Almuric, Robert E. Howard [love books to read .txt] 📗
- Author: Robert E. Howard
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a dazed impression that it was huge, supple, and catlike. I rolled
frantically aside as it spat and struck at me sidewise; then it was on
me, and even as I felt its claws tear agonizingly into my flesh, the
ice-cold water engulfed us both. A catlike yowl rose half strangled,
as if the yowler had swallowed a large amount of water. There was a
great splashing and thrashing about me; then as I rose to the surface,
I saw a long, bedraggled shape disappearing around the bushes near the
cliffs. What it was I could not say, but it looked more like a leopard
than anything else, though it was bigger than any leopard I had ever
seen.
Scanning the shore carefully, I saw no other enemy, and crawled out
of the pool, shivering from my icy plunge. My poniard was still in its
scabbard. I had had no time to draw it, which was just as well. If I
had not rolled into the pool, just when I did, dragging my attacker
with me, it would have been my finish. Evidently the beast had a true
catlike distaste for water.
I found that I had a deep gash in my thigh and four lesser abrasions
on my shoulder, where a great talon-armed paw had closed. The gash in
my leg was pouring blood, and I thrust the limb deep into the icy
pool, swearing at the excruciating sting of the cold water on the raw
flesh. My leg was nearly numb when the bleeding ceased.
I now found myself in a quandary. I was hungry, night was coming on,
there was no telling when the leopard-beast might return, or another
predatory animal attack me; more than that, I was wounded. Civilized
man is soft and easily disabled. I had a wound such as would be
considered, among civilized people, ample reason for weeks of an
invalid’s existence. Strong and rugged as I was, according to Earth
standards, I despaired when I surveyed the wound, and wondered how I
was to treat it. The matter was quickly taken out of my hands.
I had started across the valley toward the cliffs, hoping I might
find a cave there, for the nip of the air warned me that the night
would not be as warm as the day, when a hellish clamor up near the
mouth of the valley caused me to wheel and glare in that direction.
Over the ridge came what I thought to be a pack of hyenas, except for
their noise, which was more infernal than an Earthly hyena, even,
could produce. I had no illusions as to their purpose. It was I they
were after.
Necessity recognizes few limitations. An instant before I had been
limping painfully and slowly. Now I set out on a mad race for the
cliff as if I were fresh and unwounded. With every step a spasm of
agony shot along my thigh, and the wound, bleeding afresh, spurted
red, but I gritted my teeth and increased my efforts.
My pursuers gave tongue and raced after me with such appalling speed
that I had almost given up hope of reaching the trees beneath the
cliffs before they pulled me down. They were snapping at my heels when
I lurched into the low stunted growths, and swarmed up the spreading
branches with a gasp of relief. But to my horror the hyenas climbed
after me! A desperate downward glance showed me that they were not
true hyenas; they differed from the breed I had known just as
everything on Almuric differed subtly from its nearest counterpart on
Earth. These beasts had curving catlike claws, and their bodily
structure was catlike enough to allow them to climb as well as a lynx.
Despairingly, I was about to turn at bay, when I saw a ledge on the
cliff above my head. There the cliff was deeply weathered, and the
branches pressed against it. A desperate scramble up the perilous
slant, and I had dragged my scratched and bruised body up on the ledge
and lay glaring down at my pursuers, who loaded the topmost branches
and howled up at me like lost souls. Evidently their climbing ability
did not include cliffs, because after one attempt, in which one sprang
up toward the ledge, clawed frantically for an instant on the sloping
stone wall, and then fell off with an awful shriek, they made no
effort to reach me.
Neither did they abandon their post. Stars came out, strange
unfamiliar constellations, that blazed whitely in the dark velvet
skies, and a broad golden moon rose above the cliffs, and flooded the
hills with weird light; but still my sentinels sat on the branches
below me and howled up at me their hatred and belly-hunger.
The air was icy, and frost formed on the bare stone where I lay. My
limbs became stiff and numb. I had knotted my girdle about my leg for
a tourniquet; the run had apparently ruptured some small veins laid
bare by the wound, because the blood flowed from it in an alarming
manner.
I never spent a more miserable night. I lay on the frosty stone
ledge, shaking with cold. Below me the eyes of my hunters burned up at
me. Throughout the shadowy hills sounded the roaring and bellowing of
unknown monsters. Howls, screams and yapping cut the night. And there
I lay, naked, wounded, freezing, hungry, terrified, just as one of my
remote ancestors might have lain in the Paleolithic Age of my own
planet.
I can understand why our heathen ancestors worshipped the sun. When
at last the cold moon sank and the sun of Almuric pushed its golden
rim above the distant cliffs, I could have wept for sheer joy. Below
me the hyenas snarled and stretched themselves, bayed up at me
briefly, and loped away in search of easier prey. Slowly the warmth of
the sun stole through my cramped, numbed limbs, and I rose stiffly up
to greet the day, just as that forgotten forbear of mine might have
stood up in the youthdawn of the Earth.
After a while I descended, and fell upon the nuts clustered in the
bushes near by. I was faint from hunger, and decided that I had as
soon die from poisoning as from starvation. I broke open the thick
shells and munched the meaty kernels eagerly, and I cannot recall any
Earthly meal, howsoever elaborate, that tasted half as good. No ill
effects followed; the nuts were good and nutritious. I was beginning
to overcome my surroundings, at least so far as food was concerned. I
had surmounted one obstacle of life on Almuric.
It is needless for me to narrate the details of the following
months. I dwelt among the hills in such suffering and peril as no man
on Earth has experienced for thousands of years. I make bold to say
that only a man of extraordinary strength and ruggedness could have
survived as I did. I did more than survive. I came at last to thrive
on the existence.
At first I dared not leave the valley, where I was sure of food and
water. I built a sort of nest of branches and leaves on the ledge, and
slept there at night. Slept? The word is misleading. I crouched there,
trying to keep from freezing, grimly lasting out the night. In the
daytime I snatched naps, learning to sleep anywhere, or at any time,
and so lightly that the slightest unusual noise would awaken me. The
rest of the time I explored my valley and the hills about, and picked
and ate nuts. Nor were my humble explorations uneventful. Time and
again I raced for the cliffs or the trees, winning sometimes by
shuddering hairbreadths. The hills swarmed with beasts, and all seemed
predatory.
It was that fact which held me to my valley, where I at least had a
bit of safety. What drove me forth at last was the same reason that
has always driven forth the human race, from the first apeman down to
the last European colonist—the search for food. My supply of nuts
became exhausted. The trees were stripped. This was not altogether on
my account, although I developed a most ravenous hunger, what of my
constant exertions; but others came to eat the nuts—huge shaggy
bearlike creatures, and things that looked like fur-clad baboons.
These animals ate nuts, but they were omnivorous, to judge by the
attention they accorded me. The bears were comparatively easy to
avoid; they were mountains of flesh and muscle, but they could not
climb, and their eyes were none too good. It was the baboons I learned
to fear and hate. They pursued me on sight, they could both run and
climb, and they were not balked by the cliff.
One pursued me to my eyrie, and swarmed up onto the ledge with me.
At least such was his intention, but man is always most dangerous when
cornered. I was weary of being hunted. As the frothing apish
monstrosity hauled himself up over my ledge, manlike, I drove my
poniard down between his shoulders with such fury that I literally
pinned him to the ledge; the keen point sinking a full inch into the
solid stone beneath him.
The incident showed me both the temper of my steel, and the growing
quality of my own muscles. I who had been among the strongest on my
own planet, found myself a weakling on primordial Almuric. Yet the
potentiality of mastery was in my brain and my thews, and I was
beginning to find myself.
Since survival was dependent on toughening, I toughened. My skin,
burnt brown by the sun and hardened by the elements, became more
impervious to both heat and cold than I had deemed possible. Muscles I
had not known I possessed became evident. Such strength and suppleness
became mine as Earthmen have not known for ages.
A short time before I had been transported from my native planet, a
noted physical culture expert had pronounced me the most perfectly
developed man on Earth. As I hardened with my fierce life on Almuric,
I realized that the expert honestly had not known what physical
development was. Nor had I. Had it been possible to divide my being
and set opposite each other the man that expert praised, and the man I
had become, the former would have seemed ridiculously soft, sluggish
and clumsy in comparison to the brown, sinewy giant opposed to him.
I no longer turned blue with the cold at night, nor did the rockiest
way bruise my naked feet. I could swarm up an almost sheer cliff with
the ease of a monkey, I could run for hours without exhaustion; in
short dashes it would have taken a racehorse to outfoot me. My wounds,
untended except for washing in cold water, healed of themselves, as
Nature is prone to heal the hurts of such as live close to her.
All this I narrate in order that it may be seen what sort of a man
was formed in the savage mold. Had it not been for the fierce forging
that made me steel and rawhide, I could not have survived the grim
bloody episodes through which I was to pass on that wild planet.
With new realization of power came confidence. I stood on my feet
and stared at my bestial neighbors with defiance. I no longer fled
from a frothing, champing baboon. With them, at least, I declared
feud, growing to hate the abominable beasts as I might have hated
human enemies. Besides, they ate the nuts I wished for myself.
They soon learned not to follow me to my eyrie, and the day
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