More and more men came out of the village and joined in the battle. Dom cracked one with his club and saw him fall, but at that instant another was on him from the side, and he felt the sharp pain of the knife piercing his arm. He struggled to swing the club again, but the man dodged the blow. He saw one of the hunters go down with a knife in his back, and another from a knife struck hard under his ribs. The men from the village seemed to be everywhere, and he had to fight desperately to keep them off.
Then suddenly he realized that the hunters were running away, and found himself running with them. The enemy pursued them as far as the edge of the clearing, and their cries of triumph and derision followed the hunters for a long way after that.
They gathered together in another clearing farther up the valley. The defeat had shocked them, and they were wordless and miserable. Dom knew why they had been beaten. It was not just that, with half their men away in the hunt, they had been outnumbered three to one, or more. What had really made the difference was that Dom’s father, their chief, had not been there. They had had no one to rally them when the villagers came out and attacked them; it was because of that they had run like monkeys, not fought like men.
• • •
The chief’s fury was enormous when he came back with the other hunters. He strode among the ones who had been left behind, striking them as they cowered from his rage and calling them women—worse than women since they had allowed men who were themselves no better than women to drive them away. They took the blows and the insults, but then they too turned angry and sullen. That hunter who had protested before said:
“This place is no good for us. The lands in the south are as good as these, and there is much game. There we can eat fresh meat every day.”
Dom’s father went fiercely toward him, but there were murmurs from other hunters as well. Dom knew what they were thinking. It had been the chief’s idea to split the hunters into two bands. He had gone away, and that was why the villagers had beaten them.
“We will have fresh meat every day,” Dom’s father said, “when we have killed the enemy. And we will have their tree-caves and their stone knives, and everything else.”
Someone said: “When is when? The days go by and nothing happens.”
Another spoke. “You said you would find us a cave in the hills. If we had that we would not need their tree-caves. And we can do without their stone knives. The knives our women make are good enough.”
It was not just one—all the hunters were grumbling. Dom remembered a tale the old women told of a chief, long ago, who had failed in his duty to the tribe, and how the rest of the hunters had turned on him together and killed him. A thing that had happened once could happen again. With his heart pounding he looked at his father, and saw that he knew this too.
His father turned from the hunter who had first spoken, and stood in front of another, whose face was bloody from the fight in the clearing. Speaking only to him, he said:
“You are a coward. You ran from men who are as weak as women.”
The hunter looked at him, daring to reply.
“I remember that you ran, too, on the hillside.”
Dom’s father smashed him to the ground with his fist. He shouted:
“We ran then because the stones of the hillside came down on us! Not as cowards who run from cowards.”
He had chosen that one man in the hope that by striking him down he could intimidate the rest. But this time the other hunters did not stay silent in fear. It was another who shouted back:
“Where is the cave you promised us? And why were you not here to fight, you who call us cowards?”
Their grumbling had turned into a low growl that rose almost to a roar. In a moment they would attack their chief all together, and strong as he was he must die quickly. Dom cried out:
“I know a way of getting through the hedge. . . .”
The grumbling stopped at his words. His father stared at him. One of the hunters laughed.
“Another evil spirit has got into him through the cut in his arm. Or perhaps the old one is still there. The boy is mad.”
His father said: “Speak, if you have anything to say.”
Dom said: “You said that the stones came down on us from the hillside that day. That was true. And the enemy’s place lies under the hill. When we went up there and looked down at them I saw a big stone, as tall as a man and as wide as four men side by side. If we could roll that down the slope it would break through the hedge, and we could run in after it.”
The hunter who had laughed said scornfully:
“I also remember that stone. It is fixed in the earth. You could not roll it down.”
Dom said: “But if we scratched away the earth in front of it, maybe it would roll.”
There was a silence; then Dom’s father said:
“We will look at this stone. Come.”
He turned and walked away. Dom followed him and so, after a moment’s hesitation, did the other hunters.
• • •
The stone was bigger than Dom had thought, covered with moss and lichen and with small plants growing in crevices where earth had gathered. It seemed impossible that it could be moved, and he half expected his father to say so, and cuff him for his foolishness. But his father went very carefully all round the stone, examining it. After that he stared down the slope toward the village.
“If it could be made to roll down it would break through the hedge, as the boy said. If it can be moved.” He looked at the hunters. “We will dig the earth away and find out.”
He had won back his ascendancy over them, for the time being at least. At his command they set to work, scrabbling at the earth with their hands, loosening the soil and pulling it away. They could not all get in under the stone together so Dom’s father made them work in relays: he did not dig himself, of course, because he was the chief.
They worked hard and for a long time, sweating in the rays from the sun which, though slanting now across the valley, were still hot. Only when the sun had dipped below the facing hill did the chief permit them to stop.
Dom looked at the hole they had made; it seemed very small compared with the size of the boulder. With the other hunters he put his hands against the rough surface of the stone, trying to move it. Nothing happened.
“We will come here tomorrow,” Dom’s father said, “and dig again.”
• • •
In the morning the cut in his arm was sore and inflamed, and Dom wondered if the evil spirit really had returned to him. He would have liked to go and search for the plant which Va had put on the wound in his leg, but his father commanded all the hunters to go up again to the stone on the hillside, and Dom had to go with them.
The sky was light but the sun had not yet risen above the hill; there was a glow of gold in the blue sky behind its crest. But one could see very clearly, and he looked down beyond the hedge into the village. Animals were there: cattle in their pen and hens pecking the earth. None of the people could be seen; doubtless they were still sleeping in their tree-caves. He wondered in which cave Va was; then his father saw him standing idle and ordered him to dig.
The sun came up and they sweated again. Down in the village people came out of their huts. They looked up at the hunters and mocked them as they had done the previous day. Dom saw women and girls there as well as men and, once more filled with anger at the thought of her running away from him, tried to pick Va out. But the distance was too great to see if she were there; the enemy’s jeers came thinly through the air.
They dug round the sides and back of the stone as well as under the front. The work was hard, and although the hunters’ hands were tough and calloused, they grew sore. Some said it was time to try pushing the stone again, and in the end Dom’s father agreed. They put their shoulders to it, striving to make it move, but with no success.
There was grumbling among them. Dom’s father shouted:
“Push! Push hard!”
He came and heaved against the stone himself, elbowing a hunter out of the way to do so. Then they all felt it, a tiny rocking, almost imperceptible. They heaved again and it rocked a little more. Dom’s father said:
“It is beginning to come loose. Now dig!”
They dug and heaved and dug again. Each time they tried it moved more positively—after another hour or two they could rock it to and fro. Wiping sweat from his eyes, feeling the soreness and smart of his wounded arm, Dom looked briefly down into the village. He thought of Va with anger and a savage joy. Soon he and the other hunters would be in there, and he would show her what it meant not to obey his commands.
On the next attempt the stone almost came out of its socket in the earth. The hunters went back to their digging with a will, because now they could all see the prospect of success, of fighting and triumph. They dug and pushed, dug and pushed. Then, pushing, Dom heard his father’s cry of exultation close by him and, putting all his strength against the stone, felt it lurch forward, tilting up and away, out of the earth which had held it.
They all shouted together as the stone rolled down the slope, but their shouts died when its progress halted after no more than a yard or two. The hunters stared at it, discouraged.
“It has moved once,” Dom’s father said, “so it will move again. Push!”
It moved but stopped after a few more feet. Unless they could get it to roll fast it would be useless as a means of breaking through the hedge. Near the village the slope was much less steep, almost level. No amount of straining, Dom realized, would enable them to move it down there.
The hunters heaved and struggled. Dom felt the sting of his wound as his arm pressed against the jagged surface, but ignored it. The stone rolled again, and this time went on rolling. They saw it gathering speed as it bumped on down the slope, rocking and scattering smaller stones that lay in its path. Shouting, the hunters ran after it.
The men of the village came running as the boulder careered downhill toward the hedge. Dom heard their cries of amazement and dismay, mingling with the hunters’ shouts of excitement. Bouncing in a cloud of dust, the stone reached the more gentle slope at the bottom and without checking, rolled on. It hit the hedge and smashed through it, making a gap several feet across and crushing some of the village men who stood inside. Before it finally came to rest it had crashed into one of the tree-caves and split it open.
• • •
The battle was not a long one, but it was bloody enough. The men of the village, in among their homes, fought much harder than they had done on the first encounter; but the hunters fought better than on the second. They were at full strength, they were relishing the triumph of having forced their way through the barrier which had held them at bay for so long, and they were led by their great chief, Dom’s father, swinging his huge club of bone. Nothing could stand in their way now.
Dom, forgetting wound and weariness, forgetting everything except the ecstasy of battle, wielded his club with the rest. Very soon its whiteness was stained with the blood of the enemy. Like the other hunters he killed mercilessly, giving no quarter. Within fifteen minutes it was over, and the earth littered with dead or dying men, among whom the hunters walked, shouting their victory.
The women and children of the village huddled together in shocked and weeping groups. As soon as his mind cooled from its fever of killing, Dom looked for Va among them. He found her quite soon, clinging to an older woman. With the bloody club in his hand, he said:
“Come!”
She stared at him, shivering with fear, her face stained with tears. Despite his anger he found it good to see her again. He would beat her for running away, as he must, but perhaps he would not beat her very hard. Then they would go to the wood together, and bathe in the pool, and find fruit to eat. He would make another necklace of scarlet blossoms and put it round her neck.
When she did not move, he said more harshly:
“Come. We have conquered your people. From now on you will do as I say.”
She still cowered away. Dom passed the club into his left hand and roughly grabbed her arm with his right. She moaned, and the older woman cried out, but he pulled her toward him.
As he did so he heard his father’s voice calling. He turned and his father came to him. Dom said:
“This is the girl who helped me, and then ran away.”
Dom’s father looked at Va. “She is of an age for mating.”
“Yes,” Dom said. “I will take her for my mate. But first I will beat her for running away.”
His father laughed. “She is of an age for mating, but you are not, boy! I will take this one.”
“No.” Dom looked up at his father. “You cannot do that. She is mine.”
“Cannot?”
His father stared at him, more curious than angry, still good-humored from the victory he had won. He grinned.
“Run away, boy. Leave the girl to me.”
“No!” Dom was frightened, but desperate. “I will not.”
He pulled at Va’s arm again, trying to convey to her that they must both run now, to get away from his father. But she moaned again, and held back. Then Dom’s father roared as curiosity and amusement gave way to rage. His heavy fist smashed at Dom. Dom dodged the first blow, but the second knocked him senseless.
6
THE NIGHT AFTER SHE HAD run away from Dom, Va could not sleep. She lay awake, thinking of what had happened and sobbing from time to time. It was her punishment, as the Village Mother had said, and she must endure the unhappiness. It would not last. The savages would go away in due course, and after that she would forget about Dom. She would marry someone, Gri perhaps, and live her life in the village as her people had always done. At last, when she was old and wise, she would be the Village Mother like her grandmother.
But as the slow hours passed, she thought less of the Village Mother’s words and more of Dom. She thought of the way he had learned to smile during the two days they had spent together. She remembered his anger when she had pulled him down into the pool, and then how he had laughed afterward.
It was true that he had killed the squirrel, and grinned as he held out the small corpse to show her. But he had not known that he was doing anything wrong—to him her tame squirrel had been just another animal to slaughter. Because he was one of the savages, the Village Mother had said, and of course that was true. She had also said that a savage could never change, would always be a cruel and hateful killer.
Was that true, too? Although she knew the Village Mother was wiser than anyone else, Va could not bring herself to believe it. She thought of that morning of the second day, when she had found the moss-bed empty and gone down unhappily to the pool—of how good it had been when she had realized that the face reflected in the pool beside her own was Dom’s. And how he had brought her the necklace of flowers. That was not the way a savage acted. There were other things in his mind besides the lust for killing.
She made her mind up as light was beginning to filter into the hut, in promise of the new dawn. She would go to the wood again, as soon as the gap was opened in the hedge. Perhaps Dom would still be there, waiting for her. She would teach him—not just things like swimming but how to love small animals, not kill them. The Village Mother was wrong because she did not know Dom. All she knew was that the savages had killed men and cattle, and tried to break into the village. She had not seen Dom’s face when he offered her the necklace of flowers, nor when they laughed together in the pool. Her own first thought had been right: he could be taught not to be a savage. She could teach him.
But the gap was not opened in the hedge that morning because this time the savages did not go away. They stayed in the clearing, occasionally coming up close to the hedge and shouting until they were driven off with stones. Va lo
oked for Dom but did not see him. Only the men were allowed to climb up on the huts to throw stones; she had to peer out dimly through the thorns.
The fact that she had not seen him did not mean that he was not there; but just as the previous evening she had imagined she heard his voice crying hatred with the rest, so now she felt sure in her heart that he had not returned to his savage tribe—that he was still in the wood, waiting for her to come back. Tomorrow, perhaps, she would be able to do so. But next day the savages were still there; and the day after the same.
That night the Village Mother spoke to them, assembled together near the fire.
“They are more cunning than I thought,” she said, “and more persistent. They know we have been grazing the cattle while they were away hunting. Therefore they stay here to prevent your doing this.”
One of the men said: “What should we do, Mother? We have fodder for only a few days. Soon the cattle will be starving. Should we not go out and fight them?”
“They are stronger than you are,” the Village Mother said, “and more skilled at fighting. One expects as much of savages. It would be folly to attack them; they would only defeat you as they did before.”
Another man said: “They have shamed us, Mother. We must not skulk here and watch our women and children starve. It is better to be killed than do that.”
“Maybe,” said the Village Mother. “But for the sake of your women and children it is better to live and be able to protect them in days to come than to save what you call your honor.”
He said: “But if we stay here we will all starve together. In a few days the cattle will start to die. We must do something.”
The Village Mother shook her head.
“If we are less strong than the savages, it is all the more important that we should show ourselves wiser. They must have food also. As our cattle run short of fodder, so they will lack meat. Then they must go away to find animals to kill.”