The Complete Hok the Mighty Page 26

  Krol had repossessed his ivory axe. He lifted it angrily, as though to smite it into Hok’s skull. But then he lowered it, and grinned nastily.

  “I heard you blustering when I came up,” he said. “Something about fighting. What do you think to fight?”

  “I spoke of Rmanth, the elephant-pig,” replied Hok. “Yes, and the Stymphs. Your people fear them. I do not.”

  “Mmmm!” Kroll glanced downward, then up. “They are only little pests to mighty warriors like you, huh? You do not fear them? Hok—that it your name, I think you said—I will do you a favor. You shall have closer acquaintanceship with the Stymphs.”

  MENTION of the dread bird-snakes made the tree-folk shiver, and Krol sneered at them with a row of grinning fangs.

  “You cowards!” he scolded. “You disgrace me before this boastful stranger. Yet you know that Stymphs must eat, if they are to live and let us alone. Hoist this prey up to them.”

  “Bound and helpless?” demanded Hok. “That is a part of your own cowardice, Krol. You shall howl for it.”

  “But you shall howl first, and loudest,” promised Krol. “You biggest men, come and carry him up. Yes, high!”

  That last was to quicken the unwilling limbs of his fellows, who seemed to like Hok and not to like the prospect of mounting into the upper branches.

  Thus driven to obedience, four of the biggest men nimbly rove more vines around the captive, fashioning a sort of hammock to hold him and his weapons. Soko, stooping to tie a knot, gazed intently into Hok’s face. One of Soko’s big bright eyes closed for a moment—the ancient and universal wink of alliance, warning, and promise.

  The four scrambled up and up, bearing Hok among them. Now the sky came into view, dullish and damp but warm. Apparently the valley was always wreathed, at least partially, in light mists. Into a tall treetop the big captive was hoisted, and made fast there like a dangling cocoon. Krol panted fatly as he clambered alongside. The others departed at his nod. Krol, passing Hok, jostled the big bound wrists. Hok felt something pressed against his palm, and closed his fingers upon it.

  The hilt of Soko’s bone knife! With difficulty he fought back a smile of triumph. . .

  Then he was alone in the treetop with Krol.

  “Look up, you scoffer,” bade Krol. “In the mists—do you see anything?”

  “Very dimly, I make out flying shapes,” replied Hok quietly. “Two—three—no, many.”

  “They can see you, and plainly,” Krol informed him. “Like my people, the Stymphs have ability to see far on dull days, or dark holes, or even at night. They have cunning sense of smell, too. Probably they scent some prey close at hand now, and wonder if I have hung something up for them.”

  “You hang food for the Stymphs?” demanded Hok.

  “Yes, such men as displease me—don’t stare and wonder. I am chief of my tribe. I must keep an alliance with other powers.”

  Krol squinted upward, where the Stymphs hovered in the mist-wreaths. Opening his wide mouth, he emitted a piercing cry, half howl and half whistle. The bird-snakes began to flap as if in response.

  “They know my voice, they will come,” announced Krol. With the evillest of grins, he swung down to the safety of the foliage below.

  No sooner was he gone than Hok began to ply that bone knife Soko had smuggled to him. It was difficult work, but he pressed the well-sharpened edge strongly against the vine loops around his wrist. They separated partially, enough to allow him to strain and snap them. Even as the boldest Stymph lowered clear of the mists and began to angle downward, Hok won his arms free. A few mighty hacks, and he cleared away the rest of his hammocky bonds.

  The tree-folk had bound his unfamiliar weapons in with him. Drawing himself astride of a big horizontal branch, Hok strung the big bow and tweaked an arrow out of his quiver.

  “I have a feeling,” he said aloud to this strange land at large, “that I was sent here—by gods or spirits or by chance—to face and destroy these Stymphs.”[17]

  CHAPTER VII

  The Stymphs

  SO CONFIDENT was Hok of his ability to deal with the situation that he actually waited, arrow on string, for a closer mark. After all, he had killed one such bird-snake with a single quick thrust of his dagger. Why should he fear many, when he had arrows, an aye, and two knives? A big Stymph tilted in the mist and slid down as if it were an otter on a mud-bank. Its long triangular head, like the nightmare of a stork, drooped low on the snaky neck. Its jag-toothed bill opened.

  Hok let it come so close that his flaring nostrils caught the reptilian odor; then, drawing his shaft to its barbed head of sandstone, he loosed full at the scaly breast. Hok’s bow was the strongest among all men of his time, and a close-delivered arrow from it struck with all the impact of a war-club. The flint point tore through the body, flesh, scales and bone, and protruded behind. The swoop of the Stymph was arrested as though it had blundered against a rock in mid-air. It whirled head over lizard tail, then fell flooping and screeching toward the great mass of foliage below.

  “Ahai!” Hok voiced his war-shout, and thundered mocking laughter at the other Stymphs. “Thus Hok serves those who face him. Send me another of your champions!”

  Several of the abominations had flown a little way after their falling friend. But, before they could get their cannibal beaks into the stricken body, it had lost itself among the branches, and they came up again to center on the more exposed meat in the treetop. Two advanced at once, and from widely separate angles.

  Hok had notched another arrow, and sped it into the chest of one. Before he could seize a third shaft, the other Stymph was upon him. Its talons made a clutch, scraping long furrows in his shoulder. He cursed it, and struck a mighty whipping blow with his bow-stave that staggered it in mid-flight. Clutching the supporting branch with his legs, he tore his axe from its lashing at his girdle, and got it up just in time to meet the recovering drive of the brute. Badly gashed across the narrow, evil face, the Stymph reeled downward, trying in vain to get control of its wings and rise again.

  More Stymphs circled this third victim of Hok, and tore several bloody mouthfuls from it. A loud clamor rose over Hok’s head—the smell of gore was maddening the flock. Slipping his right hand through the thong on his axe handle, he looked up.

  The sky was Ailing with Stymphs.

  Though never a man to recognize danger with much respect, Hok was forced to recognize it now. Where he had thought to meet a dozen or score of the monsters, here they were mustered in numbers like a flock of swallows—his system of counting, based on tens and tens of tens, would not permit him to be sure of their strength, even if he had time.

  For they had dropped all over him, all of them at once.

  A TOOTHY jaw closed on his left elbow. Before it could bite to the bone, he whipped his axe across and smashed the shallow skull with the flat of the blade. Back-handing, he brought the axe round to smite and knock down another attacker. Axe and bow-stave swept right and left, and every blow found and felled a Stymph. The stricken ones were attacked and rended by their ravenous fellows, which made a hurly-burly of confusion and perhaps saved Hok from instant annihilation by the pack. As it was, he knew that the Stymphs were far too many for him.

  The end of this furious struggle in the open top of the jungle came with an abrupt climax that Hok never liked to remember afterward. He had ducked low on his limb to avoid the sweeping rush of a big Stymph, and for a moment loosened the straddle-clutch of his legs. At the same moment another of the creatures dropped heavily upon his shoulders, sinking its claws into his flesh. Its weight dislodged him. Hok lost all holds, and fell hurtling into the leafy depths below.

  His right hand quitted its hold on the big axe, which remained fast to his wrist by the looped thong. Reaching up and back as he fell, he seized the Stymph by its snaky throat and with a single powerful jerk freed it from its grasp upon his ribs and brought it under him. Its striving wings were slowing the fall somewhat, though it could not rise with his weight
. A moment afterward, the two of them crashed into the mass of twigs and leaves, hit an outhrust bough heavily.

  The Stymph, underneath, took most of that shock. Its ribs must have been shattered. At the instant of impact, Hok had presence of mind to quit his grip upon its neck, and managed to fling his arm around the branch. He clung there, feet kicking in space, while the Stymph fell shrieking into the middle branches.

  Again he was momentarily safe. He looked up. The Stymphs, where they were visible through sprays of greenery, were questing and circling to find him, like fish-hawks above the water’s surface.

  “Ahai! Here I am, you bird-snakes!” he roared his challenge, and climbed along the branch to a broader fork, where he could stand erect without holding on. And here he found shelter, even from those ravenous beaks and claws.

  A great parasitic growth, allied to giant dodder or perhaps mistletoe, made a great golden-leafed mat above him, circular in form and wider across than the height of two tall men. It could be seen through, but its tough tendrils and shoots could hold back heavier attacks than the Stymph swarm might manage.

  “Come on and fight!” he taunted again. “I have killed many of you, and still I live! Ahai, I am Hok the Mighty, whose sport it is to kill Stymphs and worse things than Stymphs!”

  THE flattened, darkling brains of the Stymphs understood the tone, if not the words of that defiance. They began to drop down on winnowing scaly wings, peering and questing for him. “Here, just below!” he cried to guide them. Then he slung his bow behind him, and poised his axe, spitting between hand and haft for a better grip.

  They settled quickly toward him, wriggling and forcing their way through the upper layers of small twigs. He laughed once again, and one of the Stymphs spied him through the tangled matting. It alighted, clutching the strands with its talons, and with a single lancing stroke of its tight-shut beak drove through a weak spot in the shield. Hok stared into its great cold eyes, and shifted his position to avoid its snap.

  “Meet Hok, meet death,” he said to it, and chopped off that ugly head with his axe. The body flopped and wriggled beyond his jumble of defending vegetation, and three of the other Stymphs came down all together to feast upon it.

  That was what Hok wanted. “So many guests come to dine with Hok?” he jibed. “Then the host must provide more meat.”

  He laid his longest arrow across the bow-stave. For a moment the three fluttering bird-snakes huddled close together above the prey, almost within touch of him. Setting the head of his arrow to an opening among the whorls and tangles, he loosed it at just the right moment.

  A triple shrillness of pained screaming beat up, and Hok was spattered with rank-smelling blood. Skewered together like bits of venison on a toasting-stick, the three Stymphs floundered, somersaulted and fell, still held in an agony of conjunction by Hok’s arrow. For the first time, unhurt Stymphs drew back as in fear. Hok made bold to show himself, climbing up on top of his protecting mat.

  “Do you go?” he demanded. “Am I as unappetizing as all that?”

  They came yet again, and he dodged nimbly back into safety. More arrows—he had a dozen left. These he produced, thrusting them through broad leaves around him so as to be more quickly seized and sped. Then, as the Stymphs blundered heavily against his shield of natural wickerwork, he began to kill them.

  Close-packed as they were, and within touch of him, he could not miss. By twos and threes his arrows fetched them down. Even the small reptile-minds of the flying monsters could not but register danger. Survivors began to flop upward, struggle into the open air above the branches, retreat into the mist. Hok hurled imprecations and insults after them, and once more mounted the mat to kill wounded wretches with his axe, and to drag his arrows from the mass of bodies.

  WELL-MANNERED as always, he took time to thank the curious tangled growth that had been his bulwark. “My gratitude to you, who made me a shield from behind which I won this victory,” he addressed it. “You were sent from the Shining One, whom I worship. He knew I needed help, down here in the mists beyond the reach of his rays. My children shall never forget this kindness.”[18]

  From below came an awkward scrambling, and Krol, the chief of the tree-folk, mounted upward into view.

  “Greetings,” Hok chuckled at him. “See what sport I have made with your friends, the bird-snakes.”

  Krol might have feared the huge, blood-smeared chief of the Flint People, had he not been so concerned with the retreat of the Stymphs overhead.

  “They will go,” he chattered. “They will never come back, because they fear I you. If I had known—”

  “If you had known, you would not have hung me up for them to eat,” Hok finished for him. “As it is, I have driven off your ugly allies, by fear of which you ruled your people. That fear will be gone hereafter. So, I think, will you.”

  Hok swung down to a branch above Krol and feinted a brain-dashing blow with his axe. Then he laughed as the tree-chief let go all holds, dropping six times his own length through emptiness. He caught a branch below.

  “You and I are enemies!” he snarled upward. “Though you have beaten my Stymphs, there remain other things—even Rmanths! I shall see you dead, and your body rended by the tusks of Rmanth, Hok the Meddler!”

  And then, though Hok began climbing swiftly downward, old Krol was swifter and surer. They both descended through thickening layers of foliage, to the woven living-place of the tree people.

  CHAPTER VIII

  The Dethroning of Krol

  BY the time the slower-climbing Hok had come down to that mighty hammocklike footing, Krol had had precious minutes to gather his followers and howl orders and accusations into their ears.

  “Ah, here he comes to mock us, the overgrown invader!” Krol yelled, and shook a furious finger toward the approaching Hok. “He has slain the Stymphs, who protected us!”

  “I have slain the Stymphs, who feasted on any tree-man daring to climb as high as the open air above the forest,” rejoined Hok, with a lofty manner as of one setting Krol’s statement right. “I have helped you, not injured you.”

  Krol glared with a fury that seemed to hurl a rain of sparks upon Hok. “You biggest men,” he addressed the other tree-folk out of the side of his broad, loose mouth, “seize him and bind him a second time.”

  Hok set his shoulder-blades to the main stem of a tree. He looked at the tree-men. They seemed a trifle embarrassed, like boys stealing from a larder. Soko, the biggest among them, was plainly the most uneasy as well. Hok decided to profit by their indecision.

  “You caught me once because I was playful among you,” he said. “Hok never makes the same mistake twice. Standing thus, I cannot be knocked down from behind. Meanwhile,” and he quickly strung his bow, notching an arrow, “I shall not only strike my attackers, I shall strike them dead.”

  “Obey me!” blustered Krol, and one of the men lifted a heavy milk-nut to throw. Hok shot the missile neatly out of the hand that held it.

  “No throwing,” he warned. “Charge me if you will, but make it a fight at close quarters. Those who survive will have a fine tale to tell forever.” He glanced sideways, to a gap in the matting. “But the first man to come within my reach I shall cast down there. Krol, is your other ally, Rmanths, hungry?”

  The half-formed attack stood still, despite Krol’s now hysterical commands to rush Hok. When the old tree-chief had paused, panting for breath, Hok addressed the gathering once again:

  “You cannot hope to fight me, you slender ones. The Stymphs, who have held you frightened for so long, fell dead before me like flies in the frost. Of us two—Hok or Krol—who is greatest?”

  “Hok is greatest,” announced Soko suddenly.

  It was plain that none had dared suggest rebellion against Krol since the beginning of time. Krol was as taken aback as other hearers. Soko turned toward Krol, and the old chief actually shrank back.

  “He admits killing the Stymphs, he admits it!” jabbered Krol, flapping a nervous paw a
t Hok. “If they are gone, how shall strangers be kept out of this land of ours?”

  HOK guessed that this was an ancient and accepted argument The tree-folk naturally feared invasion, must have been taught to think of the Stymphs as their guardians against such a danger. He snorted with scornful amusement.

  “The old liar speaks of ‘this land of yours,’ ” he repeated. “How is it your land, men of the trees, when you can neither tread its soil nor look into its sky—when bird-snakes prey on you above, and an elephant-pig prowls below, so that you must dwell forever in this middle-part like tree frogs?” He paused, and judged that his question had struck pretty close to where those folk did their thinking. “I have been your benefactor,” he summed up. “The open air is now yours, for Krol says the Stymphs have fled from it. The next step is—”

  “To kill Rmanths?” suggested someone, a bolder spirit among the hearers.

  “The next step,” finished Hok, “is to get rid of that tyrant Krol.”

  Krol had drawn back into a sort of tangle of branches and vines, which would serve as a partial screen against any rush. He snarled, and hefted his ivory-bladed axe in one hand.

  “You speak truth, Hok,” put in Soko, more boldly than before. “Go ahead and kill Krol.”

  But Hok shook his golden shock-head. “No. I could have done that minutes ago, with a quick arrow, or a flick of my axe. But I have left him for you yourselves to destroy. He is your calamity, your shame. He should be your victim.”

  Krol made play with his axe. “I will hew you all into little shreds!” he threatened in a high, choked voice. Soko was the first to see how frightened the old despot was. He addressed his fellows:

  “Men of my people, if I kill Krol, will I be your chief?” he asked. “Such is custom.”

  Several made gestures of assent, and Soko was satisfied.