• • •
Dom slept badly and from the sounds about him knew that the others were as restless. In the morning they fed on what was left of the previous day’s kill. Normally this would have cheered them up but it was not like that today. The hunters grumbled sullenly among themselves. At last one spoke out:
“We must go back. These are bad lands. We must go back to the Cave, to the place where the spirits of our forefathers will protect us.”
He was a big man, almost as big as Dom’s father. He had grumbled before but not in the presence of the chief. Dom’s father said:
“That would do no good. In the old lands there is little game and the water holes are drying up. We must go on.”
“But this land takes our courage from us,” the hunter said, “and the strength from our arms. You go on. We will go back.”
Dom’s father walked stiff-legged toward the hunter and, standing in front of him, roared out his anger. It was a fearful sound and Dom shivered to hear it; but the hunter shouted back defiance. Then each took an antelope-horn dagger from his belt.
The hunter moved, making a circle about Dom’s father, his heels raised clear of the ground as he walked. Dom’s father turned with him, not moving from the spot on which he stood. The roaring and shouting were finished—they stared at each other in silence, lips drawn back in snarls of hatred.
After the first circle the hunter made a second, and a third. Still Dom’s father turned and kept his ground. All the tribe watched, the hunters quiet, the women and boys making low hissing noises between their teeth. Dom watched too, in excitement and anger and fear.
The hunter attacked. He threw himself forward with a shriek that split the air, his right hand raised to plunge the dagger into Dom’s father’s neck. But Dom’s father’s own right arm went up, inside the descending one. The two figures met in shock. For a moment or two they swayed together, their strengths opposing and balancing; until with a cry of triumph Dom’s father thrust forward and the hunter staggered and fell to the ground.
He was not hurt, although his dagger had dropped from his hand. Yet he made no attempt to rise or defend himself, not even when the weapon hand of his adversary plunged down toward him. He only groaned as the dagger stabbed through his flesh and found his heart.
Dom’s father put his foot on the body, and looked at the tribe.
“We go on,” he said.
They murmured in agreement. Dom’s father pointed to the body of the hunter who had been killed in the attack on the hill tribe. It had been kept within the circle of sleepers all night, to protect it from scavenging beasts.
“He will stay here,” Dom’s father said. He rolled the other one under his foot. “As this will. Their spirits will attack our enemies after we have gone.”
So the old ones took the corpses and threw them in the water hole. Then the tribe resumed its march.
• • •
The grasslands gave way to higher ground on which there were some bushes and eventually trees. They still did not see many antelope but there were other animals. They saw a giraffe for the first time, and gazed in astonishment at this huge creature with the tiny head perched on top of the long mottled neck.
The hunters gave chase and the giraffe fled away, moving awkwardly and less fast than an antelope but easily outdistancing its pursuers. The next day, though, they sighted two, and tracked them and drove them into the reach of the waiting warriors. One of the beasts lumbered toward Dom and he swung his club at a long spindly leg. His blow glanced off but others succeeded and the giraffe, with a crack of bone, crashed to the ground. The hunters threw themselves on it, driving their daggers in at a dozen different spots as the animal struggled under them. Its heart was less easily found than the heart of an antelope, and it was a long time before it lay still.
When they had feasted on the giraffe they went on. This was altogether better land; greener and with more game in it. Water holes were more frequent, too. One day they came to a small river, and stared at the broad track of water, continually running away and yet continually replenished.
One of the men said: “We could hunt on either side of this water. There is much game.” He nodded to Dom’s father in token of respect. “You have brought us to a good land, chief. Let us stay here and go no farther.”
But Dom’s father said: “In our old land we had the Cave.” He pointed at the sky where, for some days past, the blue had been largely hidden by fleecy cloud. “Where will we find shelter here, in the time of rains? We must go on.”
That night, as though the spirits of the sky had listened to his words, it rained: a downpour which soaked through the covering hides and drenched them all. The next morning they shivered until the sun broke through and dried them. They went on, to the south.
• • •
They came across plenty of game, of many different kinds: pigs and baboons and smaller animals like porcupine. They found zebra and hunted them, but the zebra kicked their way through the line of waiting hunters, leaving two wounded and one dead from the blows of hooves. After that they left the zebra alone and tackled easier quarry.
They did not discover a place to shelter them from the rains but the hills became steeper and rockier and Dom’s father said they must find one soon. No one disputed this. They were grateful and honored him for bringing them into a land so rich in water and game.
One night they slept near the entrance to a valley that was part grassed and part wooded. Blue-white rocks showed among the vegetation that covered its slopes. They had made a kill the previous afternoon and today, Dom’s father said, they would explore the valley walls and seek a cave.
The path they took was along the western side of the valley, through scrub and treeland interspersed with clearings. Some of the boys ran ahead but Dom walked behind with the men, remembering he was a hunter and had a hunter’s dignity to maintain.
Then two boys came hurrying back and went to Dom’s father, nodding their heads in respect.
“We have found game!”
Dom’s father said: “We do not need game. Our bellies are full, and the women carry fresh meat.”
“There are strange men who are with the game.”
Dom’s father glared in anger.
“Hunters?”
One of the boys said: “They do not hunt. They watch.”
Dom’s father shook his head. Dom did not understand this, either. The watching must be part of a hunt; but the boy had said the men were with the game. It made no sense.
Dom’s father said: “Show us this—the game, and the men who watch.”
Guided by the boys the hunters went stealthily through the bushes. They came to a clearing and peered from behind a screen of leaves. They saw cattle in front of them—animals as big as the large antelope but thicker and clumsier in body. They could not run as antelope ran, Dom thought, with legs like that. When they fled, the hunters would catch them without much difficulty.
He saw the men also. There were two of them, standing near the cattle and talking together. He felt his blood stir, the hair on his neck bristling with anger.
Dom’s father yelled in rage and all the hunters yelled with him. They broke shouting from the bushes and ran through the grass—the two men turned and fled but strangely the animals stayed where they were, not scattering until the hunters were among them and clubbing them down. There were more than a score and they left three dead behind; the hunters could have killed twice as many with little extra effort.
His foot on one of the beasts, Dom’s father roared to the sky his triumph. All the hunters shouted, too, praising him. He had brought them through bad lands to a place where there was water everywhere, to a place where game stood unmoving while you slaughtered it. Soon he would find them a cave where they could shelter from the rains. The enemy had fled at his first cry. This was good land; and the tribe were masters o
f it as once they had been masters of the grasslands.
Dom shouted with the rest, proud of the tribe and of his father who had done all these things.
They feasted in the clearing which had a stream running beside it. The women cut up the dead beasts but took only the tenderest parts of their flesh: there was far more meat here than they could eat in several days. They stripped off the hides but left the bloody carcasses in the grass. Vultures circled overhead, but dared not come down while the tribe was there.
It was late afternoon and they dozed, full-bellied, in the sun. Dom had a dream of hunting, and his body twitched as in the dream he yelled at onrushing antelope. But the yell became real, echoing in his ears though not from his own throat. Bewildered he leaped to his feet and saw the enemy bursting out of the bushes on the far side of the clearing. His club of bone lay at his feet; quickly he picked it up and ran forward with the other hunters to take up the challenge.
The strangers outnumbered the hunters, though they were smaller and slimmer men. They carried pointed stones which they tried to use as daggers; but the great clubs of the hunters struck them down before they could come to grips. One of the men rushed at Dom while he was off guard from striking at another, but Dom saw him in time and fended the blow off with his arm. The man was fully grown and bigger than Dom, but he did not press the attack and fell back weakly.
The fight was quickly over, with the rest of the enemy fleeing as the first two had done. The hunters pursued them a little way into the bushes, but they ran well and the hunters were gorged with meat. They went back to the clearing where the remainder of the tribe waited.
Now their joy, and their pride in themselves and their chief, were greater than ever. By overcoming this enemy they had avenged the defeat on the rocky hillside. They had said the tribe were the masters of this good new land: their victory proved it true.
About the Author
John Christopher is a pseudonym of Samuel Youd, who was born in Lancashire, England, in 1922. He is the author of more than fifty novels and novellas, as well as numerous short stories. His most famous books include The Death of Grass, the Tripods trilogy, The Lotus Caves, and The Guardians.
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Also by John Christopher
From Aladdin
THE TRIPODS SERIES
The White Mountains
The City of Gold and Lead
The Pool of Fire
When the Tripods Came
THE SWORD OF THE SPIRITS TRILOGY
The Prince in Waiting
Beyond the Burning Lands
The Sword of the Spirits
The Guardians
The Lotus Caves
A Dusk of Demons
Wild Jack
In the Beginning
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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This Aladdin paperback edition May 2015
Text copyright © 1977 by John Christopher
Cover illustration copyright © 2015 by Anton Petrov
Also available in an Aladdin hardcover edition.
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Cover designed by Karin Paprocki
Interior designed by Hilary Zarycky
The text of this book was set in Venetian 301.
Library of Congress Control Number 2015932406
ISBN 978-1-4814-2001-3 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4814-2000-6 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4814-2002-0 (eBook)
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