The Hunter Returns

by David Drake

  For a moment Hawk remained rooted in his tracks, overcome with amazement. Slowly he walked forward. The dog, as surprised as the man, was stretching his nose as far as he could, snuffling the dead cat.

  Still incredulous, Hawk looked down at the slain puma. In his whole memory nothing else like this had ever happened. Even severely wounded pumas were capable of putting up a terrific fight, and this one had been scarcely scratched.

  Suddenly Hawk was overcome by a hot surge of excitement. The puma had been killed by the serpent’s magic power!

  This, then, was the secret. He was master of a new and mighty power, almost unbelievable strength, for he remembered now that he had shot the puma with the same dart which he had dipped into the strange fluid that came from the snake’s deadly head. It was the fluid and not any wound that killed the snake’s victims. Hawk stood still, shaken to the core by this new thing he had learned. A dart dipped into a serpent’s venom was indeed a mighty weapon. Equipped with such a thing, he might well walk safely anywhere at all.

  Awed and fearful, trembling with what he had learned, Hawk shouldered the deer and made his way back to the cave. The big grass serpents were scarce and therefore hard to find, but he must hunt some more at the earliest opportunity.

  He came in sight of the cave and stopped, while a feeling of alarm rose within him. He had left Willow safe, protected by a fire at the cave’s entrance, but now the fire was only smoldering ashes. He tested the winds, which carried nothing except an odor of smoke. But he could see no smoke. Hawk dropped the deer, fixed a dart, and stalked forward.

  He peered cautiously into the cave. Inside, a cheerful fire leaped high and beside it was Willow, working on another basket. Hawk followed with his eye the course of the ascending smoke, and saw it rising through the hole Willow had poked in the cave’s roof. Thus her mysterious actions with the stick were explained at last. She had been making an opening where the smoke might escape. With a grunt of admiration, Hawk went back for the deer.

  When the deer had been cut up and stored in the cave, Hawk sat down to work on his dart heads. He had practiced so much and made so many that he knew almost by instinct whether or not he could make a good one from any piece of flint. He also knew exactly how the stones were going to split, and often, by striking a good-sized stone in exactly the right place, he could break it into a dozen fragments, all of which were already partly shaped. It was work to which he was so accustomed that he could do it with his hands and part of his mind; the rest of his thoughts wandered elsewhere.

  The serpent’s venom was very powerful magic; a mere touch of it had killed the puma. If he could transfer the snake-magic to his own dart heads, would it not be possible to use even smaller darts? It would no longer be necessary to inflict a mortal wound, and if he could make his darts smaller he could certainly carry many more of them. The more he could carry, the better he could hunt and defend himself.

  But how could he make small darts fly any distance? The heavy darts he was now using depended on their own weight, their feathers, and the power of the throwing-stick. It would be impossible, even with the throwing-stick, to hurl a small dart a long way.

  Willow had finished her basket and was stretching sinew which she would later use in sewing skins. She stretched it by tying one end to a slender green stick, bowing the stick, and then tying the sinew to the other end. The stick itself, slowly straightening, kept the sinew taut. Hawk was annoyed because a strip of sinew had broken with a loud snap, and disturbed his thoughts.

  “Bring me water,” he said.

  Willow rose to get the two skin pouches which they used for water containers and started out of the cave with them. Hawk watched her impatiently.

  Cave life had positive advantages, but it was not without its disadvantages. When they had lived in the open they had been within a few feet of a clear-flowing spring where they could quench their thirst any time they wished. But there was no water at all in the cave. The nearest spring was across the valley and up the opposite slope. All their water had to be carried from there, and there was never enough of it. Neither of the pouches held more than a thirsty man could drink and water left in them for any length of time had a bad taste. At night they dared get no water at all.

  Willow came back with two filled pouches and Hawk drank. The dog looked expectantly up, and when no water was forthcoming for him he drifted out of the cave to go get his own drink.

  Hawk laid down the empty container thoughtfully. Until now it had not occurred to him that lack of water could be a very serious thing. He had wanted the cave largely because it was a safe place, and one he could defend if they were attacked by alien hunters. But now he realized that if the hunters came, they could block Hawk and Willow from their source of water, and that would be fatal. He turned to Willow.

  “You must make more containers, many more, and keep them filled so that we will always have water.”

  “We do not need them,” Willow replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me show you.”

  Willow brought the basket she had woven. It was wide and deep, and so finely woven that when she held it up, no light showed between the supple sticks of which the basket was made.

  “It is strong and tight,” Hawk said, “but it will not hold water.”

  “No,” Willow admitted, “but if the holes between the sticks were filled in, it might.”

  “Filled with what?” Hawk asked, his interest aroused.

  “The sticky black mud you use to catch little birds,” Willow replied. “I watched you the day you made the new spear for Short-Leg. There was a little pool of water on the black mud. If water did not sink through the mud there, it might stay in a basket coated with the mud.”

  Hawk remembered the tar pit and grinned delightedly. It was an excellent idea and might work. It would be much easier to fill and carry a tar-coated basket than several skin containers, and the basket would hold more water.

  “We’ll try it,” he said, snatching up his spear and throwing-stick. “Bring the basket.”

  Together they left the cave. The dog, sunning himself in the warm grass, looked lazily up and thumped his tail at them. He rose to follow as they made their way to the tar pit.

  Hawk dug into the sticky surface with his fingers. He brought out a handful and examined it closely. The tar formed a firm but pliable ball, and when he squeezed it, it spread out readily. It did not disintegrate as a handful of mud would have done. He handed the tar to Willow, who began pressing it against the inside of the basket. Hawk dug out more tar.

  An hour later their work was done. The basket had a smooth, sticky lining of tar, which Willow had carefully worked into each tiny crack. Returning to the spring, they lowered the basket into the icy water, and breathlessly lifted it out again. It was brimful of clear, sweet water, and only a few drops seeped through here and there. Willow patiently began to work the tar in tighter at such places.

  As pleased as though it had been his own idea, Hawk squatted beside the spring, watching her.

  “Why did the women of the tribe not make these lined baskets before?” he asked.

  “I do not know,” Willow replied. “Perhaps it was because we were always moving, and skin containers are easier to carry.”

  As she carefully lifted the basket and carried it back to the cave, Hawk walked beside her, greatly pleased. Back in the cave, he took a long drink. He smacked his lips, while a vast sense of well-being filled him. Nobody else had ever been as well-off, he was sure. There was meat in the cave, and dried seeds and berries, and plenty of water, and a good supply of darts. Hawk awakened to the startling fact that he need not devote every waking minute to the grim business of just getting enough to eat or protecting himself and Willow. Luxuriously he stretched out beside the fire and slept while Willow began cooking bear meat.

  The dog’s low growl brought Hawk back to reality.

  Darkness had fallen while he slept, and the dog was lying in the cave’s mouth
rumbling at a prowling tiger. Hawk felt a sudden little panic.

  Again the cave seemed small and close, a prison of a place. The only light was that cast by the fire. Hawk went to the entrance and peered out. He had intended to sleep outside, but there was no way now he could do so, for it was unsafe to go out at night and attempt to build a fire. Disgusted, he ate in silence, then threw himself down on the bearskin and went to sleep again.

  He did not sleep heavily, and as usual was ready to awaken in a second, but there were no alarms during the night. With morning’s first light, Hawk rose and stretched. He threw wood on the low-burning fire and looked at the basket, which was still nearly full.

  It was good, very good, and they should have more of these tar-lined baskets. Willow started weaving one while Hawk went out to gather more dart shafts. He knew where the best ones grew, in a thicket of small trees in a nearby valley. There were so many that they crowded each other, and their limbless trunks were of a uniform size, free of branches. Hawk entered the thicket and started cutting sticks. Suddenly he was aware of the dog’s warning growl.

  Hawk peered out cautiously, to see the first of a long line of strange hunters swing down a slope and disappear into a gully. A moment later the head and shoulders of a man, with the lower body still concealed by the slope, reappeared. Hawk faded silently into the thicket, the dog beside him.

  Beyond any doubt, the hunters were on his trail.

  BEAVER

  Wolf’s tribe camped on the edge of a marshy lake. Halted would have been a better word than camped. Kar made an effort to build a fire, but he could find no dry wood in the darkness, and none of the others were willing to help.

  In the morning, the women began to grub up cattail roots to grind into a bitter flour, and the Chief Fire-Maker got a small blaze going to ease his conscience. Kar avoided the eyes of his surviving fellows. In Kar’s own mind, it was his failure to drive the bitch away that had caused the death of the boy and his mother.

  Nobody else seemed to care—about those deaths, or about anything else. The cattails would keep the tribe alive for a few days more, but the women who dug in the marsh went about their task with less animation than the reeds twitching in the light wind.

  Dawn displayed a stand of willow saplings which a blight had killed. They made poor firewood, but they were the best available. Kar fed in another billet of wood cut to length with a borrowed hand-axe. He thought grimly about the previous night. Even with a proper spear, he could not have been expected to drive away the pack when it rushed his side of the camp. He was old and the Chief Fire-Maker, not a hunter.

  Willow bark hissed as it peeled back in the fire. Wolf sat nearby and stared at his hands. Bearpaw glared at the Chief Hunter as if expecting him to change events which had already occurred. Bearpaw was a good hunter—strong and fast—but he did not have a quick mind. He couldn’t understand why everything was going wrong.

  If last night’s disaster wasn’t Kar’s fault, then who was responsible? Wolf, because the Chief Hunter should have ordered the tribe to flee as soon as the plundering dogs appeared? Perhaps that was so, but the tribe had been desperately glad to find food of any sort. None of them had been willing to accept the need to run away from what would otherwise provide at least one more meal. Wolf was no more to blame than any of the rest of them.

  Grassblade, bent over in the muddy water, suddenly straightened and stared at the low bank partway around the lake. The reeds near the bank were all young growth, short and colored a brighter green than those in the far distance. A few cut-off stems poked up above the lake’s surface, yellowing in the sunlight. Had another tribe been harvesting cattails recently?

  The thought turned Kar’s mind back to Hawk. The Chief Fire-Maker knew with vivid certainty what was responsible for the tribe’s recent cycle of catastrophes. They had been following tradition, as their fathers and fathers’ fathers had done, but the spirits which ruled all aspects of life wished to change tradition. The spirits had shown Hawk the new ways that they wanted the tribe to adopt—and the tribe had exiled Hawk, instead of listening to the spirits who spoke in the voice of the Chief Spear-Maker.

  Kar couldn’t imagine why the spirits had decided to change the traditions which had been followed throughout all the generations of men, but Kar was only a man himself. The spirits did as the spirits chose. Men could only obey the spirits’ decisions.

  Or disobey, and find themselves driven across the face of the world—starving and at the mercy even of scavengers like the plundering dogs.

  Kar jumped to his feet. “Wolf!” he cried. “We—”

  “Chief Hunter!” shouted Grassblade from the marsh. In her excitement, she dropped the bundle of cattails she had laboriously gathered. “I’ve found a beaver den! We will have meat!”

  Wolf and Bearpaw roused instantly and peered in the direction in which Grassblade was pointing. The children and the other women also stopped their business of chopping and grinding the bitter roots.

  “Wolf!” the Chief Fire-Maker repeated. “We must find Hawk and take him back into the tribe if we are to survive!”

  “Hawk is dead,” Wolf said flatly. He picked up his club from the ground. “Come, all of you!” He continued, “But don’t make any noise. If the beaver is in its burrow, then we’ll catch it at once. Otherwise, we’ll wait till it returns.”

  “Fresh meat at last!” Bearpaw rumbled as he trotted in the direction of the beaver den beside his chief hunter.

  Kar, carrying a willow sapling which he had shaped to a point, followed the rest of the tribe. He was behind everyone except Grassblade, who had to wade out of the muck before she could join them.

  The willow stake was a poor weapon. The wood had burned to ash when Kar tried to harden it in the fire, so the point was splintery. It was better than nothing; that was all he could say about it.

  The rest of the tribe was enthusiastic. The Chief Fire-Maker was not. He felt sick. He was sure that the tribe was still refusing to obey the spirits’ decree. The only thing which could come of that was what had come to the tribe ever since they drove Hawk away: disaster.

  Wolf waved the others to halt while he mounted the bank. A track, more easily spotted from above than at the lake’s surface, wove through the freshly sprouted reeds.

  Kar watched the Chief Hunter snuffle the air through his broad, highly sensitive nostrils. Even the Chief Fire-Maker, whose sense of smell had been blunted by decades of kneeling over smoky fires, scented the musk which the beasts used to mark their territory. Wolf was searching for the hole which ventilated the den. The actual entrance was beneath the surface of the lake, safe from most dry-land predators.

  These were giant beavers, not the smaller variety which cut down trees for food and dammed creeks into ponds in which they built covered nests of sticks and mud. The biggest of the giants were the size of a large black bear, larger than any two men together. The beavers dug into the muddy banks of lakes and ate reeds which they cropped with front teeth as long as the fingers of a big man. They spent almost all their time in the water through which they drove themselves with oversized hind feet.

  Out in the lake, the giant beavers were too large to snare and too swift for a hunter balanced on a floating log to catch. Trapped in their den, though, the rodents could be killed as easily as rabbits dug out of their burrows.

  Wolf located the vent which marked the living chamber of the den. It was hidden in lush vegetation at a distance back from the bank, but the animal odors rising from the opening displayed it to the Chief Hunter. He broke a reed and set it in the edge of the hole as a marker.

  The women moved toward Wolf. He waved them back. Magnolia ignored the order. Grassblade and Moonflower grabbed the other woman’s arms and pulled her forcibly to a halt. Magnolia’s eyes were wide and staring with the prospect of food. Her mouth opened. Kar feared she would shout and warn their prey, but at the last instant Magnolia’s eyes glazed and her body slumped into disinterest.

  Kar had hoped t
hat when Magnolia lost the corpse of her baby in the bison stampede, the young woman’s mind would return to normal. That had not happened.

  The Chief Hunter bent down and put his ear against the ventilation opening. What he heard must have pleased him, because he smiled as he got up again and moved to the bank. There he gestured Bearpaw and Kar to join him.

  The Chief Fire-Maker followed Bearpaw cautiously, trying not to snag the vegetation with his sharpened pole. He stared into the water. The lake was less than Kar’s own height beneath the top of the bank. The track which the beavers’ slick bodies had worn across the bottom mud was obvious from this angle, though the water was dark with silt and decaying vegetation.

  “I can hear them breathing,” Wolf whispered to the other men. “They’re inside, and we’re going to trap them.”

  We, thought the Chief Fire-Maker. Kar was not a hunter, but Wolf clearly expected his Chief Fire-Maker to act like a hunter while hunger demanded it. They had cast out Hawk for violating tradition, but now they were all ignoring tradition.

  “Kar,” the Chief Hunter ordered, “you will jump into the water and wedge your pole across the mouth of the opening.”

  “The beavers will push me out of the way, Wolf,” the old man protested. His skin crawled at the notion of standing waist deep in cold water, but he knew better than to object on those grounds.

  Wolf glared. “Bearpaw will stand with you,” he said. “Your pole will hold the leading beaver for a moment. Bearpaw will spear it. Meanwhile, the women and children will dig down through the vent. If the beavers turn back in their tunnel when they see the way is blocked, I will club them through the hole we dig in the roof of their den.”

  Bearpaw nodded. “When do we start?” he muttered. “I’m hungry.”

  “Kar?” Wolf asked sharply. “Do you understand?”

  Kar sighed. It seemed like a good plan. “Yes, Chief Hunter,” he said. “I will do my part.”