The Complete Hok the Mighty Page 16

  “It is a life-rocket, not dependent on the energy-broadcast machinery,” he explained. “It will carry us away. Go back, Naku, for the rest of the rocket fuel, while I pour this into the tanks.”

  Naku obeyed, making several trips. At last Vwil motioned them into the tiny compartment that did service as cabin and control-chamber, and devoted himself to the controls. There was a roar, a shudder of the vessel.

  IT was so. Vwil flew them high into the night air, then made a landing at the rim of the valley. They came out again, and looked down at the flaming structures that were once the stronghold of Earth’s invaders and would-be conquerors.

  “Will you slay this one, too?” whispered Aria to Naku as they emerged, but he shook his head.

  “Vwil is kind. He alone seemed to be a friend when I was a prisoner. And he has now saved our lives, when he could have left us in the midst of that fire.”

  Vwil, too, came into the open.

  “I have checked the equipment,” he announced. “Emergency rations, water enough, and the fuel, though it would hardly stir the big ship, will carry this little one all the way home.”

  “Home to your star?” demanded Naku. “Is that where you go?”

  “Where else?” smiled Vwil. “This world has hardly been hospitable.”

  “But you will bring back others to fight and kill us.”

  Vwil shook his domed head.

  “No. I go to make a report to my people that your world is uninhabitable.”

  Naku looked his incomprehension, and Vwil elaborated:

  “My commander used to say harsh things about my soft weakness. He scorned me for being merciful. Perhaps he was right—but he is dead, and I alone am left. My judgment must suffice. And I want nothing else to do with you men.”

  “We fight hard,” agreed Naku.

  “I am not even sure that we would win a permanent victory over you,” went on Vwil. “You might be defeated temporarily, then rally and wipe us out. And we of my world are not seeking to die; we are seeking to live.”

  Naku felt a sudden burst of warm generosity.

  “Vwil,” he said, “your kindness counts for something. Perhaps we can live in peace, if we make every effort—”

  “No, my friend,” broke in Vwil. “You are wrong. You and I might live as neighbors and comrades. But my people are greedy, and yours are stubborn. There could be only war between them. It is better that we keep our ways separate.”

  He put out his hand, and Naku took it and shook it. Aria, who had understood none of Vwil’s talk, did the same.

  “And now I will enter my craft,” finished Vwil. “I will give you time to get well away from the blast of the rockets. Good-by.”

  Vwil got into the life-rocket and closed the door. Naku and Aria walked briskly away, far along the rim of the valley. As they did so, they heard the roar of the take-off behind them, and turned to see. But Vwil was no more than a comet in the upper sky, seeming to slide away between the stars.

  The two had time to look at each other and smile. It seemed to them that nothing would ever be exciting again, except each other.

  “Rrau, the war chief of my people, is dead,” said Naku. “Ipsar, the priest, is dead. I am young, but probably I shall rule what is left of us.”

  “Do your men take more than one wife?” asked Aria, and Naku shook his head.

  “One man takes one woman. Come with me, Aria. We shall reach home by morning, and I shall send a messenger to your tribe, with news and offers of friendship. After these dangers, men may learn to live at peace.”

  VWIL, afar in his lonely little ship, glanced back once. A rearward port showed him the globe of Earth, already falling thousands of miles behind.

  “It is a beautiful place, and rich,” he sighed to himself, “but I may be forgiven for lying to my people about it. No riches are worth pain and cruelty. We need more room, more food, more water—we shall find some other planet, deserted and wanted by no one. It will be strange if we Martians cannot make of such a place what we want it to be.”

  THEY all died long ago, at the hands of our ancient ancestors in the bitterest and most final war of all human history and prehistory, but we still wonder at their grotesque remains—the Neanderthal Men that were not men, but somehow a different and rival race. Fierce and cunning and horrific, they had to be exterminated if our fathers would live in the Europe they found thirty thousand years ago.

  The Neanderthaler was gross and shambling and hideous, prototype of ogre and troll; but he fashioned and used tools with those great meaty hands of his, built fires, cooked meat, joined with his fellows in great bands for war and hunting. We know that he worshipped, for he buried his dead with provisions and weapons for use in an afterlife. We do not think he had art, but we cannot be sure. And no man can say into what pattern fell his thoughts, for they were not such thoughts as we think.

  His skull was primitive, thick, almost browless; but what it lacked at the front it made up in a great swelling occiput, and its whole tissue approximated in size and weight many modem brains. What would be his ethics, impulses, his likes and dislikes? The only surety is that they differed from our own—were so different that when our true forefathers, the tall handsome hunters of the Upper Stone Age, met such hairy ogres, they could not make treaties or agreements. It was war, and to the death.

  It was a long war and desperate. Not only was there close and awful combat, to the last drop of blood and the last ounce of strength; there was brilliant thought and planning and courage, and inventions mothered by sternest necessity—inventions that seem simple enough to us now, but which then changed the fate of whole continents and epochs. We wonder about such matters, cannot help wondering, imagining, making mind-pictures of how things may have fallen out in that grim youth of the world.

  And so—another adventure of Hok the Mighty, chief of cave-dwelling hunters, as he strove against the abominable beast-folk he called Gnorrls.

  —M.W.W.

  ☆ ☆ ☆

  “HAI!” cried Hok, for the love of battle was strong in his breast. Now he lifted the first of his javelins and, scarcely aiming it, he sent it in a short arc to the chest of the closest Gnorrl. Hok was shouting now, and the battle cries of his tribe rang from his lips.

  He had come on them accidentally, and it had been contrary to his nature not to offer them battle, though they outnumbered a hundred to his one. His legs planted apart, he sent the second javelin spinning through the air. “Remember Hok!” he called.

  They were Gnorrls, right enough—hairy, burly, abhorrent—but they were not acting like Gnorrls. Instead of charging in a howling mass, they formed into a skirmish line and closed in, twenty or so, very cannily.

  Noticing this strange behavior, Hok grew wary, and even in battle, his eyes became thoughtful. He had left only his stone axe with its span-wide edge, his poniard as sharp as a sting, slung in the girdle that held up his clout.

  At the very first moment he drew away from them. Clean-limbed, long-legged, deep-chested, his tawny hair flowing behind him, he was a famous runner. He was less bulky than they, and he towered above their tallest by the height of his proud head. His moccasined feet touched the snowy ground like a stag’s hoofs, and as he ran, his face grimaced in disgust.

  Anyway, he would soon be clear of their swiftest—those bandy legs and heavy bones could not begin to match his hunter’s lope.[1] Even though they had surprised him as he roamed among the crusted drifts near to their stamping grounds, they could never catch Hok, strongest and swiftest of the true men.

  But, even as he drew far ahead, his blue eyes snapped with the cold fire of desperation. For he was running down a long, gentle slope, tufted with leafless thickets above the snow crust, and at the bottom was a winter river—but not frozen! Here the channel was narrow, and the current raced too rapidly even for the ice-spirit to clutch. Before many breaths’ space he would be there—would have to swim that blood-stopping water—no, that would be impossible!

  Because
the Gnorrls lumbering behind him were not pursuing alone. Along the river-bank to right and left other parties appeared, closing in. He could not break either way, and if he sprang into the water their hurled stones would smash out his brains before he could flounder across. Hok was trapped!

  Knowing that, he turned and faced the beast-men as they converged upon him. The fear of the Gnorrl still touched his heart, as from his first boyhood encounter with them; but not they nor smarter creatures could have guessed it from his challenging glare, the flash of teeth in his beard, the upward whirl of the war-axe in his great cobble of a fist. So formidable was his coming to bay that the three bands of Gnorrls wavered, snarling and jibbering, even as they came together and formed a half-circle to trap him with his back to the racing torrent.

  “Come on and fight, Gnorrls!” Hok roared at them, and saved the rest of his breath for the last and grimmest struggle that he thought was upon him.

  But at that instant something buzzed through the air from behind him, like a huge wasp, and the centermost Gnorrl of the half-circle suddenly stiffened, dropped his club and fell limply on his back. The shaft of a javelin sprouted from the thing’s gross, shaggy chest. And the others, who had wavered, now stopped in their tracks and burst into a chorus of dismayed whines and wails.

  Hok flexed his muscles—he was for leaping straight at the line, smashing his way through. But again there was diversion from across the river to his rear.

  A voice made itself heard, a human voice that roared in gutturals—it seemed to be imitating the Gnorrl language in mocking defiance. Hok had insulted Gnorrls like that in the past . . . but the half-human monsters were more dismayed by the voice than by the spearcast. They began to stumble backward, breaking their formation. More shouting at them from over the river, and they actually turned and fled. Hok leaned upon his axe, and was grateful to whoever had so strangely rescued him.

  “Hai, you chief of men!” bawled that same rescuer. “You are safe now! Walk upstream a few paces—there is a broadening, and ice enough to cross! Come to me!”

  Hok had time and safety now, he turned and looked.

  THREE ten-tens[2] of paces away, with the river and much other width between him and Hok, stood the figure of a tall, lean man in a muffling mantle of bison-pelt. Hok scowled in mystification. Three ten-tens—had the stranger thrown a javelin so far and so straight? Even so shortly after deadly peril, Hok was able to feel chagrin that he himself could not do much better, if at all. He salvaged the weapon that had pierced the now dead Gnorrl. Then, obeying the words and gestures of the man beyond the river, he trotted to where the ice would bear his weight and bring him across.

  The other came to meet him—strangely roan-red of hair, with the beard plucked clean from his square, shallow jaw in token of bachelorhood. Hok met the gaze of two eyes, brilliant but close-set, that seemed to sneer. But Hok was not one to forget his manners.

  “Who shall Hok thank for standing his friend against those Gnorrls?” he asked formally.

  “I am Romm, the free hunter, wandering to see new and pleasant countries,” was the airy reply. “Your name is Hok? Are you not the chief of that tribe that lives to southward along this same river, the man whom the hairy folk—the Gnorrls, as you name them—call the Slayer From Afar?”

  Hok’s jaw must have dropped in wonder, for the stranger laughed without particular abashment. “Oh, I know the language of the creatures,” he elaborated. “I have long observed them, you might say. Come, Hok, you stand my debtor for saving your life. Will you not invite me to visit your camp and tribe?”

  It was baldly requested, but again Hok did the polite thing. “Come,” he said, and turned downstream along the river. Romm followed, and the two began to travel toward Hok’s country.

  On the way, Romm did most of the talking—an incessant recounting of the wonders he had seen in many countries to south and east, of his love-successes with stranger women, his cleverness in hunting and battle. Yes, for all his verbosity, he remained a figure of mystery, not easy for Hok to estimate or classify.

  “You have learned the language of the Gnorrls,” Hok found time to remind him. “When you yelled at them across the river, was it to frighten them?”

  “In a way—yes,” grinned Romm. “At any rate, they left you alone.”

  “It was as though you had given them an order,” pursued Hok.

  “In a way—yes,” repeated Romm, with more of his characteristic mockery. “An order—it seemed like that. But you thank me too much, Hok. Perhaps you are more useful to me if you remain alive.”

  Hok opined weightily that any good man was more useful when alive, and Romm laughed and laughed. One thing Hok did not mention about the rescue, and when they camped that night in a little cedar-rimmed hollow, Romm himself brought it up.

  “How did you like my javelin-casting?” he inquired.

  “It was well done,” responded Hok, who found it harder and harder to maintain his gratitude toward this rescuer of his.

  “Well done!” echoed Romm. “Can you say no more? But I can cast a javelin farther than any living man.”

  Hok said nothing. It had been his private opinion for years that he, himself, was the best javelin-thrower in the world.

  ON the next day, shortly after noontide, they reached Hok’s stronghold. Hok led the way in, by a narrow runway between high bluff and swift water, and Romm followed him to the lip of a lune-shaped beach made by a backward curve of the bluffs. The only other way out was a ladderlike trail that slanted to the top of the high ground.

  From the clump of conical huts, made of woven willows and clay daub, came Hok’s people to greet their chief and stare at his guest—thirty huge-limbed hunters, with their women and children, some ninety or a hundred in all. Some were tawny like Hok, some were brunettes from further south who had gathered under the mighty chieftain for leadership and protection; but none of them had ever seen a roan-head like Romm, who rather gloried in the attention he drew.

  “This is Romm,” Hok introduced him. “He saved me from some Gnorrls—he speaks their tongue, and may help us fight them.”

  Romm replied with another of his ready chuckles that did not invite anyone to share his mirth. “What if I do not care to fight Gnorrls?” he asked, for all to hear. “Men of the riverside, does this big chief of yours waste your strength in useless war?”

  In the forefront of a knot of hunters stood Zhik, the brother of Hok, two years his junior and a sub-chief of the clan. Like Hok in color and features, he was only a finger’s breadth smaller all around. He took a slouching step forward, scowling.

  Romm did not appear to notice. His bright, narrow-set eyes were questing elsewhere among the onlookers. “You have handsome women here, Hok,” said he.

  Hok followed Romm’s gaze, and saw that it had found a comely woman with black hair and golden-tanned skin. She had come from Hok’s own residence, the grotto in the bluff behind and above the huts. Now she turned her back, in modest dislike of Romm’s searching regard. Hok’s nostrils twitched and an icy light kindled in his own eyes. “That is Oloana, my wife,” he warned Romm bleakly.

  “Mmmmm—yes.” Romm was not abashed. “Women are won by fighting of their men, is that not so? If someone fought and beat you, Hok—”

  Zhik growled and spat in the sand, and made a leaping stride that brought him within reach of Romm. “Hok, I do not like tins stranger,” he snapped. His hand darted to his hip, swift as a conjuror’s and came away with a beautifully ground dagger of deer-horn. “Let me slit open his narrow belly and see how his blood discolors the ground.”

  “I am your guest, Hok—in your protection,” said Romm hastily, and Hok thrust Zhik back with the heel of a hand against his chest.

  “It cannot be, Zhik,” he said; then saw that Romm, for all his claim of hospitality rights, had drawn from his own girdle a little hand-axe with a narrow, chisel-like blade—a weapon that could drive to the brain with a single flick of the wrist. Hok’s other big hand shot out li
ke the paw of a cat and struck Romm’s wrist, so that the axe was knocked to earth.

  “No fighting,” commanded Hok. “Romm, it is best that you make no enemies here. My men are skilled with weapons.”

  “With the javelin?” asked Romm, who seemed to have conquered his momentary nervousness. “They do well with that, I suppose—and you, of course, surpass them all?”

  Hok nodded.

  “I, too, am thought skillful at javelin,” Romm informed the gathering. “It would be sport, I think, for Hok and me to cast javelins against each other to see who made the farthest throw—two out of three trials.”

  Eager for diversion, the tribesmen applauded. Hok gazed at his guest, so ready with challenges and evidently so confident of victory. Could he, Hok, afford to take up such a defiance? Nay, could he afford to refuse? . . .

  “Let javelins be brought,” he directed some halfgrown boys. “We will go to the meadow beyond here, and Romm and I will match our skill.”

  He led the way up the slanting path that mounted the bluff.

  CHAPTER II

  The Javelin-Throwing

  THE clan gathered quickly—men who happened not to be hunting, women who could drop their work, children in winter garments of rabbit-fur and soft deerskin. At Hok’s direction, two of the biggest boys stepped off a hundred paces in the snow, planted a branch of cedar, then a second hundred paces and a second branch, and finally a third.

  “A fourth ten-ten mark, too,” requested Romm, who was squinting along the shaft of a javelin. Hok stared, and Romm snickered. “Perhaps three ten-tens of paces is your limit, Hok, but I can do better.”[3]