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  The Original and Complete

  Hok the Mighty

  Manly Wade Wellman

  (custom book cover)

  Jerry eBooks

  Bibliography

  Meet the Author

  BATTLE IN THE DAWN

  HOK GOES TO ATLANTIS

  THE DAY OF THE CONQUERORS

  HOK DRAWS THE BOW

  HOK AND THE GIFT OF HEAVEN

  HOK VISITS THE LAND OF LEGENDS

  THE LOVE OF OLOANA

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Novels

  The Day of the Conquerors, Thrilling Wonder Stories, January 1940

  Short Fiction

  Battle in the Dawn, Amazing Stories, January 1939

  Hok Goes to Atlantis, Amazing Stories, December 1939

  Hok Draws the Bow, Amazing Stories, May 1940

  Hok and the Gift of Heaven, Amazing Stories, March 1941

  Hok Visits the Land of Legends, Fantastic Adventures, April 1942

  The Love of Oloana, Pulse Pounding Adventure Stories #1, December 1986

  Untitled Hok Fragment, Echoes of Valor II, August 1989

  Meet the Authors

  MANLY WADE WELLMAN

  Author of HOK GOES TO ATLANTIS

  I HAVE read perhaps fifty books and other accounts of ancient Atlantis, all the way from Plato to Ignatius Donnelley, and I am convinced that amid all the imaginative flowerings there are certain sound kernels of truth. There must have been a community in ancient times, with a culture surpassing all its neighbors; it must have been destroyed—this conviction prevents me from writing tales about Atlanteans today—and there must have been some survivor, a strong swimmer or swift runner, who told his children about it. That story, told at second hand as the children grew up, repeated and re-repeated, has come down to this day.

  The only hero of antiquity I know who might have escaped the destruction is Hok, the Stone Age man about whom such flattering things have been said by readers of AMAZING STORIES. Hok is very real to me, in appearance and character. I make no doubt but that the memory of this sturdy old cave chief also survives today, in stories about Hercules, Gishdubar or even Paul Bunyan. And, as I ponder this, the whole tale took form in the back of my mind, in that rather lurid movie theater where so many fantastic dramas have been unreeled. Perhaps it’s a vision of what really happened. I defy anyone to prove the contrary.

  One or two have asked me if I intend to write further adventures of Hok. That is entirely up to the readers of AMAZING STORIES. Hok, for all his savage simplicity, is a thorough gentleman. He won’t appear where he is not wanted. I’d appreciate any reactions to him, whether flattering or critical.—Manly Wade Wellman.

  Originally appeared in Amazing Stories, January 1939

  STONE-AGE Europe was spacious, rich and uncrowded; but there could be only one race of rulers.

  Homo Neanderthalensis must have grown up there from the beginning, was supreme and plentiful as the last glaciers receded. His bones have been found from Germany to Gibraltar, and his camps and flints and fire-ashes. We reconstruct his living image—burly and stooped, with a great protruding muzzle, beetling brows, no chin and no brow. Perhaps he was excessively hairy—hardly a man, but more than a brute. Fire was his, and the science of flint-chipping. He buried his dead brothers, apparently believing in a hereafter, even a deity. He could think, perhaps speak. He could fight, too.

  When real men first came through the eastern mountain passes or out of the great valley now drowned by the Mediterranean, battle ensued. The invaders were Homo Sapiens, in body and spirit like us, their children. They could not parley with the abhorrent foe they found; there could be no rules of warfare, no truces or treaties, no mercy to the vanquished. Such conflict could die only when the last adversary died.

  It must have been a struggle generations long. Was it not full of daring, despair, sacrifice, triumph? Was not the conquest the greatest, because the most fundamental, in the history of the race? No champions of mankind ever bore a greater responsibility than those first little bands who crossed, all unaware, the borders of Neanderthal country.

  With one such band, at the moment of such crossing, our story begins:

  CHAPTER I

  The Land of the Gnorris

  THE southern country had come to hold too few game herds, too many hostile bands of fellow-hunters; hence the family’s spring migration, many days’ journey into the north which these days grew warmer than their fathers had known it.

  This particular bright morning found the whole nine scattered. A foolish deer, grazing too close, bounded away with a javelin in its shoulder, and the swiftest runners led the chase with the rest trailing behind. So from horizon to horizon and beyond, with flecks of blood to point the way across rich green meadows, and hunger to quicken moccasined feet. The sun had reached zenith and passed when the first of the hunters, gaining the top of a little knoll, saw that the prey had fallen and died just beyond.

  That first-comer was the eldest son of the wandering household, and the tallest and swiftest. He was as strong as the leopard whose pelt he wore for single garment, and his smooth young skin showed tanned and healthy with good outdoor living. His lion-tawny hair had been cut shoulder length and was bound back from his shrewd face with a snakeskin fillet. His chin, plucked clean of beard as custom decreed with bachelors, jutted squarely. His mouth was wide and good-humored beneath a straight nose, and his gray eyes opened widely, clearly. In one hand he swung a stone-bladed axe, and a loop at his shoulder held the mate to the javelin that had pierced the deer. His name, and he hoped to make it great, was Hok.

  Pausing thus, Hok grinned triumphantly for just the half of an instant. Then his eyes narrowed and his lips drew tight. Something dark and shaggy crouched on the far side of the fallen animal. A bear? Hok’s free hand flashed backward, twitching the second javelin from its strap.

  Behind came the patter of other feet, and a comradely panting. That was Zhik, a younger half-brother and favorite companion. Not as tall as Hok, nor as old by three years, the stripling nevertheless was sturdy and handsome. Hurrying from behind, he poised a spear of his own.

  At that moment the shaggy thing rose from the side of the deer, rose on two legs to face them. It was not a bear.

  Barely thirty paces separated the youths from the creature that disputed their right to the meat.

  It had hands and feet, coarser and larger than Hok’s own; it was a head shorter than he, but broader; it wore no clothes, and coarse hair thatched shoulders, chest and knotted limbs. Then its eyes grappled Hok’s across the intervening space.

  Shrewd were those eyes, in a broad, shallow skull like the skull of a hairy lizard. Fire was in them, and intelligence and challenge. The two bright crumbs of vision, under their coarse brows, did not falter before Hok’s gaze as would a beast’s. Meeting the stare, startled and fierce on his own part, the hunter-youth was aware only vaguely of the rest of the face—out-flaring nostrils, a sagging lip, a hideous rank beard and forelock, ears that seemed to prick like those of a wolf.

  Zhik drew in his breath, as if setting himself for the cast. “Wait,” interposed Hok quickly, he did not know why.

  A third human figure had come from behind—the Chief, their father and head of the party, a hunter still vigorous and swift but unable to match forever the pace of these two eldest sons. He, too, balanced a javelin ready, and at sight of the creature before them his heavy, fulvous beard gaped open in amazement.

  As for the curio
sity itself, this last reenforcement daunted it. Slowly, clumsily, it backed away. They saw that it moved with knees bent, back hunched, arms hanging forward like an ape’s. Its eyes still turned to Hok, and it was at him it blurted a sudden gutteral sound of defiance. Then, turning upon broad, flat feet, it made off with awkward speed. It dropped into a fold of the meadow, remained invisible for moments, then reappeared beyond, well out of javelin range, to plunge into a thicket.

  Zhik, the youngest, recovered his high spirits first. “Gnorrl!” he shouted after the fugitive, in imitation of its throaty cry. Hok laughed, and repeated, “Gnorrl!” A new word was born into man’s language, a word that would be used often and fearfully in days to come.

  All three moved forward, tensely cautious. It was as though they expected the slain deer to spring up, alive and savage. But it was dead enough. The Chief turned it upon its back, then drew a knife of ground buckhorn. Hok knelt to help him open the belly and peel the hide, but Zhik gazed searchingly around the horizon for long moments.

  “That Gnorrl left a bad stink here,” announced the Chief. “Let us drag the meat away.” They did so, but still smelled, or fancied that they smelled, the vanished monster.

  The rest of the party came up as the butchery went on—first Asha, latest wife of the Chief, a plump, handsome young woman in a doe-skin tunic, with a naked boy-baby straddling her hip; next Barp and Unn, half-grown sons of Zhik’s dead mother, carrying on their unwilling shoulders part of the camp-luggage; after that Eowi, full sister to Hok, a slim and agile maiden also loaded with bundles; finally Asha’s other child, the little girl Nohda, old enough to walk but not to carry any burden save her clout of hare’s fur and a necklace of red seeds. As these arrived, they helped in cutting up the meat. Under the Chief’s direction the four quarters, the loin and tenderloin, the heart, the liver and the kidneys were detached and wrapped in the new hide. The ribs, head, shins and entrails remained for hyenas and ravens.

  BY now it was mid-afternoon, and the party went no further than a willow-fringed creek before the Old Man uttered the laconic order “Camp.” At once Hok and Zhik produced axes and cut long, supple willow poles. Several of these were thrust into the ground and bent together for central lashing. Over them Asha and Eowi drew the tent-cover of sewn hides. Barp and Unn gathered kindling and heavier wood, and the Chief reverently produced from his belt-pouch the long, charred fire-spindle. A piece of soft, punky wood served as hearth, and upon this he twirled the spindle-point, crooning the while the ancient prayer to the fire god.

  When a bright blaze had been kindled, the meat was apportioned. The Chief got, as was his right, the tenderloin. Next choice, a steak from the rear quarter, went to Asha. Hok’s turn came third, and he cut slices of liver and impaled them on a green willow withe. As he put them to the fire, his sister Eowi came and squatted beside him.

  “What happened?” she asked. “None of you have told, but—”

  “Gnorrl!” cried Zhik, whipping himself erect and standing at gaze.

  They all saw it then, far down the stream. It had crept up to watch them, and at the chorus of bewildered shouts from the campers it now shrank back into a little clump of bushes—a broad, repulsive shagginess that blended into the leafy shadow.

  Hok had dropped his liver into the fire and had sprung to where javelins were planted, tip in earth, for a quick snatch. His back tingled and crawled, in the place where, with his long-ago ancestors, a manelike strip of hair had bristled. His eyes measured the distance to the bushes. He ached to throw a spear.

  Eowi came to his side again. She had rescued his dinner from burning, and was touching it with a gingerly forefinger. “I know now without being told,” she said softly. “That was the danger. What was it, a man?”

  “No,” returned Hok, his eyes still prodding the clump. “It was a Gnorrl. Zhik made the word.”

  The Chief was laughing loudly and carelessly, for the sake of the frightened children. After a moment, the others joined in his merriment. Barp and Unn whooped bravely at the silent bush-clump, waving their axes and exhorting the Gnorrl to show himself and be slain.

  Hok returned to his cooking, tried a lump of liver experimentally, and finally ate with relish.

  BUT as the sun drew to the horizon’s edge, Hok’s uneasy mood came back upon him. The Chief and Zhik betrayed something of the same feeling, for they brought wood in great billets and built the small fire into a large, bright one. Hok sought serenity in toil, looking to his weapons. Did not the edge of his axe need retouching to make it sharper? With a bone chisel he gouged away a tiny flake of flint.[*] But this aided neither the appearance nor the keenness of the weapon. He started suddenly.

  It had grown dark as he handled his gear, and he thought that something heavy and stealthy moved outside the patch of firelight. He felt as he had felt in childhood, when his mother, the Chief’s first wife, still lived and told of how her dead grandfather had moaned outside the tent to be let in.

  The Chief, who likewise felt the need for occupation, tightened the already perfect lashings of his javelin. “We shall sleep outside tonight,” he decreed. “Zhik, too. The women and children in the tent, and a big fire kept up until morning. One of us will watch.”

  “Well said,” agreed Hok. “I am not sleepy. I shall watch first.”

  It developed that Zhik was not sleepy, either, but Hok was the elder and had made first claim. The Chief then raised his voice, calling “Silence!” At this customary signal for bed-preparations, Asha, carrying her baby, entered the tent. Eowi and little Nohda followed, and then Barp and Unn, who took their places at either side of the doorway. The Chief and Zhik lay down by the fireside.

  Hok, left to his vigil, fought hard against the perplexing sensation of being watched. He tried to say that these were fancies. The chill at his backbone came because it was a spring night, and he had come farther north than ever before. The uneasiness was because of the strangeness. Any prudent hunter did well to watch, of course; if the Gnorrl came . . .

  It did not come, and at last he grew sleepy. The stars overhead told him that night’s noon was at hand. He nudged Zhik into wakefulness, and lay down.

  He dropped into sound slumber, for moments only as it seemed—then started to his feet with a wild, tremulous wail for fear and pain ringing through his head. Catlike, he commanded himself upon the instant of rousing, could see, stand and clutch at his javelin.

  It was dawn. The crying came from the direction of the tent. Something huge and dark was carrying something small that struggled and screamed. The Chief, too, was there running with axe uplifted.

  But a shaggy arm drove out like a striking snake. Hok saw the Chief spin and fall heavily. The Gnorrl—it was that, of course—fled with its prize.

  When Zhik and Hok had gained their father’s side he was dead. His skull had been beaten in, as though by the paw of a bear.

  CHAPTER II

  Blood for Blood

  THE others were out of the tent by now. There was considerable hysterical weeping, notably by Asha, who had lost baby and husband in almost the same instant of time. Hok, bound by racial custom not to speak to his stepmother, told Eowi to comfort the distracted woman. In the gray dawn he and Zhik reconnoitered.

  A look told them everything. Strange, enormous tracks behind the tent, a slit in the hide covering—the Gnorrl, plainly, had crept up here. By guess or scent it located the sleeping place of Asha’s baby son. A single strong rip with a sharp flint would give egress to a hand. The Chief, the only camper awake, had been slapped to death like a fly—the strength of the Gnorrl must be enormous. Had Hok pursued blindly, he might have died as well.

  The brothers looked pallidly at each other. “You are the Chief now,” Zhik said.

  Hok had not thought of that, but it is true. He, with manhood barely upon him, must be leader, defender and father of this handful. The realization steadied him, and he made plans for the space of two breaths, while Zhik waited expectantly.

  “I am going t
o take up the trail,” said Hok at last. “Stay here and bury him.” He gazed down at his dead father. “Heap stones, to keep the beasts away. Then break camp. Keep your weapons in hand, and have Barp and Unn do the same. Yes, and Eowi too, and Asha when she stops crying. Be ready to fight for your lives.”

  “I understand,” nodded Zhik.

  “When you are ready to march, wait here and watch. I will make a damp-wood fire. When you see its steam, come and find me there.”

  Zhik nodded as before, started to ask a question, but tactfully paused. Hok knew what was on his mind, and issued a final command.

  “The trail leads north. If I make no signal by noon, you will know that I will never make signals again. You, Zhik, will be the Chief. Lead the others south.”

  “South?” echoed the younger brother. “Where there is danger?”

  “Maybe the danger is less than what we have found.”

  He turned away without waiting for further comment from Zhik. He saw to his javelins, slung them in place, thrust axe and knife into his girdle. Neither speaking nor looking back, he strode quickly out of the camp, picked up the spoor of the raider and followed it at a trot.

  THE footprints of the Gnorrl betokened a long, wedge-shaped sole, point-heeled and splay-toed. Its greatest weight was at the outer edge—Hok remembered how grotesquely the legs had bowed. From force of habit he gauged the length and tempo of the stride, the considerable bulk supported on these strange feet.

  The sun was well up by this time, and he glanced quietly but expertly around. The country was all rolling meadow, well grown with grass and heather—rain must fall plentifully. Far to the north he saw wooded heights, from which a river wound its way. He made out distant dark spots at the brink—wild cattle drinking, and a rhinoceros or two, proof of the good hunting to be found. Upon his right, the east, ran at an angle the silver thread of the creek beside which his people had made camp, and he could descry a little ravine through which it ran to join the river.