The Hunter Returns

by David Drake

  He was awakened by the dog’s warning growl, and sprang instantly to his feet. The first faint, wan streaks of daylight filtered dismally through the cave’s opening, and the mournful twitter of an early-waking bird was borne to his ears. Snatching up his darts, he went to the opening and looked out.

  Morning mists swirled lightly over the clearing, and smoke from the enemy fire curled lazily up through them. Three of the hunters squatted on their haunches, just out of dart range, looking steadily at the cave. Others dawdled about the fire, but not all were accounted for. They could not have gone hunting, for it was too early to hunt. Suspicious, Hawk peered out of the mouth of the cave to see what had happened to the rest.

  A pebble fell behind him, and a little chunk of earth dropped to the floor of the cave. The dog snarled fiercely and trotted back into the cave. He stood still, muscles tense and head alert, then nervously padded back to Hawk. Another clod of dirt dropped from the cave’s roof, and another. Again the dog returned to the cave, as though he wanted to locate something that should be there. He bristled.

  Hawk jerked about, startled. There were faint scrapings and pawings on the roof of the cave, and dirt sifted down steadily. Now he knew where the missing hunters were. They were on top of the cave, trying to dig their way through the smoke hole. After they had an opening through which a man could drop, doubtless they would attack from two sides at once. But until the hole was big enough, there would probably be no further attacks.

  Fear touched Hawk’s spine with icy fingers. He could defend the door, but this was a situation which he had not anticipated. Obviously it was impossible to be in two places at once, and Willow was no match for even one hunter. She could help little if some came through the door while others dropped through the hole in the roof. Hawk squatted in the entrance, considering the new danger.

  Willow brought him a chunk of roasted meat, and Hawk grimaced as he took it. The weather had been warm, and meat did not keep well in warm weather. When it started to spoil it was both distasteful and apt to induce a sick stomach. They should have had fresh meat today, but there would be none until he dared leave the cave.

  Gingerly Hawk smelled of the meat, then sniffed again, more deeply. It should be spoiled but certainly it did not smell that way. Rather it had a smoky odor, not unpleasant. Hawk nibbled a bit, then took a bigger portion. It was not spoiled at all, but good, with a smoky taste as pleasant as its odor. Hawk looked up at the ledges where the rest of the meat lay.

  Most of the smoke went out the smoke hole, but some always lingered near the top of the cave, so that the stored meat lay constantly in a thin pall of smoke. Evidently the smoke was responsible for keeping the meat from spoiling.

  Hawk stored this discovery in his brain with all the others he had made. It was most useful. If meat could be preserved, for even a little while, it meant that they could have that many more meals out of any large game animal, instead of eating just a little and throwing the rest away. That was something for the future—if there was any future.

  From overhead came a muffled pounding, and the scraping of rock on rock. The diggers, Hawk guessed, had struck a ledge of rock and were trying to break through it. The scraping and pounding continued. Hawk picked up the water basket, and drank. He put the basket down and listened intently.

  The diggers on top of the cave had abandoned their first hole and were starting a new one in a different place. Hawk breathed a little easier; perhaps the entire cave was roofed with rock and could not be broken. The smoke hole might go through a crack in the rock too narrow for a man. Or maybe it was too difficult to dig there; the smoke emerged in a grove of trees, and digging a hole large enough to admit a man, through interlaced roots, could be almost as difficult as digging through rock.

  Suddenly a boulder, dislodged from the roof, bounded against the rim of the water basket and tipped it over.

  Both Willow and Hawk sprang instantly to right the basket, but they were too late. Their precious water flowed in a spreading, dark stain on the floor of the cave.

  MARMOT

  Wolf’s eyes caught the flash of motion against the grass of the distant hillside. Not even the Chief Hunter’s keen vision could make out the shape of the small animal moving there, but he knew what it must be from the location.

  “Marmot,” Wolf said aloud. He spoke to reassure himself that he was still a hunter capable of leading the tribe rather than because he needed to inform the others of what he had spotted.

  Wolf’s ears no longer rang in memory of the blow he had taken in Bull’s camp, but sometimes the Chief Hunter had waking dreams of the way the world had been when he first led the tribe many years before. Then they had meat regularly. Old men said it had been better in former days, but to Wolf’s memory that time was a paradise in which he and his folk gorged on bison and never worried about the next day’s hunt.

  Then, suddenly, the memory of the past would vanish. Wolf would see the haggard faces of those he led and feel hunger claw his belly. He was embarrassed to dream of the good days which had been. It made him fear that he was losing his mind, the way Elm had gone mad shortly before her death.

  The marmot on the far hillside barked a quick preliminary warning when the little animal realized a human was staring in its direction. The marmot was the lookout for a tribe of dozens of its fellows.

  Thought of numbers forced the Chief Hunter to consider the draggled remnants of the tribe which followed him. Kar was at the end of the line. The old man carried a crude spear which was the best Wolf could fashion. It was mostly for protection. A party of two adult males and a young boy could not even pretend to be able to hunt real game.

  The three women—Grassblade, Moonflower, and Magnolia—and two girls gathered the roots and berries on which the tribe had been forced to subsist. It was not a satisfying diet to a tribe of nomadic hunters, nor was even vegetable food ample in quantity.

  Magnolia often went off with her deer-antler digging-stick. She bolted whatever edibles she found instead of bringing the food back to share with the others. No one commented on her behavior. Magnolia sat sullenly by herself at the campfire, crooning as though the infant which had died so long ago could hear.

  The marmot realized that the humans were not coming closer. It clucked reassuringly to its fellows. They went back to cropping grass or simply lolling in the warm sunlight. If the lookout had given its shrill call of immediate danger, the upland pasture would quiver for an instant while all the creatures leaped to the safety of their interconnected burrows on the rocky slope.

  Magnolia suddenly left the line of the tribe and strode toward the opposite slope. She made no attempt to conceal herself, though the sharp-eyed marmots were almost impossible for even cats to stalk successfully. The lookout whistled in alarm. The speck that was the little animal’s body disappeared from the outcrop which it had taken as its watchtower.

  “Magnolia, where are you going?” Wolf demanded. “We can’t hunt marmots!”

  Magnolia ignored him. The young woman had borne a charmed life since she started going out alone to gather food. No predator had harmed her, though a woman armed only with a digging-stick should have been easy prey. Perhaps the spirits chose to spare those who had lost their minds.

  Wolf had been spared, while most of those he led had died. He shivered at the thought.

  “We might be able to dig them out of their holes,” suggested Moonflower as she watched the other woman walking stolidly across the valley.

  “Of course we can’t do that!” Wolf snapped. “The ground is rocky and all the burrows join under the ground. We’d just be wasting our time!”

  “What meat will you be bringing us tonight, Chief Hunter?” Grassblade asked in a bitter voice.

  Wolf’s head jerked back at the insult. He raised his hand to strike the woman. She glared at him, too angry and frustrated to be afraid. Wolf lowered his hand.

  Grassblade dropped the load she was carrying and set off after Magnolia, carrying only a pointed br
anch for digging. Moonflower looked at the children and said, “Come along,” before following the other women.

  The women and children did not look back as they walked across the valley on a hopeless quest. Wolf stared at them. He did not attempt to shout orders which he knew the others would ignore.

  “It is not right,” said Kar sadly.

  The Chief Hunter looked at him. “Perhaps they are right,” he said. “What have I brought them except misfortune? Go on, Kar. Join them. They will need a Chief Fire-Maker.”

  “We did wrong to send Hawk away,” said the old man firmly. “That was not your fault, it was the fault of all of us together. The spirits will not bring back the tribe’s good luck until we apologize to Hawk.”

  Wolf looked at the clumsy spears he had made for Kar and himself. He sighed. “Hawk is dead,” he said at last. He nodded toward the women and children, who were beginning to climb the far side of the valley. The tribe of marmots had vanished utterly from the grassy slope above.

  Kar took the Chief Hunter’s arm. “Come,” he said. “Perhaps we can dig out a marmot. Anyway, the sun is bright. It will feel good on my old bones.”

  The women and young were hard at work, digging the earth away from several burrow entrances, when the two men joined them. The holes were easy to find, since the marmots had worn trails across the meadow to them. Wolf could see half a dozen entrances besides the three at which the humans were working.

  The wind keened around the humans, coursing up the slope of the valley and whistling through the bare rocks of the ridge line above them. It was strong enough to feel cool, despite the sunlight on which Kar had remarked.

  Magnolia was digging particularly fast. She kept her deer-antler implement sharp, and she worked as steadily as a force of nature. Watching her was like seeing grass sway in the wind, or a stream gurgle downhill without ever stopping or slowing. Despite Magnolia’s mindless concentration, her efforts were as vain as those of the other diggers.

  The marmot burrows began with a drop shaft which plunged straight down for the length of a man’s hand and forearm. It was this design which permitted the little creatures to disappear so suddenly when danger threatened. From the base of the drop shaft, the burrow extended sideways in a runway along which the marmots could move swiftly. Grassblade and the two girls had excavated a runway far enough to find the first of its many branchings.

  It was as Wolf had said: digging out the marmots was an impossible task. Despite that, the Chief Hunter sighed and began to tear at the earth around another entrance. His awkwardly fashioned spear made a better digging-stick than it did a weapon with which to hunt big game.

  Instead of digging, Kar stared with an expression of wonder on his face at the holes thus far excavated. Wolf grunted to catch the old man’s attention. “Come,” he whispered to his Chief Fire-Maker. “Help me. If we are to stay together as a tribe, we must act as a tribe . . . even if what we do is a waste of time.”

  Grassblade had sharp ears. She looked over from where she was levering a rock out of the soil with her digging-stake. “What you have done for the past months has been a waste of time, Chief Hunter,” she said sharply. “Otherwise we would have had meat to eat, as is proper.”

  Wolf pursed his lips. He concentrated on thrusting his spear into the ground and twisting the earth loose to shower down the drop shaft. He did not reply.

  “No,” said Kar. “There is a better way!” The Chief Fire-Maker’s face became suddenly lively. He bent and began to fumble with the implements of his profession, the tinder and flints with which he lighted his fires. “Help me, everyone!” Kar ordered. “Bring bundles of grass. Quickly!”

  The three children willingly stopped what they were doing and clutched handfuls of the long, coarse grass that carpeted the meadow. The women were doubtful and hostile. Because of the long succession of catastrophes, they had lost the habit of obedience to the chiefs of the tribe. “You can’t drive marmots with fire,” Moonflower objected. “They’re underground, can’t you see?”

  “Yes, and we can drive them!” said Kar. The old man drew himself up to his full height. At times like this when he spoke with assurance, the Chief Fire-Maker projected the authority which Wolf believed he himself had lost.

  Kar pointed to the hole Magnolia was excavating, the entrance farthest down the slope. “The wind comes up the valley,” the old man explained. “I will build a grass fire in the mouth of that tunnel and the wind will blow it through all the burrows.”

  Grassblade shook her head uncertainly. “But—” she said, no longer hostile. “The tunnels will not burn . . . will they, Chief Fire-Maker?”

  “The tunnels will not burn,” said Kar, “but the wind will blow the smoke through them and drive the marmots out of other holes. We will wait and catch them when they come out.”

  “What if they don’t—” Moonflower began with a frown on her face as she tried to understand the new idea. Wolf was frowning also, but he had learned that old Kar’s mind was quicker at establishing new concepts than his own was.

  “Do as I say, woman!” snapped the Chief Fire-Maker. “Do you want to starve?”

  The grass was long and green rather than dry. Wolf knew that it would not burn well, but for this purpose it was better that the fuel give off billows of smoke. He had to remember that they were not trying to drive a herd of bison into a trap with bright, swift-spreading flames.

  The Chief Hunter helped crop the grass, cutting the stems with the edge of his spearpoint. The task was familiar. All his conscious life he had sawn grass and twisted it into torches with which to drive the herds. Maybe that was what the tribe needed: not new traditions, exactly, but rather traditions changed slightly to accommodate new circumstances.

  What Hawk had done, for instance—training the spirit of the wood to throw spears by itself. That did not seem so unreasonable anymore. Why had they thought they must drive their Chief Spear-Maker away for doing a valuable thing like that?

  Wolf stacked his armload of grass on the pile the women and children had harvested. Kar had his fire burning already, an orange gleam turned pale by the sun. The Chief Fire-Maker fed a twist of grass to the tendril of flame reaching from his set of punk and shavings. Yellow-white smoke curled up and streamed along with the breeze. Kar dropped the twist into the lowest excavation and added more grass to it.

  Wolf came to life. “Everyone go to another hole and wait!” he ordered sharply. He was again the tribe’s Chief Hunter, even though this was an unfamiliar form of hunting. “When the marmots show themselves, strike quickly! Otherwise we will miss them.”

  Wolf ran to a hole to the side of the one where Kar was generating smoke. The women and children scattered to other openings, clutching clubs and rocks. They were scattered over fifty yards. Magnolia stopped digging, but she remained poised where she was with her sharpened antler in her hand. The expression on her face would have been more fitting on a beast of prey.

  A wisp of haze drifted out of the tunnel by which Wolf was watching. It was scarcely visible, but the Chief Hunter could smell the sharp tang of the smoke when he bent close to the opening. He drew his head away quickly, afraid that he would frighten back a marmot which would otherwise have bolted from cover.

  Wolf raised his spear to stab if he got the chance. The marmots whistled shrilly within their tunnels. The sounds were thinned and deepened by echoing through the burrows.

  The women and children poised with greater or lesser expertise. Grassblade was farthest up the slope, but there were burrow entrances even higher than she was. It was while glancing at Grassblade that Wolf saw a marmot unexpectedly pop from a hole behind her.

  “There!” screamed the Chief Hunter, pointing. Grassblade and the marmot were equally surprised. The plump animal jumped toward her just as the woman turned around. Grassblade dropped her digging-stake and grabbed at the beast with both hands. All the tribe were running toward her.

  Though the marmot squealed and thrashed its stubby legs, it di
d not attempt to bite Grassblade. It was a strong, healthy animal which weighed almost twenty pounds. Its body fat and smooth, russet fur made it difficult to hold, but the woman clung to it desperately.

  Magnolia elbowed past the others converging on the struggle. “Meat!” she shrieked. “Give it to me!” She clawed at Grassblade’s face with her left hand in a furious attempt to make the other woman give up her prize.

  “No, it’s mine!” Grassblade shouted. She twisted away and kicked out at Magnolia. Wolf reached the melee and caught Magnolia by the shoulder. The young woman gave an insane scream and stabbed Grassblade in the stomach with the sharp-pointed antler she carried.

  Wolf gasped and stepped back. The whole tribe froze. Grassblade’s face went gray. Half the length of the digging implement was buried in her body. She did not collapse at once, but the marmot leaped from her nerveless fingers and disappeared back down its burrow before anyone thought to act.

  Magnolia threw her hands over her mouth. For the first time since her baby died, Magnolia’s expression was that of a normal human being—a human wracked with horror at what she saw, at what she had done. “Oh, Grassblade!” she cried. “Oh, Grassblade, it wasn’t me who . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. The murdered woman stumbled to her knees, then fell on her face across the marmot burrow.

  Smoke continued to rise from some of the entrances, but no more marmots appeared.

  “Come,” muttered Wolf. “We must leave this place. It is unclean.”

  BENT BOW

  The dog, padding over, bent his head to the spilled water and licked up as much as he could. Then he ran a pink tongue over his furry upper jaw and sat back on his haunches, looking expectantly up at Hawk.

  Hawk brushed a hand across his shaggy mop of hair and dangled the empty water basket while the enormity of this tragedy sank in. They could live, for days if need be, without food. But not without water, and their entire reserve stock had been in the basket.