The Covenant (4 page)

“Who knows?”

The imprecision of his answers alarmed him as well as the others, and he might have drawn back from this great venture had he not chanced to see Naoka lolling in the dust behind the thin line of sticks that marked her quarters. She was a marvelous girl, smooth of skin and decked with beads cut from the thick shell of the ostrich egg. Her face radiated the joy of a fine young animal, and obviously she wanted a husband to replace the one the rhinoceros had killed. Aware that Gumsto was staring at her in his hungry way, she smiled and nodded slightly as if to say, “Let’s go.” And he nodded back as if to reply, “What delight to share the dangers with you.”

It was remarkable that a girl as nubile as Naoka was available for a new marriage; a clan might operate together for thirty years without such an accident, because it was the custom of this tribe for a girl to marry when she was seven and her husband nineteen or twenty, for then trouble was avoided. It was a fine system, for the husband could rear his wife in ways he preferred; when she entered puberty to become a real wife, she would be properly disciplined, knowing what things angered or pleased her man. And he, having been forced to practice restraint while his wife was still a child—ostracism if he molested her sexually prior to her second period—acquired that self-control without which no man could ever become a good huntsman.

There were weaknesses in the system. Since the husband had to be much older than the wife, there was in any group a surplus of old widows whose men had died at the hunt or been killed by falls when searching tall trees for honey. These elderly women were welcome to stay with the band as long as they could function; when they could
no longer chew or keep up with the march, they would be placed in the shade of some bush, given a bone with meat clinging to it, and one ostrich egg, and there they died in dignity as the clan moved on.

Useless old widows were therefore common, but beautiful young ones like Naoka were a precious rarity, and Gumsto calculated that if he could somehow placate old Kharu, he stood a reasonable chance of gaining Naoka as his second wife. But he realized that he must move with some caution, because Kharu had spotted his intentions, and he was aware that his son was also eying the beautiful girl, as were the other men.

So as he leaned against the tree, his right foot cradled in the cavity above his left knee, he took stock of himself. He was a normal, good-looking man, rather taller than others in his group. He was compact, angular of shoulder and slim of hip, as the desert required. His teeth were good, and although he was deeply wrinkled, his eyes were powerful, unstained by rheum or brown. Best of all, he was the master-tracker. From a distance of miles he could discern the herd of antelope blending with the sand and find the one that was going to lag, so that it could be detached and struck with an arrow.

He possessed an inner sense which enabled him to think like an animal, to anticipate where the antelope would run or where the great rhinoceros was hiding. By looking at a track days old and noticing the manner in which the sand had drifted, he could almost detect the life history of the animal. When fifteen tracks jumbled together, he could identify the one made by the creature he sought and trace it through the medley.

Night fell, and a woman responsible for tending the fire placed her branches with delicate attention, enough wood to produce a flare to warn away predators, not too much to waste fuel. The swift, sure blackness of the savanna lowered upon the camp, and the twenty-five little brown people curled up under their antelope cloaks, their hips nestled in the little hollows. Two hyenas, always on the prowl, uttered their maniacal laughs at the edge of darkness, then moved on to some less-guarded spot. A lion roared in the distance and then another, and Gumsto, planning his exodus, thought not of these great beasts but of Naoka, sleeping alone not a dozen lengths away.

His plan had two parts: ignore old Kharu’s bleating but involve her always more deeply in the exodus so that she would have no alternative
but to support it; and lead his hunters on the trail of that rhinoceros for one last meal. In some ways it was easier to handle the rhinoceros than Kharu, for at dawn she had six new objections, delivered in a whining voice, but despite her irritating manner her cautions were, as Gumsto had to concede, substantial.

“Where will we find ostriches, tell me that,” she railed. “And where can we find enough beetles?”

Glaring at her ugly face, Gumsto showed the love and respect he felt for his old companion. Chucking her on the cheek, he said, “It’s your task to find the ostriches and the beetles. You always do.” And he was off to muster his men.

Each hunter reported naked, except for a quiver of slender arrows, a bow, and a meager loincloth to which could be attached a precious receptacle in which he kept his lethal arrow tips—but only when the rhinoceros was sighted. Few hunters have ever sallied forth with such equipment to do battle with so monstrous a beast.

“From the next rise we may see him,” Gumsto reassured his men, but when he followed the spoor up the hill, they saw nothing. For two days, eating mere scraps and drinking almost no water, they pressed eastward, and then on the third day, as Gumsto felt certain they must, they saw far in the distance the dark and menacing form of the rhino.

The men sucked in their breath with pleasure and fear as Gumsto sat on his heels to study the characteristics of their enemy: “He favors his left foreleg. See, he moves it carefully to avoid pressure. He stops to rest it. Now he runs to test it. He slows again. We shall attack from that corner.”

On the next day the little hunters overtook the rhino, and Gumsto was right: the huge animal did favor his left front leg.

Deftly he positioned his men so that no matter where the beast turned, someone would have a reasonable target, and when all were ready he signaled for them to prepare their arrows, and now a cultural miracle took place, for over the centuries the clan had developed a weapon of extraordinary complexity and effectiveness. Their arrow was like no other; it consisted of three separate but interlocking parts. The first was a slight shaft, slotted at one end to fit the bowstring. The secret of the arrow was the second part, an extremely delicate shaft, fitted at each end with a collar of sinew which could be tightened. Into one collar slipped the larger shaft; into the other went a small ostrich bone, very sharp and highly polished, onto which old Kharu’s deadly poison had been smeared.

When assembled, the arrow was so frail that of itself it could scarcely have killed a small bird, yet so cleverly engineered that if properly used, it could cause the death of an elephant. It represented a triumph of human ingenuity; any being who had the intellect to devise this arrow could in time contrive ways to build a skyscraper or an airplane.

When the final tip was in place—handled with extreme care, for if it accidentally scratched a man, he would die—Gumsto used hand signs to direct his hunters to close in, but as they did so he detected one last avenue down which the rhino might escape if it saw the hunters. Ordinarily he would have placed one of his practiced men at that spot, but they were required elsewhere, so perforce he turned to his son, and with deep apprehension said, “Keep him from running this way.”

He prayed that Gao would perform well, but he had doubts. The boy was going to become a fine hunter; of that there was no doubt. But he was slow in mastering the tricks, and occasionally Gumsto had the horrifying thought: What if he never learns? Who, then, will lead this clan? Who will keep the children alive on the long marches?

Gumsto had been right to be apprehensive, for when the rhinoceros became aware of the hunters, it galloped with great fury right at Gao, who proved quite powerless to turn the beast aside. With a contemptuous snort it broke through the circle of hunters and galloped free.

The men were not hesitant to condemn Gao for his lack of bravery, since they were hungry and the escaped rhino could have fed the entire clan, and Gumsto was appalled, not at his son’s poor performance in this particular hunt, but at the grave danger his clan faced. Twice recently he had sensed his age—a shortness of breath and a weakness at unexpected moments—and the safety of his people weighed heavily upon him. The inadequacy of his son reflected on him, and he was ashamed.

In sore irritation he abandoned the rhinoceros and concentrated on a herd of little springbok. Assuming full control of his men, he brought them to a spot from which they could take good aim at two animals, but neither was hit. Then Gumsto himself stalked another and lodged his arrow in the lower part of the beast’s neck.

Nothing visible happened, for the arrow’s weight was quite inadequate to kill the beast; all it accomplished was to deposit the tip beneath the tough outer skin, where the poison would be free to disseminate.
And now the excellence of this arrow manifested itself, for the springbok, feeling the slight sting, found a tree against which to rub, and had the arrow been of one piece, it would have been dislodged. Instead, it came apart at one of the collars, allowing the shaft to fall free while the poisoned tip worked its way ever deeper into the wound.

The springbok did not die immediately, for the effect of the poisoned arrow was debilitating rather than cataclysmic, and this meant that the men would have to track their doomed prey for most of that day. During the first hours the springbok scarcely knew it was in trouble; it merely felt an itching, but as the poison slowly took effect, strength ebbed and dizziness set in.

At dusk Gumsto predicted, “Soon he goes down,” and he was right, for now the springbok could scarcely function. Even when it saw the hunters approach, it was powerless to leap aside. It gasped, staggered, and took refuge beside a tree, against which it leaned. Pitifully it called to its vanished companions, then its knees began to crumble and all was confusion as the little men ran up with stones.

The butchering was a meticulous affair, for Gumsto had to calculate exactly how much of the poisoned meat to toss aside; not even the hyenas would eat that. The first concern of the hunters was to save the blood; to them any liquid was precious. The liver and gizzard were ripped out and eaten on the spot, but the chunks of meat were taboo until taken back to camp and ritually apportioned so that every member of the clan could have a share.

Gumsto could not be proud of his accomplishment. Instead of bringing home a huge rhinoceros, he had produced only a small springbok; his people were going to go hungry, but what was worse was that at the tracking only he had foreseen which way the animals were going to move, and this was ominous. Since the clan knew nothing of agriculture or husbandry, it lived only on such meat as their poisoned arrows killed, and if those arrows were not used properly, their diet would be confined to marginal foods: tubers, bulbs, melons, rodents, snakes and such grubs as the women might find. This band had better develop a master-hunter quickly.

Normally, the son of a leader acquired his father’s skills, but with Gao this had not happened, and Gumsto suspected that the deficiency was his: I should not have allowed him to drift into peculiar ways.

He remembered his son’s behavior at their first big hunt together;
when other lads were hacking up the carcass, Gao was preoccupied with cutting off the tips of the horns, and Gumsto realized then that there might be trouble ahead.

“You’re collecting them to hold colors?” he asked.

“Yes. I need seven.”

“Gao, our clan has always had some man like you, showing us the spirits of the animals we seek. Every band has, and we treasure the work they do. But this should come after you’ve learned to track and kill, not before.”

Wherever the San people had traveled during the preceding two thousand years, they had left behind on rocks and in caves a record of their passage: great leaping animals crossing the sky with brave men pursuing them, and much of the good luck the San hunters had enjoyed stemmed from their careful attention to the spirits of the animals.

But before prayers, before obeisance to the animal spirits, before anything else on earth, the band must eat, and for a lad of sixteen to be delinquent in the skills of obtaining food was worrisome.

And then a shameful thought crept up on Gumsto: If Gao turns out to be a proficient hunter, he will be entitled to Naoka. As long as he remains the way he is, I face no trouble from that quarter. That exquisite woman was reserved for a real man, a master-hunter, and he himself was the only one available.

So when the meager portions of meat were distributed, he asked his wife airily, “Have you talked with the widow Kusha about her daughter?”

“Why should I?” Kharu growled.

“Because Gao needs a wife.”

“Let him find one.” Kharu was the daughter of a famous hunter and took nonsense from no one.

“What’s he to do?”

Kharu had had enough. Rushing at her husband, she shouted for all to hear, “It’s your job, worthless! You haven’t taught him to hunt. And no man can claim a wife till he’s killed his antelope.”

Gumsto weighed carefully what to say next. He was not truly frightened of his tough old wife, but he was attentive, and he was not sure how he ought to broach this delicate matter of moving Naoka into his ménage.

How beautiful she was! A tall girl, almost four feet nine, she was exquisite as she lay in the dust, her white teeth showing against her
lovely brown complexion. To see her flawless skin close to Kharu’s innumerable wrinkles was to witness a miracle, and it was impossible to believe that this golden girl could ever become like that old crone. Naoka was precious, a resonant human being at the apex of her attractiveness, with the voice of a whispering antelope and the litheness of a gazelle. Desperately Gumsto wanted her.

“I was thinking of Naoka,” he said carefully.

“Fine girl,” Kharu said. “Gao could marry her if he knew how to hunt.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Gao.”

He was not allowed to finish his line of reasoning, for Kharu shouted across the narrow space, “Naoka! Come here!”