Zan-Gah: A Prehistoric Adventure (14 page)

Slowly and very cautiously, the creature came forward a little; and suddenly it reared up on its hind legs like a huge, imposing ape. Yet Zan saw dimly at last that it was neither a bear nor an ape. Emerging from the opaque darkness was a gigantic man! It was Chul! Zan was never so glad to see anyone in his life! He roused Dael even as Chul dispatched each of the guards with a single blow of his great fist. Then grabbing two of the bars of their pen, Chul snapped them like twigs and Zan and Lissa stepped out, ready to flee for their lives. “Come Dael, come,” Zan whispered urgently, but Dael
would not come!
“No, Zan,” he said. “I do not wish to go home. I will not.”

It was said that Chul was slow-witted, and it was true. But more than most, he had powerful and sure instincts. He saw at once that Dael was not himself—was sick—that something awful must have happened to work an earthquake in his mind. Chul did not pause to argue. Grabbing Dael by his arm, he flung him across his mighty shoulders and ran so fast that Zan and Lissa could scarcely keep up with him and his load. Dael was too dispirited to resist.

 

In his simplicity, Chul had never doubted that he would find both Zan-Gah and Dael. He had made careful preparations, bringing large supplies of food and water and leaving caches of both in caves, tree hollows, and under rocks all along the way. There were a couple of weapons too. They soon retrieved some necessities, especially the spears. The dawn was breaking and they were going on a downhill slope toward the land of red rocks where there would be many hiding places. Meanwhile they had to make haste. Their footprints were easily visible in the dusty ground, and it might not be long before spearmen were on their trail. Because they were traveling downhill, the wasp men, from their higher vantage point, would be able to see their progress from a considerable distance. They could not stop to eat or make a fire, at least until they had crossed the great gorge that was supposed to be Zan's burial place.

In telling his guards the night before where they were hoping to go, Zan had not been wise. The wasp men knew exactly in which direction to pursue them, and might well have caught them quickly if they had not delayed. But they had been preparing for a larger attack against the five clans, their old enemies. Thus, Zan's small band had a whole day to flee before they were followed—not by one but by seven clans of barbaric, fantastically painted warriors. It was almost an army.

When Zan's group entered the land of red rocks they had to stop and camp whether they wanted to or not. They had hardly slept in days, nor eaten more than their bare subsistence required. Zan and Chul were accustomed to
deprivation, but Dael was weakened by whole years of captivity. Lissa-Na, unused to either long travel or lack of comfort, was visibly in danger of collapse. In time, as they walked between the high, protective walls of the red cliffs, Zan recognized his former dugout shelter by the great death's-head configurations. Curiously, none of the party but he saw skull forms in the rocks, and Zan did not point them out. Showing them the easiest way to ascend to the dugout, he received an unlikely surprise when he found that it was already occupied! A young lad showed himself and called out to Zan-Gah in a familiar voice. It was Rydl!

Warm (if astonished) greetings and introductions followed. Zan explained to his companions how Rydl had befriended him in his time of trouble, and he was well received. Rydl finally understood what a twin was, and gazed long and curiously at both of them, giving a frightened glance at Chul as well. Rydl explained that his aid to Zan a few weeks earlier had been quickly suspected by the wasp men, and feeling sure that his kinsmen would force the truth out of him, he ran away, hiding in the red dugout and enjoying life there for the most part. He showed Zan the sling he had made for himself, and demonstrated how adept he had become with it. This surprised Zan as he remembered how little Rydl formerly had been interested in his invention. Trying it out, Chul responded to the weapon as Rydl had when he was younger—with awkwardness and little profit. It kept getting tangled, and Chul tended to hit himself with his own rock. None guessed at the time how important the invention of the sling would be to the future of Zan's people.

There was no time for this “plaything.” The exhausted party had to sleep for a few hours and quickly get on their way. Rydl, learning who might be pursuing them, decided to go along lest he be seized by his people and flung into the bottomless chasm. He too slept in preparation for a journey. Chul was the first to awake, roused by a distant noise. He immediately woke the others and bade them listen. The sound they heard was like remote thunder, and Zan took it to be an approaching storm; but Chul, allowing his jaw to drop as he listened intently, declared that it was the beat of drums. The wasp men were coming!

Chul instructed them to gather their things quickly. It sounded like an army and it was getting closer. As in a hunt the wasp warriors were announcing their advance with a dreadful clamor in the hope of driving their quarry to the edge of the abyss. Zan thought of the lion hunt when a similar method had been used. “Why should we allow them to drive us into their trap?” Zan asked. “We could wait here and try to slip behind their lines. I am not afraid of their noises!” Even as he spoke the drumbeats grew louder, now accompanied by a savage, deep-voiced chant of war:
Ah ah UH! Ah ah UH! Ah ah UH!

“To be trapped in this hole like frightened animals?” Chul responded. “No! We know where the crossing is, and we can beat them to it! If they get there first, our people will have no warning of the attack. And they will place guards at the bridge to take us when we try to cross.” There was no time for debate. They were roughly jolted into action by the regimented, inexorable reverberation of the drums. Chul led and the others followed him—except for
Dael, who followed Lissa-Na. And still the coarse chant and thunderous beat pursued them, ever louder.

The wasp men progressed at a steady, deliberate pace, eventually pausing to camp for the night. They were in no great hurry, satisfied that nothing could stop their advance. Zan's party made no such pauses, but sped toward the great cleft with its single crossing; so they were actually able to increase the distance that separated them from the drums and arrive at the chasm well before them. Unfortunately, they could not at once find the dead tree which served as the only bridge, and by the time they did, the wasp men were in sight, beating a note of terror, and grumbling their dull cry of battle. Rydl went first, dancing across with practiced step like a cat. Lissa-Na, whom Zan had come to respect as a very courageous person, crossed next with no sign of fear, her red hair flying. Dael followed, and then Zan. In the middle of the crossing Dael suddenly stopped and looked down into the stupefying depths of the chasm. Perhaps he was asking himself whether or not to end his life then and there. Guessing at his thought, Lissa called to him and extended her hand. He looked at her face for four or five seconds, looked down again, and then—took her hand and went across. Zan was close behind.

The wasp men with their eerily painted faces and red-tipped spears were close, and the tumult of their drums beat like astounding thunder. It was Chul's turn to cross,
but he did not take it!
Instead he grasped in his huge hands the end of the gnarled old log that served as a bridge. It was the small end, the top of what had once been a tree,
and with a titanic effort wrenched the trunk from its seat on the other side and sent it toppling and crashing by starts to the bottom of the abyss. To save his friends Chul was sacrificing himself! There was no crossing now, and the spearmen were rushing toward him. An agile dodge and the stroke of his club sent the foremost of them to his death. Meanwhile Zan, Lissa-Na, and Rydl were using their slings to good effect, giving Chul some relief. But it could not be long before he would be cut down by the multitudes that were approaching. It was Rydl who saved him. Calling loudly to him, he signaled a spot nearby that was a little narrower than the fissure generally was. Nowhere was the split in the earth very wide, but this spot alone might possibly be crossed by a very large, athletic, and daring man. Taking a desperate run, Chul leapt across to a colossal boulder on the other side, grabbing it with his very fingernails and holding onto it for his life. To his dismay, he heard a grating sound that sickened him. Under the violent shock of his weight the boulder had begun to move! With a final dauntless effort, even as spears were being hurled at him, Chul reached the top of the great rock, which slowly was collapsing under him. At the last crucial moment he was able to jump onto the far side and evade the assault, while the immense stone, like the gnarled log before, tumbled and crashed for a full minute to the bottom of the chasm.

 

 

 

 

The drums stopped. The wasp men, gathering at the edge of the cliff, first gazed into its awesome depths and then outward at the escaping fugitives. Once at a safe distance, Zan and his group did not look back. Several of the warriors threw their spears in sheer rage, although they knew that their targets were well out of range. Then they turned their wrath on their leader, as though it had been his fault that their intended victims had gotten away. Before long they were all arguing among themselves. They were indeed a quarrelsome people, swift to anger and far from unified—except in their shared desire for pillage.

Not one of their large group dared attempt the leap that Chul had made, and the next point of passage over this great schism in the earth was three days away. A few were ready to make the trek, but the greater number were not. Unnerved by the physical power of Chul and the inept beginning they had made, they decided to go home for a while to regroup their forces and salve their morale. Later they would build another bridge, when they had
the materials they needed at hand. This was finally agreed upon, but not without such violent dissension that they came near to attacking each other.

 

It need hardly be said with what surprise, joy, and excitement the return of Zan-Gah, Dael and Chul was received. From a distance, Thal recognized the two familiar globes of hair as in former days. How happy he was to see his two sons together whom he never thought to see again! When they arrived, Wumna, not believing her eyes and afraid the vision would disappear, nearly fell down from sudden happiness; while the father stared in wonder at his boys, now taller and softly whiskered. Zan, slim and grown, thought that his mother had shrunk, and that Siraka-Finaka seemed even smaller than he remembered. Siraka-Finaka completely ignored Zan and Dael, considering only the giant before her. She pounded her husband's hairy chest with her little fists to make certain that he was real. Chul lifted her off her feet, embracing her and his children as he never had before. Then he twirled his war club over his head with a whoop of triumph joined in by one and all. Unnoticed at first, Lissa-Na and Rydl were accepted and welcomed as the friends of Zan-Gah, and Chul was not slow to tell how Rydl had saved him from sure destruction. Zan, too, informed his family that Lissa-Na had been his healer and friend. Wumna squinted her eyes and looked narrowly at her for a moment, and Siraka-Finaka examined her red hair in wonder, as at the plumage of an exotic bird. But Lissa was soon made to feel at home.

That night before the fire, conversation turned to serious matters. Thal was visibly older, and white hairs had appeared in his dark beard. He was more somber than Zan had ever seen him. The feud between the clans had begun again. It was the Hru who had broken the truce. They had gradually regained their strength once they had gotten some food. Zan remembered the rabbit he had given them when they were too hungry to hunt or attend to their own needs. Emboldened by Chul's absence, their defensiveness had changed to aggressive hostility, and although no one yet had been killed, some were seriously wounded.

“Friends,” Zan said, “I must depart again to visit Aniah as I promised to do if I should return, and I must bring Dael with me if he will go. We cannot afford our hatred. I have reason to believe that the wasp men will be coming in great force, and we must stand together against them once again if we are to survive.”

 

Very early the next day, Thal and Chul walked with the twins most of the way as their guards, but on approaching the dwelling of Aniah they remained behind. Their presence would only aggravate matters. If peace could be made, Zan-Gah would have to make it without their help.

The word soon spread throughout the clans that Zan-Gah had returned with his brother. How this became known so quickly was a mystery, although not a difficult one; for although the men spoke only within their own clans, the women mixed secretly at times, sometimes
for religious reasons. Generally, the women were less separated by hatred than their husbands. It was their own sufferings that they cared about, not the rancor and prejudices of their men.

When Zan and Dael approached the northern clan, they were welcomed in a more friendly fashion than ever. Zan-Gah, the hero of the lion hunt, was now also seen as the determined champion who had risked all to recover his brother and twin. Aniah clasped their hands, feasted them, and gave them audience. He looked at Dael with curiosity, for he could see that he was much changed. He observed that Dael said nothing, and stood behind Zan-Gah like his shadow. Zan had a great deal to tell, but he confined himself to the wasp people. He told Aniah how he had narrowly escaped, and how the might of Chul had temporarily prevented a massive invasion. “The wasp people are determined,” he said, “to destroy us or make slaves of us,” adding that many, perhaps two hundred had come at them.

Aniah had the look of one who is groaning inwardly with pain, his brow newly entrenched with a leader's woe. “It is hardly seven days since we were at each other's throats,” he said. “Of all the five clans there is not one that does not feel aggrieved about something.”