The Adventure Novella MEGAPACK®

by Wildside Press

  That friendly speech brought the tree-dwellers closer to this big stranger. A half-grown lad was boldest, coming straight to Hok and fingering his leather moccasins. Hok’s first thought was how swiftly young Ptao, at home by the frozen river, could thrash and conquer such a youth—his second was a hope that Ptao would be fore-bearing and gentle to so harmless a specimen. The others gathered around reassured. They began asking questions. It was strange to all that a human being could kill large beasts for food and fur, and the men were particularly fascinated by Hok’s flint weapons.

  “We have our own stories of old times, when your fathers made stone things,” volunteered Soko. “Now we satisfy ourselves with what bones we can raid from that great pile of mammoths, when Rmanth is not there gorging himself.” He produced his own dagger, smaller than Hok’s reindeer-horn weapon, but well worked from a bone fragment. “After all, we need not fight monsters, like you.”

  “If you did fight like me, all together, and with wisdom and courage, Rmanth would not have you treed,” said Hok bluntly. “Perhaps I can help you with him. But first, tell me more of yourselves. You think it strange that I wear skins. What are these weavings you wear?”

  “The forest taught us,” said Soko sententiously. “As the branches weave and grow together, so we cross and twine little tough strings and threads drawn from leaves and grasses. They give us covering, and places to carry possessions. Is it so marvelous? Birds do as much with their nests.”

  “Nests?” repeated Hok. “And how do you people nest?”

  “Like the birds—in woven beds of branches, lined with soft leaves and fiber. A roof overhead, of course, to shed the rain.” Soko pointed to a little cluster of such shelters, not far away in an adjoining tree.

  “You do nothing but sleep and play?”

  “We gather fruits and nuts,” spoke up another of the tree-men. “That takes time and work, for a man who has gathered much must feed his friends who may have gathered little.”

  “It is so with my people, when one hunter kills much meat and others return empty-handed,” nodded Hok. “What else, then?”

  “A great labor is the mending of this floor,” replied Soko, patting with his foot the woven platform. “Branches rot and break. We look for such places, through which our children might fall at play, and weave in new strong pieces, or tie and lace across with stout vines.”

  Once again Hok glanced upward. “And what is there?”

  A shudder all around. “Stymphs,” muttered Soko, in a soft voice, as if he feared to summon a flock of the bird-snakes.

  “Ugly thing,” said Hok. “I may do something about them, too. But I am hungry just now—”

  Before he could finish, the whole community dashed away like so many squirrels through the boughs, to bring back fistfuls of nuts, pawpaws and grapes. Hok accepted all he could possibly eat, and thanked his new friends heartily.

  “I did not mean that you must feed me,” he told them. “You should wait for me to finish my talk. But since you bring these fruits, I will make my meal of them. You may take my provision.”

  From his pouch he rummaged the remainder of his dried meat. It was one more new thing to the tree people, who nibbled and discussed and argued over it. Flesh they had occasionally—small climbers, fledgling birds, even insects—but nothing of larger game, and both cooking and drying of food was beyond their understanding. Hok chuckled over their naïveté.

  “A promise!” he cried. “I’ll give you Rmanth himself for a feast, and I shall roast him on a fire, that which you call the Hot Hunger. But let Soko sit here by me. I want to hear of how you came to this place to live.”

  Soko perched on a tangle of vines. “Who can tell that? It was so long ago. Cold weather drove us from the upper world,” and he pointed northward. “Those who stayed behind were slain by it. Our old men tell tales and sing songs of how the remnants of the fleeing tribe blundered in here and gave themselves up as trapped.”

  “Why did the ice not follow you in?” asked Hok.

  “Ask that of the gods, who drove it to right and left of our valley. In any case, we were sheltered here, though there were many fierce creatures. But the cold was fiercer—we could not face it—and here we stay.”

  “Treed by Rmanth and harried by those Stymph bird-snakes,” summed up Hok. “You are happy, but you could make yourselves much happier by some good planning and fighting. Who is your chief?”

  “I am their chief,” growled someone behind him, “and you had better explain—quickly—why you seek to make my people dissatisfied.”

  CHAPTER VI

  A Chief Passes Sentence

  There was a sudden gasping and cowering among all the tree-folk, even as concerned the relatively sturdy Soko. Hok turned toward the speaker, expecting to come face to face with a fearsome challenger.

  Around the spiral vine-column a little grizzled form was making its way. This tree-man was old and ill-favored, with almost pure white whiskers on his chinless jaw. He wheezed and snorted, as though the exertion were too much for him. Perhaps this was due to his weight, for he was the fattest Hok had yet seen among those dwellers of the trees. His belly protruded like a wallet, his jowls hung like dewlaps. But there was nothing old or infirm about the power in his big, close-set brilliant eyes.

  Gaining the side of the nearest tree to him, this oldster put out a confident hand and snatched away a sizeable slice of the dried meat Hok had distributed. Though the victim of this plunder was an active young man, he did not resist or even question, but drew diffidently away. The old man took a bite—his teeth, too, were young-seeming and rather larger and sharper than ordinary—and grunted approval. Then his eyes fastened Hok’s, in a calculated stare of hostility.

  But Hok had met the gaze of the world’s fiercest beasts and men, and his were not the first eyes to falter. The old tree-chief finally glanced away. Hok smiled in good-humored contempt.

  “Well?” challenged the oldster at last. “Do you know how to act before your betters?”

  Hok was puzzled. The simple truth was that Hok had never recognized anyone as his better from his youth upwards.

  Years before, when a big boy not yet fully mature, the slaying of his father by Gnorrls had made him chief of his clan. His young manhood had barely come to him before he had driven those same beastly Gnorrls from their rich hunting-empire of meadows and woods, and founded in their stead an alliance of several tribes, with himself as head chief. The mighty nation of Tlanis was sunken under the sea because of him. The Fishers in their seaside pile-villages had changed their worship from water-god to sun-god out of sadly learned respect for Hok. If ever he had been subordinate, even only the second greatest individual in any gathering, he had had plenty of time to forget it.

  Just now he spat idly, through a gap in the woven branches.

  “Show me my betters,” he requested with an air of patience. “I know none, on two legs or four.”

  “I am Krol!” squeaked the other, and smote his gray-tufted chest with a fat fist. “Be afraid, you hulking yellow-haired stranger!”

  “Men of the trees,” Hok addressed those who listened, “is it your custom to keep fools to make game for you? This man has white hair, he should be quiet and dignified. He is a bad example to the young.”

  It was plainly blasphemy. Soko and the others drew further away from Hok, as though they feared to be involved in some terrible fate about to overwhelm him. The chief who called himself Krol fumbled in his girdle of twisted fiber, and drew forth an axe of mammoth ivory set in a hard-wood handle. Whirling it around his head, he cast it at Hok.

  Hok lifted a big knowing hand, with such assurance that the movement seemed languid. The axe drove straight at his face, but he picked it out of the air as a frog’s tongue picks a flying insect. Without pausing he whirled it in his own turn and sent it sailing back. It stru
ck with a sharp chock, deep into a big branch just above Krol’s head.

  “Try again,” bade Hok, as though he were instructing a child in how to throw axes.

  Krol’s big fangs gnashed, and foam sprang out in flecks upon his lips and beard. He waved his fists at his people.

  “On him!” he screamed. “Seize him, beat him, bind fast his arms!”

  Hok rose from where he sat, bracing himself erect. He looked with solemnity upon the half-dozen or so biggest men who moved to obey.

  “Come at me, and you will think Rmanth himself has climbed up among you,” he warned. “I do not like to be handled.”

  Krol yelped a further order, backing it by a threat. The men rushed unwillingly.

  Hok laughed, like an athlete playing with children. Indeed, the tree-men were childlike in comparison with him. He pushed the first two in the face with his palms, upsetting them and almost dropping them through the branchy fabric. A third attacker he caught and lifted overhead, wedging him in a fork of the boughs. The others retreated fearfully before such effortless strength. Hok laughed again, watching.

  But he should have watched Krol as well. The plump old despot had stolen close unobserved. In one hand he clutched a big fiber husked nut, of the milky kind Hok had enjoyed earlier in the day. A swinging buffet on the skull, and Hok staggered, partially stunned. At once the tree-men rushed back, and before Hok could clear his brain and fight them off, he was swamped. They looped his wrists, ankles and body with quickly-plucked vine tendrils, tough and limber as leather straps.

  Krol found time to take some fruit from a child, and husk it with his teeth. “Now, stranger,” he sniggered, “you will learn that I am chief here.”

  Hok had recovered from that stroke. He did not waste strength or dignity by striving against his stout bonds.

  “A chief who plays tricks and lets other men do the fighting,” he replied. “A chief who strikes his enemies foully, from behind.”

  Krol had repossessed his ivory axe. He lifted it angrily, as though to smite it into Hok’s skull. But then he lowered it, and grinned nastily.

  “I heard you blustering when I came up,” he said. “Something about fighting. What do you think to fight?”

  “I spoke of Rmanth, the elephant-pig,” replied Hok. “Yes, and the Stymphs. Your people fear them. Do not.”

  “Mmmm!” Krol glanced downward, then up. “They are only little pests to mighty warriors like you, huh? You do not fear them? Hok—that it your name, I think you said—I will do you a favor. You shall have closer acquaintanceship with the Stymphs.”

  Mention of the dread bird-snakes made the tree-folk shiver, and Krol sneered at them with a row of grinning fangs.

  “You cowards!” he scolded. “You disgrace me before this boastful stranger. Yet you know that Stymphs must eat, if they are to live and let us alone. Hoist this prey up to them.”

  “Bound and helpless?” demanded Hok. “That is a part of your own cowardice, Krol. You shall howl for it.”

  “But you shall howl first, and loudest,” promised Krol. “You biggest men, come and carry him up. Yes, high!”

  That last was to quicken the unwilling limbs of his fellows, who seemed to like Hok and not to like the prospect of mounting into the upper branches.

  Thus driven to obedience, four of the biggest men nimbly rove more vines around the captive, fashioning a sort of hammock to hold him and his weapons. Soko, stooping to tie a knot, gazed intently into Hok’s face. One of Soko’s big bright eyes closed for a moment—the ancient and universal wink of alliance, warning, and promise.

  The four scrambled up and up, bearing Hok among them. Now the sky came into view, dullish and damp but warm. Apparently the valley was always wreathed, at least partially, in light mists. Into a tall treetop the big captive was hoisted, and made fast there like a dangling cocoon. Krol panted fatly as he clambered alongside. The others departed at his nod. Krol, passing Hok, jostled the big bound wrists. Hok felt something pressed against his palm, and closed his fingers upon it.

  The hilt of Soko’s bone knife! With difficulty he fought back a smile of triumph….

  Then he was alone in the treetop with Krol.

  “Look up, you scoffer,’ bade Krol. “In the mists—do you see anything?”

  “Very dimly, I make out flying shapes,” replied Hok quietly. “Two—three—no, many.”

  “They can see you, and plainly,” Krol informed him. “Like my people, the Stymphs have ability to see far on dull days, or dark holes, or even at night. They have cunning sense of smell, too. Probably they scent some prey close at hand now, and wonder if I have hung something up for them.”

  “You hang food for the Stymphs?” demanded Hok.

  “Yes, such men as displease me—don’t stare and wonder. I am chief of my tribe. I must keep an alliance with other powers.”

  Krol squinted upward, where the Stymphs hovered in the mist-wreaths. Opening his wide mouth, he emitted a piercing cry, half howl and half whistle. The bird-snakes began to flap as if in response.

  “They know my voice, they will come,” announced Krol. With the evilest of grins, he swung down to the safety of the foliage below.

  No sooner was he gone than Hok began to ply that bone knife Soko had smuggled to him. It was difficult work, but he pressed the well-sharpened edge strongly against the vine loops around his wrist. They separated partially, enough to allow him to strain and snap them. Even as the boldest Stymph lowered clear of the mists and began to angle downward, Hok won his arms free. A few mighty hacks, and he cleared away the rest of his hammocky bonds.

  The tree-folk had bound his unfamiliar weapons in with him. Drawing himself astride of a big horizontal branch, Hok strung the big bow and tweaked an arrow out of his quiver.

  “I have a feeling,” he said aloud to this strange land at large, “that I was sent here—by gods or spirits or by chance—to face and destroy these Stymphs.”

  CHAPTER VII

  The Stymphs

  So confident was Hok of his ability to deal with the situation that he actually waited, arrow on string, for a closer mark. After all, he had killed one such bird-snake with a single quick thrust of his dagger. Why should he fear many, when he had arrows, an axe, and two knives? A big Stymph tilted in the mist and slid down as if it were an otter on a mud-bank. Its long triangular head, like the nightmare of a stork, drooped low on the snaky neck. Its jag-toothed bill opened.

  Hok let it come so close that his flaring nostrils caught the reptilian odor; then, drawing his shaft to its barbed head of sandstone, he loosed full at the scaly breast. Hok’s bow was the strongest among all men of his time, and a close-delivered arrow from it struck with all the impact of a war-club. The flint point tore through the body, flesh, scales and bone, and protruded behind. The swoop of the Stymph was arrested as though it had blundered against a rock in mid-air. It whirled head over lizard tail, then fell flopping and screeching toward the great mass of foliage below.

  “Ahai!” Hok voiced his war-shout, and thundered mocking laughter at the other Stymphs. “Thus Hok serves those who face him. Send me another of your champions!”

  Several of the abominations had flown a little way after their falling friend. But, before they could get their cannibal beaks into the stricken body, it had lost itself among the branches, and they came up again to center on the more exposed meat in the treetop. Two advanced at once, and from widely separate angles.

  Hok had notched another arrow, and sped it into the chest of one. Before he could seize a third shaft, the other Stymph was upon him. Its talons made a clutch, scraping long furrows in his shoulder. He cursed it, and struck a mighty whipping blow with his bow-stave that staggered it in mid-flight. Clutching the supporting branch with his legs, he tore his axe from its lashing at his girdle, and got it up just in time to meet the reco
vering drive of the brute. Badly gashed across the narrow, evil face, the Stymph’ reeled downward, trying in vain to get control of its wings and rise again.

  More Stymphs circled this third victim of Hok, and tore several bloody mouthfuls from it. A loud clamor rose over Hok’s head—the smell of gore was maddening the flock. Slipping his right hand through the thong on his axe handle, he looked up.

  The sky was filling with Stymphs. Though never a man to recognize danger with much respect, Hok was forced to recognize it now. Where he had thought to meet a dozen or score of the monsters, here they were mustered in numbers like a flock of swallows—his system of counting, based on tens and tens of tens, would not permit him to be sure of their strength, even if he had time.

  For they had dropped all over him, all of them at once.

  A toothy jaw closed on his left elbow. Before it could bite to the bone, he whipped his axe across and smashed the shallow skull with the flat of the blade. Back-handing, he brought the axe round to smite and knock down another attacker. Axe and bow-stave swept right and left, and every blow found and felled a Stymph. The stricken ones were attacked and rended by their ravenous fellows, which made a hurly-burly of confusion and perhaps saved Hok from instant annihilation by the pack. As it was, he knew that the Stymphs were far too many for him.

  The end of this furious struggle in the open top of the jungle came with an abrupt climax that Hok never liked to remember afterward. He had ducked low on his limb to avoid the sweeping rush of a big Stymph, and for a moment loosened the straddle-clutch of his legs. At the same moment another of the creatures dropped heavily upon his shoulders, sinking its claws into his flesh. Its weight dislodged him. Hok lost all holds, and fell hurtling into the leafy depths below.