People of the Dragon - Debora Pint (best books for 8th graders TXT) 📗

PEOPLE OF THE DRAGON

by Lin Carter

Chapter One

– Out of the North –

My name is Junga. I am the youngest of the three sons of Gomar, the mighty hunter; and my people are the People of the Dragon. Or so, at least, we call ourselves, after that red, bearded star that burns like a signal torch down the southern skies, ever leading us onwards, who ever follow. In the time of my grandfather, Zorm the Wise, it first shone in the wintry skies above our lost homeland which now lies buried deep beneath the eternal snows. It was in the time of the White Winter that it first appeared and blazed in those forgotten skies, calling my fathers forth from the valley wherein my people had dwelt from Time's forgotten dawn.

The snows had fallen thick and yet lay deeply piled, and still unmelted, from the winter before. The herds our hunters sought for meat were thinned by the unending winter, and the foliage whereon the beasts fed were scrawny and frost-bitten. The people of my tribe went hungry then, and the cold winds blew ever at the mouths of the caves, and the old folk died of the coughing sickness, one by one, and many the newborn babe was exposed to the elements on the hill-slopes because there was not enough meat for the strong and living, much less the newly-born.

Those were harsh times; cruel times; for oft have I heard my grandsire tell of them, he that lives yet but is lean and hardy for all his length of years. Men starved and women wept, or sat dry-eyed and stony-hearted, crooning to the dead babes they clasped against their shrunken breasts. Children fought, naked and snarling, like starving curs over scraps of meat. Ever the snows fell, blocking the ways between the mountains. Ever the winds blew cold as a whetted knife, freezing the blood in our veins, chilling the very marrow in our bones. And then the wolves came down from the windy heights, to slink among the caves—and never in the memory of a living man (my grandsire, Zorm, would say) had this occurred before.

Grim and terrible were the battles my fathers fought, knee-deep in the numb, red-splattered snow, defending the women and the children, the old and the sick, against the ravening wolves, who grew ever bolder, maddened by starvation, until they strove to enter the very caves of my people, to rend and tear hot flesh from the living.

And then one night when a howling gale had torn the snow-heavy clouds away to bare the merciless stars, the Red Star blazed above, that no man's eye had looked upon in all the generations of men. Burning bright it was, like scarlet fire, with a long writhing streamer of flame behind it, for all the world like a dragon's serpent-length and serpent-tail. And it was Zorm, my grandsire, who heard it hissing to him in his troubled dreams: Arise! the Dragon Star whispered, Take thy people, and go forth into the south, for the Great Ice cometh down upon the valley of thy fathers, that shall never lift for an thousand years of time. Go forth, I bid thee, south and ever south, and I shall fly ever down the skies before thee, and I shall bring thee at last to a warm and golden land of eternal summer that fronts upon a blue and smiling sea... a sweet and verdant country, like a garden, where the ripe fruit droppeth from the heavy-laden branch, and none need ever suffer from the gnawings of hunger, nor the pangs of thirst, nor shiver to the chilly kiss of the wintry wind.

Whether it was but a dream or a true vision sent from the Gods of the North, Zorm my grandsire spake thus to the people, and they rose up and took their furs and skins, their stony axes and flint-bladed spears, and all that they possessed, and departed from the place of their fathers, and wended their long way south and ever south, down from the mountains of the wintry north, following the visions of Zorm the Wise, and the Red Star that flew down the skies before them, leading them on like a streaming torch borne in the invisible hands of a friendly god. My father, Gomar, was but a boy in the day of the rising-up and the going-forth of my people, the People of the Dragon; and I, his son, was born on the great march and have never seen the lost land of my fathers. Nor shall I ever, while the world lasts.

Chapter Two

– The Plains of Thune –

But I would speak of what befell me in my fourteenth year, when the People had come down at last out of the great mountains, and were crossing the measureless plains we called the Land of Thune for that there were flat and level as the Stone Table in the old myth, wherein Thune, the sun lord, was slain by the Demon of Winter, only to rise again, reborn with spring.

The People had waxed in number since the time of our going-forth: then we had been but three-and-twenty, and Thorn the Strong, firstborn of the sons of Zorm, had been our chief. Now were we near fifty in number, and Thom-Ra, the brother of Thorn, led us on the march. Gray of mane and beard was Thom-Ra, with tall sons went ever at his right hand, but still a mighty warrior for all that he was in his prime. At his left hand went mine own father, Gomar, for they were brothers, albeit my sire was the youngest of the sons of Zorm, who lived yet, and was now known as Zorm the Wise.

The thick furs of cave-bear and snow-wolf we had put by, once we were come down from the mountains with their ice-choked passes and their wintry winds. It was Tuma the Limping, the clever, the Lame One, had bethought him of scraping the fur from the hides so that we went clothed now but in the hides of beasts. For the Plains of Thune were milder and not so cold as had been the windswept and snowy heights. And the warriors and the hunters wore still the necklace of fangs that were the mark of manhood to the men of my tribe, and had ever been.

I, a mere youth, was not yet attained to an age whereat I might strive for the mark of manhood, but my brothers, Jord and Karth, wore about their strong throats the coveted necklace of the fangs of the great cave bear. Youth though I was, I had the strong thews of my father, gliding over the heavy bones of our kind, and the clear tanned hide and raw yellow hair and cold blue eyes of my blood from time immemorial. We were mighty then, tireless in the hunt, and powerful in war.

But the level plains of long sere grass, they were strange and new to us and we knew not the ways thereof. At the time whereof I speak, we had marched south for seven days and had found no game and little water, and hunger gnawed at us and made tempers short and men take risks they might otherwise have been too wary to attempt. For we knew nothing of this land nor of the dangers peculiar to it, as I shall shortly show.

When the last of the dried meat was gone, and the water low in the leather bottles, our huntsmen ranged far and ever farther afield, searching for game. What beasts might dwell here amidst the endless plains we could not guess, but beasts somewhere there must surely be, for else the Dragon Star and the visions of Zorm would not have led us thither.

By night we lay huddled together for warmth, body close to body, trying to ignore the emptiness of our bellies and the dryness in our mouths. None complained and none whimpered, for we were a hardy people; only the babes cried a little against their mothers' breasts. Fire we had brought with us at the beginning of the great march south, fire from the Undying Flame that the women tended ever and that was never allowed to die out. It had been Zar, the great-great-grandsire of Zorm—Zar, the first chief of our tribe—who had first learned the secret of making fire. For that reason was the sacred fire of the tribes watched over and guarded thereafter down through the generations, called the Flame of Zar. But his secret, which had to do with the striking together of certain rocks, had perished with him under the trampling feet of the hairy mammoth. And, within my own time, the flame we had brought with us in a bowl of hollowed stone, had been drowned in a sudden rainstorm. No longer did any, even Zorm the Wise, who was the descendant of Zar in the fourth generation, remember the secret of fire. Therefore did we huddle for warmth together under the thick grasses amidst the windy plains, naked and shivering in our hides. And more than a few of the people had cause of nights to grumble against the cleverness of Tuma the Limping–for that, at his behest, we had scraped the thick, warm fur from the hides we wore.

Foremost of the hunters of the tribe was my mighty father, Gomar. He and my brothers had gone forth at dawn earlier to seek for game. But with the setting of the sun they had not returned, though all else, including mine uncle, Thom-Ra the chief, had come back from the hunt, and empty-handed.

Chapter Three

– The Vision of Zorm –

For worry after my father and my brothers, I, Junga, could not sleep that night. And neither did my grandsire, Zorm, find easeful slumber. The sleep of the aged is thin as the blood in their veins, I knew, but as my grandsire lay curled against me, his bony frame gaunt in my arms, which I wrapped about him so that he might take warmth from my young flesh and hot blood, I felt him tremble betimes and betimes cry out.

Towards the mid of night, he spake suddenly in a voice clear and strong, and I startled from my half-doze at his cry.

"Gomar, my son! Venture not into the marshy places! Turn back therefrom, and thy sons with thee! Beware the Oozy Thing—the ghastly stench of it, and the bottomless hunger! Turn thy steps away from the deep places, or the Father of Slime will drink thy strong blood and suck the flesh from thy bones—Aiiee!"

With this last, he shrieked and woke trembling and staring about into the dark with eyes filled with fear. But when I asked of him the meaning of his words, it was as if they had been spake by another, for he remembered them not. He knew only that a black and doom-fraught dream had seized upon him as he drowsed. When I told him the words he had uttered in the dream, he grew agitated and distraught. Mayhap it had been a vision of warning, sent him by the Gods of the North, who ever and anon spake to him in his slumbers. The thought that my father and my brothers were in danger roused me and I rose from my bed and took up my flint spear and stone knife and the great axe that was used only in war. Nor did my grandsire seek to stay me.

"East-away, child, in a marshy place, the danger lurks," he quavered, pointing with one frail arm. "Nor know I how the knowledge cometh to me—but fly like the very wind, young Junga, if ever thou wouldst see thy kin alive!"

I passed through the huddled sleepers to