against a baleful mob. In the forefront was Kimri, the black-bearded giant from whom he had won the lovely Oloana. There was also Cos, a paunchy, nasty-eyed fellow who had ruled the walled town of Tlanis until Hok adventured thither and changed all that. Over the head of Cos looked Romm, who once made the bad guess that renegading among the Gnorrls would give him victory over Hok’s Flint Folk. Djoma the Fisher slunk pretty well to the back, for he was never over-enthusiastic about fighting Hok man to man. It was a delightful throng of menaces.[20]
“I will have the pleasure of slaying you all a second time,” Hok greeted them, and rushed. One hand swung his axe, the other jabbed and fenced with a javelin. In his dream, those second killings seemed much easier than had the first. The ancient enemies fell before him like stalks of wild rice before a swamp-buffalo. He mustered the breath in his deep chest to thunder a cry of triumph, when—
They seemed to fade away, and at the same time to mould and compact themselves into yet another form. This one was hairy, pudgy, grizzled, but active. Bestial lips writhed and fluttered, wide eyes that could see in the dark glared.
“So, you big yellow-haired hulk!” choked a voice he knew, beside itself with rage. “I find you unprepared, I kill you thus!”
Hok threw himself forward, under the stroke of some half-seen weapon. His hands struck soft flesh, and he heard the threatening words shrill away into a shriek.
Then the dream became reality.
Dawn had come. Soko, wounded and weary, had dozed off during his watch, and Krol had returned to take his vengeance.
Only Hok’s sense of danger, shaking him back to wakefulness, had given him the moment of action needed before a blow fell. Krol had poised a big club, a piece of thorn-wood stout enough to break the skull of a horse. This weapon now swished emptily in air, as Hok grappled and held helpless the gray old sinner.
“Soko! Soko!” called Hok loudly.
Soko looked up, washing the sleep from his own eyes. “Eh?” he yawned, then he too was aware of the danger. He sprang up.
“Soko,” said Hok, “I swore that you would kill this man and become chieftain in his place. Do so now. Do not let him escape once more.”
Soko drew a dagger. Hok let go of Krol.
THE deposed ruler of the tree-men made a last effort to break for safety, but Hok blocked his retreat. Then Soko caught Krol by his long hair. The dagger he held—it was the same big bone blade that had spiked Soko to the branch last night—darted into the center of Krol’s chest. Blood bubbled out. The old despot collapsed, dying.
The wakening tree-people were hurrying from all sides to stare and question. Hok clapped Soko’s unwounded shoulder.
“Obey your new chief,” he urged the gathering. “Be afraid of him, follow him, respect him. He is your leader and your father.”
Krol looked up, blood on his wide mouth. “What about the water?” he sneered, and with a coughing gobble he died.
There was silence, and Soko, in the first moment of his power, could only look to Hok for guidance.
“People of the trees,” said Hok, “I have been challenged. Krol was bad and deserved death. But he spoke the truth when he reminded us that water was not at hand while Rmanth roamed below. In other words, Rmanth must be destroyed. I promised that, did I not?” He balanced his axe in one hand, and nodded to Soko. “Come chief. We will arrange the matter.”
Soko followed him, trying not to seem too laggardly. Hok raised his voice: “Go to the usual place, you others, and let down your gourds. Water shall be yours, now and forever after.”
He and Soko came to the tube that gave sheltered descent to the ground level. Hok entered it first, swinging downward by the rough ladder-rungs. Soko for once did not climb faster than he. Hok came to the floor of the cavity, and without hesitation wriggled through the lower opening into the outer air, standing upon the damp earth of the valley bottom. Soko had to be called twice before he followed.
“Look around for that stream of water,” directed Hok. “There, isn’t that it, showing through the stems below us? Come on, Soko. You are a chief now.”
At that word, Soko drew himself up. “Yes, I am a chief,” he said sturdily. “I will do what a chief should do, even though Rmanth eats me.”
“You shall eat Rmanth instead,” Hok said confidently. “But first, the water.”
They came to the edge of the stream. Gourds dangled down from above, on lengthy vine strings. Hok and Soko guided them into the water, and tugged for them to be drawn up. Glad cries beat down from the upper branches, as the hoisters felt the comforting weight of the containers.
“The voices will bring Rmanth,” Soko said dully.
Hok glanced over his shoulder. “He is already here. Leave him to me. Go on and fill gourds.”
He turned from Soko and walked back among the trees, toward the gray bulk with its six knobby horns and hungry tusks.
“I have a feeling that this was planned for both of us,” Hok addressed the elephant-pig. “Come then. We will race, play and fight, and it shall end when one of us is dead.
”
CHAPTER XI
The Termination of Rmanth
SEVERAL accounts have descended to us of how Hok raced, played and fought that day.[21] But names have been changed, some facts have been altered for the sake of ritual or romance. In any case, Hok himself talked little about the business, for such was not his way. The only narrators were the tree-folk, who did not see much of what happened. Which makes the present story valuable as new light on an old, old truth.
Hok saw that Rmanth was at least six times more angry than when they had met last. The arrow in his tongue had evidently broken off or worked its way out, though pink-tinted foam flecked Rmanth’s great protruding tusks. The arrow in his nostril still remained, and his ugly snout was swollen and sore. His eyes remained cold and cunning, but as Hok came near they lighted with a pale glow of recognition.
“You know me, then,” Hok said. “What have we to say and do to each other?”
Rmanth replied by action, a bolting direct charge.
Tree-thickets sprouted between the two, but Rmanth clove and ploughed among them like a bull among reeds. His explosion into attack was so sudden, so unwarned, so swift, that Hok’s sideward leap saved him barely in time. As it was, the bristly flank of the beast touched him lightly as it drove by. Rmanth, missing that first opportunity to finish this maddening enemy, turned as nimbly as a wild horse, head writhed around on the huge shoulders and horrid fangs gaping for a crushing bite.
Hok hurriedly conquered an instinctive urge to spring clear—such a spring would only have mixed him up in the brush, and Rmanth’s second pounce would have captured him. The part of wisdom was to come close, and Hok did so. He placed one hand against Rmanth’s great quivering haunch, the other hand grasping his bow-stave. As the big brute spun to snap at him, Hok followed the haunches around. Rmanth could not get quite close enough to seize him. As the two of them circled, Hok saw a way into the open, and took it at once. He slipped around and behind a big tree. Rmanth, charging violently after, smote that tree heavily. Hok laughed, then headed toward the slope which he had traveled the day before.
Rmanth’s thick head must have buzzed from that impact against the tree. He stood swaying his muzzle experimentally, planting his forefeet widely. Hok had done all his maneuverings with an arrow laid ready across his bow, held in place with his left forefinger. Now he had time to draw it fully and send it singing at Rmanth’s face.
As before, he aimed at the eye. This time his aim was not spoiled. The shaft drove deep into one cold, wicked orb, and Rmanth rose suddenly to his massive hind-quarters, an upright colossus, pawing the air and voicing a horrible cry of pain. Such a cry has been imagined only once by modern man, and the imaginer was both a scholar and a master of fantasy.[22] Hok clinched forever his right to his reputation of stout-heartedness. He laughed a second time.
“An arrow in your other eye, and you’ll be at my mercy!” said he, reaching over his shoulder for another shaft in his quiver.
But there was not another shaft in his quiver.
THE battlings with the Stymphs, his knocking of the milknut from an assailant’s hand, the hurried destruction of Krol’s gaudy snake had used up his store of shafts. If Rmanth was half-blinded, Hok was wholly without missiles. He felt a cold wave of dismay for a moment, but only for a moment.
“Perhaps I was not fair to think of hacking and prodding a helpless enemy to death,” he reflected. “This makes a more even battle of it. At any rate, Rmanth has forgotten that Soko will be filling the water gourds. Let me play with him further. Here he comes!”
And here he came, in another of his mighty bursts of power, swift and resistless as an updriving avalanche.
Hok dared wait longer this time, for Rmanth must charge up the hill. He had quickly returned his bow to its shoulder loop, and now took a stout grip on his axe. As the gaping fang-fringed maw, from which lolled that inflamed tongue, was almost upon him, he sprang aside as before and chopped at the remaining good eye of Rmanth. Missing, he struck the gray hide of the cheek. His heavy flint rebounded like a hailstone from a hut-roof. Hok turned and ran., leaping from side to side to confuse his enemy, and paused near the great sloping trail down which dying mammoths were wont to slide themselves. A carrion stench assailed his nostrils, and he remembered his original quarrel with Rmanth.
“You ate my prey,” he accused the lumbering hulk, which turned stubbornly to pursue him further. “Gragru I trapped, wounded, and chased. He was mine. He recognized my victory. But you lolled below here and gorged yourself on my hunting. You owe me meat, Rmanth, and I intend to collect the debt.”
His voice, as usual, maddened the elephant-pig. When Hok began to scale the slope backward, Rmanth breasted the climb with great driving digs of his massive feet and legs.
But now the advantage was with Hok. Lighter, neater-footed, he could move faster on the assent than could this mighty murderer. Indeed, he could probably gain the snow-lipped plain above and escape entirely. But he did not forget his promise to Soko’s people. Victory, not flight, was what he must achieve.
“Come near, Rmanth,” he invited, moving backward and upward. “I want a fair chance at you.”
Rmanth complied, surging up the slanting trail with a sudden new muster of energy. Hok braced himself and smote with his axe at Rmanth’s nose.
Right between the two forward horns his blade struck, and again Rmanth yelled in furious pain. But the blow only bruised that heavy hide, did not lay it fully open. Rmanth faltered, and Hok retreated once more.
“This nightmare cannot be wounded,” he reflected aloud. “At least not in the side or head or muzzle, like an honest beast. What then? The neck, as with a bull?”[23]
But there was no way to get to Rmanth’s neck. He did not charge with head down, like a stag or bison or rhinoceros, but with nose up and mouth open, like a beast of prey. Hok wished that he had a spear, stout and long. It might serve his turn. But he had only the axe, and it must not fail him. He continued his retirement, along the trail he remembered from his previous descent.
SO FOR some time, and for considerable rise in altitude. Then, suddenly, Rmanth was not crowding Hok any longer. Hok paused and grimaced his defiance.
“Tired?” he jeered. “Or afraid?”
Plainly it was the latter, but Rmanth’s fear was not for Hok. He turned his one good eye this way and that, looking up into the sky that at this point was not very misty. He sniffed, and wrinkled a very ugly gray lip that reminded Hok of Krol.
Then Hok remembered. “Oh, yes, the Stymphs. Krol told me that you did not venture far enough from the shelter of the trees for them to reach you. But think no more about them, Rmanth. I killed most of them. Those who lived have flown away. Perhaps the snow will destroy them—they seem to think it a kinder neighbor than Hok.”
He moved boldly into an open space on the slope. Rmanth snorted and wheezed, seeming to wait for sure doom to overtake the audacious human. Then he squinted skyward again, was plainly reassured, and finally followed Hok upward.
“Well done, elephant-pig!” Hok applauded. “This is between you and me. No Stymph will cheat the conqueror.”
More ascent, man and beast toiling into less tropical belts. Hok found himself backing into a ferny thicket. It was here that—yes, wadded into a fork was his bundle of winter clothing.
As he found it, it seemed that he found also a plan, left here like the clothes against his need. He felt like shouting out one of his laughs, but smothered it lest Rmanth be placed on guard. Instead he seized and shook out the big lion skin that was his main protection against blizzards. Its shaggy expanse was blond and bright, like his own hair.
“See, Rmanth,” he roared, “I run no more! Catch this!”
He flung the pelt right into Rmanth’s face.
Next moment those mighty fangs had closed upon the fur. The horrid head bore its prize to earth, holding it there as if to worry it. His neck was stooped, the thick skin stretched taut . . . Hok hurled himself forward in a charge.<
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Before Rmanth was aware that the hide in his jaws was empty, Hok had sprung and planted a moccasin upon his nose, between those forward horns. Rmanth emitted a whistling grunt and tossed upward, as a bull tosses. Hok felt himself flipped into the air, and for a moment he soared over the neck-nape, the very position he hoped for.
Down slammed his axe, even as he hurtled. It struck hard, square, and true across the spine of Rmanth, back of the shallow skull. Hok’s arms tingled with the back-snap of that effort, and his body was flung sidewise by it.
But Rmanth was down, stunned or smashed. He floundered to his knees. Hok ran to him, dagger out. A thrust, a powerful dragging slash, and the thick hide was torn open. Once more the axe rose and fell. The exposed spinal vertebrae broke beneath the impact with a sound like a tree splitting on a frosty night.
Rmanth relaxed, and abruptly rolled down slope, as dead mammoths were wont to roll. Hok saved his last breath, forbearing to shout his usual signal of victory. Snatching up his crumpled lion-skin cloak, he dashed swiftly downward in pursuit of that big lump of flesh he had killed.
CHAPTER XII
The Feast and the Farewell
THOSE men, women and children who had been Soko’s tree-people sat at last on the solid soil, stockaded about with the mighty trees of the jungle, and roofed over with the impenetrable mat of foliage, vines and mould that had once been their floor and footing. They sat in a circle near the brink of the stream, and in the circle’s center was a cheerful cooking-fire of Hok’s making. The air was heavy with the smell of roast meat.
There had been enough of Rmanth for all, and more than enough. Once Hok had found Soko and shown him the carcass, it had been possible, though not easy, to coax the other men down to ground level. And it had taken all the muscle of the tribe, tugging wearily on tough vine-strands, to drag Rmanth to the waterside. After that, it was an additional labor, with much blunting of bone knives, to flay away his great armor of hide. But when the great wealth of red meat was exposed, and Hok had instructed the most apt of the tribe in the cooking thereof—ah, after that it was a fulfillment of the most ancient dreams about paradise and plenty.
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