Helgvor of the Blue River

by J. -H. Rosny aîné

  Aoun did not insist. He watched the sparks rise from the twigs, while his companion lit the end of a turpentine stick. It soon threw out a bright light. Then, leaning towards one of the openings, the son of Earth flung the burning brand towards the tiger…

  The flame described a parabola and fell among the dry grass. It was the most arid part of the moor, where the nocturnal vapors had not yet formed…

  The tiger started as he caught sight of the glittering projectile, which disappeared among the tall grass stalks. Aoun laughed silently. Zouhr was carefully considering whether he should light another torch.

  Only a twinkling red glow remained among the vegetation. The tiger lay down again.

  After a moment’s hesitation Zouhr lit the second turpentine stick. The fire had just caught the point of it, when a livid jet appeared where the first had fallen, ran up the grass stalks, and made a line of light. The wild beast rose up with a roar, and was about to spring when Zouhr flung the second burning brand.

  It struck the brute on the chest. Maddened, it turned around and around and bounded from side to side in zigzags. The fire, with a dry crackling sound, seemed to gallop its way through the tall grass; then it disseminated itself in sheafs and enveloped the wild beast… The carnivore gave a cry of fury, plunged through the flames and fled.

  “It will not come back,” Zouhr asserted. “No beast returns to the place where it has been burnt.”

  His companion’s cunning delighted Aoun. His laugh was no longer silent but rang out over the moor, like a joyous war-cry.

  “Zouhr is more cunning than Goun of the Dry Bones,” he said enthusiastically.

  He laid his muscular hand on the shoulder of the son of Earth.

  The tiger did not return. Aoun and Zouhr slept till daybreak. A mist covered the moor and the jungle; silence and stillness lasted till the full dawn. Then the day animals began to stir. A loud clamor rose from the river and the trees of the forest. The son of Urus came out of the refuge and studied the landscape. No suspicious odor alarmed his nostrils and some axis passed by, which reassured him still more.

  He went back to Zouhr and said, “We will continue our journey; but we will first go in a westerly direction so as not to meet the tiger.”

  They started before day had fully dawned. The mist slowly rolled away and was lost in the pale sky, which rapidly turned blue. At first there were few animals to be seen; then their numbers increased and the warriors conjectured that they had left the domain of the tiger behind them. Aoun however sniffed the air anxiously. Feverish heat hung over the foliage; red-headed flies tormented the two men; the Sun’s rays shot through the branches and seemed to bite into their flesh like white ants; monkeys made faces at them, and parrots shrieked in strident and furious tones.

  “There will be thunder in the forest!” said the son of Earth.

  Aoun stopped to consider the western sky. They were at the entrance of a clearing and could see a long stretch of firmament, of the color of lapis lazuli, without a single cloud. Notwithstanding this the two men felt a vague uneasiness, which seemed to pervade the air like an unseen terror.

  It lasted for a long time. Aoun and Zouhr turned aside towards the river, following the lines indicated by the various kinds of undergrowth. At midday the storm was still far off. They made no fire, but ate, without enjoyment, a slice of meat they had cooked on the previous day. Their rest was disturbed by the attacks of insects.

  When they resumed their journey, the first mists were appearing in the west. A milky color spread itself among the blue; the uneasy belling of the swamp deer was heard, and the lowing of buffaloes; cobras slipped by among the grasses. For a moment the warriors hesitated to start, but their halting place was not a favorable one: immense old trees lifted crests that were dangerously high; the ground was spongy at their feet; they could see no shelter against the thunderbolts that would ravage the forest. At intervals gusts of air passed over the crests of the trees with a sound like that of a river, or rose up in spirals, brushing aside the foliage. This was followed by deep, heavy silence. A wall of vapor rose towards the zenith, black smoke that became phosphorescent towards the edge. Then furious livid gleams of light shot through the world of trees. They had their origin very far from where Zouhr and Aoun stood, so they did not add their clamor to the tumult of the storm. When the wall shrouded the middle of the firmament and began to descend towards the east, a growing terror took possession of all living things; here and there only a fugitive animal could be seen seeking its lair, or a frightened insect trying to reach some crack in the bark of a tree. The life of the creatures was enveloped by another life, that life which, subtly diffused, creates and nourishes the forest life, but which if it is unchained destroys alike trees, grass and animals.

  The wanderers had experienced these convulsions of nature. Aoun only thought of a refuge; Zouhr lifted his head from time to time possessed by the idea that monstrous wild beasts were raging in the clouds. Already their roars could be heard. Distance made them solemn, like the Sound of lions’ voices lost among the hills. Then the thunder broke and the glare of the lightning became intolerable. A sound of running water was heard, which soon grew to the roar of rapids and of torrents. The jungle opened upon a lake which was preceded by marshes; no shelter was visible in the reeking ground, and the thunder rolled on at intervals. Under the arcades of a banyan-tree where the two men stopped, a leopard crouched; sharp cries were heard from the monkeys in the branches above. Water flowed as if an ocean had broken through dykes in the sky; the smell of thunder and the scent of plants was borne on the squalls of wind… In an hour the lake had risen; the marshy pools were full; one of them overflowed and began to invade the forest.

  The wanderers were forced to retreat; but other waters came on with a roar which added to the noise of the storm. They were forced to flee as best they could towards the east. The raging waters harassed them. They had barely escaped from the floor on one side when it appeared unexpectedly on the other. Aoun galloped like a stallion, and Zouhr followed him, bent down and hardly lifting his feet, as was the custom of the Men-without-Shoulders. When they had put a space between themselves and the inundation they continued their way towards the east, in the hope of reaching the river.

  They traversed moors, and threaded their way through bamboos, palms and creepers. A marsh which had overflowed obliged them to turn towards the north. The storm was abating, the gusts of wind howled less loudly, and they finally reached a clearing where a torrent formed by the rain was racing along…

  There they stopped, trying to estimate the depth of the water.

  The lightning struck a group of ebony-trees; on the other bank the long body of a terrified animal rose in great bounds; Aoun and Zouhr recognized the tiger. It turned around and around for a time in terror, then it stopped and perceived the human beings…

  Aoun’s instinct told him that it was the one which had prowled around the refuge. Zouhr was certain of it when he saw that its chest was singed, and knew it must have been done by the burning grass… More vaguely the tiger recognized the prey that had escaped him, made memorable by the fire, the barricade of creepers and the burning grass. He found them again at the moment when another fire struck the ebony-trees. Their forms thus associated in its mind with terrible things, made the wild beast hesitate.

  All three remained immovable for a time. There was too small a space between the men and the beast to make flight possible.

  Aoun had already got ready his spear, and Zouhr, fearing that flight might be followed by pursuit, also prepared himself to fight.

  It was he who first hurled his weapon. It whistled above the waters and hit the brute close to its right eye. With a terrible roar it made its spring, but blood impeded its sight: its bound had not that awful precision which condemned to death all within its reach. The long body fell into the torrent, turned around and around, and clung to the bank by its front paws. Aoun threw himself upon it, his spear struck its breast, missing the shoulder�
� Maddened with rage the brute hoisted itself onto the bank and charged the men. It was lame, and it moved slowly; Zouhr pierced its side with a second spear, while the son of Urus wounded it on the neck…

  Then, holding their clubs in readiness, they waited. Aoun faced the attack and brought down his weapon on the tiger’s head, while the Wah attacked it from behind and aimed at the vertebrae… One of its claws tore the Oulhamr’s body, but by stepping aside he made it slip, and the club, crashing down on the tiger’s nostrils momentarily arrested its course… Before it could spring again, Aoun’s club came down for the third time with such force that the tiger remained motionless, as if it slept. Then, without pausing for a moment, the two companions belabored its vertebrae and legs with blows. The enormous body sank down, with terrible convulsions, and the son of Urus having put out its left eye, the wild beast was at the men’s mercy.

  A spear thrust let out its heart’s blood.

  IX. The Forest of the Lemurian Men

  The weather was mild on the following days. The warriors advanced confidently through lands where the river was as broad as a lake. The joy of the conqueror was upon them, which made the recollection of past perils almost agreeable to them, without diminishing their prudence. They found temporary homes in the jungle, on the river bank, among the rocks, in the hollows of trees thousands of years old, in thickets where the thorns were so strong that after having cut a passage for themselves with their axes, and stopped up the entrance, they could defy the carnivores.

  Their way was barred by a lake, which made them turn aside from the river, and they found themselves at the foot of a mountain. It was not a high one. After walking for a quarter of a day, they reached a plateau, which began with a savannah, and became a forest; it stretched from northeast to southwest, and was dominated on the northeast by another chain of mountains where two rivers, which fed another lake, took their rise.

  Aoun and Zouhr did not get close to the forest till near sunset. A crevice in a porphyry rock gave them shelter and they barricaded the opening with branches. Then they lit a great fire on the savannah and roasted an iguanoid. The heat was not so great as on the plains, and a breeze which blew from the neighboring mountains refreshed the air of the plateau. The two men enjoyed the coolness after so many torrid nights; it reminded them of their nightwatches with the Oulhamrs. They took almost as much pleasure in breathing it in as they did in eating. The rustling of the forest was like the sound of running water in the distance. At times they heard the roar of a wild best, the hyenas’ sinister laugh, or the howling of a pack of Dholes.

  A sudden clamor arose, then strange forms appeared in the trees. They resembled dogs and at the same time Red Dwarfs. Their over-mobile faces were lit up by round eyes placed too close together. Their four legs ended in hands.

  Aoun and Zouhr recognized them. They were the rhesus monkeys, who have green hair on their backs, and yellow on their chests, and whose faces are as red as the setting Sun. They looked at the fire. The son of Earth did not dislike them. In one sense he considered them like himself, as he did the Men-Devourers. Aoun shared this belief. Since their arrival in this new country, the wanderers had met them almost every day, and knew that they were inoffensive. But on account of their resemblance to the Red Dwarfs, the rhesus inspired them with a vague uneasiness.

  About a dozen of them could be seen in the last rays of daylight. Having watched the flames for a moment, they bounded from branch to branch, and from tree to tree, with giddy rapidity; then they stopped and again began to take note of the unusual spectacle. At last a big male—he was like a wolf in build—slowly descended to the ground and advanced towards the fire. When he had covered a distance of about ten ells, he stopped and gave a sort of gentle whimper, which was at the same time an appeal.

  Aoun had lifted his spear, remembering the treachery of the Red Dwarfs, who were hardly larger than the rhesus. He let it fall again when he heard the cry. After waiting a moment the monkey advanced another few ells. Then he seemed to have stopped for good, rendered motionless by a combination of fear and curiosity.

  Loud howls resounded; three wolves appeared on the summit of a mound. As the wind blew away from them neither the men nor the rhesus had noticed their approach.

  The rhesus tried to reach the trees. The most active of the wolves got ahead of him, the two others barred his retreat. Only the way to the fire remained free. The great monkey stood for a moment distracted, while his companions in the trees chattered despairingly. He turned his anxious face towards the men, saw that the wolves were drawing nearer, and mad with terror, dashed forward.

  At the moment when he got near the fire, the three pursuers were converging upon him; the most active of them was only ten ells distant. The rhesus gave a mournful cry. There was no space left between the flesh-eaters and the fierce flames. Death was before him and the simian felt its cold horror. He turned first towards the forest, towards that ocean of leaves where he could so easily have escaped from the teeth of his enemies…then a second time his distressed face was turned imploringly towards the men.

  Zouhr rose, his spear held high in his hand. A race instinct boiled within him; he bounded towards the monkey. The wolf recoiled before the man’s form, and Aoun in his turn sprang to his feet. The wolves howled; though they still kept their distance, they feigned attack, with lips turned up menacingly.

  Aoun disdainfully threw a stone. Struck on the shoulder the nearest wolf fell back towards the others.

  “Wolves are not worthy of spears or javelins,” mocked the son of Urus.

  Among the trees one could see the other monkeys bounding from branch to branch, while the motionless fugitive looked anxiously at the men who had just saved his life. His long arms trembled. Fear had taken possession of him; he was afraid of the unknown fire, afraid of the wolves, afraid also of those forms which stood up so straight, and of that strange voice which differed from any of the voices of the forest or the steppes. By degrees his heart beat less quickly, and his round eyes sought those of the men. He began to feel reassured; when the stronger one does not strike first, after a little while the feebler one thinks that he will not strike at all. The rhesus was now afraid only of the fire and the wolves. Then the fire ceased to alarm him, as it remained within the pile of heaped-up branches.

  Aoun and Zouhr, having chased away the wild beasts, took stock of their guest. He was sitting down like a child, and his little hands completed the resemblance; also his chest, which was nearly flat.

  “The wolves shall not eat the little green dwarf,” said Aoun with a laugh which made the monkey start.

  “Aoun and Zouhr will take him back to the trees!” added the Wah. He began to tremble again as they approached him. Their slow movements, the tones of their voices, no longer loud as when they were threatening the wolves, calmed the rhesus, and there was a feeling of gentleness between them. For Aoun and Zouhr there was pleasure in the thought of having a new companion, who excited their curiosity and made life less bleak.

  Time passed. The wolves still watched; they howled at intervals; they were furious with the fire, the men, and the prey that had escaped them, not by cunning or swiftness, but through an incomprehensible intervention. At last they disappeared. They faded into the night and, as they were no longer downwind, it was impossible for their approach to be unobserved should they return.

  The rhesus did not go away at once. He began to grow accustomed to the fire: the breeze blew more chill from the mountains; the sky was too clear, it absorbed the heat; the beast imitated man and took pleasure in the hot breath which came from the flames.

  Then the rhesus gave a little cry, looked fixedly at his hosts and bounded towards the trees.

  Aoun and Zouhr regretted his departure.

  The next day the two men returned to the forest. It astonished them by the enormous size of its trees and undergrowth. There were fewer serpents than on the plains; the tribe of white-headed crows croaked in the tops of the trees; gaurs passed across the
clearing, while black bears showed themselves on the forks of the big branches. Sometimes a leopard would come forth towards the close of day, without daring to attack the men. Then a horde of long-tailed entellus monkeys, with bearded faces, would appear. They assembled in clusters in the branches, with weird cries, enjoying the feeling of companionship and the sense of security which they derived from uniting to defend themselves and their territory.

  On the fourth night, Aoun became aware of a peculiar smell. No other odor which he had smelt since his arrival in this new land so much resembled the human effluvia. He shuddered; fear made his hair stand on end. Neither the odor of the tiger, the lion, the saber-tooth, nor that of the giant feline would have seemed so alarming to him.

  He wakened Zouhr so that they might be ready to fight, and both of them kept all their senses on the alert. The Wah’s power of smell was not so strongly developed as that of the Oulhamr, he only noticed a faint odor, but Aoun affirmed with dilated nostrils, “The smell is that of the Kzamms.”

  The Kzamms were the most ferocious of men. Tufts of fur, in color like that of the fox, covered their faces and bodies; their arms were as long as those of the Tree Men, their legs were short and bowed, their thighs hung in three fleshy folds and their toes were enormous. They ate the vanquished Oulhamrs, and had devoured the few Men-without-Shoulders who had escaped extermination.

  For a little while the smell seemed to grow weaker, the mysterious being appeared to be going farther away. Then it became stronger again and finally Zouhr whispered, “The son of Urus speaks truly; it is like the smell of the Kzamms.”

  An agony of impatience made Aoun breathe quickly. His club was at his feet; he readied his bow, in order to shoot to a great distance…

  It now became certain that more than one of the mysterious creatures was near; the smell came from two directions.

  He said, “They see us and we do not see them. We must see them…ourselves!”