* * * * *
There is something I do not like about a deep tangled forest, and
that is the lack of sunshine. The light is green and cool, and at
intervals you will see a thin beautiful shaft of yellow spearing down
from an opening far above; but unless you come to a glade there is no
chance of catching a glimpse of the sun in its glory riding the blue
fleece-clouded sky, and without the sun I feel lonely and somehow
half-lost. It is why I would make an indifferent watcher, for they must
wake by night and sleep by day. I am a sun-worshipper of the first
order. I need its blazing all about me in order to be wholly myself.
Of all woodlands, the least lovely is the Fearful Forest. As I have
said, its trees are spaced evenly as though they had been planted by
someone in the far olden times. Their wide leaves are dark blue-green
with emerald veins running beneath the surface. Their boles are thick
and have rough hard bark, unlike the smooth-skinned tree ferns of
Sunset Fields. Between their roots orange and black mushrooms and
strange pale sick-looking fungi lurk, and crawling upward toward the
invisible sun go lichens of every hue from mauve to sanguine. Where
the branches begin there is a riot of parasitical growths, thick vines
and murderous mistletoe, climbing plants that bear huge trumpets of
orchids, every sort of disagreeable creeper that lives on the energy
of its stronger brethren. All this vile vegetation makes an almost
impenetrable roof over the whole Fearful Forest. On the ground between
the trees lie heaps of long-decayed touchwood, squat thickets of brier,
lightning-blasted limbs only beginning to crumble, and a deep soft
carpet of dead things, from the half-dissolved flora of which peer
white rib cases and gleaming, grinning skulls. The Fearful Forest reeks
of death, of murdered animals and plants, of life that is not healthy
nor productive of anything save more death.
There are trails through the depths of this dismal woodland, paths
made by bears or stags or the giant dogwolves that range in packs of a
hundred. Smaller aisles are made by jackal-rats and the other lesser
animals. Halfspoor was following a deep trench of a trail that ran
almost straight toward the opposite side of the forest.
* * * * *
For a long while I followed this pathway, glancing at the ground
now and again to be sure the knifetooth bear had not turned off;
and my mind was oppressed against my will by thoughts of horror,
generated, doubtless, in the dreary sunless vistas about me. Indeed,
I would have gone back had it not been for the bold and idiotic plan
I had conceived, of slaying Halfspoor single-handed. Several times a
jackal-rat crossed my road, snarling at me, its scurfy brown hackles
lifted. The third such loathsome beast I skewered with an arrow out of
sheer dislike, retrieving my shaft before I passed on.
Suddenly I halted. Before me on a patch of mold lay the print of the
bear, and within its great outline was a second track, that of a man.
Another human was following Halfspoor! I was astonished. I knew where
every hunter of the glen-folk ranged today, and none should be near the
Fearful Forest. Kneeling, I stared closely at the footmark. I knew it
well, as I knew the spoor of every man in this region. Laq the guardian
was before me in the woodland.
Laq! He who had so oddly broken two of the oldest customs--say rather
immutable laws--of humanity. We are supposed to love one another
equally, and for the most part we do; reserving, as I have said,
a special love for our mates and a heightened reverence for our
guardians. But I could not feel any very powerful affection for the
guardian Laq that day. I was disgruntled and wrathful to find that he
was somewhere ahead.
Certainly he had a perfect right to be in the Fearful Forest. The
guardians passed this way with some frequency, and no hunter or singer
or watcher of the night envied them their solitary journeys ... nor
their mysterious and appalling duties at their destination!
For the guardians were the only barrier, as we all had been told from
childhood, that stood between mankind and The Nameless. The calling was
hereditary, limited to certain families. Dedicated at birth to their
lifelong task, the guardians learned their secrets from their fathers,
and imparted not a syllable of them to anyone outside the craft so long
as they lived. It was thought that perhaps only those of select blood
lines had minds capable of holding these secrets without going insane;
it was thought--oh, many many things were thought of the guardians!
Generally aloof, wrapped in the cloak of esoteric knowledge, they lived
among us as superior beings, complex where we were simple, sober where
we were light-hearted, supremely important where any one of us could be
replaced by a score of others.
Over The Nameless the guardians had power, and kept them confined to
their stark and blighted-seeming country beyond the Fearful Forest. I
never knew a man so daring or so rash as to ask any sort of impertinent
question of a guardian, whether about his work or his cabalistic
secrets or his terrible charges. The less said or even thought of The
Nameless, the better.
So the guardians moved between the glens and the jagged cliffs, revered
by men and shunned by beasts of prey, accepting food and comforts and
at times a mate from our ranks; the sole protection of humanity from
their age-old enemies....
_The Nameless!_
* * * * *
Suddenly I realized I was approaching the limits of the Fearful Forest.
I peered keenly at the great mutilated tracks in the mold. Yes, it was
still Halfspoor I followed, and here was Laq's mark too.
I think it was then that I began to feel fear, when I knew that I
should have to skirt the country of The Nameless. It never entered my
head that Halfspoor would go straight on across the blackened plain;
surely not even a bear would pass too near the forbidden lands. But he
was evidently going to have a distant look at them, and so perforce I
must have one likewise.
Soon the trees thinned a little, and daylight crept toward me from
between their boles. Then in a few moments I stood on the edge of the
woodland. I began to sing to myself in a tuneless mumble. There was
very little joy in me, and I felt I would be happier with some man-made
noise, even such noises as came from my unskilled throat.
One sweeping glance I gave the plain before me. There were the slimy
pools with their odious tufts of weeds and strings of water vines
emerging like sentient things of evil. There were the undulating bare
stretches of black dead soil from which nothing sprouted. And beyond,
strange cragged rocks and cairns upreared haphazardly in profusion for
many thousands of paces, until at last the raw red cliffs leaped up to
cry a halt to them and all this barren, frightful country ... beyond
the cliffs, what man knew what might be?
One glance, and then I flung myself into a pile of touchwood,
scattering the punk in blinding, billowing clouds and bruising my
shoulder on a hidden stump. As I had heard the thin twang of a
bowstring, I now heard the quick heavy crump of an arrow striking a
tree, just before my face was buried in the crumbling tinder. I rolled
over behind a log, eyes full of the dry powdery stuff and nostrils
twitching against the longing to sneeze. My own bow was in my hand
and an arrow nocked before I rubbed my vision clear; then I peered
cautiously over the log in the direction whence the shaft had come.
* * * * *
Nothing moved, so presently I bounced to my feet and went over to the
right to inspect the arrow, which had buried itself two finger-lengths
in the bark. I broke it off and stared at the feathers and green-dyed
butt. It was one I had made myself.
Standing without movement, I listened hard, and at last heard someone's
careless foot crack a twig in the distance. Then I allowed myself the
luxury of an ear-shattering sneeze.
One of our own glen-folk had shot at me. There was no escaping that
fact. It might have been anyone save a hunter, for all of us made our
own weapons, giving the surplus to be divided among the less adroit men
of the other callings.
In the split second between the string's song and the thunk of the
arrow, it had flashed into my mind that one of The Nameless was
shooting at me. For of course no one knew exactly what they did, just
how they injured men, or even what they looked like; they might be
ogres with twelve arms and seven heads, carrying half-a-dozen bows....
But this was an arrow of _my making_. That meant that the shot had
been a warning to return to a safer place, an admonition that I was
wandering too far, sent dramatically by one of the patrolling guardians.
Yet why had he not merely stepped up and warned me? All the guardians
knew me well. They knew I would be tractable to any suggestion. Why had
he shot and fled?
So conditioned is our race to amity and all-embracing brotherly love,
so incredible is the thought of violence between men, that it took
quite five minutes of cogitation before the terrible idea occurred
to me: that it might have been Laq, a jealous and hate-filled Laq,
shooting not to warn, but to murder.
I remembered the legend of the bones of Sunset Fields, and a sickness
took me in the pit of the stomach for a while. Then I put the grotesque
thought from me, and went to look for Halfspoor's trail once more.
* * * * *
It ran clear and straight out across the black plain; I rubbed my chin
and hesitated briefly. Then, nocking an arrow, I strode out and away
from the edge of the Fearful Forest. My skin began to crawl, crawl
with dread, but with scowling eyes I traced the prints before me, and
there was no possibility in my mind of turning back now. Remembrance of
the shaft in the tree was angering me more with every step. Warning
or murder weapon, its insolent caveat was the final stimulation I had
needed to force my frightened body onward.
If you are not a hunter, perhaps you will not understand the intense
and passionate ascendancy that a stalk may gain over a man's will. He
begins in a spirit of sport, it may be, thinking, "I shall pit my wits
against this stag--or bison, or cave cat--and see if I can out-think
him." Then after so long he begins to feel feverish about the temples,
his hands sweat, his breath comes shorter; and suddenly it is not an
idle hour's sport, but a whole life he is living in these moments, a
veritable microcosm of existence, and the quarry is not simply a great
dangerous animal, but all foemen, all desirable goals, everything he
wants for himself and in the same moment everything he has fought and
will fight forever. I cannot make it plainer. It is just this: the
longer the hunting, the more acute grows the urgency to come up with
and slay this fleeing creature, whether it be jackal-rat or eagle or
two-ton knifetooth bear. If the hunter be a real man, he will not cease
from pursuit while there is wind in his lungs and a modicum of strength
in his hands.
Even though the game lead him into such a place as the country of The
Nameless, from which, as we all have been told from infancy, there
is no escape, your true hunter cannot stand and let it go. I had
been making pictures in my head for half a day's spooring, of what I
should do to this great ursine brute when I caught him; I was entirely
incapable of returning empty-handed. I think that even without the
impetus of that furtive skulker with the arrow, I would have gone on.
As it was ... I quickened my pace.
The blackened plain was broader than it had seemed from the forest. I
trotted briskly over it, avoiding the stinking pools, and on all its
grim surface nothing moved except myself. The pugmarks of Halfspoor
went straight as an owl's death-strike toward the broken cairns and
ragged rocks. Biting my lips with determination, I followed them. I
was in a strange state of single-mindedness, like a man drunken on
fermented tree fern sap who knows only that he wants to do one thing
and that, no matter how ridiculous it may be, nothing will stop him
from doing it.
* * * * *
Already I had gone a thousand paces farther than any man of my
race--save the guardians--had ever gone before. The earth beneath my
bare toes was gritty, almost like powdered stone, and I did not wonder
that nothing grew here except in the scummy pools of stagnant rainwater.
Now the first of the queer cairns was before me. Halfspoor had gone
around it. So did I.
A shadow moved in the far corner of my left eye. I gazed swiftly
toward it, but it was gone.
A shudder ran up the back of my legs and quivered across my shoulders
till my hands shook. Yet my stalking-madness would not let me be long
afraid.
Here was a plot of ground between two walls of unevenly-piled rocks.
Trails of jackal-rats threaded its smooth surface, and across
Halfspoor's prints ran those of a big lone dogwolf. I was bewildered.
Could _this_ be the country of The Nameless, over which even the eagles
feared to soar? Or did it lie, perhaps, beyond those bleak cliffs
yonder?
Here Halfspoor had caught himself a jackal-rat. Said I not that he was
a foul feeder? He had torn the scavenger in two and spent five or ten
minutes in wolfing down the tenderer portions.
Where was he heading, this temerarious bear? What curious siren call
was luring him (and quite possibly me) to destruction?
I paused by a wall, to pick out with the point of my knife a thorn that
had been working its way into my heel. This wall, now: it appeared to
have been built a-purpose. The base was straight and made of thick
square blocks, the upper rows knocked a little out of line but still
fairly even. Between the stones was a crumbly, grainy material, and in
places it still adhered to the rock in lumps and patches. I scratched
my head over it, forgetting Halfspoor. Suppose, now, a man wanted
to build a wall of such huge stones--provided he found a way to move
them in the first place, for they were enormously heavy--would he
not concoct some gummy or cohesive substance with which to hold them
together? And in the course of time, of many moons and years, would
this substance not possibly harden and then decay, leaving traces such
as I now pried away with my thumbnail?
But what would a man want with a wall like this?
* * * * *
A light shone in my mind. Why, if he had such a wall erected across one
end of a glen, it might keep the carnivores from his tribe's trees, and
there would be no need for more than one or two night watchers!
If I lived to return to our valley, I would lay this idea before my
people. It was amazingly simple, and yet new. Surely no one had ever
thought of it before.
Well, I went on through the rocky ruins.
Halfspoor was heading for the cliffs. In this bad unfamiliar soil it
was hard to judge the age of his traces, but I thought he could not be
more than half an hour ahead of me now.
Again a shadow moved just beyond the range of my vision, and again when
I looked around it had gone.
I thought of Laq. I should have traced his footprints at the edge of
the wood and discovered the truth concerning that arrow.
Shadows....
I was not exactly happy. But I traveled on over Halfspoor's trail,
committed to the rash impulsive adventure beyond recall. At one point
I passed a lair, dug out beneath one of the shapeless cairns and lined
with torn fur, which stunk of dogwolf; the bones of many big hares
littered the ground before its mouth, but there were none of the fierce
occupants at home just then, and I passed on. There were more signs of
beasts hereabouts than one could find in all the valleys back beyond
Sunset Fields, and my amazement grew within me. This was not what the
guardians had told us concerning the country of The Nameless, they who
were doom and destruction to everything that drew breath.
Here was a place where Halfspoor had seated himself to rest, in a
corner of the ancient walls. Tiny tufts of grizzled fur were left
sticking to the rough surface, where the bear had rubbed his back
contentedly over the stones. I inhaled deeply of his scent. He was not
far ahead now!
* * * * *
Indeed he was not; less than two hundred cautious paces had I gone
when his mighty frame rose before me, towering up beyond a rock so
abruptly that I thought he must have heard me and lain in wait. Then
I realized, even as my fingers flew in a panic to my quiver, that his
back was toward me and he was staring forward and up, making a guttural
pleading sort of noise in his chest. I could scarcely shoot him in the
back (it would only have enraged him anyway), so I slipped off to the
left and crept along behind a low broken wall until I judged I was
opposite him. Carefully I raised my head. There he was, all fourteen
feet of him, his monstrous head tipped back and his mouth open, so that
his twin fangs in profile seemed but a single terrible yellow tusk.
I might have lanced an arrow through his cranium then, but ... well,
Ahmusk the hunter is no assassin. When the day comes on which I dare
not fight fairly, even with a knifetooth bear, then I shall break my
bow and take to garland-weaving.
I stared up to see what he was moaning at. Before him at a little
distance rose a thing like a flat-faced precipice, which I had been
watching and wondering about for some minutes. It appeared to have been
_constructed_, like the low walls I had examined; but its stones were
even larger than theirs, and its overall surface much smoother. At
regular intervals, and in series of evenly spaced lines, across this
uncanny cliff, there ran large square openings, like many blind eyes
in an ogre. There were five of these horizontal lines of holes, rising
up until the top of the cliff all shattered and craggy put an end to
them. I would say this strange erection was more than seventy feet high.
Framed in one of the holes on the second level sat another knifetooth
bear, deep brown where Halfspoor was grizzled, smaller than the old
scoundrel by a third of his bulk, and--my word on it!--an expression of
coyness about her shaggy face that nearly made me burst out laughing.
This was the lodestone which had dragged him inexorably over the brooks
and through the Fearful Forest, even into the land of The Nameless. A
female! A bear-wench!
She glared at him sidelong, her black nose pointed down and her
comparatively short two-foot fangs digging into her shoulder; while
Halfspoor, giddy and fatuous with love, made his drooling noises of
courtship.
* * * * *
I sat down with a bump--he was oblivious to me and to everything but
his light-o'-love--and chuckled helplessly. Then I frowned. What
should I do? Leap up and dance to attract his attention? Or leave
him to his wooing and trust to run across his trail another day? You
will understand that my stalking-fever, which even the country of
The Nameless had not been able to dispel, was misted away by this
development as though it had never been. Poor old Halfspoor! It would
be a scurvy trick to interrupt him now with death.
And even as I thought these comradely thoughts, the whine of an arrow
came from nowhere and on its heels the angry squall of the giant bear.
I twisted round and looked over the wall. There was a shaft, fleshed in
his furry thigh; and Halfspoor was gazing at me with no friendliness
whatever.
It was no time for idle wondering as to the source of that arrow.
Indeed, I think I knew instinctively who had sent it over my head into
the courting bruin. But as I leaped the scattered rocks and dodged the
higher walls of that ruinous place, I was seeking only an advantageous
battleground, not the stealthy prowler with the bow. At my back I
could hear the wrathful snorting of the knifetooth bear, the swift
thud-thud of his enormous paws, and the rattle of stones dislodged by
his whirlwind passage.
My bow was in my hand, a lean arrow nocked on the cord. Hastily as I
ran I gripped two others between the fingers of my left hand. Skirting
a heap of gray lichen-grown rubble, I whirled on my toes and sent the
first missile back at him. When I could risk a glance again, he had
fallen a little behind, being some forty long paces in the rear, and
was swatting impatiently at the broken shaft protruding from his thigh.
I think my own shot had missed him, and considering my haste, I was not
surprised.
I halted and taking a decent aim I loosed one at his head. At the
same moment he roared loudly, opening his immense mouth to its full
extent. Luck not being with me, the arrow glanced off one of his
overgrown fangs with a sharp click, which appeared to startle Halfspoor
considerably, because he stopped dead and blinked down his muzzle in a
quaint way. I shot the third of my arrows and tore a long red furrow up
one gray-sprinkled cheek. Then, as he was nearly atop me in four sudden
raging bounds, I fled like a hare amongst the ruins. His coughing and
bellowing echoed like implacable thunder in my ears.
* * * * *
There was a deep and narrow gut of a trench that ran between two high
stone walls. In jumping it I had an idea; doubled back, narrowly missed
being decapitated by a swipe of one savage paw, and dived over the
rocks into this curious thoroughfare. Scuttling like a jackal-rat, I
went on toes and fingers off to the right, with Halfspoor's vociferance
threatening to crack my eardrums. Two or three times he reached down
for a blow at my back, and I actually felt the wind of his pad's thrust
on my nape. Then he darted ahead, if such a titanic monster may be said
to dart, and leaning over one wall he waited for me. Clever brute!
He would scoop me out of my ditch like a fish from a runlet, would
he? I vaulted the wall opposite to his side and after one hasty shot
flew into a crazy labyrinth of ancient ramparts and disintegrating
inclosures. An insane bawling told me I had probably hit him again. I
had ten arrows left. My confidence was growing. Only let me find a tall
cairn to scale, and I would make Halfspoor into a positive porcupine
with those ten missiles.
A sun-blind owl sat in a filthy nest among fallen blocks of stone. As I
dashed past, it blundered out and flew into my face, beating its heavy
wings and jabbing furiously at my eyes with its little hooked bill. I
fended it off with the bow, gripped my bone-headed hatchet and with a
long-armed glancing swing hit it under one of the big dazzled eyes. It
fell away, screeching, and I ran on. Halfspoor's grunt was close behind.
Then, some distance off, I caught the sound of howling, and knew that
a pack of fierce dogwolves were running on a scent. I hoped they would
not come here to complicate matters.
* * * * *
There was a place where broken walls flanked a row of stones which
rose gradually upward, somewhat like a ladder placed halfway between
horizontal and vertical; that is, a man could step on one stone, then
up on the next, then the next, and so on, until he found himself quite
high in the air. The row ended on a flat floor open to the winds of
heaven, some twenty-odd feet from the ground; and here and there
around this flat place irregular rocky projections rose. I had seen
enough of this country by now to know that the projections must once
have been another wall, rising to enclose this flat floor. Why someone,
or something, had gone to so much trouble to make these ancient walls,
I could not imagine. At first I had thought it must have been a truly
gigantic being, to lift the huge stones. Now I had seen so many
inclosures roofed over (as we roof over our platforms with thick fronds
during the brief weeks of the winter) at a height of no more than nine
or ten feet, that I could not believe a giant had made them. Why should
he make a place in which he would have to lie down, never standing? But
on the other hand, that may have been the case. It was hardly the time
for philosophical speculations. I trotted up the stone ramp briskly and
cast my eyes about for a good shooting-nook.
Halfspoor was hot after me. He dropped to all fours and came up the
graduated stones as though he had been using such conveniences all his
life--and it was not truly so different from climbing a rocky hill,
except that this was smoother going. I dashed for a heap of rubble at
one corner. Leaping this, I crouched down as Halfspoor hit the top at
a run. I shot at him and my ill luck was still with me, for again my
shaft glanced off one of his frightful tusks. Surely an evil fog lay
over my eyes that day! He charged in my direction and I had time for
but one more swift arrow, which I had the good sense not to aim at
his head. It buried half its length rather low in his shoulder and he
squalled resentfully. Then I slipped over the edge and dropped to the
ground.
* * * * *
I had calculated the drop well. It was too much for his bulk. He loomed
above me, raging. I put an arrow in his cheek, and he bit down hard
and spat out the head and part of the shaft. I drew a good bead on his
eye but he turned much more quickly than I had anticipated and the
missile whined away in the sky. He headed back for the climbing stones.
I looked about me. There was a broken inclosure nearby in one wall of
which was an entrance like a cave mouth, perhaps seven feet high by two
broad: it seemed as good a place as any to dodge into, and I did. There
I awaited his coming, controlling my breathing as best I could in order
that my next shots would not be so shamefully wasted.
Then I heard the dogwolf pack much closer. They yapped and yowled, and
mingled with their excited noise was the petulant grunt of Halfspoor.
Still I waited, but he did not come. Then I knew by the sounds that the
dogwolves had surrounded him. Here was an odd happening! Certainly no
dogwolf would attack a knifetooth bear, even though he ran with five
score other canines. Only a very silly human hunter would pit himself
against old Halfspoor.
But, by my love for Lora, they were shepherding him across the ruins!
I caught a glimpse of the old devil backing reluctantly up a mound,
and then as I gaped he turned and shambled off down a black ravine,
complaining and waving his forepaws angrily. In a great circle they
followed him, nipping at his heels, leaping out of range, and keeping
up an incessant clamor that sounded like boys teasing a captured cave
cat kitten.
I counted the arrows in my quiver. There were six now. Ill luck rode
my shoulders that day. Halfspoor should be bleeding to death with
eight shafts in his chest and head; instead he had four or five
inconsiderable wounds, one of which I had not even given him.
I spat on the ground, wishing I had a drink of water. Ahmusk, mighty
stalker of knifetooth bears! I laughed without mirth. Ahmusk, desperate
invader of the land of The Nameless. There, now, was a title for a
brave man; but I had come here in the grip of hunting-fever, and so
little credit attached to me for the deed. I was in a mood to revile
myself aloud. I smote my bare thigh and swore heartily. What should I
do now about Halfspoor? There was no profit in advertising my presence
to the dogwolf pack. They had been known to pull down men if they were
hungry.
* * * * *
I put my hands to my ears and rubbed them roughly, for of a sudden
they were tingling and prickling. It was as though I had heard a high
unpleasant sound; but except for the distant uproar of Halfspoor and
his annoyers, there was nothing. The country was bewitched, that was
it. There was a pause, and then my eardrums thrilled briefly again to
something I could not locate or analyze.
I glanced behind me at the inclosure. Roofless, I had the feeling that
it must once have been roofed; there were low piles of rock trash all
about, as there would have been had the roof--fallen now--been somehow
impossibly made of stone. What prodigies of strength and skill had
wrought these incredible walls? I shook my head, and turned back to the
entrance.
There was something approaching slowly over the ruined structures to my
right. I looked at it with widening eyes. It was about a hundred paces
off. For one sickening moment I believed it to be some horrid kind
of ogre, made of muck or rotted flesh or some such grisly matter; it
seemed slimy and _dead_....
Then the sun struck it, and I decided that it was simply covered with
long trailing dark hair, which glistened wetly in the rays of the dying
sun.
It came on, and my knees smote together while my tongue stuck to the
roof of my sudden-dried mouth.
In form it was like a man. Indeed, had a man been smeared with black
mud, and then been given a coat of heavy hair, oily or permanently damp
hair, he might well have resembled this creature. I judged it to be
about six feet or a little over, my own height; and so later it proved
to be. It moved oddly, with a sort of halting gait, weaving its arms
to keep its balance on the jagged rocks. I could see two deep blackish
pits in its head where its eyes would be, and matted straggly hair fell
lifelessly from its crown. It was naked, like an animal.
I thought of my mother's old songs of the ogre-breed, which can take
all manner of shapes, but often emulate mankind, building their frames
magically from dead beasts or from the masses of decomposing vegetable
matter in the forests. Maybe my first idea had been right, and this was
an ogre of mire and pelts, all wickedness.
At any rate, it was coming at me, if rather slowly; and so I put an
arrow to the string, being minded to die bravely as becomes a hunter of
the glen-folk.
Seeing me raise the bow, it waved at me in protest, and with so human
a gesture that I could not shoot it, but only held my weapon ready. It
then raised one hand to its face, with something bright in its fingers
(it had fingers, I could see, like a man's), and my ears tingled again
to the unheard sound or vibration which had bothered me previously.
* * * * *
From the ruins behind it rose the noise of dogwolves barking. It
nodded, like a man who would say to himself, That is good. Then it came
on with its slow, almost apologetic pace. I lowered my bow. Somehow I
felt that it meant me no injury.
When it was no more than half-a-dozen feet off, it halted; and we
stared at each other curiously.
It was a hairy brute, to be sure, but evidently no ogre. Its thatch
glistened darkly, and seemed of the consistency of a cave cat's mane,
but without curls; lank, long, and thick. In the places where this
mantle did not grow, as on the cheeks and forehead and on the rounded
portions of the limbs, there was a short dusky shag, a nap like that
on a knifetooth bear's muzzle. The effect was startling, but on close
inspection not really ugly, and wholly without the impression of terror
which my first sight of it had brought. It appeared to be watching me
steadily, though its eyes were entirely hidden in their sunken shadowed
wells. Finally it put up its right hand to the level of its waist and
held it there. I could not see the significance of the gesture. After
a moment it thrust the open hand out to me in several short jabs. The
motion was entirely without menace. I could make nothing of it.
It clasped its hands together and shook them. Then it stuck the right
one toward me again. I realized that it wished to touch my own hand!
I shifted my bow to my left hand--so sure had I grown in these few
brief seconds that it meant no harm--and touched its hairy fingertips.
Instantly my hand was enfolded in a firm hearty grip, and moved rapidly
up and down. I cannot explain how or why the emotion swept over me,
but immediately I felt a warm friendship for this shaggy being, such a
feeling as I had never held before for anything save my fellow men and
women of the valleys.
And there was something else. The gesture felt ... felt natural, and
proper, and almost _familiar_, as though I had done it many times
before!
Mystified, I drew back my hand as he released it; and once more we
stood staring at each other without sound.
* * * * *
A movement at last caught my eye, and staring over his shoulder I saw
two great dogwolves breast a wall and come loping toward us. With a
warning cry I threw up my bow. In the time it took me to change hands
on it, he had peered back; then he gave a cry, remarkably manlike in
tone, and waved urgently at my face. Scowling, I dodged back to get
a shot at the foremost brute. At once the hairy thing knelt, as if
pleading, and the pair of dogwolves, coming up, fawned on him with
lolling scarlet tongues.
My jaw dropped and I gasped, dumbfounded.
The fierce beasts were his friends!
I slung my bow over my shoulder, but took the precaution of grasping my
bone hatchet. The dogwolves stared at me, their hot eyes as puzzled as
no doubt my own were; but they made no move toward me.
The hairy being stood up and came forward to touch me lightly on the
chest. Then he shook my right hand up and down again. The dogwolves
crept on their bellies to our shadows, and one of them, a giant of a
fellow, touched my foot with his wet nose, whining a little.
If there has ever been a more astonished person than I was at that
second, he must have fainted away with his wonder. I know I grew quite
giddy. Now, I said to myself, if Halfspoor were to amble up to me
and ask for the loan of my knife, I think he would get it without a
question or a raised eyebrow!
The big carnivores lay panting beside us, and the dark rough-coated
manlike creature rubbed his chin and stared at me from those deepset
eyes; which I could make out now, as they were glittering in a stray
beam of sunlight that fell across his strange face.
He said something to me. It was not an animal's noise, but a reasonable
imitation of human speech, except that none of the words were familiar.
At once I remembered the young hunter who had come to our glen several
years before, from a country far to the north. His language, while
much the same as ours, had words in it which we had never heard; and
the elders of the tribe said that probably other folk, living in other
isolated places, must have developed words of their own too.
* * * * *
This being, of course, seemed to me at first no more a man than were
the dogwolves at his feet. He had the same general form, yes, and
perhaps even the exact conformation of features under that mat of hair;
but what human by any stretch of the imagination could ever grow such a
pelt?
Nonetheless, his voice was pleasing enough to the ear, and his speech
seemed separated into distinct words, though as I have said, none of
them were familiar to me.
I said, "Friend what-is-it, you undoubtedly know what you're talking
about, but I do not. I would give a new set of hunting arrows to be
able to understand you."
He uttered more words, pointing off to the west where the tall raw
cliffs were even now shutting off the lower half of the sun.
"Yes," I said, "evening comes on, and you're afraid I'll wander over
into the country of The Nameless. Is that it? Never you fear, my
friend, I'll not go a step farther in that direction."
But he took my hand, hesitantly and as though afraid that I might be
offended; and he tried to lead me westward.
I hung back, and the dogwolves growled a little, but desisted when he
spoke to them. Then he signed to me, as plainly as one could imagine,
that there was food where he was taking me; and so because of my
grumbling belly I suffered him to lead me off among the ruins of this
fabulous place.
As we walked I thought of Lora, and her distress in the morning when
she would find me still away; but not for anything would I tread the
paths of the Fearful Forest at night. I must find a sleeping place
nearby.
We passed the flat-faced precipice with the five lines of square
openings, where Halfspoor's brown lady had been sitting. I pointed up
and said, "Knifetooth bear!" He cocked his head at me. I hunched my
shoulders, put two fingers athwart my lips for fangs, roared like a
bear and said, "Knifetooth!" again.
The hairy one stopped, opened his mouth--he had teeth as even and
white as my own--and out of his throat came the exact duplicate of old
Halfspoor's battle cry. The dogwolves leaped and barked excitedly. I
nodded agreement and said, "Bear!"
He said something guttural that sounded like _oorsa_. I made him repeat
it several times. It occurred to me that _ursus_ is another of our
names for old knifetooth; and my wonder grew apace.