Free Manly Wade Wellman - Hok 01 by Battle in the Dawn (v1.1) Page B

gingerly forefinger. “I know now without being told,” she
said softly. “That was the danger. What was it, a man?”
                 “No,” returned Hok, his eyes still prodding the clump. “It
was a Gnorrl. Zhik made the word.”
                 The
Chief was laughing loudly and carelessly, for the sake of the frightened
children. After a moment, the others joined in his merriment. Barp and Unn
whooped bravely at the silent bush- clump, waving their axes and exhorting the
Gnorrl to show himself and be slain.
                 Hok
returned to his cooking, tried a lump of liver experimentally, and finally ate
with relish.
                 BUT
as the sun drew to the horizon’s edge, Hok’s uneasy mood came back upon him.
The Chief and Zhik betrayed something of the same feeling, for they brought
wood in great billets and built the small fire into a large, bright one. Hok
sought serenity in toil, looking to his weapons. Did not the edge of his axe
need retouching to make it sharper? With a bone chisel he gouged away a tiny
flake of flint. But this aided neither the appearance nor the keenness of the
weapon. He started suddenly.
                 It
had grown dark as he handled his gear, and he thought that something heavy and
stealthy moved outside the patch of firelight. He felt as he had felt in
childhood, when his mother, the Chief’s first wife, still lived and told of how
her dead grandfather had moaned outside the tent to be let in.
                 The
Chief, who likewise felt the need for occupation, tightened the already perfect
lashings of his javelin. “We shall sleep outside tonight,” he decreed. “Zhik, too. The women and children in the tent, and a big
fire kept up until morning. One of us will watch.”
                 “Well
said,” agreed Hok. “I am not sleepy. I shall watch first.”
                 It
developed that Zhik was not sleepy, either, but Hok was the elder and had made
first claim. The Chief then raised his voice, calling “Silence!” At this
customary signal for bed-preparations, Asha, carrying her baby, entered the
tent. Eowi and little Nobda followed, and then Barp and Unn, who took their
places at either side of the doorway. The Chief and Zhik lay down by the
fireside.
                 Hok,
left to his vigil, fought hard against the perplexing sensation of being
watched. He tried to say that these were fancies. The chill at his backbone
came because it was a spring night, and he had come farther north than ever
before. The uneasiness w r as because of the
strangeness. Any prudent hunter did well to watch, of course; if the
Gnorrl came. . . .
                 It
did not come, and at last he grew sleepy. The stars overhead told him that
night’s noon was at
hand. He nudged Zhik into wakefulness, and lay down.
                 He
dropped into sound slumber, for moments only as it seemed—then started to his
feet with a wild, tremulous wail for fear and pain ringing through his head.
Catlike, he commanded himself upon the instant of rousing, could see, stand and
clutch at his javelin.
                 It
was dawn. The crying came from the direction of the tent. Something huge and
dark was carrying something small that struggled and screamed. The Chief, too,
was there running with axe uplifted.
                 But
a shaggy arm drove out like a striking snake. Hok saw the Chief spin and fall
heavily. The Gnorrl—it was that, of course—fled with its prize.
                 When
Zhik and Hok had gained their father’s side he was dead. His skull had been
beaten in, as though by the paw of a bear.

CHAPTER II
      Blood for Blood
     
                 THE
others were out of the tent by now. There was considerable hysterical weeping,
notably by Asha, who had lost baby and husband in almost the same instant of
time. Hok, bound by racial custom not to speak to