John Norman (41 page)

“Since I gave you the sinew,” said Hamilton to Butterfly, “you must, when the men return tonight, give me your share of the dried sugar berries, if Old Woman lets us have them.” These were almost the last of the berries, dried and hard, but sweet when chewed, left over from the preceding fall.

“No!” said Butterfly.

“Give me back the sinew!” laughed Hamilton.

“No!” said Butterfly. “I will give you the sugar berries! I will, Turtle!”

“Very well,” said Hamilton. She looked down at Butterfly. “For whom are you making that garment?” she asked.

“For Hawk,” said Butterfly, angrily. “He makes me work so hard!”

“Men are all beasts,” said Hamilton.

“Yes,” said Butterfly. “They are! They are!”

Hamilton looked away from Butterfly, happy. She breathed in the delicious spring air.

The men were hunting. They would return by nightfall. There was now no man in the camp, with the exception of Hyena, who seldom ran with the hunters. He was in his cave, arranging stones in patterns, about the skull of an aurochs. He spent much time doing this, and such things. Hamilton hoped that the men’s hunt would be successful. She was hungry. They had been gone now for two days. She had missed Tree last night. She saw Antelope returning to camp with water. Cloud was with her. Cloud no longer wore Gunther’s watch, taken from him when he had been driven from the camp. She kept it among her belongings.

Hamilton made her way up the face of the cliff. She made the ascent less circuitously than she would have the preceding fall. She did not take the sloping path used by Old Woman, that used, too, by those who carried burdens, but scrambled upward, foot by foot, toward the second tier of caves, to the first broad ledges. Some forty feet from the ground, on – a broad ledge, she looked out across the woods. The sky was very blue, with white clouds. The first leafage, delicate, very green, was on the trees and bushes. This past winter there had been only one visitor other than Gunther and William, a trader from the Bear People. He had brought shells from the Coast People, for which he had traded skins, and, for them, received salt from the Men. He had stayed for ten days. He had been known. Gunther and William had arrived some four weeks later. Hamilton was looking forward to the summer camp, in which the Men moved sometimes marches away, for new hunting, in which huts were built. It had been to a summer camp that Tree had first brought Hamilton. And from the camp they had gone to fetch flint and salt before returning to the shelters. The women did not know the location of the salt. Hamilton recalled how bard she had worked at the flint lode. But she was anxious to see it again. Flint, and salt, were necessary. She recalled how Spear h4 scratched out the sign of the Weasel People at the flint lode and drawn over it the sign of the Men, the arm and the spear. She wore that same sign on the five leather squares of her necklace, among the leather, the claws, the threaded shells. The flint belonged to the Men, and so, too, she thought, smiling, did the women of the Men, no less claimed, no less owned. She saw Flower below, at the foot of the cliffs. Flower, too, of course, wore the necklace of the Men. It was a pleasant day, shortly past noon. From where she knelt she could see the children playing.

“Lazy Girl,” said Old Woman, emerging from the cave behind her. “Chew this hide for Runner.” She threw a hide scraped, beside Hamilton. What flesh and dryness remained in it would be chewed away, bitten and licked by the mouth of a woman; the acid in her saliva, moistening the hide, Hamilton knew, too, was important. “Let Cloud do it!” protested Hamilton.

“I will switch you,” said Old Woman.

“No,” said Hamilton. “I will do it!” Quickly Hamilton picked up the hide and began to chew it, beginning at one edge.

“You are a lazy girl,” said Old Woman. “You should be traded to the Coast People. Their girls are good for nothing.”

Old Woman cackled with satisfaction, and left.

Hamilton chewed on the hide.

She saw Flower below. Why had Flower not been given the hide? Flower did not work well when the men were not present and Old Woman could not see her.

“Flower,” thought Hamilton, “is a lazy girl. If anyone should be traded to the Coast People, it should be Flower.” If Flower were traded, Hamilton thought to herself, she, Hamilton, would be the most beautiful woman in the camp, except perhaps in a year or two, when Butterfly was older. Hamilton thought of herself as being the camp beauty. The thought did not displease her. Then she laughed at herself. How strange it all was. She recalled her own time, her own world, her former identity and self, her education, her degree, her proficiencies, former friends, former surroundings. Now she smiled. Now she was only Turtle, a slave of primeval hunters, and of one in particular, a primeval woman kneeling on a stone ledge before a cave, chewing hide for a master, waiting for the return of hunters.

“I am happy,” said Brenda Hamilton to herself. “I am truly happy!”

It was then that, from the ledge, she saw him, at first only a shaggy pelt of hair, the tip of a stone-bladed spear in the brush, more than fifty yards away, across the clearing at the foot of the cliff.

She knelt on the ledge, speechless, frightened, confused.

Then she saw others.

She leaped to her feet, screaming.

At the same time, moving swiftly, crouched over, carrying spears and clubs, they emerged from the brush about the clearing.

They wore headbands.

She saw Flower stand as though frozen. In an instant one of them was upon her, striking her with a club to his feet.

She heard Antelope scream. Old Woman came running from the cave. The children, crying out, shrieking, scattered. Men struck at them with spears. Hamilton saw one of the men kneeling over Flower, jerking her hands behind her back and tying them. She saw Antelope in the arms of another man, squirming. Then she was thrown to her belly, to be bound. Other men swept around the clearing. Some began to climb. Numb, half in shock, not comprehending, Hamilton stood watching. “Run!” cried Old Woman. Hamilton saw the face of a man appear suddenly above the ledge to her left. Then his arm was over, and half his body. “Run!” screamed Old Woman. Hamilton suddenly felt the stinging cut of the old woman’s switch. Frantically Hamilton began to scramble up the cliff. Gasping, fingernails scratching in the crevices, miserable, Hamilton climbed. She heard Old Woman’s switch below strike the man. He cried out with rage. She turned, looking over her shoulder, hearing Old Woman’s scream, then seeing her dropping, hitting, rolling and dropping, turning, down the steep slope, sprawling to the clearing below, and the face of the man below.

She climbed another foot. She heard his cry to her, ordering her to return to the ledge. Desperately she sought a new handhold. He cried out again. She found it, and moved higher on the cliff. She had seen Tree climb the cliff here, and others, even some of the boys. A rock struck her, hard, on the left side, above the small of her back. She slipped, but caught herself. Then she heard the man begin to follow her. Then there was another, too, with him. She reached a small ledge, and, breathing wildly, with two hands, grasped a heavy stone. With difficulty she raised it over her head and, moaning, flung it downward. It struck the first climber a glancing blow on the side of his head. He lost his hold, scrambling and scratching against the side of the cliff, and, skidding, and then dropping, fell back to the broad ledge, twenty feet below. The second climber reached over the ledge on which she stood and grasped her ankle. She shook free and began again to climb. He ordered her back. He was swift behind her. He leaped for her but she was too high for him. For minutes Hamilton climbed. At first he did not climb after her but stood on the ledge, shouting at her. Twice he threw rocks. One struck her on the left leg, behind the knee, hurting her. The other struck near her face on the left side, nearly causing her to lose her hold, but again, she did not fall. She heard men shouting below. She sensed that some were looking for a new ascent an easier one, to head her off. Then she heard the man below, not wanting to risk losing her, perhaps wanting to be the one to take her, begin to climb. On a tiny ledge she turned. He was still following her. Far below she could see men in the clearing. At the feet of one, bound hand and foot, lay Flower. Between the feet of another, similarly secured, lying on her side, lay Antelope. The butt of his great spear, upright in the dirt, in his imperious grasp, that of her taker, lay near her face. She saw Old Woman lying at the foot of the cliff. Another man was dragging Butterfly by the hair, bent over, down the sloping path leading up to the first level of caves. In his free hand he held a bag of salt. She saw one child, bleeding, lying in the clearing. From the brush one man emerged, pulling a young, pregnant female by the wrist. He tied her hands behind her back and made her kneel. With a rope he tied her by the neck to Flower’s bound ankles. She saw two more women of the Men being prodded to the center of the clearing, shoved stumbling before the spear butts of captors.

Hamilton was miserable. She did not see how she could climb further.

She heard the man below her, now making his way upward. He shouted angrily at her. He gestured that she should come down.

Again, moaning, Hamilton climbed. She slipped, cried out, and again climbed. She now clung to the cliff a yard below its summit, but could not reach the summit. She was more than eighty feet above the nearest outjutting ledge below her at this point, the height of an eight-story building. She did not dare to turn and look back to the valley, which lay some two hundred feet, the equivalent of some twenty stories, below. She wept, and put her cheek against the granite of the cliff. Never before had she tried to scale the cliff on this face. She realized, sickeningly, she had not chosen an ascent which was proper for her. She had seen Tree climb the cliff at this point, but he was powerful and long of limb. The boys, she now remembered, had been to her left. She could not retrace her steps without falling into the hands of her pursuer. He laughed below her, seeing her predicament. She cried out with misery and, suddenly, as she felt the wind moving against her on the cliff, was frightened of falling. She heard the man moving closer to her. She looked down. He had taken a thong from his waist and put it in his teeth. In a moment she knew he would reach up and tie it on her ankle, and she would be caught. There was a sound above her. She heard a clicking noise, a tongue click, and a smacking of lips and hiss. Ugly Girl reached over the cliff, extending her arm and hand down to Hamilton. “No!” cried Hamilton, frightened. Then she reached for Ugly Girl’s hand and, seizing her on the wrist with her other hand, swung out over the cliff. Hamilton screamed with misery. The man below cried out with rage. Then, inch by inch, Ugly Girl, with her squat, powerful body, the strong arm, drew Hamilton to the summit of the cliff. Gratefully Hamilton scrambled over it. She looked about herself. She saw Nurse and another woman of the Men two hundred yards away. They had made the ascent by the side, and were now, running and scrambling, making their way down a side path to the brush and trees far below. She saw the woman with Nurse abruptly, suddenly, change her direction, and take a new descent path. Ugly Girl pulled on Hamilton’s arm, hurrying her. Hamilton shook free of her touch, shuddering, but ran beside her. Nurse and the other woman of the Men had disappeared. Hamilton and Ugly Girl sped across the roof of the mountain of stone in which were the shelters. There was some brush and twisted plants on its summit, where, over years, dust had gathered and seeds had fallen. She heard a cry behind her, the man pursuing her having gained the height of the cliff. Suddenly they saw two men appear before them, some two hundred yards away, emerging over the rocks. Hamilton moaned. She turned back, and then back again. They were approaching swiftly. She did not know which way to run. Then, crying out, she felt the hand of the man behind her in her hair. She was painfully thrown to her knees on the stone. She tried to reach his hand in her hair. Ugly Girl darted away. The other men neared. She tried to struggle. He, his hand tight in her hair, wrenched her head viciously back and forth and she, screaming, half blinded with pain, knelt with absolute quiet, a captive female; she now feared only, his hand so tight in her hair, that she might move in the slightest, thus again causing herself that excruciating pain. She had been taken. She saw Ugly Girl stop, and look about herself, wildly. Hamilton lifted her hand to Ugly Girl, tears in her eyes. The two other men were now within fifty yards. Ugly Girl suddenly turned back and, to the astonishment of the man who held her, threw herself upon him like an animal, scratching at his eyes biting at his throat. He fended her away from himself with his right arm, releasing Hamilton, who, crying out, scrambled away. She heard Ugly Girl cry out with misery. Turning back Hamilton saw that the man had thrown Ugly Girl to his feet by her hair. He kicked her. Ugly Girl whimpered and reached out to Hamilton. Hamilton turned away, fleeing. She heard the other two men behind her; she heard the cry of another man from somewhere; she fled. Now she was on the side path, which she knew well, each hold and step; she darted, leaping and scrambling, from one ledge to another, and then she was out of sight of the men above her; she darted into one of the caves on the second level, slipping into its darkness. “Turtle?” said a voice. It was Cloud, huddling in the darkness, trembling. “Yes,” whispered Hamilton. Then, on her hands and knees, she, from this cave, crawled down a crooked, sloping passage into an adjoining cave. “That is the way to the Men’s cave,” wept Cloud. “You may not go there!” Scarcely had Hamilton entered the small, crooked, sloping passage then she heard men, three of them, entering the cave she had left. She heard, behind her, Cloud’s scream, and the sound of blows. Hamilton emerged into the next cave. She screamed. A monster, it seemed, reared up before her, something with a twisted human body and the head of an aurochs’ skull. It shook a rattle at her wildly. It was Hyena. She fled past him into the darkness. She heard men entering the cave from the ledge outside, from the sunlight, and another, calling out angrily, emerging from the small passage, who had followed her into it. She heard Hyena’s rattle. Then she heard men brush past him. She fled deeper into the passage, feeling the sides of the passage.