People of the Dragon, Debora Pint [that summer book TXT] 📗

where Thom-Ra, the chief, lay amidst his sons and his women. At my approach the younger of the sons of Thom-Ra roused. Taller than I, and older by two years, and mightier of thew than I, was Charn, the chiefs son. But ever was I fleeter of foot than he, and keener of eye, wherefore he admired me for those things wherein I was more skillful than he, as I admired him for those skills of his, and we had ever been friends.

"Whither at this dark hour, Junga?" he asked me, and I told him of the vision of Zorm and of my fears. He tugged at the few tufts of yellow hair that, as yet, sparsely adorned his chin.

"Ever from our fathers' time have the things seen in his dreams by Zorm the Wise proven true and sent by the Gods," he mused. "If peril lurks amidst the plains, we must know of it. And my uncle and thy father are the boldest of all our huntsmen, and must not perish. Come, I will go with thee." And Charn took up his weapons and came to my side.

"Whatever danger the Plains of Thune conceal, we shall face it together, Junga, thou and I!" he said stoutly; and my heart warmed to him then and there; and for all the rest of our lives did we cleave together, Charn and I, as we had been brothers born out of the same womb.

We left the camp and struck due east, in the direction from which the sun would rise. Nor did we loiter on the way, but like the wind we ran; nor did I ease my pace so that he could keep abreast of me, but flew on ever before him while he strove manfully to attain my speed.

Black was the sky in that doomful hour, and thick with clouds, and thunder growled like a surly beast upon the heights. Ever and anon, lightning flashed amidst the high-piled clouds, and we knew a storm was brewing. All the more reason, then, to speed my pace, before the winds grew and the rains came down to obliterate my father's spoor upon the long grasses.

In the days of my youth I could run all day, swift as a bird, tireless as the invisible wind. We were mighty men in the days of my youth, iron of arm, and with an unyielding and an untiring strength like the stone of the mountains that had cradled the birthplace of my race. Such men dwell not upon the earth now, as strode the wide ways of the world when Charn and I were in the fullness of our youth.

Fleet though we were, we were too late.

 

 

Chapter Four

– The Horror in the Pit –

 

Ere ever we had found the marshy place, the storm broke above us. Wind tore with shrieking voice through our yellow hair, which not yet was woven into the long braid of manliness, and tugged at the strip of hide we wore about our naked loins. Cold rain lashed our backs and shoulders like icy whips and blinded us so that we stumbled and could not see our footing. But the flames of heaven blazed on the hearths of the Gods, and by its intermittent flaring we saw boggy ground ahead, and low hummocks of scabrous grass, and black pools in betwixt, and recognized this as the place dreamt of in the vision of Zorm.

Here we went slowly and on cautious feet, Charn and I, not knowing what peril might lurk herein. We avoided the black pools and inky rivulets, leaping from hummock to hummock, ever wary and holding our weapons at the ready. And I called aloud my father's name and the names of my tall brothers, in my clear young voice. But no answering call came out of the pouring dark.

We came at last to the brink of a great shallow pit, like the bed of a vanished lake. But it was empty of water, that lake, though a slick coating of black mud, or something very like unto mud, lay along the bottom of the depression. I peered over the brink and gazed therein... and my heart froze within my breast at what I saw pitifully tumbled about upon the floor of the pit.

They were the bones of men, three men, and one larger of size and older than the other twain: and still clasped about the bones of its neck was the triple-stranded necklace of bear's fangs that oft I had seen hung about the throat of my father, that mighty hunter. Now he would hunt no more, would Gomar, nor would his tall sons go ever at his side...

At my shoulder, Charn the chiefs son sucked in the breath between his teeth. The whites of his eyes shone wide with terror in the flicker of the storm-fires.

"The bones are stripped bare!" he whispered. "Not a morsel of flesh remains upon them! What manner of beast could have done this to strong men, well armed and brave? It was no beast did this grisly thing, but a night-devil!"

For a moment I did not reply, for the tears I would not permit to flow from my eyes choked my throat. Then I growled in a low tone that, beast or devil, I would slay the thing had done this, or be slain by it. Mayhap the Gods heard my vow, for thunder crashed and lightning struck to fire a dead tree that stood not far off amidst the marshes, and it burned like a torch held in a giant's hand.

"Vengeance I will pursue later," I said. "First I must care for my dead." And this we did, side by side, after the few and simple rites of our tribe. The raw and naked bones of my brethren and my sire we fetched up out of that black and slimy pit, piled them on a pyre made of dry grasses, and touched the pyre to flame with a bough torn from the burning tree. They flared up like dry twigs in a conflagration, the bones of my father and his sons, and that was a strange thing to see, for new bones burn poorly. Perchance it was the black slime wherewith they were bedrabbled that made them flare like dry tinder.

The smoke of the funeral pyre rose to heaven, bearing with it the ghosts of my father and my brothers on their long journey to the second life. They would join the ghosts of their ancestors in the country beyond the clouds, and dwell in bliss forever, purged of all crimes done in this life by their passage through the purifying flames. I made my farewells in silence, and Charn, my friend, stood at my side, his hand upon my shoulder. Above us, the storm died away and the stars stared down, coldly curious. Then I took up my weapons and prepared for the hunt.

"We part here, my friend," I said. "Bear word back to Zorm of how his son and his grandsons perished; say to him also that the last of his blood goes forth to seek vengeance or to die."

"If Zorm shall hear the tale of it, it shall be from your own lips, Junga, my brother," said Charn quietly. "For I shall go with you to face what cometh."

"This is not your fight, but mine," I said.

"I have made it mine," he spake. And then tears that I had held back rose to blur my vision and for some little time I could not speak, but only clasped his shoulder blindly, with a pressure that said what I could not.

And we went forward together, bearing a burning branch to light the way before us while we tracked the beast to its lair.

 

 

Chapter Five

– Father of Slime –

 

In truth it was not hard to follow, that trail. For when the beast had heaved itself up out of the pit the black ooze had clung to it, or so it seemed, so that it left a track of bedrabbled slime whereby we tracked it swiftly. Strange they were, those tracks. I, who have hunted the white tiger of the heights and cave-bear and the ghost-gray wolves of the snow country have never seen a trail more oddly marked.

Charn saw the strangeness of it, too. "It seems to squirm along upon its belly as if it had no legs," he grunted. "See, Junga, my brother, there are no marks of pads or claws or hoofs in this soft mud! Naught but the trail of wriggling slime... is it some monster worm we follow, do you think, or some great serpent?"

"It was no serpent sucked the bones of my father clean," I growled. But his words sent a thrill of uncanny horror through me like a sudden chill. We were little more than savages in those days, and had seen little of the mighty world, its wonders and its mysteries, and our heads were full of the tales of night demons and monsters, whereof the old women whisper round the cave fires on stormy nights. Thinking of these unwholesome things made the flesh creep upon my arms and my nape-hairs prickle and lift. But I went on, bearing ever in mind that whatever can kill a man is solid and real, and can itself be killed.

Or so I thought at the time.

We came upon it quite suddenly, not long thereafter.

We had come to the edge of another bowl-like depression in the marshy ground, but this one was full to the brim with black water, or with some other fluid black as ink and stinking like the breath from an open grave.

Charn wrinkled his nose at this stench. "Foul water must it be, to smell so bad as this," he murmured, bending curiously over the motionless surface of the black fluid.

I know not what it was made me put my hand out suddenly to stay him. But I caught his arm and thrust him back, and in so doing, saved him from a death more terrible than ever a man of our tribe has dreamed in his grisliest nightmare.

For the black fluid rippled—stirred—and rose in a slow, horrible wave that shaped itself into a ropy arm of glistening, quivering black jelly. And this black tentacle of living slime groped at the space where Charn had been a heartbeat before.

"Gods of my fathers!" he cried. "It is a thing of slime—slime that lives, and moves, and—kills!"

In truth, it was the father of all slime, a living mass of quivering obscenity, vast enough to mire and swallow down a woolly mammoth in his prime. We shrank before it, retreating to a grassy hummock, and the heaving mass slopped up and over the brink of the hollow and flowed towards us like a living wave.

I flung my spear directly into the mass, but it passed through the stinking jelly without dealing it hurt nor harm. A tentacle shaped itself and whipped out towards me, but I hewed through it with my stone axe, and, severed clean, it fell to twitch and wriggle upon the lank grass like a great worm. But only for a moment did it hold its shape. In the next instant it had burst into a black puddle that trickled back to the parent mass, joined into it and was instantly absorbed.

We had thrown both our spears by now, and Charn had flung his axe into the heaving shape of slime, wherein it sunk without a trace. Save for my axe, and the flint knives twisted into the thongs that bound our strips of hide about our loins, we were defenseless.

So we retreated further, our knees trembling, our faces livid with terror. A droplet of the slime-stuff had touched my bare breast, where it clung, burning like liquid fire. I bent and caught up cold wet mud and smeared it on the burnt place with shaking hands. Now I knew what it was had stripped bare the bones of my father, for the