The Hunter Returns

by David Drake

  “Waugh!” said Flash. “It is good.”

  Wolf crawled back to gather the other hunters and explain his plan. The little birds hopped cheerfully above him.

  Wolf moved as if he were a spike of winter ice that extended farther and farther along a rock face even though the seepage which fed it was imperceptible. The grass rasped softly. The edges cut the skin of the Chief Hunter’s shoulders and forearms, but that was the least of the discomfort of his glacially slow stalk.

  The heat was the worst. The valley floor was hotter than the knoll, and the dry grassblades seemed to weave through the sullen air and clamp it down, the way roots kept soil from washing away in a cloudburst.

  Pollen and ordinary dust sifted onto Wolf’s shoulders, then found their way up his nose. Several times he had to pause to keep from sneezing.

  He wondered if one of other hunters would sneeze and waste all the effort thus far invested in the stalk. He hoped not. He had deliberately chosen the most difficult approach for himself, the long circle to get on the far side of the herd.

  If all went as planned, Wolf would jump up and charge the herd when he got as close as possible. He might even be within the distance at which he could hurl his spear. Fleet-footed horses acted as sentinels on the fringes of the mixed herd. They would probably dodge a spear thrown to its maximum range, but Wolf’s appearance should throw the beasts into a sudden panic. When they fled from the Chief Hunter, they should crash directly into the spears of the remainder of the tribe’s hunters, who were creeping closer in a loose arc from the other direction.

  The tribe would eat meat tonight!

  Wolf slid his spear forward among the roots of the grass, as silently as a flint-headed serpent. Only when the weapon was advanced by the length of his forearm did the Chief Hunter begin moving his body again.

  The grass blades were so thick that Wolf could not see anything more than an arm’s length in front of him. He could only hope that his men were carrying out their part of the plan. Occasionally he heard one of the horses whicker or a camel give a peevish grunt. Wolf froze at each sound, but the animals were only chatting among themselves or complaining about an unusually persistent horsefly.

  Insect-eating birds hopped merrily among the herd, snapping up prey which the animals’ trampling feet had uncovered. A tick-bird gave a long, raucous call from very close by. From the apparent height of the call, the bird must have been standing on the shoulders of a horse. Wolf was unable to pierce the screen of grass with his vision.

  The Chief Hunter feared that the birds would notice him even though the horses and camels had not, but by now he was so close that it almost didn’t matter. The smell of herd animals lay across the grass like fog rising from a pond in the morning. The camels had a ranker odor than that of the horses, but as Flash had said, camel hump was a dish as tasty as any a man could desire.

  Wolf’s stomach rumbled in sympathy with the thought. As if that were a signal, a stallion on the far side of the herd gave a shrill scream of warning.

  The Chief Hunter jumped to his feet. In front of him was a chaos of dust and animals crying in terror as they wheeled to run. He had been so close—

  But a hunt that fails by a hair’s breadth puts no more meat on the table than a day when no game at all is spotted.

  One of the other hunters had spooked the herd toward the valley’s southern end, away from the main arc of spearmen.

  If Wolf had been a little closer, the animals’ flight would have been directly past him. Then the Chief Hunter at least would have had a chance to spear a single animal—only one meal for the tribe, but better than bitter porridge and black looks from his fellow tribesmen.

  Instead, the nearest animals were thirty yards away, too far for an effective spear cast. Wolf raced toward the herd.

  The horses and camels separated as they ran. The horses formed dense globes of a dozen or so, with a stallion in the lead and his mares formed behind him with their colts on the protected inner side of the group. The long-necked camels fled individually. Their knobby legs moved in a jerky, seemingly uncoordinated motion which none the less covered ground even faster than the graceful scissoring of the horses.

  Wolf heard human shouts, but the other hunters were hidden behind the cloud of dust. A camel bolted toward him. As the Chief Hunter poised his spear, the beast saw him and changed direction with the delicacy of a bird flaring its wings against the air. Wolf almost threw his spear anyway, but he had only a tiny chance of bringing down his prey with a hasty cast at this distance.

  He might have tried despite the slight chance of success, but even a slightly wounded camel would run for miles with the Chief Hunter’s spear stuck in its hide. The spear—one of those Hawk had made before his exile—was a good one. Wolf did not throw because he knew that if the spear was lost, a weapon made by Boartooth would replace it.

  The last family of horses thundered off to the south, too far for Wolf to reach with a spear cast, much less for him to hope to deliver a killing blow. The stallion leading the group was a powerful roan animal. Sweat darkened the dust on the beast’s chest and forelegs. He ran easily, but a spear hung from his shoulders. The point had slid under the hide at an angle, so that it pricked the horse but did him no serious injury.

  Any successful hunter had sharp eyes. Wolf’s eyes were the best in his tribe. Even at this distance, he recognized the spear bobbing from the stallion’s withers as the one Boartooth had made for Heron—and had been forced to keep for himself.

  Now the Chief Hunter knew why the herd had been spooked too early. It was as clear to him as if he had been standing beside Boartooth when the boastful younger man stood and hurled his spear from too long a range, so that he could claim to have brought down the first meat of the hunt.

  The remaining hunters puffed toward Wolf along the track the herd had torn through the meadow. Most of the men had thrown their spears. Wolf hoped they would be able to find the weapons again. The rumps of the trailing animals were barely visible through the dust of their flight. Occasionally a mare would flick her tail high, as if gesturing defiance toward the humans.

  It was too much to hope that one of the hunters would have made a lucky throw that brought down an animal, but Wolf did hope that until he saw that all nine of his men were straggling toward him with sad looks on their faces. The tribe would have no meat tonight.

  There was a sudden commotion toward the southern end of the valley. The herd had vanished into the distance and the cloud of its own dust. Now individual animals reappeared, scattering in many directions. Horses and camels alike screamed in pain.

  “They’ve fallen over a cliff!” Flash said. His face, gloomy and dispirited only moments before, was suddenly alive with laughter. “We’ll have something good to eat after all!”

  “My spear drove them!” shouted Boartooth as he joined the group gathering around the Chief Hunter. “I told you that my weapons would bring luck, while Hawk’s spears left us hungry!”

  “There is no cliff,” said Wolf in a voice that sounded as if he were chipping the words out of stone. “We chased the animals into a hunting party from another tribe. If someone had not thrown his spear too early”—the Chief Hunter glared at Boartooth—“we would have much meat to eat tonight.”

  Boartooth looked away. His necklace of tusks had become disarranged during the chase. His fingers straightened the decoration now, since they no longer had a spear to occupy them.

  “Chief Hunter?” said Flash timidly. “They have meat over there.” He pointed with one finger toward the south, where the dust had settled over the ambush site. “Maybe they would share with us?”

  Wolf stood grimly, looking at the other hunters. He heard human cries of triumph to the south, now that the thunder of hooves had ceased. He said nothing while he thought.

  Heron said, “We are few and weak. If we demand meat from another tribe, they will laugh at us and send us away. They may even”—he looked back in the direction of the tribe’s camp�
�—take our women and our spears. The good spears, I mean.”

  “Mine are good spears!” Boartooth muttered, but he backed away from the other hunter. Heron, like Wolf, had kept his spear rather than risking its loss on a long throw. He rotated the smooth shaft in his hand as he stared at the would-be spear-maker.

  “But we did drive the animals to them,” Flash said. “They would not have had easy kills except that the herd fled from us. Besides, if they made many kills, they will have more meat than they can finish themselves before it rots.”

  What Flash said was true. The other tribe had not so much hunted the horses and camels themselves, as they had simply waited while the panicked herd ran into their spears. Even if the other tribe was very large, two or three adult animals would provide it with much more than its own members could eat.

  Unfortunately, what Heron said was true also. When one tribe was very much weaker than another, it was human nature to treat the weak ones as inferior—animals to be preyed upon, not human beings with whom to trade and exchange wives.

  Wolf’s stomach growled. The sound decided him.

  “All right,” he said. “All of you search for your spears. We can’t help the fact there aren’t many of us and we’re hungry, but we don’t have to meet another tribe while we’re unarmed. Boartooth, you go back to the camp and bring everyone here. We will go together, all of us, to greet them.”

  “I need to search for my spear too, Chief Hunter,” Boartooth said with unexpected boldness. “Send Heron back with the message.”

  “Heron will stay here,” Wolf said in his flinty voice. “I know where your spear is. It’s in the shoulder of the stallion that cost us our success today!”

  Wolf could hear the happy commotion long before he and his own people came in sight of the other tribe. The strangers were butchering out the animals their spears had brought down. The kill was a considerable one—at least half a dozen horses and camels, easily the equivalent in meat of a pair of giant bisons.

  The Chief Hunter’s plan had been a good one. It just had not worked out for him and his people.

  In broad daylight, with a quantity of meat on which to gorge, the other tribe was not keeping a close lookout. Predators would become a problem when the sun went down, but not even the great saber-tooths would barge openly into a full tribe of humans by daylight in order to hijack a kill.

  Wolf led his people openly to the site where the strangers cut up their kill. He didn’t want to look to the other larger tribe as though he were sneaking up, perhaps with hostile intent. Even though the meadow grass was no more than waist high to Wolf and his adult hunters, none of the strangers noticed them until the newcomers were within easy spear cast.

  The strangers must have been very hungry to concentrate so completely on the meat they were bolting raw. Wolf’s belly growled in sympathy.

  A child carried by a woman in Wolf’s tribe began to wail. A girl with a flint knife and a strip of camel tenderloin leaped to her feet. She stared at Wolf, then shouted in surprise. All of the strangers jumped to alertness. The men dropped chunks of meat and seized spears already bloody from the animals they had killed. Women whisked infants to the rear or gathered stones to throw as their part of the common defense.

  Wolf pointed his spear to the ground in his left hand and raised his right hand palm outward. “We come in peace,” he called. “My name is Wolf.”

  There were at least forty people in the other tribe, a larger number than in Wolf’s even before the troubles of the recent past. Fifteen of the strangers were adult males: hunters during normal times, warriors now if the need to fight arose.

  A grizzled, stocky man with eagle feathers in a headband of tanned hide stepped forward from the other tribe. He held his spear in both hands. He was not precisely threatening, but neither was he making a special effort to appear peaceful the way Wolf was doing.

  “My name is Bull,” he announced. “I am the Chief Hunter of my tribe. This is our kill. Go away and leave us to it.”

  Wolf continued walking forward. He could see the nearest of the animals brought down in the ambush. It was the roan stallion which Boartooth’s spear had wounded. “We come in peace,” he repeated. “But it is our kill also, Bull. You and we should share. There is plenty for all.”

  Several men from the other tribe shouted with anger at the suggestion, though it was obvious to all that there was far more meat than even a large tribe could eat before it spoiled. One of Bull’s hunters ran a few steps toward Wolf, bellowing and shaking his spear in the air as if he were about to throw it.

  “Get back here, Longshank!” Bull snapped at him. “If you were in such a hurry to bloody your spear, why didn’t you manage to do it when the horses ran straight at you?”

  Longshank’s spear was not one of those which showed signs of a recent kill.

  Wolf continued to walk forward. He met the eyes of the other tribe’s chief. Boartooth, bolder still, strode past Wolf and pointed to the roan stallion. “Look, Chief Hunter,” he said in a loud voice. His hand indicated the chert-bladed weapon. “That is my spear. Without me, you would not have meat. It is right that this meat be shared between your tribe and mine.”

  Bull and the nearest of his men looked at the stallion in surprise. In their haste and triumph, none of them had noticed that the extra spear in the horse’s shoulder was not one of their own. It was obvious to all Bull’s men that Boartooth and his Chief Hunter were speaking the truth: Wolf’s tribe had been an important part of the kill.

  “We still don’t need to give them part of our meat,” Longshank muttered, looking at the horse. “The beasts were running when we killed them.”

  “There’s plenty for all,” another hunter pointed out.

  The women of the two tribes stood behind the men. As the discussion began and it was clear that there would not be a battle, the women straightened up and began eyeing the other tribe. Some of the unmarried women looked at the strange men with particular concentration; and the single men looked back.

  The stallion was partially butchered. Its ribs showed white on the upper side. The smell of fresh meat was dizzyingly wonderful to Wolf.

  A woman stepped up close behind Bull. She was probably a medicine woman, like Elm; and like Elm, she was old and crotchety. “Look at how thin they are, Bull!” she shrilled. “They’re unlucky. We should have nothing to do with them.”

  The hunter who had argued with Longshank now turned to the old woman. “How long has it been since we made such a kill on our own, Troutscale?” he said. “Maybe they have brought us good luck!”

  Bull looked over Wolf’s hunters with a practiced eye. “With this many men,” he mused aloud, “we would be able to hunt even the great mammoths. That would be good.”

  “We have trouble finding enough meat as it is,” Longshank protested. “With more mouths to feed, we will go hungry more nights than not.”

  “But—” said another hunter.

  “Wait!” Bull ordered forcefully. He looked at Wolf. “My tribe and I will discuss these matters in private,” Bull said. “You and your people may wait or go, that’s up to you. But you do not touch our kills until we have decided.”

  Wolf nodded at the challenge in the voice of the other Chief Hunter. “We will wait,” he said. “Then we will share with you the game that we drove into your spears, as is our right.”

  Bull’s tribe withdrew half a spear cast and huddled together. Their voices buzzed. Both adults and children cast frequent glances toward Wolf and his people. Wolf was not concerned at the delay. He knew that the other tribe was hungry also, and that they would shortly come to a decision.

  What that decision would be was more doubtful. It was not traditional for tribes to operate together for more than a brief session of trading, and Wolf well knew that his people had nothing to trade. But it was obvious that the strangers also found it increasingly difficult to hunt bison in traditional fire drives.

  Today’s accidental pairing of the hunting partie
s had resulted in a major kill. Bull’s comment about mammoth hunting suggested that the other Chief Hunter was thinking still further ahead.

  Boartooth walked over to the downed stallion. Several of the other tribe’s hunters turned, raising their spears. “Leave the meat alone, you fool!” Wolf snarled.

  Boartooth gripped the shaft of his spear and pulled the weapon free. It left a shallow gouge, scarcely even a flesh wound; but, as Boartooth had said to Bull, that was the wound that drove the herd into the other tribe’s hunters.

  The strangers’ discussion became heated. Troutscale raised her shrill voice. The old woman’s demands were flattened again and again by Bull, who rumbled like an avalanche. At last, snapping and glowering at one another, Bull’s tribe strode back toward Wolf.

  “It is right that you should join us,” said Bull. “We have decided.”

  “Waugh!” Boartooth shouted in joy. He slapped the flat of his spear across his chest in enthusiasm. The spearhead struck his necklace of tusks with a sharp clack. The chert spearpoint shattered on the hard tooth. The spear suddenly had only a brown nub instead of a true point.

  “They are accursed!” Troutscale shrieked in horror, pointing at the omen. Even Bull looked horrified. He stepped back a pace.

  “Wait!” cried Wolf. “It is not an omen! We have lost our Chief Spear-Maker!” He stepped forward with his hand out to the other chief.

  “Go back!” shouted Bull. He raised his own spear, a well-fashioned weapon whose edges glittered through a film of drying horse blood. “You are accursed! Get away from us or we will kill you all!”

  The hunter who had previously argued with Longshank now glowered and thrust his spear at Boartooth. Wolf’s would-be spear-maker jumped back, barely avoiding the point.

  “It is right that we should share—” Wolf began. A woman from Bull’s tribe hurled a rock at him. He dodged, but all the women and children of the other tribe were picking up stones to volley in another moment.