Short Fiction - Robert E. Howard (the reading list TXT) 📗

glances had failed to attract the attention of the young man who seemed engrossed with his artistry, so she had taken to the unconventional way of spying upon him, in hopes of finding some way to win him.

Ga‑nor turned from his completed work, stretched and glanced toward the care month. Like a frightened rabbit, little A‑æa ducked and darted away.

When Ga‑nor emerged from the cave, he was puzzled by the sight of a small, slender footprint in the soft loam outside the cave.

A‑æa walked primly toward her own cave, which was, with most of the others, at some distance from Ga‑nor’s cave. As she did so, she noticed a group of warriors talking excitedly in front of the chief’s cave.

A mere girl might not intrude upon the councils of men, but such was A‑æa’s curiosity, that she dared a scolding by slipping nearer. She heard the words “footprint” and “gur-na” (man-ape).

The footprints of a gur-na had been found in the forest, not far from the caves.

“Gur-na” was a word of hatred and horror to the people of the caves, for the creatures whom the tribesmen called “gur-na,” or man-apes, were the hairy monsters of another age, the brutish men of the Neandertal. More feared than mammoth or tiger, they had ruled the forests until the Cro-Magnon men had come and waged savage warfare against them. Of mighty power and little mind, savage, bestial and cannibalistic, they inspired the tribesmen with loathing and horror⁠—a horror transmitted through the ages in tales of ogres and goblins, of werewolves and beast-men.

They were fewer and more cunning, then. No longer they rushed roaring to battle, but cunning and frightful, they slunk about the forests, the terror of all beasts, brooding in their brutish minds with hatred for the men who had driven them from the best hunting grounds.

And ever the Cro-Magnon men trailed them down and slaughtered them, until sullenly they had withdrawn far into the deep forests. But the fear of them remained with the tribesmen, and no woman went into the jungle alone.

Sometimes children went, and sometimes they returned not; and searchers found but signs of a ghastly feast, with tracks that were not the tracks of beasts, nor yet the tracks of men.

And so a hunting party would go forth and hunt the monster down. Sometimes it gave battle and was slain, and sometimes it fled before them and escaped into the depths of the forest, where they dared not follow. Once a hunting party, reckless with the chase, had pursued a fleeing gur-na into the deep forest and there, in a deep ravine, where overhanging limbs shut out the sunlight, numbers of the Neandertalers had come upon them.

So no more entered the forests.

A-æe turned away, with a glance at the forest. Somewhere in its depths lurked the beast-man, piggish eyes glinting crafty hate, malevolent, frightful.

Someone stepped across her path. It was Ka‑nanu, the son of a councilor of the chief.

She drew away with a shrug of her shoulders. She did not like Ka‑nanu and she was afraid of him. He wooed her with a mocking air, as if he did it merely for amusement and would take her whenever he wished, anyway. He seized her by the wrist.

“Turn not away, fair maiden,” said he. “It is your slave, Ka‑nanu.”

“Let me go,” she answered. “I must go to the spring for water.”

“Then I will go with you, moon of delight, so that no beast may harm you.”

And accompany her he did, in spite of her protests.

“There is a gur-na abroad,” he told her sternly. “It is lawful for a man to accompany even an unmated maiden, for protection. And I am Ka‑nanu,” he added, in a different tone; “do not resist me too far, or I will teach you obedience.”

A‑æa knew somewhat of the man’s ruthless nature. Many of the tribal girls looked with favor on Ka‑nanu, for he was bigger and taller even than Ga‑nor, and more handsome in a reckless, cruel way. But A‑æa loved Ga‑nor and she was afraid of Ka‑nanu. Her very fear of him kept her from resisting his approaches too much. Ga‑nor was known to be gentle with women, if careless of them, while Ka‑nanu, thereby showing himself to be another mark of progress, was proud of his success with women and used his power over them in no gentle fashion.

A‑æa found Ka‑nanu was to be feared more than a beast, for at the spring just out of sight of the caves, he seized her in his arms.

“A‑æa,” he whispered, “my little antelope, I have you at last. You shall not escape me.”

In vain she struggled and pleaded with him. Lifting her in his mighty arms he strode away into the forest.

Frantically she strove to escape, to dissuade him.

“I am not powerful enough to resist you,” she said, “but I will accuse you before the tribe.”

“You will never accuse me, little antelope,” he said, and she read another, even more sinister intention in his cruel countenance.

On and on into the forest he carried her, and in the midst of a glade he paused, his hunter’s instinct alert.

From the trees in front of them dropped a hideous monster, a hairy, misshapen, frightful thing.

A‑æa’s scream reechoed through the forest, as the thing approached. Ka‑nanu, white-lipped and horrified, dropped A‑æa to the ground and told her to run. Then, drawing knife and ax, he advanced.

The Neandertal man plunged forward on short, gnarled legs. He was covered with hair and his features were more hideous than an ape’s because of the grotesque quality of the man in them. Flat, flaring nostrils, retreating chin, fangs, no forehead whatever, great, immensely long arms dangling from sloping, incredible shoulders, the monster seemed like the devil himself to the terrified girl. His apelike head came scarcely to Ka‑nanu’s shoulders, yet he must have outweighed the warrior by nearly a hundred pounds.

On he came like a charging buffalo, and Ka‑nanu met him squarely and boldly. With flint ax and obsidian dagger he thrust and