Read The Hunter Returns Online
Authors: David Drake,Jim Kjelgaard
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Historical, #Prehistory, #Action & Adventure, #Survival Stories, #General
The Hunter Returns (4 page)
They were there for only a split second, but that was enough. Anyone who lived by hunting had to learn, first of all, to take advantage of opportunities. Hawk cast his spear.
He heard it strike, and saw a thrashing in the tall grass. Instantly he was running forward, his club upraised. Meeting the other dog, he sidestepped as it struck at his throat. Hawk smashed his club solidly down on the dog’s head. It staggered, threw itself about, and went limp.
Scarcely pausing, for he was in the fire’s outer glow and therefore in a very dangerous place, Hawk went forward to get the spear-stricken dog. It was a female, and the one he had killed with his club was a big male. Doubtless they were a mated pair with puppies somewhere in the forest.
Hawk dragged both dogs to the fire and left them beside Willow. Then he squatted down near the fire.
He still shivered with excitement at the power of the wonderful new weapon that was now his. It was a long-sought answer to two pressing problems: how to stay far enough from dangerous game and at the same time attack it; and how to reach out and kill small, agile beasts which hitherto had eluded the hunters. At last he had a weapon with which he could strike at an unheard-of distance.
Hawk sat still, so entranced by the new and wonderful spear-thrower that he paid small attention to the familiar smell of burned hair and roasting meat. But when Willow brought him the roasted haunch of one of the dogs he tore happily at it. Finished, he looked to his fire and lay down to sleep.
His slumber was light. Ceaseless vigilance, an ability to be awake and on one’s feet fighting, all in the same instant, was the price of life. Hawk awakened at intervals to tend his fire and to test the various winds. No danger threatened.
He slept sporadically, satisfied that all was well and still refusing to worry about what tomorrow might bring. Banishment should have meant death in a matter of hours, but he and Willow were still alive and had food in plenty. They also had fire, their surest protection. Hawk rested contentedly, knowing that at any moment he might have to fight for his life but accepting that fact as a normal part of existence.
With dawn he rose and ate more meat, which Willow cooked. The day would bring its own special problems and the question of coping with them occupied his thoughts.
Until now his life had been a nomadic one. The tribe to which he had belonged had always found it necessary to wander, to follow the game herds upon which they depended for food. Often they passed one season hundreds of miles from where they had spent the previous one. There was no such thing as a settled or permanent home.
And the tribe, with a dozen strong hunters, had been able to wander. That many spearsmen, presenting a united front, could beat back almost anything that attacked. Even the ferocious saber-tooth was not a match for twelve spears.
But Hawk knew that he could not possibly wander now. Even if he were not accompanied by the wounded Willow, one man alone was no match for all the dangers of traveling. He must have a haven, some place of safety, and the fire was the safest place he knew. He hauled more wood and built his fire up. Then he looked restlessly about.
The second absolute necessity for just staying alive was plenty of food. For the present he had plenty, but it would not last. He must get more, and the fact that he had to hunt meant that he must leave the safety of the fire.
Hawk carefully fashioned two more spears for himself, then lashed points to them from the flints and thongs in his pouch. He tried them both for balance, and fitted them to his spear-thrower. Satisfied, he glided softly into the forest.
Seeking game, Hawk walked as cunningly and as carefully as any four-footed hunter. He used his eyes, ears, and nose, as completely as any beast of the forest. Always he hunted into the wind, so that he might be sure of everything about him.
Suddenly he halted, his nostrils dilating as they detected a faint scent. The odor strengthened, bringing to him positive news of a great cave bear. Hawk stood still, smelling, looking, listening. Cave-dwelling bears were monstrous things, even more savage than the saber-tooth tigers. From time to time, when they were desperate for food, the tribe’s hunters had attacked and killed a bear, but such a creature was far more than a match for one man. Still, for safety’s sake, he had better locate the bear’s cave.
Cautiously he stole forward, only to halt again as a new scent began to mingle with that of the bear.
It was the odor of dire wolves, giant beasts larger than the deer they usually hunted. A pack of them must be after the bear.
Just ahead of him was a small hillock crowned with a group of trees. Hawk ran swiftly up the slope and stopped beneath a tree whose low-hanging branches offered a quick climb to safety if need be. He peered around the trunk.
Across a small meadow, and against the side of another hill, the cave’s black entrance made a gaping hole. Taller than a man, it was little more than a yard wide. Nothing was visible, but Hawk was sure that the bear was within his den. Wolf scent grew stronger.
They swept into sight, a score of them. Lean gray beasts, each almost as tall as a man, the pack was strong and knew it. Even a herd of giant bison might fear such a pack. Should they attack a marching tribe, one unprotected by fire, the best the hunters could do would be to climb the nearest trees. Unfortunate humans caught on the ground would be torn apart in seconds.
The pack was intent on the bear’s den, and without hesitation swept in to attack. To Hawk, watching from the opposite hill, the cave’s dark entrance seemed to become a shade darker, and then the massive head and shoulders of the bear were framed in it. The wolves were leaping now, crowding each other in their eagerness to close. They swept in from every angle.
Like swift clubs the bear’s paws flashed. His great jaws snapped, and three wolves lay where they had fallen. More pressed in, so many that for a moment, the cave’s mouth and the bear were almost hidden beneath a wave of wolves.
Then, almost as suddenly as it had started, the fight was over. Leaving its dead behind, the battered pack withdrew. For a few minutes the wolves milled uncertainly, as though they would attack again. Then they trotted away.
Hawk waited until he was sure they were gone before he left the sheltering trees. It had been a surprising fight. The bear should have been killed, and would have had he been caught in the open. But he had chosen his position well and defended it easily. His tender flanks and belly, his most vulnerable parts, had been protected on three sides, and he had won his battle.
It was something to think about. Hawk added the incident to his wealth of forest lore.
He continued his hunt, searching out those places where he thought game would be. Presently he stopped again. Just ahead, a herd of antelope was feeding. Hawk stalked the small beasts carefully. He fixed a spear in his throwing-stick, stepped around a tree, and found himself within a few yards of the antelope.
They reacted in their usual fashion. Leaping and jumping erratically, they seemed for a moment unable to decide just where they were to go. Hawk cast his spear and saw it transfix a buck. Entering one side, the spear head and six inches of shaft protruded through the other. Happily Hawk went forth to retrieve his game. Again he had done it. Again he had killed game at a greater distance than a man could throw a hand spear by strength alone.
As Hawk shouldered the little buck, he straightened and stood still, alerted by the scent of dog. It was a puzzling odor, last night’s stale smell mingled with a faint but fresh one. Hawk followed his nose.
He looked beneath the roots of a great tree at two snarling puppies.
WOLVES
The mammoth had begun bellowing in the middle of the night. The men of Wolf’s tribe awakened immediately. They squatted, shoulder to shoulder, just inside the glow of firelight.
The hunters murmured among themselves as they strained their ears to catch every detail of sound and scent which the wind bore.
The commotion might mean food, and the tribe needed food very badly. Wolf’s belly pinched though he, as Chief Hunter, had eaten as well as any of the men in the tribe. The women looked gaunt, and several of the children cried listlessly with hunger.
When dawn was a hint so slight that stars still sparkled on the eastern horizon, Wolf muttered, “Come!” He got up, carrying his two spears in his left hand. Several of the hunters watched their chief in concern.
“Men do not hunt in the darkness, Wolf,” said Elm, the medicine woman. She was very old, perhaps a full generation older than anyone else in the tribe. Although Elm was a woman, age and the spiritual powers which she invoked in healing gave her freedom to speak where others would remain silent.
Wolf nodded toward the east. “It is not night, it is morning,” he said gruffly. “Besides, we need meat.
“Come,” he repeated. The hunters were looking at him. They got to their feet without objection. The ten adult men and their sons stayed close together as they slipped through the near-light.
Old Kar looked back once, toward the campfire which the women would now have to stoke. The Chief Fire-Maker had a duty to the camp, but his greatest duty was to the hunt; especially now, when the tribe’s luck had been bad for so long.
The mammoth was alone. It was a young bull, perhaps one driven from its herd when it challenged another bull for leadership—and failed.
The beast’s current problems began when it tried to cross a slow-moving stream during the night. The low creek bank shaded imperceptibly into a marsh of reeds rather than ordinary grasses. The mammoth was now bogged to its belly in sucking mud.
Wolf frowned at the sight. He and his hunters were not the only predators summoned by the beast’s despairing bellows.
A pack of a dozen dire wolves snapped and snarled among themselves at the edge of the marsh, waiting for dawn to provide them a better notion of how to proceed. The dire wolves were twice the bulk of ordinary wolves, and their powerful jaws enabled them to break up bones which their lesser cousins could not.
The increase in size and strength had not been accompanied by a comparable boost in brain capacity. The dire wolves were unusually stupid for carnivores. Their usual tactic was to charge straight in and overpower their prey. That would not work here.
The mammoth, though trapped beyond hope of rescue, weighed five tons. It was simply too big for the wolves alone to kill. Besides, it still swept a great arc with its trunk and curved tusks.
The morning sun was not yet high enough to lift vultures from the trees on which they perched overnight. They would come soon enough, drawn by the movements of other meat eaters even before the scent of death reached the birds’ keen nostrils.
The killers on which all the would-be scavengers depended were the pair of great tigers pacing toward the mammoth from upstream while Wolf and his hunters approached in the opposite direction. The cats advanced with a degree of caution, heads up and sniffing the wind. A grown mammoth was a dangerous opponent, even for tigers whose fangs were six-inch knives.
“The tigers are already here, Wolf,” said Boartooth, as though the Chief Hunter had not seen the big cats almost a minute before. Boartooth, an Assistant Fire-Maker, was a young man who wore a broad necklace of boar tusks to flaunt his name. He had vast confidence in his own abilities. “We must go back.”
Wolf looked at Boartooth sourly. “No,” he said. “We need meat, so we will drive the animals away and take the mammoth.”
“Waugh!” said several of the hunters in surprise. Old Kar looked at Wolf with concern. The Chief Fire-Maker guessed what his own part in the plan would be, and he was worried that he would not be able to perform it.
“Wolf,” Kar said, “the grass here will not burn well. There will be more smoke than fire, and the flames will spread slowly.”
He nodded toward the pack of wolves, angrily sidling away from the oncoming tigers. “Besides,” he added, “these are not bison to flee in panic from a fire. While there is so much meat around, they will not go far.”
Wolf grunted. “We are men,” he said. “It is right that the meat should be ours.”
The Chief Hunter turned to Boartooth. “You, Boartooth,” he said. “Go back and bring the women and girls. We will camp on the creek bank, and our campfire will keep the wolves and tigers away.”
Kar grimaced. “Be sure they fetch all the dry wood,” he said. “The alder saplings along the creek here will not burn well, and we will need a very big fire tonight.”
As the Chief Fire-Maker spoke, one of the saber-tooths sprang with a terrifying scream. Its forelegs locked on either side of the mammoth’s hump. They anchored the cat while the long fangs stabbed and slashed backward under the pull of the tiger’s powerful neck muscles.
Arterial blood spurted from the deep cuts. The red streams pulsed, paused, and pulsed again. Blood soaked the black wool covering the mammoth’s hide.
The stricken mammoth bellowed again and clubbed its trunk back over its head. The tiger was already leaping away. The mammoth’s blow staggered the cat and caused it to splash sideways into the marsh. The saber-tooth twisted, then clawed its way to firm ground in a spray of water and shredded reeds.
The killer’s mate began to groom it on the banks. The long saber fangs were bright with blood. The tiger licked them clean with obvious relish while the mammoth bled to death in the bog nearby.
Kar fussed with his preparations, plaiting the coarse bottomland grass into torches. The outer leaves were golden and would burn well enough, but the core of each grass stem was still pale and juicy because the soil was so wet.
The hunters could see that they would have trouble even keeping their torches burning. The tigers began to eat. The smell of fresh meat outweighed the tribe’s concerns.
Each hunter carried a hollow gourd filled with punk. Kar went from one man to the next, lighting the punk from the smoldering in his own gourd. By the time Boartooth returned, a little embarrassed at having been sent on a task that would usually have been given to a boy, all was ready for this unusual hunt.
Wolf gave a curt order. The men and boys lighted heir torches and moved forward slowly. This time instead of running ahead of the fire, they let the mild breeze advance the flames.
As Kar had warned, there was smoke but very little in the way of fire. The gray-white cloud clung to the grassheads as it blew toward the mammoth. The dire wolves had taken no notice of the tribe. Now the pack began to snarl and pace, uncertain of what was happening.
The male saber-tooth rose to its full height on the mammoth’s back and roared a challenge while its mate hunched low. After a moment, the cats resumed eating, but their attention was now concentrated on the humans.
The hunters continued to walk forward, relighting their wall of protection wherever it had smoldered out. Their legs were smeared black from the ashes. Occasionally a man would yelp as he brushed the tip of a stem which was still glowing.
The women and girls, carrying all the possessions of the tribe, stayed close behind the males. Elm muttered, but even she was willing to accept that there was no traditional way to hunt a bogged mammoth—so Wolf was not going against tradition. If the tribe hadn’t been so hungry, there might have been louder protests . . . but they were
very
hungry.
Bitter smoke wrapped the carnivores in memories of instinctive fear. The cats stopped eating, but they held their position on top of the mammoth’s carcass. The female growled. The male rose frequently onto its hind legs and slashed out with its widespread claws. The smoke swirled and reformed.
The line of hunters was within fifty yards of the mammoth. Vultures wheeled in the sky, but the birds would not come down while the smoke from the grassfire drifted over the ground.
“Hau!” the Chief Hunter shouted. His torch had gone out, but the fire had begun to leap ahead of him over the pithy reed tops closer to the creek.
He clashed the shafts of his two spears together. “Hau!” he called again. “Run, beasts, run! We are men and we come with fire!”
“Hau!” cried Kar, who did not have a spear. He waved his club to fan the flames. Other hunters took up the chant, clacking their spears together—tentatively at first, then faster and louder as they found the noise gave them courage and disturbed the animals. The wolves began to back away, then paused.
Wolf was afraid, but he knew that if the humans turned and ran now, the pack would chase them down and kill all but the swiftest. Without really thinking about what he was doing, he shouted, “Come!” to his men and rushed forward.
The fire singed his thighs as he ran through it. For a moment, the dire wolves were shadows twisting in the thickest part of the smoke. Then the pack broke and fled in the opposite direction. The ground trembled as a dozen 200-pound wolves galloped across it.
Boartooth threw a spear. It was a good cast, but the range was long. The spear struck a wolf in the haunch and penetrated to half the length of the flint blade—deep enough to cling, but not to disable its victim. The dire wolf, yelping in bass terror, ran even faster.
For the first time since he exiled Hawk, the Chief Hunter realized that the tribe no longer had a spear-maker to make up for such accidents. They would have to appoint a Chief Spear-Maker soon—
But first there was the problem of gaining the tons of good meat which were almost in their grasp.
When the wolves ran, the male saber-tooth leaped to firm ground with effortless grace. He roared a challenge while his mate crouched on the mammoth.
Kar had paused to plait together several reeds and ignite their dry heads. Though the reeds did not make a bright flame, they burned better than the wet grass, and the new torch had sufficient weight to carry it if thrown. Kar hurled the burning reeds straight at the tiger.
The bundle caught the cat on the side of the jaw. Its whiskers and the fine tufts of hair on its ears flared up. The tiger roared and sprang off in the direction the wolves had taken.
For a moment, the female saber-tooth held her place on top of the huge corpse. Then, with a blood-curdling roar, she jumped to the bank also. For a moment her body was a tawny shadow arching like a fish’s back every time it leaped and disappeared again in the high grass. Then Wolf’s tribe was alone with the corpse of the mammoth and a skyful of vultures which were afraid to land.
“We’ve driven them off!” Boartooth cried exultantly. “Our luck has changed, now that we’ve rid ourselves of Hawk!”
“Begin laying a proper fire,” said Kar coldly. “We’ll need more than smoke to keep those teeth away from us as soon as the wolves and tigers have time to get over their surprise.”
But the whole tribe, including the women and children, was splashing through the marsh with hand-axes and flint knives to get pieces of the meat. They were famished. None of them would wait for the mammoth to cook before they ate their bellies full.
Kar sighed and began to gather dry wood from where the women had dropped it. He was as hungry as the rest of them; but his duty came first, and Kar’s duty was to make the fire that would protect the tribe through the rest of the day—and the night which would follow.
The sun was two fingers beneath the horizon, but it still cast its red glow over the western sky. The moon would not rise until after midnight, and even then it would be a waning sliver. Through the twilight sounded the hollow
tok! tok! tok!
of a hand-axe on bone.
“Boartooth!” Kar shouted. The Chief Fire-Maker and Chinless, his other assistant, were dragging a bundle of alder saplings toward the fire. “Leave the mammoth alone and help us cut wood!”
Most of the tribe sprawled around the fire on their backs or sides, trying to find a comfortable posture. Their bellies were swollen with the huge amount of raw meat they had stuffed down their throats.
Many of the humans had eaten so much that they threw up. That didn’t matter; there was plenty more to refill the suddenly emptied stomachs. No matter what, tons of the rich, fat-marbled meat would spoil before the tribe could possibly devour it.
Even Wolf looked nearly comatose with his eyes half-open. His powerful fingers were laced over his belly as if to keep his guts from bursting out. With the exception of Kar—and Chinless, whom the Chief Fire-Maker had bullied into getting on with his duties—the tribe were not so much humans for the moment as they were like serpents which lay torpid as they digested the swollen lump that marked their most recent meal.
The campfire was near the mammoth. Kar had set his fire as close to the creek bank as he could in the jubilant confusion after the tribe gained the mountain of warm meat.
The fire
had
to be close if it was to keep the other predators away from the mammoth as well as protecting the humans during the night, but the constant procession of people jumping and splashing to and from the corpse made it impossible for the Chief Fire-Maker to build as near the bank as he wanted.