Other eyes watched the two—six pairs of brown orbs hidden in deep sockets, shadowed by bushy brows. A hunting party of thurbs had come over the ridge; in search of the deer wont to frequent this grassy park. They stood transfixed at sight of the Man and the savage kther facing each other.
“That one is not a thurb,” spoke An-Ga, leader of the hunters and chief of the tribe of Go. “Look at the color of him…and see the hair upon his head and face! Can he be human even?”
“Whatever he is,” said Strob, the chief’s brother, “he has no fear. See—he advances upon the kther!”
“He will be torn to pieces!”
“The kther is the deadliest of beasts!”
“What can he do against a kther? He has no weapon!”
Two yards apart, the naked Man and the snarling kther faced each other, the beast frothing with animal fury, the Man curious and wondering. The kther’s jet fur stood erect along its weaving spine down which ripples ran to the long, twitching tail. Great yellow eyes peered unblinking at the Man. The red maw opened in a soundless snarl.
Kor stopped, puzzled by the creature’s manner. He wondered if it were afraid. While he pondered the problem, the kther drew itself into a quivering heap, bunched its limbs; then with all the power of steely muscles, it sprang.
Kor observed its rearing assault with indifference. The need to kill in order to preserve himself had not yet occurred to him. The great bulk seemed to cover the intervening space in a slow, flowing motion, then the kther crashed down upon him. Flashing claws ripped like scimitars. Fangs clashed; a growling snarl ripped from the beast’s belly. Scalding pain gushed over Kor’s back and flanks. He willed the beast to die…and the power of his mind lashed out of its thrall of darkness.
The great kther squalled and rolled kicking on the grass.
Painfully, Kor dragged himself to his feet. He stood swaying. Blood ran from a score of deep gashes in his sun-reddened flesh. He stared stupidly at the kther. The great beast was dead. Kor felt faint. He toppled over, measured his length on the grass.
Awe-struck, the thurb hunters peered from their rock cover.
“Indeed,” cried An-Ga in a tremendous voice, “he is no thurb, but a god!”
“But a god!” cried his little band of followers.
“Let us go to the god. Perhaps he needs our help!”
Skin-clad, trailing spears, the bald-headed thurb rushed into the meadow, gathered around conqueror and conquered.
“He still lives—” announced An-Ga, feeling Kor’s body. “But he is wounded. The kther ripped him with its claws.”
“Aie! He will die, then! Whom the mighty kther whips with his claws goes down into the world of shadows!”
“Unless he is a god!”
A hoarse exclamation broke from a bending thurb.
“Look—his wounds! The god heals himself!”
The hunters bent, staring with eyes big and round. Slowly, the gaping wounds in Kor’s flesh were closing, knitting, healing of themselves. As they watched, the last bloody furrow closed itself, and the Scarlet Saint lay without a scratch to mar his skin.
The thurb began all to sound at once. They went mad with an ecstatic frenzy. They shook their spears and danced around and around Kor and the fallen kther, trampling at the lush grass, chanting with wild, primitive joy.
“Hail the god! He has vanquished the kther! He has healed his wounds! Hall the god! Aie—”
On and on the thurb danced and yelled, their minds intoxicated by what they had witnessed.
Kor rolled over and sat up. The din was deafening. He had no memory of combat with the kther. He looked at its dead body without interest, swung his gaze to include the yelling thurb. They saw his look, broke and ran. Kor sat and resumed contemplation of the dead kther. He wondered what it was and why it did not move.
At last he got to his feet, stretched lazily, and began to stride rapidly toward the head of the meadow and the forest that lay beyond.
The thurb grouped themselves in silence, watching him go.
“The god!” cried Strob. “The god is leaving us!”
“Catch him!” ordered An-Ga.
The thurb looked at him. Who was a fool among them? Was the stranger not a god? Had he not slain a kther? None ventured forward until all moved in a body, slowly. They crept after Kor, calling out, pleading, placating. Kor did not hear them, nor could he have understood the harsh gutturals of their speech. He reached the edge of the forest, sat down on the exposed root of a tall pine and looked back the way he had come. He saw the advancing thurb then, but there was nothing about them that interested him.
An-Ga led the rest by half a spear’s length, a position forced upon him by virtue of his chieftainship. He croaked dismally.
“Stay, O god!”
Kor stayed.
He began to wonder about the advancing thurb. Their similarity to himself disturbed him. They were man-like, heavily muscled, almost hulking in stature. They had wide, bushy eyebrows, but their heads and faces were hairless. Their bodies, where not covered by wolf-skins, were revealed as coarsely haired.
The thurb saw Kor looking at them and gathered in a knot to confer. Afterward, An-Ga turned from his fellows advanced a few paces, and laid down his spear. Kneeling then, he backed away on his knees to rejoin the group. One by one, the others came forward, dropped their spears and retreated on their knees.
They began to chant, a meaningless jabber, but now Kor felt something in the depths of his mind which spoke for these simple people.
“We are thurb, O god! We lay our spears before thee.”
The sense broke into meaningless gabble, became a dismal mouthing of sounds.
Kor wondered, what are thurb? Am I a thurb? What is a spear? He got up and strolled toward the piled spears. He looked down at them. They were long shafts of wood, fitted with sharp points of stone.
“Take our spears, O god.”
Once again Kor caught the sense of the thought and looked toward the kneeling thurb. Six heads thumped in unison upon the ground. Something about them stirred Kor with pity.
These are spears, Kor thought. These creatures are thurb. I am not a thurb. I am a god.
He felt suddenly, strangely happy, as if he had solved a terribly upsetting problem. He held up both hands and pronounced the only word he could remember.
“Kor!”
“Kor—Kor!” cried the thurb together.
They leaped to their feet, babbled, waved their arms.
* * * *
Kor turned his back on them and stalked off into the forest. He forgot about them completely. The thurb followed Kor for three days, deeper and deeper into the forest. Their strength flagged. Their spears grew heavy to carry.
“He eats not, neither does he drink!” protested An-Ga, “but briefly goes to sleep! How can we keep up with him, who have not eaten for three days?”
“Let us go,” urged Strob. “We will return to our cache of meat by the meadow where we found the god. We will forget him, and hunt meat for our people on the plains.”
“We have followed him for three days,” returned An-Ga. “We are sick with hunger. We should starve before we got back to our cache.”
“How long can a man go on without eating, god or no god?”
“We must have food and water!”
“Why is this god important to us anyway? Why do we follow him?”
“Have not the old men of the tribe related that the gods love the thurb? What love has this fellow shown for us?”
So they argued and harangued among themselves. Kor halted, beset by a baffling clamor of thoughts. The thoughts came from the thurb, and spoke of discontent, unhappiness, hunger and thirst. Kor asked himself, what is hunger? He did not know. The thurb minds told him that hunger was suffer
ing, but he did not know what suffering was, either. What is thirst? Thirst is suffering of a different sort, but similar to hunger. Kor fondled the thought, unconsciously molding it into the abstraction of need. Hunger and thirst were the expression of needs. One was for food and the other for water.
Kor turned to An-Ga and gestured. The thurb chieftain gestured in return, but nothing was gained by the exchange. All around them, the pine forest lifted exalted crests to the blue, blue dome of the sky. The ground was a rich humus of brown pine needles, rich smelling, yielding to the foot. The thurb had chewed clumps of grass on the march to alleviate thirst. Their mouths were green. One who rolled a pebble in his mouth spat it out with a glum expression.
Kor said, “What is thirst?”
The sound of the words astonished him. He had not known there were so many words, nor that he could speak them. But the thurb did not understand.
An-Ga said, “Lord, we need water and food. And rest, too, for the way has been hard, following you.”
Kor grasped the thought.
He said, “Water?”
The word was not the same as the thurb word for it. An-Ga made motions of dipping cupped hands and lifting them to his lips.
Kor closed his eyes. There was a spring bubbling out of the Mountainside barely a half mile away. He sensed its presence, was aware of the cool bubbling it made in the pebbled basin of its nativity, of its sparkling descent of the hillside to a creek far below.
He seized An-Ga by the shoulder, faced him in the direction of the spring and shoved. An-Ga staggered a step forward and stopped. Kor reached to seize another thurb, but the fellow drew back.
Kor swung away from them, burst into a swinging lope down the mountainside. The pitiful band of thurb scrambled hastily after him. A few minutes later, they lay in contented relaxation, having drunk their fill.
Food, thought Kor. Thurb need food. He was at a loss to account for what food might be until a thurb conjured up an impression of deer-like animal. Kor saw the thurb running through the forest, spear ready. He saw him stop, crouched, then the cast of the spear. A nimble-footed, antlered creature fell crashing to the forest floor. Such is food, thought Kor.
He sat down on an outcropping of rock by the bubbling spring and closed his eyes. His mind swept out, touched a family of squirrels eating pine-nuts in a nearby tree. They had no antlers. They were not food. He thrust his mind farther afield.
A herd of the deer-like creatures grazed in a grassy meadow. Hunger had weakened the thurb. They were too weak to march so far. Kor continued to sit, uttering no sound. Far away, the deer lifted their heads, turned as if in response to a call. They began to drift toward the meadow’s edge, faster and faster, until soon the herd streamed at top speed through the forest. Their dainty feet stamped the turf…faster…faster.
Strob said, “He has led us to water, but do we starve now? I hunger.”
“He is a god,” replied An-Ga. “Shall we ask after the ways of gods? He has given us water. Be content. He will give us food.”
The thurb huddled in a semi-circle before Kor, clutching their spears. The sun was going down, and the forest was barred and aisled with slanting sunshine. Insects hummed and glinted in the golden glow.
An-Ga’s primitive ears twitched. Had that sound been the click of a hoof upon stone? He uttered a harsh command.
The thurb melted away from Kor’s lone, intent figure.
The deer came on, walking fast, eyes rolling, muzzles dewed. The thurb saved their wonder for later. Here was meat!
CHAPTER XVII
The thurb were happy and contented, their faith restored in their god. Kor brooded in mystic silence. He accepted the thurb as his own. They were his people. They were why he had come to the mountains.
The thurb had struck fire from a flint spear head and roasted part of their kill. They feasted now and sang praises to Kor. Kor sat aloof among them appearing to think deep, divine thoughts, though no thought would come to him. His mind was blank, observing and recording but that was all. Kor knew he had found the water, that he had brought the deer. He did not know how he had done these things. The thoughts of the thurb were sometimes clear to him, sometimes muddled and senseless. Kor was not a thurb. He was a god.
The thurb talked now of packing the rest of their meat and striking out in the morning for the cave that sheltered the tribe. Kor thought, what is a cave? He searched the thurb minds. He came away with a feeling of a hole among rocks, a cool place when the sun was hot, a warm place when wind and driven snow howled outside. There was something of shelter about a cave, something of comfort that had to do with fire, and something of something else, a feeling more than a fact. The word swam slowly into Kor’s consciousness—home.
Home! Kor felt an unexplainable ache. He was going home. That was what he wanted. Home provided security, peace and pleasure. What were security, peace and pleasure? He did not know, but he felt that they were treasured things, things he had somehow once possessed but had lost, he did not know how or when. Home held these things—and home was where the cave men of Karel IV planned to go.
Kor gave up his leadership. He followed the meat-laden hunters as they struck off across the hogbacks toward their distant caves—and home.
Two days of hard packing over ridges and through the swaying forest brought them to a gullied ravine. Single-file, the cave men trudged downward. The walls of the ravine got higher and steeper. They debauched into a canyon with high, frowning escarpments of weathered rock. The mountain range was close, lifted snow peaks above them, dazzling against the blue backdrop of the sky. A snow-covered cone rose steeply above the canyon, smoke wreathing its crest. A small, white cloud of water vapor condensed above the smoke and rained without end upon the unquenchable fires of the volcano.
The canyon floor leveled into a grassy sward. A spraying waterfall dashed in a broken cataract down the steep rocky side, pooled at the bottom and flowed in a sparkling stream southward. They came upon cultivated fields. Above the fields there were black holes in the canyon wall, topping a long slope of tumbled talus. Figures, tiny in the distance, jumped and gesticulated at the mouths of the caves. Faintly, shouts of welcome came to the cars of the returning hunters.
“Home,” thought Kor. He looked at the caves and the crowd of jumping thurb. “Soma,” he thought, and he did not know why a sharp pain stabbed through his breast. He saw that An-Ga and the other hunters were laughing and shouting back at the welcoming throng. He was pleased for them and forgot his pain.
* * * *
There was feasting in the caves that night. Kor sat on a high rock in front of the caves, looking into the bright heart of a fire. A deerskin robe given him by An-Ga dropped from his shoulders, banishing his nakedness. A wolf-skin lay across his knees. Someone had brought wild flowers and piled them at Kor’s feet. Every thurb in the tribe of Go knew that Kor was a god. So they had been told.
A woman approached him with a gourd filled with savory venison. She offered it to Kor, but Kor paid no attention. The woman thrust the gourd almost into his face, grinned coquettishly, made clucking noises with her tongue. Kor turned his head away.
Tharg squatted by the campfire. He eyed Kor with sullen jealousy. He watched his woman offer Kor food, and from the way she thrust her body forward, he knew she offered herself, too.
Tharg was a mighty thurb, heavily muscled, mightily thewed. His bald head gleamed in the light of the flames from a fresh anointing of oil. He had had to rub the oil on himself. His woman had left him to offer herself to the god. Tharg hated Kor.
“Who is he, that you call him god?” he grumbled to a campfire mate. “Do we not know that the gods made thurb after their own likeness. What thurb is so hideously haired as he?”
Tharg’s companion stopped gnawing at his portion of venison. He smacked his lips, wiped away the grease on the back of hi
s hand and grinned at Tharg.
“Not so hideous in the eyes of Tharg’s mate, is he?”
Tharg growled and fetched the fellow a back-handed lick that knocked him kicking. The smitten thurb rolled quickly over, jumped to his feet, doubled over with laughter at Tharg’s discomfiture. The woman still thrust food at Kor, simpering and grinning, making whining noises and swaying her hips provocatively.
“Ho, Tharg!” guffawed the gleeful thurb. “She will have his body and you will spend a cold winter!”
Tharg sprang erect. He was bandy-legged, hirsute of chest and arms. His chin hung low. He scuttled like a spider across the intervening space and with a vicious clout knocked his mate sprawling. Tharg stood then and glared at Kor, feet wide spread, toes gripping the ground; his arms hanging loosely. He growled his displeasure.
A stone axe hurtled through the air, glinting in the firelight, thumped into the giant’s ribs. Tharg yelled, went down with a look of wild surprise, clutching his wounded breast.
“Be taught,” An-Ga said calmly, retrieving his axe, “not to profane the god’s presence with violence. Take your mate to your cave and beat her. If she annoys the god again, I shall have her whipped for all to see. Go! I, An-Ga, have spoken.”
Tharg glowered his pain and frustration. He seized his mate by one arm and dragged her squalling to his cave. For a long time, afterward, she could be heard screaming and crying as Tharg beat her, but nobody paid any attention. The food was good and there was plenty of it.
They gave Kor a cave of his own, above all the others, by the cliff path that led to the forested plateau above. They carpeted its floor with scoured sand from the creek bed in the canyon and piled it with skins and lustrous furs for his comfort.
He took no food or water, and there was no need for a fire. Alone, Kor lived in his cave and brooded on the eternal mystery of his being.
* * * *
The days grew shorter, and the golden light of autumn settled upon the canyon. The hunters went out and returned with meat, which the women prepared for winter use by boiling and drying in the sun. Sometimes Kor went with the hunters and brought them an abundance of game. Often he stayed in his cave while the hunters were gone and slept long hours, or sat trying to drag his thoughts out of the darkness that held them fast.
The 7th Golden Age of Weird Fiction MEGAPACK®: Manly Banister Page 41
