I reeled. Literally I reeled, staggering back and dropping my jaw like
a fool. "Tree?" I gasped. "Yes, yes, a tree!"
He made polite motions, asking me my word for it.
"Tree!" I shouted. I pointed to the beasts at our feet. "Dogwolves,"
I said, with one hand on my breast; then, aiming a finger at him and
still indicating the two animals, "poort," I said. He understood that,
for he nodded. I pointed to the wall. "Peesha," I cried, nodding to
him, and then, "flat place with many dyes," I said in my own tongue.
Finally, I waved at him and then at myself, and said, "Tree, tree.
Tree, _tree_!"
* * * * *
He grasped it then. He was as amazed as I had been. We had at least one
word in common. It suggested astonishing possibilities to me. Eagerly I
touched the sky in the representation before us, the clouds, the earth,
a small hillock; naming them and getting his names in return. Not
until we came to a brook did our languages coincide again. Then I said,
"Stream," and he said, as clearly as any man could, "River." "Yes,
yes!" I shouted. "River, river!"
Babbling with excitement, he grasped my wrist and dragged me past
several of the dye-images to a large one that was without the
protecting rigid water, and which showed many men and women walking
about between stone inclosures such as littered the ground above us.
These inclosures, however, were not broken, but seemed whole and
strangely beautiful, being decorated lavishly with carving and dyes.
Some of them went up for hundreds of feet, as I could see by comparing
them with the size of the people. Before this peesha he halted and
proceeded to point out many things, naming them eagerly; but here we
could not find anything for which we had a mutual name. Indeed, it was
not remarkable, for most of the objects I had never seen until the day
before, and then only in a ruined state.
And so we passed down the cavern until we came to the end, and crossed
its narrow width to go back along the other side, looking at Dy-lee's
uncanny "peeshas;" and at last we had seen them all, and I was too
shattered for speech. Nothing like it had ever been thought of, had
ever been dreamt of, had ever been seen by anyone in all my world,
before today. That one could do this with dyes! Some of them had had
no water--he called it _glaa_--over them, and these I had touched
cautiously, finding their surfaces raised slightly here and there;
and had come to the conclusion that the dyes had been mixed cleverly
with harder substances, so that when they were put on the wall, they
stiffened there and would not blur nor run together.
And nearly as wonderful as these things was the fact that there were
points of contact in our languages, words which were the same in both
tongues. "Hand" was _and_ to him, or it may have been _hand_ also, as
his aspirates were breathed as lightly as his sibilants were tongued.
_Tree_, _river_, and _owl_ were the same. I grew quite wrought-up with
the fascination of the game, and could scarcely wait to tell Lora all
about it.
We went up the slanted stones to the surface, and after he had
carefully hidden the entrance slab with the rubble again (I could not
guess from what or whom), he led me across the ruins to another whole
roofed inclosure. This one we entered by a hole far up in one wall,
raising two logs for a kind of bridge from the ground. Into this place
the dogwolves did not follow, but lay down outside to await us.
* * * * *
Dy-lee's torch was burning low. When we had dropped into the
inclosure, he chose two more from a pile of them stacked neatly in
a corner, and lit one from the first. It flared up redly, and again
we raised a ringed slab and descended into another warm dry place of
peeshas. By then, I may say, I had identified this with our own word
"picture," which we use to describe several things, such as the images
our minds form occasionally which seem to us very real, and also a
distant view of a beautiful countryside, as perhaps from a hill; I felt
certain that _peesha_ was _picture_, and dimly I was wondering if our
own race had once known this strange art of arranging dyes on walls.
Certainly the similarity of the two words would indicate something of
the sort.
He led me to one of the pictures--I will use this other word from now
on--and held up the torch so that I could see it well. There was none
of the frozen water at all in this place. The things were done in large
squares on the rock wall, just as in the first underground grotto, but
there was no _glaa_, nor was any of the slippery curious stone set
around them. These walls were rougher and less shining.
The first one was very old, faded, flaked here and there so that the
barren rock showed through. It portrayed a scene in just such a place
as the plain above had once been, and as I had seen in a number of the
other pictures. Tall inclosures rose into the air, with more lines of
openings across them than I could count. Strange birds flew above them,
looking stiff and featherless and glittery. If there were people on the
ground, they were too small to be seen.
Gently he urged me to the next. Here was a scene among the walls, with
people moving about. They looked very like my glen-folk, excepting
always for the odd garments they wore, which covered all of their
persons but the faces and hands. Even upon their feet they seemed to
have garments.
The third picture was terrible. In its ancient much-faded colors it
showed many men fighting. Not fighting bears, or cave cats, but _other
men_. Yes, here were dead men, with blood upon their breasts, and
others were locked in fierce combat. I turned from this view with a
sickness pulling at my belly, and Dy-lee felt much the same, for he
threw a hairy arm over my shoulders and bent his head sorrowfully even
as I.
* * * * *
The next few pictures were all the same, men slaying one another,
often with strange stick-like things, the nature of which I could not
imagine. From the attitudes it was plain that when one was pointed at
a man, the man died. It was some form of magic, such as an ogre might
dream of.
Then we came to a picture which defied my comprehension for many
minutes. It was a place of high walls and inclosures, over which
flocks of the curious stiff-winged birds flew; and many of the tallest
inclosures were toppling, while fire raged in among them (I knew it was
fire by the marvelous crimson and scarlet of the colors, dimmed though
they were), and great clouds of smoke rolled out.
There were others. I disliked them, I loathed them, but I could not
keep myself from looking intently at each one. It was impressed on me
that this was no legend, but a true thing that had happened in the far
olden times. These were my people dying, at the hands of others of my
people. I could not understand, but I could feel the truth of this
thing.
Men slaying men! The legend of Sunset Fields had not lied!
On the second wall there was an enormous picture, full seven paces
long and as high as the roof, and this one I could not grasp though I
studied it for a long time. It was a place such as this plain--once
there must have been many such, in the far olden times--from the center
of which there sprouted up a great mushroom, like those in the Fearful
Forest, but all creamy-white and so big as to shatter the imagination.
I cannot say how huge it was. All our glens and valleys would be hidden
in the shadow of such a mushroom. Though I looked at it until my eyes
watered, and Dy-lee had to light his third flambeau, still I could
not understand how such a thing could grow in the midst of the tall
inclosures.
The next picture I could grasp, however. They were of ruins, like those
below which we stood, and all among the ramparts and broken walls were
the bodies of men. Some calamity had laid its dreadful hand on the
place. I wondered if the giant mushroom had been to blame, wreaking
this havoc as it grew.
And now the pictures were different. No more men slaying men, or tall
majestic structures spearing the very sky with their tops, but only
ruins and blackened plains, raw cliffs and far-flung wastes, the
wreckage of great metal things I did not recognize, and among them a
few, a very few human figures, prowling like jackal-rats furtively in
the chaos. These pictures were all very ancient, with their dye-stuffs
flaked and marred by time.
* * * * *
There was a view of a prairie, waving with orange grass, on which moved
men who might have been my own tribe. Naked, with bows and hatchets,
they stalked an animal something like a cave cat, which had a great
mane of hair all down its back. I touched this picture and nodded to
Dy-lee. He pointed to me. He knew that these were my kindred. And this
picture too was older than the oldest man of the glen-folk, for it was
much dimmed and discolored.
Down the walls I went, and now the pictures seemed to be less ancient,
and in them I saw a weird change coming over the race of men, for they
grew more hairy, and leaving the fields and pleasant glens (why, I
wonder?) they appeared to take up their homes in the blighted places
and in the caves of the raw red cliffs. Time passed, the pictures were
brighter and less flaked, and mankind was furred as a beast, growing
little by little to look like my friend, Dy-lee.
This series of pictures I pored over for a long time, going back and
forth along the wall, judging the age of each in relation to the
others; and I could not apprehend why, but it was true--these men were
the same race, but growing shaggier in every succeeding picture. How
long was the time gap between the pictures? A generation, a hundred
years, a thousand? I could not tell. I went back across the floor to
look at the earliest pictures, those in which men fought together.
They exuded the aura of an incredible antiquity. And what of those in
the other cavern? Their dyes were more brilliant, newer looking; yet
the people were dressed in the queer garments that I saw in the oldest
portrayals here. Did it mean that there were folk existing even now
like them--folk impossible to believe in!--or simply that the dyes in
their pictures were better and lasted longer than these? There were
many things here that I could not understand, and I felt small and
stupid and as young as the youngest pink rabbit with still-blind eyes.
Dy-lee made a speech then, indicating that I should look at the final
pictures; so I left my speculation and came to him and gazed.
* * * * *
Here, immediately after the series in which mankind grew hairy, was a
large square with dyes that were still vivid and clear, though it still
seemed quite an ancient picture. It portrayed a number of Dy-lee's folk
crouching amid the ruins, perhaps of this very plain above our heads.
Their attitudes showed perfectly that they were afraid, for they drew
back, with arms about their females and young ones. Then, in a cleared
space, there stood a man of my own race, smooth-skinned and wearing
the raiment of a guardian, the long fringed black fox pelts hanging
from his waist and the short mantle of white hares' skins about his
shoulders. He faced away from the cave folk, with his arms lifted in
just such a mystical gesture as I had often seen the guardians making;
and beyond him, from the edge of an especially well-limned forest,
there arose a being whose every line suggested evil--evil beyond the
power of words. There was no definite outline to the thing. It appeared
to change slightly even while I stared at it, as though the dyes had
been mixed with smoke or mist. It seemed to have horns, and then when
I looked again, the horns had vanished. There were great columns of
legs, and arms that hung loosely before its chest with an indescribable
air of menace. Perhaps there were two sets of arms. I could not tell.
It is strange to speak of a picture this way, for after all it was but
dyes of many shades laid upon rock; but all I could recall definitely
about the evil being, when I had turned away, was that its color was
that of a dead fish's belly, and that from its amorphous head there
blazed out two terrible eyes of purest lambent flame.
The import of this whole picture was inescapable. Here were the
shaggy folk, here was a guardian of my own people, and here was a
representation of one of ...
_The Nameless!_
* * * * *
For long minutes I stared at my new friend Dy-lee, while the thoughts
churned in my brain. At last I shook myself, as a bear does on coming
out of a cold stream, and I began to try him with questions, partly in
gestures and partly in words which I hoped he might understand. First
I pointed to the shaggy folk. Yes, they were his people, he signed.
Then I indicated the guardian. He pointed at me. I shook my head.
Indicating my rough loincloth of cave cat fur, I showed him the rich
black and white apparel of the little figure, and then touched my bow
and quiver, my hatchet, my knife. No guardian carries a weapon of
any sort, as the beasts will never molest one of their craft. Dy-lee
seemed to know this, for he nodded vigorously, but then showed me
where we were similar--the brown furless face and body. I said, Yes,
that this man was of my people, but differing from me in profession.
He understood this. I asked him, after several tries, whether he had
often seen such men as this; and he signed to me, Yes, that there was a
place of meeting on the plain. I then asked if he had thought I was a
guardian when he first found me the afternoon before, and he answered,
No, pointing to my bow and hatchet.
These folk having no weapons, I was at a loss to know how he had
recognized what mine were for; because the instant I had thrown up
my bow he had seen I meant to shoot, first him and then his tame
dogwolves. But after a moment's thought I remembered that in two or
three of the old pictures there were depictions of the bow and arrow. I
went back down the wall and found them. Evidently these people had once
known the use of such things, for here they were, rather hairy but not
yet covered with the thick shag, stalking a deer with bows. Somewhere
in their evolving they had either lost the art or found a better. Here,
in a later picture, they were hunting a great knifetooth bear. Ah, that
was it; they had domesticated the dogwolves, and given up the bow. I
imagined that it might have come in handy to protect themselves, for
surely they could not always travel amongst a howling pack of their
canine friends; but obviously they had discarded it entirely.
I returned to the startling picture of the guardian, and pointing to
the horrid figure of The Nameless, I bent my head in pantomime and gave
an exaggerated shudder.
Dy-lee repeated my motions exactly, and pointed away to where I
imagined they dwelt. He said something, apparently his name for the
beings. I said, "The Nameless." Again he shivered--it was a real
reaction this time--and pointed east.
* * * * *
East? But that was the direction in which lay the Fearful Forest, the
three brooks, Sunset Fields, and my own glen. I had not realized this
at his first motion, being somewhat confused by the underground cavern.
I shook my head, pointing west. _There_ dwelt The Nameless.
He would have none of that. No, they lived to the east. I pointed west,
he pointed stubbornly east.
But _I_ came from the east! If there were such beings in that
direction, would I not know it? I tried to tell him this, showing that
I came from there; very well, said he in signs, so did the guardians,
and I was obviously a relative, a son perhaps, or at least a member of
the tribe of the guardians. Yes, I agreed, but....
I gave it up. Could I still be confused by this roof that shut out the
sun? Hastily I looked at the last of the pictures, which were scenes of
hunting and domesticity, with one more guardian at the end, though not
with one of The Nameless; then I signed to him that we should leave the
place. He scrambled up to the opening and I followed, the daylight from
the high entrance hole of the inclosure above striking my eyes sharply
after the torch's flickering gleam. The dogwolves roused themselves and
nosed our hands as we came out among the broken stones.
"There!" I said, showing him the west; and, "There!" said he, in his
own language, thrusting a dark furry finger eastward. Could we be
talking of different things? No, there had been the guardian and the
changing figure of horror.
_The guardian?_
What had a guardian been doing here? And the one picture had been old,
but the other fairly recent, or I knew nothing of the manner in which
dyes fade with age!
These hairy folk had seen guardians, not once in the dim past, but
evidently often, and recently; had not my friend signed to me that
there was a place of meeting, out on the blackened plain? No wonder
that Dy-lee and his folk, while charmed with my singing and interested
in me, had shown no overwhelming wonder. So the guardians knew, had
perhaps always known, that here in the ruins and the raw red cliffs
there lived another race of men!
* * * * *
I sat down on a flat rock and puzzled the matter over, beginning
with what I conceived the early history of these people--of both our
peoples--to have been. A terrible killing among men, with many strange
weapons that spread slaughter wholesale, resulting in a leveling of
their huge structures and a splitting of the race into two parts, one
remaining in places like this, the other going into the distant glens
and plains. The folk of the ruins gradually becoming hairy--could it
be because nature saw they needed protection for their tender flesh,
living as they did in caves? The thought made me open my eyes with
my own cleverness! Then the discarding of weapons and the taming of
the dogwolves. I wondered if they had thrown away _all_ weapons, or
whether they had some secret slaying tool for their defense? Or a magic
ointment to rub on their bodies? Or what?
To this point it all seemed clear, and while it was a thing to churn
the imagination, still it was a plain and possible happening, not
destroying any concepts or deepsunk training of my youth; because no
man of my folk knew whence we had come, or anything of our history save
that it had always been, so far as our elders knew, the same as it is
now: easy and pleasant, with no enemies save the beasts of prey, and a
mate for every man and woman.
But then came the problem of the guardians. These folk knew them too.
They passed between us, it was clear, living with us of the glens but
visiting these of the caverns. I tried Dy-lee with a question: did he
know there were many, many more like me, living beyond the Fearful
Forest? I made a mark in the gritty dirt with my knife point, showed
him that it stood for myself, then made a great number of similar marks
beside it and pointed east. He understood. He could scarcely believe
at first, but after a period of astonished grunts and reassurances, he
believed. There were many like me, over yonder to the east.
Then something took him with eagerness, so that he nearly burst
with what he could not tell me; and at last he ran furiously away
to his cave, leaving me to sit with eyes popping till he returned
with a bag made of hide. From this he took a number of little bones,
hollowed and corked with plugs of wood, and some sticks tipped with
carefully-trimmed stiff feathers. Sensing that I would be curious,
he handed me one of the bones. I pried out the plug and saw that the
hollow was full of a green-blue dye, mixed, as I had suspected, with
something to make it stiff and thick. As I sniffed at it and touched
my fingertip to it gingerly, he set to work on the flat stone beside
me, dipping his feathered stick into first this bone and then that one,
making marks upon the cold rock. I watched the dyes spread and grow
into the shape of a man.
Dy-lee, my friend, was a maker of pictures!
I embraced him. I was overcome with his genius. That this
animal-looking fellow could himself make the wondrous _peeshas_!
* * * * *
Impatiently he motioned to me to be seated while he worked. I sat down
and, hoping to repay him for the pleasure I took in his craft, I began
to sing. He nodded vigorously and chuckled. We were enchanted with each
other's accomplishments.
Watching him, I saw the roughly outlined form of a man grow into a tiny
likeness of myself, with hunter's loincloth and bow. He prodded me with
the stick, quite unnecessarily. I could see that it was Ahmusk there on
the flat stone.
Then hastily he made pictures of two others, one of which seemed to be
his conception of a female of my race. Hesitantly then, he pointed
east.
I told him, Yes, and flickered my fingers to show that there were many
of us there. His thatch-shaded eyes blinked with amazement.
The next picture was that of a guardian, with black and white furs and
stern mien. I said the name aloud, and he said something like "rees,"
which I took to be "guardian" in his tongue.
With this series of pictures to aid us, we could make our queries
clear to one another. I asked how many of these guardians he had seen
or knew; and he answered, Fifteen or twenty. There being twenty-four
guardians living in our glen, I knew that all of them, or nearly all,
must at one time or another come here to commune with the hairy folk.
I asked whether they ever lived with his people, and he said, No, that
they lived beyond the woods somewhere, he thought perhaps in the sky. I
managed to make him understand that they lived among my people, and he
seemed surprised that they had never told his folk of us.
Then he made a curious little vague shape beyond his row of pictures,
which I could not fathom until he had dyed in two glowing fiery eyes;
when I knew that this was meant for one of The Nameless. I asked if he
had seen such an ogre, and he signed, No, that no man ever had except
the guardians; and that to see them was death.
Then as well as I could I showed him that we knew of these things too,
calling them The Nameless. His word for them I could not dominate,
though he said it several times.
* * * * *
I wondered how he knew what they looked like, having never seen one;
but remembered the picture in the second underground inclosure. Then I
thought of the shadowy outlines of that thing, and it occurred to me
that this was possibly but a common symbol for the beings, as no man
knew their exact form. It was such a picture as a man might make, who
knew only that The Nameless were terrible, evil, beyond all thought
malignant.
I then asked him whether the guardians protected his people from The
Nameless, and he said that they did. I told him by signs that this was
their function among us. He did not seem surprised, but again signaled
that they had never spoken of me and my tribe, and over this omission
he shook his head till the lank hair nearly stood on end.
I told him that we, too, had not known of _them_. He sat with his chin
in his palm, biting his lips over this.
I stared at the lightly-dyed portrayal of The Nameless. I pointed to it
and to the west.
He laid a hand on my shoulder, as one might to a child when it is
making up a wild tale, and pointed eastward.
We sat looking at each other and making these silly gestures back and
forth, until in one fearful flash of knowledge it came to me what the
truth was.
The taste of this knowledge was at once bitter and sweet to me: sweet,
because it blotted out in an instant the only great fear of all my
race; bitter, because it showed me that for many generations both this
man's people and my own had been hoodwinked, shamed and overlorded by
the members of a single useless profession. For it had come to me that
now I knew who The Nameless truly were.
Dy-lee was one of The Nameless, and so was Zheena his mate, and great
grizzled Dy-veece, and every member of that merry clan with whom I had
eaten and slept the night before....
Dy-lee was one of The Nameless, and so was--Ahmusk the hunter.
* * * * *
It must have taken me an hour to tell my friend this terrible,
wonderful truth which I had discovered. But finally he realized it,
and at first his wrath was dreadful to behold, and then he saw the
happiness in it and he danced for joy among his dogwolves.
The simple fact was that for no-one-knew-how-long, the guild of
guardians had kept our two races apart and in horror of the things they
called The Nameless, for reasons I could not then even begin to guess;
had kept us apart by tales of monsters which existed only in their own
minds. For the first time in my life I knew pure black hatred of fellow
humans. Had I had the guardians there at that moment, I would have
slain them all.
Yes, Dy-lee's people were The Nameless; and my glen-folk were The
Nameless to him, under whatever exotic name he called us. Nothing could
be plainer, for why else would he think The Nameless lived to the east,
while I had been taught they lived in the west?
Now in my rage it came to me why Laq had shot at me in the Fearful
Forest, and later had pinked Halfspoor with an arrow to make the bear
attack me. He did not dare allow me to make friends here with the hairy
folk. It would topple him and his entire crew of liars and rascals.
He might have halted me yesterday afternoon with a word, but there
was Lora, whom he coveted. He had had a bow, a thing no guardian ever
owned--he must long ago have stolen it and some arrows, to practice
until he thought himself skilled enough to slay me. It did not seem
incredible now that he would plan to kill me for her. Nothing seemed
strange in the light of my new discovery. The world was topsy-turvy,
and surely all things must be possible to one of his loathsome breed.
After we had stamped about for a while, talking furiously and
incomprehensibly to each other and shaking hands with fervor and
startling the dogwolves into howling many times, we went up to Dy-lee's
cave, where he called in all those of his folk who were nearby, and
laying his hand on my chest, he solemnly told them that I was one
of those creatures whom they had all feared for so many years. The
turmoil was frightful. Then, before they could flee, he shouted to them
what he had discovered. Of course it took much less time than it had
when I explained it to him, for he shared his language with them and
needed no elaborate signals. You never heard such a roar as went up
when he had finished.
It was decided, to be brief, that Dy-lee should accompany me back
through the Fearful Forest to the glens, and there we two would
confront the guardians and fling their lifetime of lies into their
teeth. I gathered also that he would protect me on the journey from
wild beasts, though how without weapons he could do this, I did not
see. At any rate, he bade farewell to Zheena and I shook hands all
round and we started out across the ruins, with Dy-lee's two poorts,
the tame dogwolves, running before us with their scarlet tongues
lolling out and their noses in the air.
As we went toward the Fearful Forest, I struck up a song; and to its
rhythm we marched bravely and in high genial comradeship.
* * * * *
The oppressive woodland closing in upon us, at about the first hour
after the zenith of the sun, my song died away on my lips; and we began
to converse together, partly in signs and partly in words. Besides
those our languages shared, we had learned a number of one another's
common words, and now questions and answers were more readily
understood.
I asked him if the guardians had ever seen the pictures which he had
shown me. He said that he was not sure, but that he believed not, at
any rate not in his lifetime. They never seemed interested in anything
except being fed and catered to, and did not spend their nights in
the caves as I had done, nor had they ever sung to the hairy folk. I
gathered that Dy-lee had shown me the pictures out of gratitude for
the delight he had taken in my songs. It was the first time I had
ever gotten anything for my voice except a kick in the rump. I was
exceedingly pleased.
Then he put to me a number of questions about my people, and as well as
I could I answered them. We discovered another mutual word, which was
"thorn," when I pried one from his foot with my knife.
Then I thought of weapons, and showing him my metal blade, I asked if
he had not seen such things before. He examined it--I think he had
wanted to for hours, but was too polite to ask for it--and said that
such a knife was unheard of. I had already noticed the flint daggers
his people used, which were flaked to make a cutting edge of a sort,
but were really sharp only at the tip. My bow and arrows and my hatchet
he had seen in his ancient pictures, but mine were the first he had
ever handled. His hands were clumsy on them, and I should have hated
to let him loose a shaft anywhere in my vicinity.
By signs and a few phrases I told him how we heat and mold the metal
for our few needs, and he was intrigued but a little skeptical. Did he
never hear of heating metal to make anything? No, he said, never.
* * * * *
But surely he knew of metal? Yes, he said, there were metal instruments
in use among his folk, but these had always been in existence, and no
man living knew the trick of making them. Then he brought out from some
hidden pouch or repository under the long hair on his side a thing like
a bright bronze bone, a small tube of metal with a hole at each end,
curiously shaped and carved with tiny marks that made no sense, for
they did not seem to be pictures or designs of anything at all. With
this, he told me, as I examined it, he would protect me if animals
should attack us; but when I asked him, How, he only smiled and laughed
to himself. I presumed he meant to surprise me, and did not press him
for details; which must have made him feel rather disappointed, for he
put away the tube with a snort.
And these, I asked then, were the only weapons his folk had? Yes, he
said, they needed no others. But if he should lose his? There were
others, many others, hidden in the caves. But in time, I said, surely
all of the mysterious instruments would be gone, some lost, others
destroyed by accident; and then what would his people do? For they
could not make others, that was obvious.
Well, I could not make him understand this query. He did not seem to be
able to visualize the distant future in the slightest degree. There had
always been the tubes, and so far as he knew, there always would be the
tubes.
I gave it up, and privately decided that I would make him and Dy-veece,
and some of the other males, learn the rudiments of archery, whether
they liked it or not.
We tramped on, and the Fearful Forest depressed us with its grim dark
trees and lack of sunlight, until at last we spoke no more to each
other, but traveled as silently as the two great dogwolves. And so it
was that we came upon Halfspoor where he sat in a glade feeding on the
body of a jackal-rat, and did not warn him of our coming until we stood
face to face with him across some twenty paces of the rotting carpet of
vegetation.
Halfspoor gazed at us, and we, paralyzed, gazed upon Halfspoor; and
he gave a grunt and a bellow, and leaping to his hind feet he came
charging down at us.
I sent one arrow into his chest before I turned to dash back down the
trail. I had it in mind to get amongst the trees before I fought, for
here there was nowhere to dodge, and dodging was my only defense
against the giant brute. Dy-lee was fumbling at his side, and the
dogwolves were leaping toward the knifetooth bear. I shouted to Dy-lee
to seek cover, though I knew he would not understand the words. I saw
a man in pelts of black and white moving furtively from the path some
hundred feet behind us, and I knew that a guardian had been following
us eastward. Then something took me across the shoulder blades with a
slap like a tree falling, and I was hurled six times my own length into
a patch of stabbing briers.
* * * * *
Even as I hit I was scrambling sideways, intent on reaching the other
side of the nearest tree; a hundred thorns were ripping my flesh, and
my back felt as though it were half broken. My ears were throbbing, I
supposed from the jolt of Halfspoor's blow. I tore myself out of the
briers, leaped with a pounce like a cave cat's across an open space and
took up a position of belligerent waiting behind a lichen-wrapped trunk.
Halfspoor, had he followed me up at once, could have slashed me apart
before ever I got out of the clutch of the thorn bushes. He had
stopped, however, on the spot where he had slapped me, and was hovering
over Dy-lee making angry swipes at him. I thought for a moment that
Dy-lee was dead or unconscious, for he was huddled down in a dark
mass at the bear's feet. The dogwolves were harrying Halfspoor, one
snapping at his legs, the other leaping to get at his throat. I made
a grab over my shoulder and discovered that the quiver was empty. My
arrows had been scattered on the ground when I flew into the briers.
As the bear was not even looking my way, I ran into the open to get
a shaft or two. I would have attacked him with my hatchet, but since
the vital spots of his skull and neck were a good twelve feet off the
ground, it would have been a futile and stupid gesture.
An arrow discovered, I drew back the cord and sank another shaft in
the bear's massive chest. Even as I shot I realized that something was
singular indeed. Although Halfspoor towered over Dy-lee, who crouched
unprotected on the earth, and though the bruin was cuffing in his
direction, yet the blows were missing Dy-lee by several feet at the
least. All that the bear need do was take one step forward on those
gigantic pads and bend his back a trifle ... and there would be no more
Dy-lee. But that step and that bend he did not seem able to accomplish!
Like a fox caught in a trap, he swayed and screamed his fury, but did
not touch my friend Dy-lee.
[Illustration: It would take more than one arrow to slay the huge
Knifetooth. Could he do the impossible?]
When my arrow struck, he turned toward me and gave a bawl of horrible
anger. Even as I snatched up the only other arrow I could see and
darted for my tree, I caught a glimpse of Dy-lee jumping to his feet,
evidently unhurt. The dogwolves hampered Halfspoor, and I made the tree
a second before the old devil reached it.
* * * * *
He came round it after me, and I dodged about to keep it between us,
taunting him loudly. This was a game at which I was past master. I
could dive and scuttle all afternoon, if need be.
Then with horror I saw that Dy-lee was coming toward us. I bawled at
him to go back--he would not know the words, but surely my frantic
motions could not be misunderstood--and then in desperation stood my
ground and shot my bolt at Halfspoor at a range of about five feet. It
was the third one to flesh itself in the barrel of his chest, but I
doubted that any of the three would prove mortal. Ribs and iron-hard
muscles would stop them from penetrating too deeply.
Dropping like a stone, I then bounded straight between his charging
legs; was struck glancingly by one hind paw and whirled over and over
in the rotten humus. My hatchet found its way by old instinct into my
hand as I rolled. Then I leaped to my toes and--collided with Dy-lee!
Memory of that instant is muddled. I know that I almost struck my
friend down before I realized who he was. I saw Halfspoor in a kind
of bloody haze, seeming to fill the world above us. Then Dy-lee put
a hand to his mouth and the great bear fell back a pace, snarling and
swatting the air. My head rang and I realized that there was blood in
my eyes. I wiped them clear and lifted the hatchet as I backed away.
The hairy man gripped my wrist and would not let me leave his side. I
thought that he had gone mad, and tugged at him frantically. But he
stood rock-firm, with one hand holding me steady and the other at his
mouth.
All this took but a second or two, and then I ceased to struggle and
only stared at our terrible ursine foe. Halfspoor stood just out of
reach, and his actions were brainless, idiotic. He would slash at us
viciously, missing us by a foot or so; slap at the side of his head
with blows that would have split open a less solid skull; then back
up a little, moan, bellow, gnash his tusks, make as if to charge at
us--and beat his head again!
I glanced at Dy-lee, who seemed calm and detached. The glint of the
bronze tube caught my eye. It was in his mouth and he was blowing
into it. I thought of the wooden whistles we make for our children;
but there came no noise out of this instrument. My head was, indeed,
ringing and pounding from the fight; yet I knew I was not deaf, for
Halfspoor was raising the dead with his uproar and I could hear that
very well.
It was hardly the time for investigation of mysteries, however.
Impatiently I pulled at Dy-lee's arm. The bear would charge. Dy-lee
grinned (at least the hair on his cheeks moved as though he had
grinned), and throwing back his shoulders and inflating his lungs,
appeared to blow a tremendous gust of wind through the metal tube.
The dogwolves, who had been snapping at Halfspoor's toes, writhed on
their bellies and screeched piteously together, as if they had been
disemboweled. Magic! The poor brutes seemed in their last agony.
* * * * *
The knifetooth bear gave one frightful, indignant, stentorian yell,
which echoed weirdly from every tree around the glade. He administered
a final pummeling to the sides of his tormented head. And he turned
and made off into the forest as if all the cave cats in the world were
nipping at his tail!
At the same time my eardrums were assailed by the most piercing _feel_
of noise that they had ever experienced. And yet there was no sound
from the tube in Dy-lee's mouth.
Now he removed it, stowed it in his secret pouch, laughed quietly to
himself, and walking across the mold, bent down and began to gentle the
groveling dogwolves. Slowly they responded, sitting up, nuzzling his
hands, and whining as if ashamed of their recent performance.
Listening with one ear while rubbing the other, I heard old Halfspoor
smashing his way through the woodland, complaining bitterly to himself
in a loud voice. I could not blame him. If the stalwart dogwolves were
reduced to impotence by the sorcery of Dy-lee's tube, even bruin must
be pardoned for running from it.
And then I heard a cry of pain and terror, a human sound that rose and
wailed and died to a hideous moaning; and without hesitation I ran off
on the bear's trail. He had found someone else in his mad career, and
that one had not escaped by magic!
It was easy to see where he had passed. Thickets were crushed, even
small trees shattered off, and the bark of the giants shredded by angry
clawings. Perhaps I went two hundred yards. Then I found the man, where
Halfspoor had found him and snatched him up and flung him aside, broken
and dying, into a heap of touchwood.
It was the guardian Laq, and he was dying if ever I saw a man die, with
a broken back and a leg that bent sideways in a way no leg was ever
meant to bend. I knelt beside him and he opened his eyes and recognized
me, and he spat feebly, for there was still hate in the man. I could do
nothing for him, could not even straighten his limbs or ease his head,
for motion would have slain him.
"Lie easy, Laq," I said. "You must rest a while, and then I will help
you home."
"When I have rested, I will slay you, Ahmusk the hunter," said he with
a curse. His hand moved feebly, and I saw he wished to pull the bow
closer, the bow that he had stolen and practiced with until he thought
he was skilled enough to murder me. I put it into his fingers, noticing
without much surprise that it was one which I had made and believed I
had lost somewhere. I gave him one of the arrows from his quiver, too,
and that was a mistake, for he stared sharply at me with his filming
dark eyes. "You think I am crippled," he said huskily, "but I will show
you when I have rested, Ahmusk. Lora will never come to your platform
and your mating furs."
* * * * *
I said nothing, for one cannot grow angry with a dying man, and there
was no kind word that my tongue could lay hold on; and so presently he
began to talk in a quiet, sane voice.
"Of course I cannot let you live. You braved the land of the shaggy
people, and made friends with them; and you have a knowledge which must
never be given to our tribes. Men must have something to fear. It keeps
them decent."
I do not know, even yet, whether he believed what he said; and I have
often pondered on it. Perhaps he had made himself believe it, for the
peace of his soul.
"The legend of The Nameless goes on," he said, the bright froth
dripping from his lips. "Ahmusk dies.... My father was a guardian. He
preached to me that some dreadful calamity would occur if we allowed
the two races to come together. All the guardians were taught that. It
was dinned into them from their birth. Only the intelligent ones saw
what that calamity would be. Our craft would lose its privilege, its
honor, its reason for being."
It was the same thought I had held. The guardians fattened on
adulation, and if that was taken from them, there would be nothing
left, for they were so accustomed to it that they could not conceive
becoming as other men.
"It does no harm to tell you these things, Ahmusk, for you will shortly
die. Yes ... you understand, I saw very early that the basic ideas of
my craft were wrong, all wrong. There was no harm in letting you know
of the shaggy people, for they are as innocent and affectionate as
you; the harm lay in the breaking-up of our guild, and the...." He was
silent for so long that I thought he had lapsed into insensibility,
but after a while he repeated what he had said about mankind needing
something to fear. He used the same words, as though it were an excuse
he had learnt by rote long ago.
"That is an untruth," I said. "Fear is evil, fear of anything is all
wrong. It is wickedness, Laq."
* * * * *
He looked up at me, and I think the naked truth came to his lips then,
and would not be denied; for he said, with a horrid gasp, "Ah, but
the reverence given us, Bear-throat! This is not lightly to be lost.
Think of it! In all the world we alone are above mankind. A hunter
is the same as a singer, the night watcher gains no more thanks, no
more prerogatives than the weaver of garlands. Only the guardian walks
clothed in honor and mystic glory! Do you think I can let you smash
us to the level of common clay, after so many generations of being
exalted?"
He stopped again, and I thought of the first of his breed, those early
guardians who must have arisen after the terrible slaughters, when all
was hatred and terror and confusion. Did they then invent the legend of
The Nameless, to capitalize on the mutual fear of the two peoples? Did
they, perhaps, force the hairy folk into the wastes and caves, looking
ahead to a reign of vicious knowledge over ignorance? And were all
their descendants as cynical and utterly selfish as this Laq?
"What of your brothers?" I asked him. "Do they know that no true harm
would come if the people knew the truth of The Nameless?"
He laughed, horribly. "My fellow guardians are in the main sublimely
unaware of their futility," he said. "The dogmatic teachings of bigoted
fathers have made unthinking sons.... You understand, Ahmusk, that I
will slay you when I have rested."
"Yes, Laq," I said, as he lay dying.
"Ah, but how I would love to see their bubble of self-importance
pricked!" he muttered. Evidently he felt no kinship with them, but
sneered at them and us alike. "How they would flounder if the facts
were forced upon them!"
I heard Dy-lee come up behind us, and the dogwolves snuffled at my
shoulders. Laq raised himself with a superhuman effort and cried, "The
bear! The knifetooth bear! Ahmusk, the bear comes! My whistle ...
my whistle! I cannot find my whistle ..." and so died, his fingers
clutching weakly at the broken bow that he had stolen so long ago, when
he first plotted to kill me for the sake of Lora.
* * * * *
I took the arrows from his quiver, and covered Laq with branches and
dead leaves, for I had no strength to bury him. Returning to the glade,
we managed to find the three arrows I had lost in the fight; then we
turned our faces eastward once more.
We crossed the Crimson Brook and the Blue, and then at last we began to
talk with our signs and our halting phrases.
"What is the tube?" I asked Dy-lee. "How did it drive off Halfspoor?"
As well as he could, he showed me. It was a whistle, of a sort, and
though we men could not hear its note, he explained that the animals
could. A low sound, made by barely breathing into it, brought the
dogwolves barking happily to our sides; but a stronger puff caused them
to howl dolefully. I had seen what a really powerful blast on it could
do to even a knifetooth bear.
"And the guardians have these whistles?" I asked him, and he answered,
Yes, they did, though Laq must have lost his. That was why they needed
no weapons when they strode the Fearful Forest. A man would not have to
slay a carnivore when he could chase it away in fright, with its ears
splitting.
And yet, all I sensed when Dy-lee blew the thing was a tingling of the
eardrums. Strange and new! That an animal could hear a sound which a
man could not!
But still I thought a bow and a few good arrows were not to be sneered
at, and resolved again to teach my friends their use, in preparation
for the time, even though it be hundreds of years hence, when all the
whistles shall be lost.
I pictured Halfspoor in my mind, and how he had stood off from Dy-lee
and swung blows at the air when the whistle blew. I saw him run again,
cuffing his own ears to beat away the tearing, bone-rending sound of
the to-me-silent tube. What a host of miracles I had to tell to Lora!
We crossed the Gray Brook and came to Sunset Fields, and the sun was
less than an hour from its setting in the west. There was a figure
running toward us, now in the waning sunlight, now in the dappling
shade of the tree ferns. I cried out joyfully, for it was my Lora.
She neared us, and seeing Dy-lee and the dogwolves, cried out with
horror. "Ahmusk! Fly, or they will slay you!"
"Come here, little fearful one," I said, "and I will open your mind to
a thousand new things!"
* * * * *
She stood there, regarding me, and the fear went out of her eyes, to be
replaced by a vast relief. "Then this creature will not harm you?"
"Nor you either. This is my friend Dy-lee," I told her, and taking
her hand, put it into his. He shook it, and she smiled uncertainly.
"Ahmusk--the dogwolves?"
I patted the biggest on the head. Oh, but that was my hour! "I have
made them gentle as fawns," I said, stretching the facts somewhat.
Then she knew that all was well, and she leaped into my arms and kissed
me until I thought she would never be done; and yet truly I was sorry
when she stopped. "What has happened, Bear-throat? Where have you been
for two days, and who is this, and how does it come that the dogwolves
do not bite, and why are you all blood-smeared, and--"
"Lora, Lora," I said, "I have a thousand things to tell you, but we
can never begin on them if you must chatter endlessly--"
"And Halfspoor, did you find his track, and where will he spend the
night, and--"
"Lora!" I shouted, enfolding her in a fierce embrace. "Listen to me,
and I shall tell you! Great Halfspoor ranges the Fearful Forest, where
I will meet him again one day. This is Dy-lee--"
"And _what_ is Dy-lee?" she asked, her voice rather muffled against my
chest.
I gave up. "I will tell you one thing," I said, "and then I will let
you babble until you run out of queries. I am like a man who has
feared lightning all his life, and has now been struck; and I not only
survive, but have found it a pleasant experience--"
"Where were you hit by lightning? Where did you get all the thorn
scratches?" she asked.
Dy-lee put his hand on my shoulder and said, pointing to Lora, "Zheena!
Zheena!"
By which I think he meant to say that females are all alike, and so,
patting my girl on her shining head, I grinned across at him and
replied, "How right you are, Dy-lee, how very right you are!"
"What did he say?" asked Lora.
"He said that there is nothing in all the fine green world like a
woman."
"Well!" said she, "you've learnt a little wisdom in your traveling, I
must say!"
"A little," said I, "a little."
And so we journeyed homeward to the glen and our people, we three good
new companions, and the dogwolves went before us and gamboled with
pleasure in the soft grass of the fields.
* * * * *
That night Dy-lee and I sat together on my platform, in the tawny-cream
light of a full autumn moon. Much had been told that evening, at a
council of all our glen-folk; much had been speculated, much had been
argued over. Some men had been shocked, some elated, some hurt--those
last were the guardians, most of whom could not believe my tale until
I showed them Dy-lee and repeated what Laq had said as he lay dying.
My shaggy comrade had dyed a picture for the folk on a big rock, and
astonished them all beyond measure. Our finest singers had performed
for him, and now he knew that Bear-throat was not such a marvelous
being after all.
Lora and I had announced our mating time. I had three days in which to
find a cave cat and make our rug. Yes, a cave cat; I had decided to
give Halfspoor a rest for a while....
After the initial surprise of Dy-lee's appearance, our people had all
become very much interested in him. He was laden with gifts to take
home to the caves: bone tools and hatchets, metal knives, fine arrows
and bows, skins of white deer and sleek owl feathers, everything they
could think of which he might like.
So now we sat together on the platform of my tree, our legs covered
with rugs against the chill of the night, and our eyelids drooping with
fatigue. Yet must I chatter a while longer, being reluctant to see this
glorious day end.
"Dy-lee," I said, "many wanings of the moon will pass before we see
an end to the changes that are going to happen among our folk, yours
and mine. We will all be one folk soon." He nodded and smiled, just
as though he could understand me. "We have been kept a simple people,
naive and guileless; and that may be good. I think it is, and I think
we will not change our simplicity. We will only see things more
plainly. And there will be less fear."
"Ahmusk," said Dy-lee. "Friend Ahmusk!"
I gripped his hand in the gesture I found so satisfying. "And with
time, Dy-lee, we will find the answers to all sorts of questions,
questions that intrigue me so that I can scarcely wait till morning
to begin searching for the answers! Those whistles of yours, for
instance--who made them, and how, and is the secret of them truly that
their noise pierces the ears and maddens an animal with fear, or what?
"And your pictures, Dy-lee, and our music: we will trade these to each
other and spend a thousand thousand contented hours with them!"
He yawned, and lying down, pulled the furs up to his chin. Still would
I talk a few moments longer.
"And some day, Dy-lee, we will know what caused your folk to grow all
shaggy, while we remained smooth-skinned. Maybe we will find out how
the men of the far olden times moved their great stones, and why they
made the tall inclosures.
"First of all, of course, we must learn to speak to one another. I
shall learn your language, and you shall learn mine...."
"But," put in a grumbling voice from the next tree, "if you do not
close your mouth and go to sleep, Bear-throat, I fear you will not
live to see tomorrow's sun, and so will miss all the fun. Go to sleep!"
I chuckled. It was Lora's father. "Good-night, then," I said. "I shall
wake you early in the morning."
"I'm sure you will. Good-night!"
I rolled over beside Dy-lee and composed myself in my furs for the
night. At once a vast comfortable weariness came over me.
"Perhaps," I murmured, "perhaps we shall even discover some day why it
is that the bones of Sunset Fields do not decay!"
Dy-lee answered me with a soft grunt and then a snore. I laughed to
myself with happiness, and fell asleep in the light of the full tawny
moon.