The Complete Hok the Mighty Read online

  Hok raised his great voice, so that the distant lads heard him. “Pace off another ten-ten!” he yelled, and all who watched murmured together in wonder. Who had ever cast a javelin four ten-tens of paces?

  “Will you try first?” said Hok courteously to his rival, who grinned in some secret mockery and chose one of the javelins scattered upon the snow. He threw off his bison-wool robe, caught the shaft by its balance, took his stance carefully, and threw it. High in the air twinkled the shaft, a dazzling streak against the cloudless blue of the sky. It climbed a great slope of space, skimmed smoothly into its downward path, and drove into the snow well past the middle of the third hundred paces.

  A watching lad quickly stepped off the distance, shouted the result to a nearer comrade, who passed it on to the gathered watchers. Two ten-tens and sixty-eight paces—a more than adequate throw. But Hok had done as well in the days before he had come to his present growth and strength. Dropping his lion’s skin, he stood forth in the crisp bright air with only a clout and high moccasins. Disdaining to choose among the javelins, he caught up the nearest, set himself with left foot forward and left hand lifted as though to point. A quick flexing of all his sinews, a driving of his strength in behind the launched weapon, and it went singing like a locust along the trail of Romm’s attempt.

  Every eye followed the course of the missile, and the younger men chorused a cheer as they saw it rise to a greater height than Romm’s had attained. The javelin angled downward and into the snow—beyond the first throw of Romm.

  Jubilation on the part of all the very prejudiced watchers as the boy paced the distance and hooted it back—two hundred and eighty-nine paces. Only Hok was silent, reserved. Romm laughed with the others, but in his secret manner that was becoming such an irritation.

  “You have beaten me—once,” he acknowledged cheerfully. “I thought to allow you that much. But two more trials remain.”

  He fumbled in a belt-bag and produced a piece of buckskin cord, as long as his arm and very thin, round and even. Then he selected another javelin and, while Hok and the others gazed in mystification, began a strange activity. He hitched one end of the cord around the javelin, just rearward of the balance, and then wound the rest in tight, even spirals, around and around, until only the other end of buckskin remained clear. This part was split, and into the opening Romm hooked his thumb.

  “This is a trick of my own devising,” he chuckled, and grasped the balance of the weapon. Again he took his stance, drew back his arm and launched the javelin. At the same moment, his thumb jerked strongly upon the cord.

  THAT violent pull unwound the wrapping, almost instantaneously. It spun the javelin as a fire-drill is spun between the palms. As the shaft took the air, it yelped rather than sang—tore up and up and up into the sky, as though it would never come down. Hok’s eyes, following that amazing journey, widened apprehensively. . . and then the boy was reporting that the distance was three ten-tens and thirty-two paces.[4]

  The murmur of the watchers became a hubbub. Nobody had ever seen such a throw, nor had they heard of one, even in the legends of their grandsires. Hok made himself stand and speak calmly, but he breathed deeply as he put out a hand and fingered the string that still dangled from Romm’s thumb.

  “There is great strength in that buckskin,” he pronounced, and Romm laughed yet again.

  “You did not think that such a cast was possible,” he taunted Hok. “Do you give up the trial, big man, or will you continue and be beaten?”

  All pricked up their ears. Nobody had ever dared speak thus to Hok. Out of the group of young hunters that stood nearest moved Zhik as before, and he sauntered dangerously, like a panther on the hunt. His hand clinched on the hilt of his dagger.

  “Hok,” he almost wheedled, “let me cut the throat of this ill-mannered stranger.”

  Romm stooped swiftly for yet another javelin, but Hok lifted his broad hand. “He is my guest, Zhik.” And, to Romm, “I will throw a second time. Watch.”

  He took up his shaft, studied it and the ground and the far upward jut of that string-sped throw of his rival. In his heart he knew that such a feat was beyond his own simple skill. Then a plan came to suggest itself, and he almost smiled in his beard, but forebore. He placed himself, gathered his strength, and threw. Compared to Romm’s peerless attempt, his javelin seemed barely to rise above treetop height. And it came down almost exactly between the marks made by his own first attempt and Romm’s.

  “Two ten-tens and seventy-eight!” called out the marker from afar. There was aghast silence, broken only by Romm’s laugh.

  “Your second is less than your first,” he said to Hok, and to the watchers: “Ho, people! This chief of yours has a weak arm and a dim eye. Would you not rather follow a true javelin-master like me?”

  It was offered as a joke, but one or two received the suggestion seriously. There were men who were jealous of Hok. They smiled back at Romm, and whispered together. Zhik glared that way, and once again he half-drew his dagger.

  Hok watched Romm pick up and wind his third javelin. The fellow’s hope seemed suddenly clear to him. He would beat Hok in this contest, but make capital of it slowly. He would gather some admirers—malcontents and young hero-worshippers—and wait his time. Some day, when Hok was absent or ill, he might try to seize power . . . Romm was gazing again at the group of women. His close-set eyes frankly admired Oloana, who turned away as before. Then Romm spoke to Hok: “Your throws are beneath my best striving,” he sneered, and with careless ease spun away his javelin. High it went, but not so high as before, and it fell to drill itself into the snow just on the near side of the third marker-branch. “Two ten-tens and ninety-eight!” cried the marker.

  Romm shrugged, thrust his throwing cord into his bag, and turned his back as though scorning to see the final attempt of his rival. And now, for the first time, Hok showed care in choosing a javelin.

  HE picked up and discarded three before he found one that pleased him—a straight and flawless shaft, a light, narrow head. He tried its balance and spring carefully. Then he planted his feet with precision, poised himself twice and finally, with all the strength and skill of his huge wise body, made his final cast.

  Away hummed the javelin, and in its wake rose the roar of Hok’s people. For it was such a cast as Hok had never made, as no other man could have made without such a device as Romm possessed. It was coming down now—even with Romm’s third try—no, beyond! And the marker was pacing off, and shouting his result:

  “Three ten-tens and nine paces!” The winter air seemed to smoke and quiver with the prolonged howling of Hok’s people. Even those who had been ready to side with Romm were dancing and whooping. It was long moments before the din abated and Hok could hear the harsh accusation of Romm, voiced through set teeth:

  “It was not fair! You tricked me—made your second throw weak, so that I would not do my best the third time!”

  But it was Hok’s turn to exult. His big white teeth glittered in the sun-brightness of his beard. “Call it a trick, if you will. I matched my heart’s trickery against the trickery of your buckskin thong. Twice out of three times I outthrew you.”

  “It was false! Cowardly!” Romm raged. His half-built fabric of sedition against Hok was crumbled to nothing, and he lost all caution and control. “I will—”

  His fist flew out, and Hok twitched up a great shoulder to ward the blow from his jaw. His smile grew broader.

  “You have struck at me,” he said, as silence fell all around them. “I owe you no further debt of hospitality or protection. And if this is to be a contest of strength—”

  With the swiftness of a lashing snake, he hurled his own boulder-like fist into the center of Romm’s angry visage, and the trickster somersaulted twice backward before he lay still and stunned, his eyes closed and blood on his nose and mouth.

  The silence remained. Hok stooped for Romm’s bison-wool mantle, then walked to the side of his motionless adversary and spread it over hi
m. He lifted Romm’s javelins and broke them, one and then the other, across his lifted knee, and dropped the pieces on the snow-crust. Finally he rummaged in Romm’s belt-bag and secured the buckskin thong whereby such amazing feats of javelin-throwing had been achieved.

  “And now,” he addressed the onlookers, “return to your work or other occupation. When this man wakens, he should know that he is not to see us any more. But if he tries to come back among us, let the children throw stones at him.”

  However, Romm made no such attempt. Later in the day, as Zhik subsequently reported to Hok, Zhik watched him rise and tramp glumly away. Zhik followed Romm stealthily, for the brother of Hok was not one to give up the project of killing someone he disliked; he wanted the roan-head to get well out of the hunting lands and therefore away from any lingering impulse in Hok to spare him. Later Zhik would overtake the fellow, goad him into drawing axe or dagger, and fight it out to a grim finish.

  But just at sunset, the thing became impracticable. For Zhik, rounding a thicket, saw a half dozen Gnorrls come trotting from the north to meet Romm. And they did not attack him—they hailed him with gestures of clumsy respect, they came close and fell on their faces before him, even as scouts of the tribe had seen them grovel before the red sun at rising. Finally they went away together—Romm and the Gnorrls—as friends and allies.

  All this Zhik reported to Hok, who digested and rationalized it:

  “Romm, then, has joined the beast-men. He has become their chief, and they worship him; perhaps his red hair makes them think he is from the sun.” Hok spat. “A man joining the Gnorrls! It is more disgusting than Gnorrls alone.”

  “And he saved your life only to discredit you before the men of our camp,” contributed Zhik. “Thus we others would be more easily beaten. I still want to come within knife-stroke of him.”

  “Such a chance may still come,” smiled Hok. “Romm plays some long game with us—something beyond killing us for the sake of his Gnorrl friends. But so far he has found the playing rough. In time to come it may be rougher still.”

  As usual, he spoke with chieftainly confidence; but his big, brave heart was full of wonder and meditation.

  CHAPTER III

  The New Weapon

  ON the third day after his contest with Romm, Hok sat by a small tallow-lamp[5] in the rear of his cave, the place where he retired for meditation and experimentation. The wise Oloana, knowing her husband’s preoccupied mood so well, warned all to leave him alone.

  He was examining the cord he had taken from Romm’s belt-bag, twisting and twining and pulling it. Earlier he had tried to use it as Romm had, with very indifferent success—it would take long practice to learn the art. But the principle of shaft-spinning was manifest to him, and he determined to achieve or improve upon it.

  “What that boastful wanderer could do, Hok can do better,” he told himself with utmost confidence. “He was not so strong as I, but the cord strengthened him. It is like the throwing stick of the Gnorrls, who can send a stone farther than it can be thrown by hand—they split a stick, push the stone in, and whirl it as though with an arm twice lengthened.”[6]

  The thought of a stick as a throwing device impelled him to poke among the weapon-materials in a nearby corner. He fetched forth a long, straight piece of hickory that he had cut months ago to make a javelin shaft. It was nearly as long as himself, two fingers thick at the mid-point where the balance would be, and the two ends tapered somewhat by long and judicious scraping with rough flint. He tested it by careful bending—it had springy strength, and in the hands of a Gnorrl it would make an ideal stick for stone-throwing. He looked from it to the cord, and back again.

  “Romm uses a cord, the Gnorrls use wood, to make their casts long,” he muttered. “I, who wish to outdo them both, might use wood and cord as well. How?”

  He tied a noose in the cord and drew it tight over one end of the shaft. Lodging the butt of the hickory in a crack of the rocky floor, he pulled at the cord. The tough wood bent slowly and unwillingly. Hok pondered, then nodded to himself. A stone—yes, or a javelin—fastened somehow to this cord, would be whipped strongly forward at will. He carried the device outdoors and to the meadow behind the settlement where, unobserved, he could test and judge.

  Driving him on with his experiments was the submerged, only half-conscious fear of what Zhik had told him—of Romm and the Gnorrls. Hok hardly knew he was looking for a weapon. He only knew he was working on something.

  His experiments with stones and wooden splinters were clumsy, but they gave him something to think about. When, after repeated tuggings, he broke Romm’s cord, he returned to his cave for another, longer and thicker. This he knotted to one end of the stick, pulling at it in various manners.

  The power was there, he knew, but he was still at a loss as to how it could be used. Finally, partially by chance and partially by half-formed inspiration, he drew the wood into an arc and made another noose in the cord with which to catch and hold the free end.

  He now had a tense figure of wood and buckskin, that would hold its shape even when he laid it by itself upon the snow. Turning the thing over, he tested its tough elasticity by drawing upon the cord. The bent bar of hickory was like a flexed muscle, ready to strike or shove.

  BUT still he was perplexed. He had started with a cord like Romm’s, a stick like the Gnorrl throwing-tool, and had evolved something vastly different from either. As he frowned and pondered, movement rustled at his elbow. A small, firm hand came into view, with a round rod of wood. With this it plucked at the tight-drawn cord. A humming sound responded, like that of bees.

  “It sings,” came the voice of Ptao, Hok’s small son. Serious blue eyes regarded the strange engine from under a shock of straw-yellow hair. Again Ptao plucked the taut cord with the haft of his toy spear, drawing it back and bending the bow a trifle. The strength of the hickory was too much for his young muscles, and it almost snapped the stick out of his hand.

  At once Hok built upon his new ideas with still another.

  “Let me see that little spear, my son,” he said, and the lad trustfully handed over his toy. Hok had whittled it days ago from a shoot of ash, too small for a real javelin, and it was a faithful model of real weapons. The point had been made as sharp as a wasp-sting, and hardened judiciously in the fire.

  Hok used the butt as Ptao had done, to evoke musical humming from the tight-drawn string. He pushed harder with it, carrying the string backward and bending the hickory length into a deeper arc. Then suddenly he let go, and with a whispering thung and a whack the toy flew some feet away. Ptao, light on his little moccasined feet, sped in pursuit and brought the thing back to his father. Another try—another. And then Hok felt that he knew what might be done to make the work a success.

  Drawing his flint knife, he scraped a notch in the butt of Ptao’s little spear. This notch he used to catch the center of the cord, and clipped it there between the great fingers of his right hand. His left hand caught the wooden arc at the point where the balance would be on a javelin, and the forward end of the spear fell across and above his clenched fist. He held it in place with his forefinger, took a firm stance as though to throw. Then he lifted the device—and loosed.

  With a great explosive whoop, the cord snapped taut again. It drove Ptao’s spear forward and away—away, away, as a swallow hurtles to escape a falcon. Hok, his left hand still clutching the machine of wood and buckskin, stared after the shaft, his lips parting in his beard with amazement.

  “It speeds!” he gasped. “It speeds—straight, and more swiftly and far than any javelin—”

  “Father!” cried Ptao, alarmed and disappointed. “My spear—look, it is lost, out of sight over there in that thicket!”

  Hok’s free hand dropped on Ptao’s tousled head. “Do not grieve, my son. Tonight, I will cut you another and better little spear—yes, and some more, to throw with this new weapon—”

  He broke off, gazing once more along the path of the missile.

/>   “Boh!” he cried, in imitation of the sound his engine had made at the moment it straightened and threw the missile; and a new word came, along with a new weapon and a new force, into the world of men.[7]

  THE next morning Hok went hunting, alone. He shot at everything he saw, from rabbits to snow-bogged elk, missing again and again and losing several of his new-made arrows; but his skill improved with the hours, and he brought back a doe and some grouse. After that he practiced daily. He learned that the little darts he made would split if launched against a hard target like a tree or stone—a misfortune, for a good arrow was as difficult to fashion as a bowstave; but he improved his workmanship, and fumbled in Oloana’s sewing-kit for some gay red feather-fluff to tie upon the shafts and make them easier to find after shooting.

  Thus Hok grew proficient with the new weapon he called a bow, but he laid it away, with his arrows tipped with skewer-like splinters of bone. The wood was too weak, the buckskin cord tended to stretch. He would return later, when he had more time, to fashion a better bow. There was work to be done now.

  The spring was foreshadowed by thaws and rains. The first crocus blossoms, white and yellow and purple, thrust their hardy faces out of drifts, and Oloana twined them in her black cloud of hair, looking forward to lilies and violets. Willow scrub burst into little furry tufts, then into catkins. The snow-patches dwindled and the game herds fattened on tender grass, while the skeletal trees clothed themselves in leaves once more. The lad Ptao, diligently practicing with the new spear his father had made for him, brought down a north-winging raven, and the hunters foretold for him a career as a great hunter. It became warm, bright, one could travel in clout and moccasins without winter’s cumbersome fur mantles and leg-swathings.

  Then the awful day dawned.

  CHAPTER IV

  The Triumph of the Beast-Men

  HOK had guessed that the Gnorrls would try something—one or two of their people had been killed by his hunters during the cold weather, and that meant attempts at revenge. The mystifying factor was Romm, wise and wicked and spiteful, who would incite and direct them. Hok kept a pair of scouts on the plains north of his settlement, and one morning those scouts came home in a breathless scamper. Sure enough, Gnorrls were coming—many of them, and very purposefully.