Manly Wade Wellman - Hok 01 (3 page)

The Capture of Oloana

 
          
IT
was one of the smallest pools in the wide, dense-grown forest, a blob of shiny
dark over which boughs and vines laced greenly. The girl turned over lazily
upon its quiet surface, swam three strong, slow strokes to the brink, and waded
out.

 
          
Her
golden, glistening body, its curves at once strong and graceful, would have
intrigued even critical modern eyes. She shook herself, like the handsome wild
thing she was, and drops showered from her like rain. Then she donned her
single garment of soft
doeskin, that
looped over one
round shoulder, covered her young bosom’s swell, fitted her waist and dropped
like a short skirt to mid-thigh. Her slender feet slid themselves into sandals
of well- tanned bison leather. On her right arm she fastened a sort of
bracelet, strung out of small gay shells. Finally she rummaged in a belt-pouch,
brought out a shallow-toothed comb of deer-horn and, leaning back against a
half-rotten stump, began to arrange her great, damp cloud of blue-black hair.

 
          
Oloana,
daughter of Chief Zorr and beloved of his giant lieutenant, Kimri, feared nothing.
The huntsmen of her little tribe had long ago driven the beasts before them,
even in this northern edge of the forest. As for human menace, who would dare
so much as look at her, for all her new ripeness of beauty?

 
          
Yet
someone was looking. He lounged easily in a tree-fork overhead, lithe and
motionless as a leopard in ambush. Unlike Oloana’s dark folk, he boasted a head
of hair the color of a lion’s mane. His face, clean of beard, was ruddy rather
than sallow
brown,
and a scar across one young cheek added
sternness to his undeniable good looks. He wore moccasins instead of sandals,
and the fashion of his axe, dagger and javelins was strange to the people of
that forest. He was Hok, who had come south to find a woman.

 
          
His
gray fighter’s eyes sparkled with honest relish, and his wide mouth spread
wider in a grin of approval. His big hands opened and closed, as though eager
to seize what he saw. Noiselessly he rose erect on his perch, twitching a
javelin from his shoulder-loop. The long shaft whizzed in the air, and thudded
into the stump beside the girl.

 
          
Oloana
screamed in panic, tried to spring away—in vain. The sharp flint point had
pinned fast the edge of her skirt. Even as she struggled to tear loose, a happy
laugh rang out above her. A long-limbed, bright-maned demon fell out of the
branchy heavens, lighted easily upon moccasined toes, and caught her by the
elbow.

 
          
“You
are mine,” he announced, in a language similar
to her own
.

 
          
She
screamed again, and struck at him. Her fist rang on a chest as hard as wood. He
laughed the louder, plucked away the tight-wedged javelin as easily as Oloana
would have gathered a wild- flower. Still struggling and shouting in fear and
rage, she felt herself whirled lightly up and across his shoulder. Then he ran.

 
          
For
another, deeper shout answered Oloana’s appeal, to be echoed by more shouts.
Her people, the dark forest men, had heard her and were coming. Hope came to
the girl and added fire to her battle for freedom. Hok chuckled and fled the
faster.

 
          
Still
more loud
came
the pursuing cries. Racing figures
could be seen among the thickets behind — black beards and brandished weapons.

 
          
“No
javelins!” bellowed one great voice, the voice of Zorr, Oloana’s chieftain
father. “You might kill her. Run him down!”

 
          
“We
have him!” howled back the gigantic Kimri, who was to marry Oloana. “He’s
running toward the ravine!”

 
          
It
was true. A narrow, ancient creek had cut deeply into the loamy floor of the
forest, and there the ravisher must perforce come to bay. Oloana ceased her
cries, fiercely exulting over the imminent reckoning. She heard Hok’s sharp
gasp of surprise as he spied the ravine, a good five times the length of a man
across, and nearly double that in depth.

 
          
But
he did not slacken his pace. Once more the stolen girl screamed, screamed in
new and mortal terror, as Hok raced to the very rim of the chasm and sprang out
over it.

 
          
For
one heart-smothering moment Oloana stared down at the rock-torn current far
below. They must fall; be crushed—but her captor’s free hand had seized a
dangling vine. Their weight carried them flying onward, upward, while the far
bank rushed to meet them. Hok’s feet found the brink, clutched solid footing,
and he paused to look back.

 
          
The
black-beards were lining the other bank, cursing and raving. Several lifted
their spears. Hok laughed and swung Oloana’s body before him.

 
          
“Do
not throw!” commanded Zorr anxiously. “Cross after him!”

 
          
“None
of you dare the leap,” taunted Hok.

 
          
“I
will follow!” screamed Kimri, towering among his fellows.

 
          
“Follow,
then,” laughed Hok, and plunged anew into the forest, dragging Oloana by the
wrist.

 
          
FOR
eternities, it seemed, he urged her to match his tireless lope. She ceased to
struggle and drag backward —her strength was nothing to his. They came into
strange country, beyond the northernmost limits of Zorr’s latest northern
foray. Just as the girl wondered if her captor would never grow weary, he came
to an abrupt halt.

 
          
They
stood in a little clearing among birches, with a trickle of water crossing it
and, to one side, a rocky hummock with a yawning cave entrance.

 
          
“We
camp here,” said Hok, Oloana’s eyes threw black hate-fire, and her bosom heaved
as she probed her mind for names bad enough to call him.

 
          
“You
dared steal me!” she flung out.

 
          
“You
are a woman,” he replied, as if that explained everything. “I am a man. My name
is Hok.”

 
          
“A
man?” she echoed scornfully.
“With no beard?”

 
          
“With
my people, men without mates pluck out their beards. Now I shall grow mine.”

 
          
Her
voice trembled with rage and contempt. “You have the face of a boy. Kimri will
crush your skull like a toadstool.”

 
          
“Let
him try,” said Hok. “Come into the cave.”

 
          
“I
won’t.”

 
          
He
lifted her from her feet and carried her in. She screamed once more, though
help was far away, and her flying fists glanced from his chest and face like
hailstones from a cliffside. Setting her carefully upon the floor of the cave,
he barred the door with his own great body.

 
          
“You
are beautiful,” he informed her. “What is your name?”

 
          
She
sprang at him and bit his shoulder. Snorting, he pushed her away.

 
          
“We
had better rest,” he decreed.
“Both of us.”

 
          
Deep
night found a fire blazing at the cave-mouth. Hok had speared a grouse in the
clearing, and was grilling it on a twig. When it was done, he offered the
choicest morsel to Oloana.

 
          
She
shook her head, her eyes bright with tears. “When will you let me go?” she
pleaded for the hundredth time.

 
          
“I
have said that you are mine. I am a chief in the country to the north. We will
go there.”

 
          
“Go
there?” she repeated. She began to edge toward him.

 
          
“What
is your name?” demanded Hok once more.

 
          
“Oloana,”
she breathed, coming closer. He gazed in happy surprise.

 
          
“Oloana.
That is a beautiful name. When we—”

 
          
Out
flew her hand. She caught one of his javelins from where it leaned at the
entrance to the cave. Whirling it, she plunged the point straight at her heart.
Hok’s hand, still clutching a shred of his supper, flew a thought more swiftly.
The deflected point glanced off across the base of Oloana’s throat, leaving a
jagged thread of crimson. A moment later Hok twisted the weapon from her hand.

 
          
“You
might have killed yourself,” he scolded.

 
          
She
burst into new tears. “I hate you. As soon as you let me go, I will try again.”

 
          
Hok
took from his shoulders the javelin-strap. Pulling her wrists together, he
bound them.

 
          
“My
feet are free,” she cried and, springing up, darted from the cave and leaped
across the fire. Before she had run half a dozen steps he overtook her and
dragged her back. This time he bound her ankles with his girdle-thong. She lay
helpless but tameless, and glared. Hok hugged his knees and studied her with
worried eyes.

 
          
“I
wanted you the moment I saw you,” he said plaintively. “I thought you would
want me, too.”

 
          
She
spat at him, rolled over and closed her eyes.

 
          
“Sleep
then,” he conceded. “I shall sleep, too.”

 
          
In
the morning he woke to find her propped upon bound hands, her eyes turned
unforgivingly upon him.

 
          
“Let
me untie you,” he offered at once.

 
          
“Do,”
she urged bitterly. “Then I can kill myself.”

 
          
“You
must be thirsty,” he said. “I will bring some water.”

 
          
In
the clearing he plucked a dried gourd from a spreading vine. Deftly cracking
it, he cleansed the withered pulp from one cuplike piece and filled it at the
stream. Carrying it back, he offered it to Oloana. She neither moved nor spoke,
but when he held it to her lips she drew her head away.

 
          
“You
do not eat or drink,” he said. “You will die.”

 
          
“Let
me die, then.”

 
          
Hok
gazed at her perplexedly. Things were not going as he had hoped. What would
life be like, with a sullen, vengeful woman who must go always tied lest she
run away or kill herself? Suddenly Hok saw an awful vision— Oloana still and
voiceless, with blood flowing from her heart where nested his javelin. So vivid
was the mental picture that he dashed the back of his hand to his eyes.

 
          
“I
hate you,” Oloana snapped at him.

 
          
He
rose and stooped above her. His hands caught the leather that bound her wrists,
his muscles suddenly
swelled,
his breath came in a
single explosive pant. The cord broke. Bending, he hooked fingers under the
thong at her ankles. A heave, a tug, and that, too, tore apart.

 
          
“Run
away,”' he bade her dully.

 
          
She
rose to her feet, amazed.

 
          
“I
thought I had you,” he tried to explain, “but, even when you were tied, I did
not have you.” His brow creased at his own paradox. “You hate me. Run away.”

 
          
“You
don’t want me now?” she challenged him.

 
          
His
hands grasped her shoulders. Their faces were close to each other. His stare
fastened upon her sulky mouth, as full and red as a summer fruit. How sweet
that fruit would taste, he suddenly thought. His face darted down upon hers,
their lips crushed together for a whirling moment. Clumsy, savage, unpredicted,
it was perhaps the first kiss in human history.