John Norman (52 page)

William and Gunther, bound, had been herded far from the shelters. The Men had traveled easily. William had indicated to them the way.

The judge, Spear, had made his decision.

“If Herjellsen has mastered the retrieval problem, we will live,” said William.

On the way the Men did not cover their movements, for they trekked lands of people with whom they shared sign talk, with whom they traded. With them they brought their women, their children. They did not come to raid, or war.

On the plains, across the great forded river, they were joined by men of the Horse People, the hunters of the small horses, scarcely more than brush-maned ponies, many of them striped with brown and black. Sometimes these animals were hunted on foot, pursued, encircled, surprised, killed; at other times they were driven toward pits or between lines of bowmen, who leaped from the ground to fire their small, stout bows at them as they raced past. The Horse People wore the skins of horses and, some of the males, in their hair, crests, of leather and horsehair, resembling the manes of the animals they hunted, which headdresses terminated with a swirl of horsehair, which fell behind the back, formed from the tails of their prey.

On the sixth day they came to the place, the gate, the corridor. Gunther and William had marked it with a ring of stones.

“They may return to their own country,” had said Spear, “but if they do not do so, then we will kill them.”

These conditions had been agreed to by William. Gunther had not spoken.

William, unbound, stepped within the ring of stones. He stood there, in the circle, on the grass.

At a sign from Spear the men lifted their axes.

“I sense it,” said William. “I sense it!”

The Men stood about the ring, their axes lifted.

“Good-bye, Brenda,” said William. “Good-bye!”

The men of the Horse People cried out with amazement. They drew back, eyes wide. They jabbered. Fox looked pale. Hyena began a dance, shaking a stick. Hawk reached out, to touch a stone. Spear lifted his ax. Hawk drew back his hand.

Gunther was unbound. It was Tree himself who freed his wrists. Gunther looked at Tree, once, outside the circle of stones; then he looked down; he looked to Hamilton, then turned his eyes aside; he entered the ring of stones.

Tree regarded him calmly.

“Good-bye, Gunther,” whispered Hamilton.

Gunther said nothing.

Again a cry went up from the Horse People, who fell back, then crowded about. Their leader thrust among them, with his bow, driving them back. The Men regarded the stones curiously. There were many things they did not understand. They did not know why the sun rose, or water flowed downward, or how a child was born.

Hyena began to chant and dance, making strange signs with his yellow-tufted stick.

Then Spear, and Tree, and the others, had turned away. Hamilton remained looking at the stones for a time. Then she, too, turned away, and followed the Men. Behind them they left the Horse People, regarding the ring of stones. Lastly came Hyena, shaking the yellow-tufted stick, dancing, uttering sounds in no language, but which seemed to him mighty in meaning, dream-sounds, of the sort which came to him in the night, when he, in his dreams, communed with the night hyenas.

“It hurts!” screamed Hamilton. “I’m dying! I will die!” It was impossible suddenly it seemed to her, that it should occur. It could not happen! “It will kill me!” she wept. She reared up, screaming, half sitting, then fell back, arching her back. “I will die!” she wept. “I will die!” Then she cried, “Kill me! Kill me!” Then the spasm abated and she wept and sweated. Ugly Girl put her head to the side of her waist, to comfort her. The other women of the Men, one by one, came to the shelter. Only Old Woman and Nurse did not come. “Go for Old Woman!” cried Hamilton. “There is time,” said Antelope. Then the pain came again, and Hamilton, crying out, felt blood in her mouth, where she had, with her teeth, torn open her own lip. She gritted her teeth, eyes closed, swallowed the blood.

It had been some months ago, toward the beginning of the fall, several weeks after Gunther and William had taken their leave of the Men, that the men, in one of the shelters, had come upon the bear, when Knife had fallen back, exposing Spear who had then been blinded. “Spear is blind,” had said Knife. “I am first among the Men.” None had gainsaid him.

For more than a week Spear, in one of the large shelters, had sat silent. Short Leg would not feed him. Some of the younger women came to him, remembering him giving him food. Hamilton too, had fed him. Sometimes Old Woman had come and looked upon him, staring out, one. eye gone, missing from the head, the other without pupil, only scar tissue beneath the upper lid. He did not move. He did not speak. One day Knife had come upon him and, seeing Old Woman standing nearby, had said to-her. “Take Spear hunting.” Knife had given Old Woman a spear, Spear’s own. Then he had gone to Spear and, by the arm, dragged him to his feet. “It is time to go hunting,” he said to Spear. Then he turned to face Old Woman. “Take Spear hunting,” said Knife. “Take him hunting on the high cliffs.” Old Woman nodded and took Spear by the arm. He permitted himself to be led away. As they had left the shelter, Knife said to Old Woman. “Spear killed Drawer.”

That afternoon Knife had been in a good mood. But in the evening, Old Woman had returned with Spear. Knife leaped to his feet, in fury. Old Woman led Spear to a place by the fire, and sat him down. “The hunting was not good,” she said to Knife, who looked upon her with rage.

Hamilton, and Flower, gave Spear meat from the fire. He chewed on it.

The Men and the women, too, gathered about. “Old Woman,” asked Tree, “who is first among the Men?”

She looked from face to face and then, after a silence, said “Spear-Spear is first.”

“No!” cried Knife. “I am first!”

“Spear is first,” had said 0ld Woman.

“Spear is blind,” said Short Leg, touching Tree. Hamilton had thrust her from Tree.

“Spear is blind!” cried Knife. “I am first!”

Old Woman said, “Spear-he is first.”

“Who is first!” demanded Knife. He looked at Tree.

Tree did not meet his eyes, but bent to the meat in the firelight, cutting it. He looked down, but he was smiling. “Spear,” he said, “is first.”

Knife cried out with rage. “Spear is first,” said Arrow Maker. “Spear is first,” said Runner. Knife looked about the fire. Stone stood up, who had hunted with Spear since their childhood. “Spear is first,” he said, without emotion. Knife glowered at Fox. Fox looked about from face to face. Then he said, “Spear-Spear is first.” “Spear is first,” said Wolf. Knife looked at Tooth. He sat cross-legged, chewing on meat. Behind him, in a collar of the men, knelt Ugly Girl, frightened. Tooth threw a bone into the fire. “Spear is first,” he said. Hawk, the youngest stood. “The first among the Men,” he said, “is Spear.”

“Give me meat,” said Spear. It was given him. Knife, looking about himself, left the shelter.

Hamilton, on her back, put her hands on her belly. Then she threw back her head and screamed again. It was large and alive and moving and wild and had begun its descent. She arched her back, shrieking, and pulled up her legs and threw them apart, her whole body caught up in the wildness of the contraction, the pain, even to the fingertips, the skin of the forehead and it would fight loose of her and the spasms more tight, more frequent, the impossible pain, the rocking, the violence, the escaping living thing unimaginable pressing from her and she saw the torch and Old Woman’s face and she reached her hand to her and Old Woman said “Be quiet,” to her and then, to the other women, “Gag her,” and Hamilton, fur thrust in her mouth, tied in place with leather, was, as Old Woman had ordered, gagged and her arms were held and the thing, alive, coming, pressing, moving, the agony, the contraction and Old Woman’s hands, sure, at her body, reaching and there was a tearing and Hamilton, arms held, gagged, back arched, silently, screamed to the silent, torchlit roof of the shelter her pain and the women pressed about and there was Ugly Girl and Flower and Antelope and the others and another pain, more terrible, and then less and from her distended body foul with stink and slime and life Old Woman lifted the thing from her body, cackling, the cord and tissue bloody, dangling from it, and, laughing, struck it, and Hamilton reached for it, tears in her eyes, and heard the tiny sound, the choking sound, and was terrified, and then, after a moment, the coughing, the intake of breath and the cry, the first cry, the lusty wail, the shriek of the offended life torn from her, lifted in torchlight among the primitive women, its lungs, tiny, widening, startled, contracting, instinctually drawing painfully within themselves the first shrieking, invisible draught of oxygen.

“It is alive,” said Old Woman. “And it is beautiful.”

Hamilton, weeping, reached for the child, and, as the women fumbled to take from her the gag of fur and leather, held its bloodied, dirty body to her own between her breasts. “I love you,” she wept to it. “I love you. I love you.”

“Give it to Nurse,” said Old Woman. “We must clean it, and cut the cord.”

Old Woman bent to the cord with a sharpened shell and bit of string. Ugly Girl and Nurse, with their tongues, licked the infant, cleaning it.

“You must not cry,” said Old Woman to the bawling life. “You will disturb the men.”

Then she put back her head and laughed.

“He may cry if he wishes,” said Antelope, laughing.

“Yes,” said Cloud.

They held up the child before Hamilton. She smiled. “He is of the Men,” she said.

Then she took him, and, in the torchlight, noted that on his neck, beneath the left ear, there was a tiny mark. It was not unlike a tree.

She held the child to her. “I love you,” she said to it. “I love you.” The pain was gone. She held the child to her, loving it. “I love you,” she wept. “I love you. I love you. I love you!”

“Cricket! Cricket!” called Hamilton.

She returned to the camp at the foot of the shelters. With Antelope and Ugly Girl she had gone to the river hank. She had gathered berries. Ugly Girl, climbing the sloping dirt bank, in places almost sheer, over the river, had thrust her hand into hollowed, tunnel nests, taking eggs, from the brownish, sharp-billed birds who nested there. Antelope, over her shoulder, like Hamilton, carried a sack, filled with berries and tiny fruit.

The children of the camp ran to them, putting their hands into the sacks. “No, No!” scolded Antelope, but not stopping them. They leaped about Antelope and Hamilton.

“Cricket!” called Hamilton. “Cricket!” She had selected some large, juicy berries, which she had hidden in a corner of the sack, at the bottom, for Cricket.

The child, Cricket, truly, had as yet no name ‘among the Men. He had not yet gone to the Men’s cave. They called him, sometimes, Turtle’s son, and sometimes, Cricket, for that was the name that Tooth had called him by when he had taken his first steps. “Cricket!” called Hamilton.

“That is enough!” laughed Antelope. Ugly Girl had already taken the eggs to Old Woman. On the way, she had, turning her head, bit one open and, spitting out the end of the shell, sucked out the white and yolk. Antelope bent down to give one of the berries to Pod, a small child, reaching up, Short Leg’s son, no more than two years of age, a few months younger, no more, than Hamilton’s son.

“Cricket!” called Hamilton. Then she asked Cloud, “Have you seen Cricket?”

Shortly after Spear had been blinded, he had been abandoned by Short Leg. Refusing to care for him, she had left him in the shelters, until one of the men would kill him. But none of the men had killed him. She had tried to attach herself to Knife, but Knife wanted none of her, for she was older than he wanted, and his choice was the girl, Flower, who had then been high woman in the camp. But Spear had again become first among the Men. None of the men had killed him. And Old Woman, when ordered to take him hunting on the cliffs, had merely done so. Spear had killed Drawer. But Old Woman did not leave him to die, or fall, among the cliffs. She had brought him back to the fire. Tree had asked her who was first among the men. “Spear-Spear is first,” had said Old Woman. “Spear is first,” had said the other men. Knife had turned away.

“Why did you not leave Spear on the cliffs?” asked Cloud. “Why did you not kill him?”

“Because among the Men,” said Old Woman, “he is first.”

Cloud, nor Antelope, nor the others, had questioned her further..

“Give me meat,” had said the blind, scarred Spear, huge and terrible, at the fire, and it had been done. Spear was again first.

“Spear,” said Old Woman to Hamilton, when they were alone, though Hamilton had not spoken to her, “is a great man. Spear is a wise and great man.”

Hamilton had looked at her.

“The Men,” she said, “need Spear.”

“He killed Drawer,” said Hamilton.

Old Woman nodded. Then she said, “Spear is needed by the men.”

When Spear had again become first, Short Leg had returned to kneel beside him, but he, terrible, one eye torn away, the other blinded, staring out, his face ridged and white with rivers of scarring, with one hand, gestured her from the fire behind which he sat. “I will die,” she had whimpered. Then she cried, “Feel my belly. I carry life!”

“I will not feed you,” said Spear.

Then she cried, “It is your law, that I be fed!”

“I will not feed you,” said Spear.

“I will feed her,” had said Stone. Short Leg had once been Spear’s woman. Since Spear and Stone had been children they had known one another. Stone had been with Spear many years ago, when Spear, for pelts, had purchased Short Leg from the Bear People. In Short Leg’s body was life. Law was to be kept. Stone remembered Spear, from long ago. He remembered Short Leg. She had had flowers in her hair. “I will feed you,” he said, his voice without emotion.

And so Short Leg was fed by Stone, but he did not make her kick, nor use her.

Hamilton’s son was born some months before that of Short Leg. When Hamilton’s son was born Spear had had the infant brought to him. He had lifted it up, over the fire. “A child is born to the Men,” he had said. Then he had given it back to the women. Little attention would be paid to it from that time on by men, except for gentle, loving Tooth, the ugly giant, with the extended canine. When the child could run with the men, when it could throw, when it could kill and take meat, then the men would take it unto themselves, removing it from the children and the women, and by training and counsel, make it wise in lore and skills, make it one of themselves, one of the Men.