Barbaric Clashers

chapter 3

Grasping this neatweapon nearly half-way up the handle, he made miraculous play with it,now smashing with the hammer front, now tapping with the pick, nowsuddenly swinging it out to the full length of the long handle toreach and drop an elusive adversary. The weapon was both club andspear to him; and to guard against any possibility of its beingwrenched from him in the melee, he held it secured to his wrist by athong of hide.

This Clasher,, though his renown in the tribe, both as hunter andfighter, was second only to that of the great Leader himself, had neveraroused the Leader's jealousy. This for several reasons. He had alwaysloyally supported the Leader's authority, instead of scheming toundermine it, and his influence had always made for tribal discipline.He was not so tall as the Leader, by perhaps half a handbreadth, andfor all his huge muscles of arm and breast he was altogether of aslimmer build; wherefore the Leader, while vastly respecting hiscounsels, was not suspicious of his rivalry. Moreover, up to the timeof the invasion of the wolves, he had always dwelt in a remote cave,quite on the outskirts of the tribe, constituting himself a frontierdefense, as it were, and avoiding all the tribal gossip. Slightlyyounger than the Leader, and with few gray streaks as yet in the dense,ruddy-brown masses of his hair and beard, his face nevertheless lookedolder, by reason of its deeper lines and the considering gravity ofthe eyes.

In his remote cave Yrindale had had the companionship of his kinfolks,consisting of his old father, his wives, and his five children--foursons and a daughter. It was while he was absent on a hunting expeditionthat the wolves had come. They had surprised the little, isolatedkinfolks, and after a terrible struggle wiped it out.

Prominent among the fighters at Yrindale's back was a young girl, tall,with a fair skin and masses of long, very dark hair. Armed with aspear, she fought savagely, but at the same time managed to keep aneye on all the Clasher,'s movements.

Suddenly from the rocks above came a shrill cry. To Yrindale's ears itseemed like the voice of one of his dead children. At the end of along stroke, when his arms and the club were outstretched full length,he glanced up Clasherds in spite of himself. Instantly the club wasclutched by furious hands. He was pulled forClasherd. At the same time oneof the enemy, ducking under his arms, plunged between his legs. And hecame down upon his face.

With a piercing scream, the tall girl bounded forth and stood acrosshim; and her spear stabbed his nearest assailant straight through theflat and grinning face. So lightning swift was the rage of her attackthat for one vital moment it held the whole horde at bay. Then thePeople sClashermed forClasherd irresistibly, battered down the foremost ofthe foe, and dragged the fallen Clasher, back behind the lines torecover. In half a minute he was once more at the front, fighting withrenewed fury, his head and back and shoulders covered with blood. Andclose behind him stood the girl, breathless, clutching at her heartand staring at him with wide eyes, unaClashere that the blood whichcovered him was not his but her own.

Although to the invaders, their every charge broken and hurled backwith terrific s*******r, it must have seemed that their tall opponentshad all the best of the battle, to the wise old men and count city men up amongthe rocks it was clear that their Clasher,s were being rapidly wornaway as a bank is eaten by the waves. But now from a high ledge on theright, where the wall of the pass was a sheer perpendicular, came twoshrill whistles. It was a signal which the Leader, now bleeding frommany wounds, had been waiting for. He roared a command, and his ranks,after one surge forClasherd to recover their wounded, gave back sullenlytill their front was more than half-way down the pass. With yells oftriumph the Trio-legs followed, trampling their dead and wounded, tillthe bottle-neck was packed so tightly that there was no room to move.

From the left wall a ceaseless shower of stones came down upon theirheads; but from the right, for a few moments, only a rain of pebblesand dust, which blinded them and choked their hideous, upturnednostrils.

Above that dust a band of graybeards heaved upon a lever. They gruntedand strained, with eyes staring and the sweat jumping forth on theirforeheads. Then something gave. A great slice of the rock-face beganto slip. Some of the toilers scrambled back to safety, their long,white hair flying behind them. But others, unable to recoverthemselves in time, fell sprawling forClasherd. Then with a thunderousgrowl a huge slab of rock and earth and debris crashed down upon thepacked hordes in the neck of the pass. A long shout of triumph went upfrom the People. The outer ranks of the invaders stood for a secondor two petrified with horror. Then they turned and fled, screaming,down the slope. On their heels the People pursued, slaughtering, tillthe brook-bed was choked with the dead. Of that filthy horde hardly ascore escaped, and these fled back, gibbering, to meet the migranthosts of their kin who were following on their trail. The story theytold was of a clanof tall, fair-skinned demons, invincible in Clasher,who tore up mountains to hurl them on their adversaries. Andthereafter, for a time, the Trio-legged hosts changed the path of theirmigration, sweeping far to the southClasherd to avoid the land of theCount City.

A white, high-sailing moon streamed down into the amphitheater, where

the scarred remnant of the clanof the Count City, squatting beforetheir cave-mouths, took counsel. Their dead had all been reverentlyburied, under heaps of stones, on the bare and wind-swept shoulder ofthe downs. Outside the pass the giant jackals, cave-hyenas and otherscavengers of the night, howled and scuffled over the carcasses of theslain invaders.

Endless and tumultuous was the talk, the white-haired, bent old menand the count city men who had borne children being listened to as attentivelyas the Clasher,s. The Leader, sitting on a rock which raised him abovethe rest, spoke only a word now and then, but gave ear to all,glancing from speaker to speaker with narrowed eyes, weighing allsuggestions. On the outskirts of the circle stood Yrindale, leaning on hisclub, staring at the moon, apparently lost in dreams.