Conan the Savage (21 page)

Even so, a revenge raid was planned and swiftly carried out. Five young bucks, barely able to conceal their righteous enthusiasm, daubed their cheeks and chests with the customary red clay and set forth on a mating hunt. They returned several days later—four of them, including Jad and Glubal, trailing comely maidens behind them. The women did not seem overly terrified; indeed, they carried neat bundles of possessions and soon joined in the daily routine around the women’s fire.

This event, to Conan’s surprise, tied him yet more closely into the life of the tribe. For with the arrival of the young brides, love was in the air of the camp. He and Songa thereafter were less likely to slip off into the forest for their intimacies than to lie in the red glow of the dying central lire at evening, snuggling in warm furs, caught up with the other new couples in a shared interlude of murmurs, laughter, and caresses.

Then one day a tremor of excitement went through the camp. Something called “Yugwubwa” had been sighted in the hills. At first it was unclear whether this was supposed to cause rejoicing or fear, but then Conan learned of a great hunt being organized. It seemed to be regarded as a rare opportunity for valour, and for laying in a large stock of food for winter. He was quick to volunteer with Songa, although she was unable to convey to him exactly what Yugwubwa might be.

Most of the tribe’s able hunters were recruited to go, as well as a number of youngsters who could be of use in heating the bushes. Aklak, as usual, was appointed hunt-master. The project called for every heavy spear in the village, since all the full-fledged hunters bore two, one of them tied with a loose hide banner meant for signalling and for turning back the prey.

The whole party, amounting to a score of men and a handful of women, set forth at dawn. A pair of trackers ran ahead unburdened to scout the way, which led southward along the first and lowest set of hills, toward a rolling plateau of mingled leaf-forest and grassland. Departing at a swift pace, they took no rest until mid-morning, when they arrived at an area of blind chasms and gravelly ravines that demarcated the plateau. It was not far from this place, evidently, that the prey had first been sighted.

Aklak took a handful of senior hunters aside and conferred with them. Then he ordered the band divided in two.; The party that he took charge of included none of the more seasoned hands. Instead, he chose Conan, Songa, and several youngsters eager to make a reputation, including Jad, Glubal, and two of the new females: lean, wiry-looking young women who already moved with a hunter’s swagger.

Striking out across the plateau, skirting the tangled thickets, Aklak kept his group silent and watchful. Then, intercepted by one of the scouts, they turned to follow him across a stream. In time they arrived at the edge of a copse where the grass was flattened by a broad, furrowed heap of fresh dung.

“What kind of monster laid that?” Conan exclaimed, shouldering to the fore. “By Crom, the beast must be huge!”

“Looks like Yugwubwa,” the scout grunted solemnly. Kneeling beside the pile, he laid a palm against it to test for warmth. Then, pinching up a sample of the brown stuff between thumb and forefinger, he crushed it before his nostrils. “Smells like Yugwubwa.”

“Aye, indeed,” some of the watchers concurred, wrinkling their noses.

The guide dabbed the excrement onto his tongue and savoured it critically against his palate. “Tastes like Yugwubwa. Must be Yugwubwa,” he proclaimed at last.

“Are you really sure?” Conan’s remark, meant as a joke, was cut off as the scout, from his kneeling posture, scooped up a generous handful of dung and slung it at Conan, spattering him on the neck and chin.

“What? Why, you—” Conan started forward, his hands clenched for murder, but was kept from it as others in the group rushed forward. Laying hold of the offal, they began hurling it wildly at one another, laughing and grunting in a momentary lapse of hunt discipline.

“What in Sheol?” Conan snarled. Then at once he understood: the hunters smeared each other with dung to cover their human scent, so that they might approach their prey more stealthily. It was the one odour that would arouse the least suspicion, a hunter’s age-old ritual, indulged in by these folk as a light-hearted frolic.

Once Conan understood, he willingly submitted. He let Songa smear the parts of his body he could not reach, then graciously returned the favour. His companions, by that time equally brown-clotted and pungent, silently took up their weapons and resumed following the track.

Shortly afterward, the scout’s stalking skills were rendered unnecessary by a tumult in one of the scattered groves ahead. Trees shivered in the green expanse, flashing the pale undersides of their leaves and giving off cracking and crunching sounds that suggested they were being dismembered as well, and eaten.

“Yugwubwa,” the murmur went through the band as, despite a qualm of uncertainty, they proceeded toward the unearthly din. Aklak led them around the side of the glade to approach the tumult from behind, along a swath of split, toppled, denuded limbs and trunks.

The beast was gargantuan, taller than a Stygian elephant, though leaner and less bulky in its proportions. Its four massive legs, rough and furrowed like great jointed tree trunks, stamped and flexed beneath the weight of the wedge-shaped muscular body that loomed half screened by lashing branches. Its hide looked impenetrable—thick and seamed, with mats of coarse red hair distributed patchily and rubbed entirely away in places. The hind legs were shorter than the front pair, which bore curved, stubby claws that looked highly efficient for both digging and self-defence. Another use for them became apparent as the monster reared up yet farther out of sight. The sloth-like talons hooked and gouged like anchors into the bark, enabling the unseen head to attack the tree’s upper branches.

“It is a rogue, a lone beast in its prime,” Aklak breathed to the others. “No family group, no easy kills... this will be a hunt to remember.”

His whisper was drowned by a near-explosive wrenching and tearing of living wood as the tree-eater had its irresistible way; half of the trunk that it had been mauling split and twisted aside, buckling to earth amid billowing foliage. This brought Yugwubwa’s forequarters back down into view: the bony, muscle-wedged torso, the nearly non-existent neck, and the long, broad, ugly head. The latter appendage was armour-plated, with six irregularly shaped horns paired along its length from tufted, mule-like ears to wet, snorting nostrils.

Those horns, some sharply hooked and some blunt or mushroom-tipped, were undoubtedly useful for snapping and levering the limbs off trees. Their bases were flattened and joined into an ungainly, elongated plate from beneath which blinked the beast’s small pig-eyes. Its broad lips formed a splay-toothed, thick-tongued muzzle that flexed greedily to fold in sheaves and bundles of foliage, twigs, branches, and strips of peeled, curling bark.

“Beware,” Aklak murmured to Conan as they crept up behind. “Yugwubwa is easily angered.”

Conan said nothing, concentrating on picking his way quietly through broken, scattered foliage. It might have been opportune to attack while the creature was occupied so high up in the ruined tree; now that its forelegs were back on the ground, it could turn and discover them the moment they moved too far from cover. It devoured the greenery ravenously, yet the continuous twitches of its short, tufted tail suggested wary irritability.

“Our best tactic is to wound it,” Aklak continued, “then hunt it back toward the main party. For that, we need a pair of strong spear-casters at the fore.” His hand rested briefly on Conan’s muscular shoulder, indicating his choice. “May the badger-spirit watch over us.”

While the others edged through foliage at either side of the broken path, Conan followed Aklak forward, ducking from shattered stump to sagging limb. The noise of the monster’s feeding was truly cataclysmic; its stench would have seemed much worse had the stalkers not already been pasted with it. Dropping to all fours and advancing at a crawl, the two advanced within spear-cast of the brute’s scraggly hindquarters.

Slowly and lithely, Aklak rose to a crouch. Conan waited for him to poise for a throw, or else make some commotion to turn the beast around. But the latter proved unnecessary, since a wild orbit of one of the monster’s eyes caught their movement. With a braying snort and a swift, tumultuous thrashing of foliage, the creature half-turned to face the intruders, bracing its mighty legs and swinging its head for a charge.

The Atupan’s spear-cast was swift and fluid, with Conan’s weapon hurtling close behind. The Cimmerian aimed for the leathery expanse of throat that looked softest and most flexible, but his point stuck instead in the hairy musculature of the monster’s breast. Aklak’s spear, aimed fairly for the eye or snout, glanced off one of the foremost, smallest horns of the oscillating head, its stone point shattering on impact.

Whether the weapon’s force was enough even to make its victim sneeze was doubtful. Conan’s shaft was snapped off by an angry swipe of one fore claw; yet the stub-end hanging in the creature’s chest must have remained an irritant, as indicated by Yugwubwa’s sudden, trumpeting bray and furious forward lunge.

“Conan, stay clear!” Songa’s slightly panicky cry rang from the forest.

The two stalkers retained one spear each. Yet further throws were impossible as the monster lunged at them, kicking up log splinters and shattered limbs before it. The two men’s weapons instead served them as balance poles to help them cross the littered ground, racing and scurrying to keep ahead of the enraged monster. Hearing more cries from either side, they glanced over their shoulders and saw spears hurled by their comrades—but without any visible effect on great Yugwubwa. The infuriated beast did not noticeably falter or turn aside; once its attention was fixed on them, it followed relentlessly on their track, its rhythmic snorts battering at their eardrums, its ponderous gait shaking the turf of the meadow under their feet.

“What of your plan?” Conan panted to his brother-in-law as they broke into open meadowland. “Is this what you call driving the beast into a trap?”

“It is well,” Aklak gasped. “Just lead him back the way we came. Yugwubwa is slow and lumbering, with his heavy horns and short hind legs. If he decides to give up the chase, jab him some more with your spear!”

The notion was laughable in view of the beast’s furious, plunging pursuit, even across the open ground. Its charge was as fierce and reckless, to Conan’s recollection, as that of an armoured homnose of Kush—a shade slower perhaps, hut also harder to dodge because of Yugwubwa’s tree-grappling nimbleness. The two spearmen were given scant opportunity to pace themselves for a long run, much less to turn and fight the menace that slavered at their heels. In swift, backward glances, Conan saw his five companions, with the exception of Songa, fall progressively farther behind. It was understandable, he allowed—since their steps weren’t hastened by the imminent prospect of being crushed or champed alive by Yugwubwa’s straining horns and teeth.

Crossing the plain from an unfamiliar angle, with dung-tainted sweat smarting in his eyes and the friction of dry air scorching his throat, Conan could not determine exactly the way they had come. Aklak seemed to know the terrain, so Conan stayed near him. Before them spread a patchy expanse of brush—potentially a dangerous snare for the fugitives, though it was unlikely to trouble their giant pursuer. It might, at any rate, provide cover; against his best judgement, Conan paced Aklak as he ran in between the stands of shrub.

The bushes forced the two a little way apart. It was Conan whom the monster followed, and as he feared, undergrowth soon hampered his steps. The chest-high foliage necessitated costly turns and leaps for Conan, while it only magnified the behemoth’s progress with crashings and thunderings ever closer behind. Ahead, abruptly, there loomed a tangled hedge of flowering bushes Conan must either crash or slither through; holding his spear level, he ducked his head and dove into it—

—only to see the land fell away before him. Darting out an arm, he grabbed hold of a-bush stem that promptly sagged downward, suspending him over the rim of a gully. Immediately overhead, the pursuing monster thundered, its speed carrying it far enough outward to miss Conan and strike the farther bank. Tumbling hom-over-hoof, it landed at the bottom with a bleat of stunned rage.

From nearby, Aklak uttered a triumphant howl, waving his bannered spear aloft to summon the others. Conan, meanwhile, clambered nimbly to escape Yugwubwa; his feet slid on loose earth as the beast hurled itself up the low embankment. By clawing at shrubbery, the huntsman dragged himself free even as chisel blows of the monster’s horns and claws tore loose a small avalanche behind him.

The Atupans, it seemed, had planned for this outcome and had fanned out along the gullies bordering the plateau. Now they came hurrying along the rim of the ravine, bearing logs and stones to hurl down on their quarry, and fresh spears to harry it with.

“Conan, my mate! How I feared for you and Aklak!” Songa was at his side, embracing him as he regained his breath. “I put a spear into the monster’s flank, but it did not even slow him!” Brandishing the stone-headed spear she still carried, she peered down through the broad gap in the brush whence snorting and pawing sounds issued.

“I will kill the devil yet, I swear it by all the nature-spirits!”

“We must slay it soon,” Aklak affirmed, “before it finds its way out of the ravine. Stay near Yugwubwa,” he called out to the others, ‘ ‘and spear him when he tries to climb up!”

The advice was easily given, yet it was no simple matter for one or two hunters, standing atop the shallow declivity, to drive back the frantic lunges of the trapped beast. The face it showed to its tormentors, for one thing, was a horrific one: slavering and splay-tusked, with curling snout, writhing purple tongue, and red, beady eyes gyrating beneath thick armour ridges. Surmounting it all, the bony crest of jagged horns could easily shatter spears; they might also hook a man and grind him to giblets if they caught him unwary. Luckily, the banks of the ravine were made of loose earth that crumbled away beneath the monster’s massive weight, providing it with no solid footholds.