The Complete Hok the Mighty Page 18

  Hok gave orders swiftly. The Gnorrls always lived and moved in larger groups than true men,[8] but their organization was clumsy. Once before, mation—a formation like his own. They made a line, continuous but open. That line began to move forward at a steady lumbering trot. When it had moved well out, there formed and set out a second line, and then a third. Behind the third wave more Gnorrls bunched into clumps, as though to act as a reserve, rushing to whatever point the battle would develop.

  “See!” growled Zhik. “Did I deceive you? More Gnorrls than we thought possible—and better armed—and wiser led! Hok, it is in my mind that this may be our last fight!”

  Hok was thinking the same thought, and he resolutely put it from him. From the armful of javelins spread at his feet, he caught up one and set himself for the throw.

  “Ready, all!” he thundered for his warriors to hear. “When they come within range, I will throw—do the same, each of you! Let this be a fight for the Gnorrls to remember all of their days!” From the valley came cadenced howls and jabbers—the Gnorrls, too, were receiving orders from their war-chiefs. One such chief pushed ahead of the line, and Hok, watching him draw into range, whipped forward the first javelin of the fight. It struck his quarry full in the midriff. The Gnorrl chieftain fell, but his followers tramped unhesitatingly forward over the ground spattered with his blood.

  Hok’s men went into action the next moment. Every one of them was strong of arm, deadly of aim—few, if any, of that rain of javelins went wide of the mark. The Gnorrls fell like leaves in a gale. But there were more Gnorrls than javelins, and they did not falter in their advance. The gaps in the front were filled from the lines and groups behind.

  “Back to the rocks,” yelled Hok, and followed his men there. They had placed other sheafs of javelins ready behind the ramparts, and began to hurl these. The range was point-blank now, the oncoming mass of Gnorrls so close that the defenders could see the glaring eyes and snarling fangs of their foe-men. Hok’s party was doing deadly execution—for a moment, Hok dared hope that even this mighty mass of enmity could be broken, driven back.

  Fleetingly, he thought of his bow, but it was too imperfect and there was only one. There was only this chance—But, even as the hope dawned, Zhik was tugging at his elbow.

  “They are behind us!”

  HOK turned, and saw. Another great cloud of Gnorrls, in open order, was bearing down from the left, moving to flank them and hem them in. Hok swore agonizedly.

  “Retreat!” he thundered at the top of his lungs. “Throw all your javelins—quickly—and get out of here!”

  He was almost too late. The charge from in front had come up to the barrier of rocks. For the moment, retreat was out of the question—men must fight, and desperately, with axe and club and stabbing-spear, to win free. Moments, precious moments that might score the difference between life and death, were eaten up in that hand-to-hand struggle.

  Then Hok’s force rolled back, leaving half a dozen dead behind—yes, and wounded too, pain-racked hunters to be clubbed and trampled by the Gnorrls. The reserve party of youths was trying to stem the flanking movement, and very unsuccessfully; for those Gnorrls had spears, and could throw them. They replied to the volleys of the young warriors, and several Gnorrl casts found their mark. With throaty war-cries, the attackers hurled their lumpy bodies into the fray.

  They met Hok as he and his first line of defense found time to turn and run back. Before he could do otherwise, Hok grappled a grizzle-pelted Gnorrl in the forefront of the flanking horde.

  The beast-man’s ungainly, lump-thewed arms clamped about him, and Hok knew a moment of revulsion comparable to that which rises upon touching a snake . . . the very disgust gave him strength to tear the creature from him, slam it to earth and split the ridged skull with a downward sweep of his axe. Smoking blood and brains spurted forth to drench him. He was up and chivying his demoralized followers into a faster flight.

  They distanced the pursuit for a time, then slowed up as Hok made a stand while Zhik and two other swift runners raced ahead to break up the camp—against such a whole generation of battling Gnorrls as this, not even the home stronghold could stand.

  Again the people of the riverside retreated, but perforce more slowly. They had to fight the foremost Gnorrls now and turn them back, so that the women could gain a start to southward, carrying the youngest children and leading those who could toddle.

  It was a day to remember, all through the lives of those who survived it—a day to remember in nightmare visions.

  Mercifully, the Gnorrls broke their early disciplined ranks, in their eagerness to overtake and kill. Thus, turning to defend the fleeing women and children, Hok’s surviving warriors had only the swift-running vanguard of the enemy to meet—they were not too crushingly outnumbered. Thundering his wild war-cry, Hok actually ran to meet a leader of the Gnorrls, caught upon the haft of his stabbing-spear the terrific downward smash of a flint-headed club.

  The blow broke his own weapon in two, but he flailed with the ragged end of the wood at the Gnorrl’s face, made it yelp and give back; then, stooping quickly, he caught up the fallen piece with the spear-head and drove it like a dagger between the thick ribs of the thing’s chest. For the sake of defiance, and to put heart into his own fellows, he sprang upon the floundering body and roared anew his challenge and triumph. But the moment was brief—the Gnorrl next closest threw its javelin, which swished past Hok’s elbow and pierced the warrior just behind him.

  Another flurry of hand-to-hand combat, with death on both sides. Zhik, white-lipped and fire-eyed, grappled a Gnorrl chieftain like a giant hairy frog, and the powerful monster tripped him and fell upon him. Hok ran in and brained the Gnorrl as it wrestled uppermost, then caught his brother’s hand and jerked him to his feet. After that, the great press of pursuing Gnorrls caught up, and again the men must run, to catch up with their women, form and defend again.

  BY late afternoon they were far south of their camp. In the evening they came to a stream, a tributary of their own river, swollen by spring rains into a churning muddy flood.

  None of the surviving tribesmen, faint with running and fighting and horror, wanted to attempt that crossing. But Hok, glancing back to where the leading Gnorrls were closing in once more, forced them to it.

  He hurled in some of the big children himself, poking them along with the butt of his axe until, crying in terror, they struck out for the opposite shore. Their mothers followed perforce, and then the rest of the women. Hok swam across, encouraging and harrying, lending a hand here and there to weak paddlers who might go under or be swept away by the freshet; then, even though his mighty thews were agonizedly tired, he made his way back to fight the rearguard action on the other bank. It was the last clash of the day, and the bloodiest. Gnorrls died. So did men; and only a handful of survivors were able to slip away, when darkness came and none could throw spears or clubs or stones after them as they strove in the water.

  The Gnorrls, poor swimmers, made their campfires on the brink of the stream. Hok marshalled the remnant of his people and took them far away, until darkness was so thick that they could not see to walk or guess the way. Then, by the light of a little fire under the lee of a hill, he counted noses.

  There were not many to count. Of his thirty warriors, eight still answered to their names—every one a peerless fighter even against Gnorrls, every one wounded in several places. But now, Zhik was the only one whose eye shone fearlessly. The fifteen boys who had sallied forth with hopes of glory that morning were now but nine, and not a one of them but wept in forgetfulness of any ambition to be a warrior. Barp and Unn, Hok’s young brothers, were both dead, cut down in the attempt to turn back the flanking party of the Gnorrls at the first encounter. Of the women, most had escaped—only a few sick and old had been cut off at the camp—and a good number of the children.

  Hok’s heavy heart lifted a little as his son Ptao came wearily to him and smiled a filial welcome. And Oloana, too, was there
, having killed four Gnorrls with her own hand. Now she brought green leaves to patch the dozen cuts and slashes upon her husband’s face and body, wounds he was now aware of for the first time.

  Before dawn Hok had this stricken troop on the move southward. That day they saw the last of the hunting grounds they had so gloriously wrested from the Gnorrls years ago—driven, beaten, half obliterated, they were returning to the forests below, where game was scarce and rival hunters many. It was a doleful homecoming.

  And the scouts on the rearward watch reported that the Gnorrls had not stopped following them.

  CHAPTER V

  Two Against the Gnorrls

  EIGHT days had passed, and the ninth was darkening into the night. Five chiefs of the southern forest clans sat around the council fire Hok had made in a pine-circled clearing, and soberly disagreed with him; for in their eyes he was no longer Hok the Mighty, ruler and champion of the folk who held those good northern huntings—he was a beaten fighter, with his following cut to pieces, and in his retreat he had brought the Gnorrls south, further south than any living man had ever known them to come.

  “The watchers say that they are as many as autumn leaves in a gale,” said Zorr, the father of Oloana, squatting opposite Hok at the head of his young warriors. “It is best, perhaps, that we parley with them.”

  “Parley!” repeated Hok, as one who does not believe his ears. “As well parley with wolves, with boars, as with the Gnorrl. You all know that.”

  “But this man Romm is their chief,” said a fellow named Kemba, scratching himself. “He can be reasoned with. As a matter of fact, Hok,” and Kemba’s voice took on a cunning note, “I think it is your blood he is after, not ours. What do the other chiefs think?”

  All applauded save Zorr, who was not anxious to desert his son-in-law. Hok, still stiff with weariness and wounds, rose and glared around, his nostrils expanded like a horse’s. He hefted his war-axe of flint, on the blade and handle of which the blood of a dozen Gnorrls had dried.

  “I say, fight to the death,” he snapped. “Who says the same?”

  “I!” barked Zhik, and rose to stand beside his brother. A few more rose, in the rearward quarters where the subordinate warriors sat. Hok counted them, and they were his own veterans, fresh from the awful conflict and still scabbed over with wounds, but ready for all that to follow him into more games with death. One or two of the southern fighters rose with them, but none of the chiefs. Kemba sneered at Hok; he would not have dared to sneer a season ago.

  “You have our leave to head back to the north and fight,” he said. “After all, it is your quarrel, not ours. We have never had to fight the Gnorrls.”

  “Because I stood between you and them!” Hok almost roared. “Kemba, if this were an ordinary matter, I would kill you for the way you talk. But there is not time or strength among us for any battle, save with the Gnorrls.” He put out an appealing hand toward Zorr. “Hark you, father of my wife!

  I am not afraid to die—but what will become of Oloana? What of Ptao, the son of your daughter? Romm and his Gnorrls will not spare them.”

  Zorr’s grizzled black beard quivered, but he shook his head slowly. “This must be a vote of the chiefs, and we must both bide by that vote,” he reminded heavily.

  “Listen to me,” said Hok. “I have a new weapon. It is a thing of strong wood and buckskin, and with it I can hurl small javelins a great distance. With this weapon—if all our warriors learn to use it—we can drive back the cursed Gnorrls—”

  “Would it take long to learn to use this—all—strange weapon of which you speak?” a crafty-looking old man asked.

  “Not long. Perhaps ten days. But until then we would have to fight them off with the weapons we now have.”

  The crafty-faced one smiled. “In ten days perhaps none here would be alive,” he said. “It would be wiser to parley. I will not listen to madness.”

  “Listen, this once!” Hok roared then. “Listen, before voting—I offer myself as a single warrior against the Gnorrls. They had come this far, even among the trees, to spy him out.

  Leaning close to the ground, his quick ear caught a noise—pit-pat, pit-pat. Two feet approached, near at hand and behind; another human being moved on his trail. Even as he listened the noise ceased, as though the pursuer listened for him in turn.

  Hok dodged sharply around some bushes. With a sudden flexture and jerk, he strung his huge bow, and upon the string notched an arrow. If this was the Gnorrl who had made the track, its pursuit of him would be short and tragic. His eyes found an opening among the bushes, and to this he drew his shaft, tense and ready to drive murderously home.

  A body, stealthy and active, moved into his line of vision. Hok’s fingers trembled on the verge of releasing the cord, then he suddenly relaxed his archer’s stance and sprang through the bushes with a whoop.

  “Oloana!” he cried; and his wife faced him, startled but radiant.

  Her fine, strong body was clad in leopard fur, in her girdle she carried a short axe and dagger. Her hand bore one javelin while a second swung in a shoulder loop. On her feet were stout traveling moccasins, and the pouch at her side bulged as with provisions for a journey.

  “I have overtaken you,” she said breathlessly. “Which way do we go?”

  Hok’s tawny head shook emphatically. “You must return to the camp,” he told her. “I face the Gnorrls alone.”

  “I am coming with you,” she replied, as definitely as he.

  “I forbid it.” His bearded face was stern. “Your place is with the tribe, or what is left of it—”

  “You made over the command to Zhik,” she reminded him.

  “Ptao is there—you should remain with him—”

  “Ptao is a well-grown boy. You were not many years older than he when you became a chief. And you left him, too, in Zhik’s care. I heard.”

  He tried yet again: “If I die, Oloana—what if I die?”

  She gestured the words out of his mouth. “If you die, Hok, am I to remain alive? Be a wood-carrier for my father, or—perhaps—marry for softness’ sake, a man who is but the quarter of your shadow? I am your wife. I do not intend to be your widow. If you die, then I shall die, too.”

  And now Hok fell silent, letting her finish her argument.

  “You are one pair of eyes, one pair of hands, against all those Gnorrls,” she summed up. “Let me be your helper—watch in the other direction, strike a blow to defend your back. If one fighter has a chance to conquer, two might have a double chance. You are the chief—I am the chieftainess!”

  Determination had come back into Hok’s heart, and now joy followed it and swelled through him. He laughed aloud, and caught Oloana in his arms, hugging her with a sudden fierceness that squeezed the last gasp of breath out of her. Then he motioned toward the open country.

  “Come then, woman. Hai! The Gnorrls do not know what misfortune is marching upon them!”

  CHAPTER VI

  The Deceit of Romm

  THEY camped that night on the stream that had saved their people from complete ruin, and it took them all the next day to re-traverse the ground they had lost in a single afternoon of running battle. Hok had a thought that made him grimace wryly—those Gnorrls made one travel fast!

  Four times during the hours of light they lay flat in brushy clumps or among high heather while patrols—not mere groups, but patrols of Gnorrls moved by, in one direction or the other. Hok, who could appreciate organized reconnaissance, saw at once that this muse be an important piece of Romm’s work. The scouting Gnorrls travelled in half-dozens, with one active fellow moving well in front and two more some paces to right and left as flankers.

  The leader and a subordinate held the central position, chattering orders, and at the rear point moved a “get-away” Gnorrl, who could scuttle back and warn his comrades if the rest were surprised and struck down. Gazing at these bands, Hok’s eye gleamed hardly and his fingers plucked longingly at the string of his bow; but he sent no arrows.
He was not seeking the blood of a Gnorrl, but of Romm.

  In the evening they camped, fireless, in a thicket not far below their old fort-village. At sundown they heard distant howling and jabbering, from many hairy throats—the Gnorrls were worshipping the sun as it set. But when the last red ray had faded on the horizon, the clamor rose even higher. Why? Then Hok remembered that the beast-men had been seen bowing before Romm, the roan-headed. Romm would find such adoration glorious, but Hok could not think of it without spitting.

  Anyway, that crude, harsh litany told him what he wanted. The main body was close at hand, while the observers and raiding groups were all to the south, combing the open country between here and the forest. Perhaps he had come just in time—the Gnorrls would be on the point of a concerted move toward the forest and the final defense position of his own people. Two days’ march would take them there—but meanwhile, they would expect no enemies this close to the heart of their main body.

  His early plan took even more definite form. He whispered to Oloana:

  “No wild beasts will threaten, with so many Gnorrls about—and no Gnorrl will move abroad in the dark. I will leave you here. Sleep lightly, with your hand upon your javelin. If I do not return before sunrise, go back southward.”

  Her hand found his in the night, her mouth kissed the side of his face. Then he moved stealthily out of the thicket, and along the way northward. The voices of the Gnorrls were guide enough.

  He carried his strung bow in his left hand, with arrow notched and kept in place by his forefinger. At his right hip, within quick snatch of his free hand, hung both his axe and his dagger. His moccasins made no noise on the earth, for Hok was night-born and did not need to grope his way.[9]