In the Beginning, Page 2

  The fight was quickly over, with the rest of the enemy fleeing as the first two had done. The hunters pursued them a little way into the bushes, but they ran well and the hunters were gorged with meat. They went back to the clearing where the remainder of the tribe waited.

  Now their joy, and their pride in themselves and their chief, were greater than ever. By overcoming this enemy they had avenged the defeat on the rocky hillside. They had said the tribe were the masters of this good new land: their victory proved it true.

  2

  THAT NIGHT A LION, COUGHING in the ­distance, wakened Dom from sleep. Automatically his hand went to the club that lay beside him, to the dagger in his belt. Having checked that his weapons were within reach, he was content.

  But the sound, in the stillness of the night, made him remember another such occasion. That had been in a different land, hundreds of miles to the north, and although only a few months since, in a different age. It had been the last night of his boyhood.

  He remembered his fear at the lion’s roar. It had happened once that a lion had leaped the outer guarding line of hunters and snatched a child and got away with it before the hunters were properly alert. That had been an accident, all the hunters said, because in truth the lions feared the tribe. A week later the hunters killed a lion and said it was the lion which had stolen the child: the tribe, not the lions, were masters of the grassland.

  But nevertheless Dom had shivered, and pulled his covering of antelope hide tighter around him. At that moment he heard his mother’s voice whisper:

  “Dom. . . .”

  “I am cold,” he whispered back.

  “Come to me.”

  He hesitated. He was no longer a child, to be nursed. In the hunt he went out with the men, as one of the beaters who drove the antelope to where the hunters waited. In a year’s time he might be a hunter himself and wield a club.

  His mother said again: “Come, Dom.”

  Her voice was low. Dom listened and heard only the soft sounds of sleep from the others. The lion spoke again, a double cough and nearer. Slowly, cautiously, he crept toward her, and her arms found him and pulled him close. Her body was warm. Gradually his shivering ceased and he slept.

  • • •

  Dom remembered the following day also. In the morning the sun woke them, rising hot above the level plain. The people of the tribe got up from the nests of grass in which they had slept and moved down the slope to the water hole. They went in their customary order, with the young hunters in front and the older hunters, ranged about Dom’s father, bringing up the rear: only in attack did he lead the way. In between walked the women and children and the old ones. The hunters carried only their weapons—the others carried hides and sun-dried meat. These were all the possessions the tribe had.

  There was a lion at the water hole—perhaps that which Dom had heard in the night—and various small animals and birds. There were no antelope. The birds rose in the air and the animals fled as the tribe approached, the lion last of all but long before they were there.

  At the water’s edge the young hunters stood to either side, and the women and children and old ones made way too for the older hunters. They in turn made way for Dom’s father, who strode through their ranks, biggest and strongest of all the tribe, and squatted beside the pool. He drank deeply and slowly, pausing several times before he stood up and raised his hand. Then the older hunters drank, followed by the young hunters and at last the women and children and old ones.

  After drinking they ate, chewing on the dry stringy meat. Then Dom’s father spoke.

  “There is less water here. This pool is drying up, as others have done. The antelope know this: that is why they have gone away.”

  The water hole lay in a hollow, bringing the grassy horizon close on every side. He pointed to the south.

  “We must follow the antelope. Wherever they go, we will go, to the earth’s end if need be. But first we must go to the Cave. We will say good-by to the spirits of our ancestors, and pray to be guided to where the antelope have gone.”

  They listened to him, troubled but acquiescent. It was hard to imagine going into another land than this one they were used to, but they knew he spoke the truth—about the drying pools and the vanishing antelope. And they knew he was the chief.

  His gaze settled on one face. He looked at Dom.

  “It is time for my son to choose his weapons.”

  Dom’s mother stood close by. She said:

  “No!”

  Dom’s father looked at her but he did not speak. There was fear in her face. Yet she said:

  “He is too young. It lacks a year before he should take weapons. He is not strong enough to be a hunter.”

  Dom’s father took a step forward and his right hand moved. She tried to dodge the blow but his fist struck her jaw and she fell. She lay moaning at Dom’s feet.

  His father said to Dom: “You are my son. We must leave this land, to follow the antelope. We will go a long way from the Cave, and may not return to it in my lifetime. So you must choose your weapons, and become a hunter.”

  The hard eyes stared at Dom from the bearded face. There had been other sons, two of them, but they had met their deaths in the hunt. Only Dom was left.

  He bowed his head in silence. His mother still moaned as she lay on the ground, but he did not move to help her. The chief’s word and wish were law to all the tribe, and especially to his son.

  • • •

  He remembered how after that they went to the Cave.

  In the morning they could see the hills, heat-hazed above the shimmering plain, but it was late afternoon before they reached the first outcroppings of limestone, and evening by the time they came to the Cave itself. At the sight of it the tribe halted and stood silent, while Dom’s father made obeisance to the holy place and to the spirits of their forefathers. Only to these would he ever bow his head.

  The Cave was the one fixed place, the only thing real and distinctive among the featureless expanses of the savanna; where nests of grass were made each night and abandoned and forgotten next morning, where even the drinking holes were scarcely distinguishable one from another. In the rainy seasons the tribe moved into the Cave and lived there; if home had had any meaning for them it would have been this. Yet also it was a place of awe. Dom felt a shiver in his mind as they moved up the rocky slope that led to it.

  The rock face was sheer and high, blue-white in color, pockmarked with holes. The Cave was the biggest of these. At the entrance the top of its arch was more than five times the height of a man, its width even greater. Inside, the ground was rough, littered with boulders, but the central path that ran back, sloping slightly upward, was smooth—­polished by the bare feet of the tribe through many generations.

  Fifty feet from the entrance was the pool. Water dripped from the wall, in a continual trickle and splash, and filled a basin several feet across. The basin was always full—even when the water holes out in the savanna dwindled, the level of the water here did not change. This wonder was caused by the spirits of their ancestors, the old ones said.

  Beyond the pool the Cave forked, the smaller branch turning right and curving back on itself, its gradient still upward. This was where the tribe lived during the rainy seasons. To the left, though, the rocky slope fell away. Dark though it was, some light filtered in from outside and Dom saw the glimmer of white within. This was the Place of Bones.

  • • •

  He remembered also his father’s words to him next morning.

  “The time has come for you to be a hunter, and each hunter must find his own weapons. In the hunt his club will be a part of his arm, his dagger part of his hand as the lion’s claw belongs to the lion’s paw. You must choose well and no one can do the choosing for you. Only the spirits of our fathers’ fathers may help you. Ask that of them, but do not disturb their rest. Go, t
hen.”

  The tribe watched in silence as Dom went down the slope into the Place of Bones. He was afraid, more afraid than he had ever been in his life, but he walked steadily, knowing that fear is the first thing a hunter must learn to master.

  Down the center of the cavern the heaped bones formed a ridge higher than a man and extending a long way back. For hundreds of years, thousands maybe, the tribe, when they had stripped hide and flesh from the carcasses of their kill, had brought the bones down here. Dom did as the old ones had told him and stood a long time with his eyes tight closed. When he opened them the white shapes glimmered a little more clearly. He walked beside the ridge, searching. Occasionally he pulled out a bone to examine it, and others rolled away with a dry ­clatter.

  As a hunter he needed two weapons: a club and a dagger. Both were provided by the skeletons of the antelope. For the club he required a thighbone, and for the dagger a fragment of skull with the pointed horn. On the choice might depend not only his prowess as a hunter but his very life.

  After long searching Dom found a thighbone that would do and hefted it in his hand, feeling the weight that pulled at his muscles yet added to their strength. It seemed heavy, though light compared with his father’s club which he had to strain to lift. He put the bone to one side and looked for a dagger. He was pleased with what he found—a horn, easily detached from the shattered skull, whose sharpness pricked his finger. His task was completed and he could leave this place which troubled and frightened him. To go farther would mean entering the domain of the spirits, at whose threshold he now stood.

  He lifted the thighbone he had found and swung it. He hesitated, then put it down and went on deeper into the cavern, searching still. At last he found what he wanted—a thighbone longer and thicker than the first. Raising it, he felt its dragging weight.

  Now he was inside the domain of the spirits. Apart from the heaped mound in the center there were other bones, lying in a long line against the wall. Any of the tribe who died within a day’s march of the Cave was brought to this spot to rest forever. The skeletons stretched away into distant blackness.

  Dom bowed his head. He took the dagger from his belt and showed it to them, strained to lift the club high.

  “Protect me,” he prayed, “as I shall protect the tribe.”

  The skeletons stared sightlessly back at him. Thankfully Dom turned and climbed the slope, toward the light and the waiting tribe.

  • • •

  There was sand outside the Cave. Dom spent all day there, polishing the thighbone to brightness and honing the dagger point. As the sun was setting his father came to him.

  “Are the weapons good?” he asked.

  Dom stood up and silently handed him the dagger. His father studied it carefully, trying its point against his arm, the palm of his hand.

  “It is good,” he said, and gave it back.

  Dom gave him the club. His father lifted it and swung it. He tossed it from his right hand to his left, and back again.

  “A good club also,” he said, “if you have the strength to use it.”

  Dom did not speak. His father threw the club and he caught it, but the weight pulled down his arm.

  “Mek chose a heavy club,” his father said.

  Mek had been his father’s first son. He had been killed by the trampling hooves of a buffalo within a year of becoming a hunter.

  “But you have chosen,” Dom’s father said, “and a choice once made cannot be altered.”

  • • •

  Dom remembered the tribe’s last hunt in the old land.

  The herd of antelope was very small: consisting only of a buck and five does. The old ones and the boys set off on either side, in two separate lines, moving in the direction of the herd but fanning away at oblique angles. After fifty yards one in each line halted and the rest went on. Although the greatest risk was of being scented, they moved very stealthily, crouching low, their progress soundless except for the tiny rustle as the long grass parted for them. Two more halted, and then two more.

  On previous occasions, Dom had been one of the beaters. Now he stood with the hunters at the mouth of the funnel which the old ones and the boys were forming around the grazing antelope. He touched the dagger in his belt, silently hefted his club.

  Time passed slowly. As the lines moved out, dropping their sentinels every fifty yards, they must also go more cautiously. Once abreast of the prey, any slight gust of wind could carry a scent inward and alarm them. Often enough the tribe had seen their quarry take fright and flee away on springing legs into the trackless savanna.

  Sweat ran down Dom’s legs and his back. The muscles of his legs tightened and his fingers clenched into a fist. Behind him he could hear his father’s steady breathing: he did not look round but braced his legs so that he would not tremble. Sometimes, though not often, a young hunter showed himself a coward in this test. Then the tribe cast him out, leaving him to wander alone until starvation or the lions ended his misery. Outside the tribe there was only death.

  Suddenly from the distance came a shout, the wild cry of the chase, and the antelope lifted their heads and ran from it. As they ran the sentinels along either line took up the cry in turns, moving inward and driving the fleeing animals toward the hunters.

  Toward Dom; for while the rest kept their places he advanced as was required of him. They were the large antelope, not the small species, and although the herd was few in number they were a fearsome sight as they raced through the grass, their hooves making the ground shake beneath his feet. He shouted, giving the hunter’s cry for the first time, using his voice to force strength into his limbs, courage into his spirit. The doe . . . in the lead, a little to the right of the others . . . he chose that one. His club of bone was heavier than ever as he ran, lifting it to strike.

  Then the antelope were on him. He swung the club high, aiming for the left side of the doe’s skull. But as he leaped in the air, giving himself leverage for the blow, he knew he would not strike truly. The club slid away from the animal’s neck and, off balance, he fell.

  Falling, he saw the buck, running in the rear of the pack. Its horns, even bigger than that one which had provided his dagger, gleamed in the sunlight. He saw the flash of hooves and knew that in a moment they would trample his helpless body; but in that moment he was overleaped. His father’s voice bellowed in rage, and his father’s great club smashed in an arc through the sky and crashed down behind the buck’s left horn.

  The buck’s front legs crumpled as the hooves were almost on Dom. Its head dropped like a rock on his chest, driving breath from his body. As he struggled to free himself he saw the great brown eye of the animal close to his own, still unglazed but fixed in death.

  His father pulled the antelope’s head away and Dom got up, gasping and afraid. He had escaped death but he had not struck his beast truly—to that extent he had failed in the test. He stood before his father, expecting a blow.

  “The club is too heavy for you,” his father said. “You have not strength enough to use it.”

  Dom dropped his head in acceptance, but his father turned away. He placed a foot on the body of the dead animal and gave a deep roar of triumph. The tribe gazed at him in reverence.

  Now the women skinned the dead buck and cut it up. They used daggers of antelope horn and knives made from the lower jaw of the small antelope, the rows of teeth honed to fine edges during the long days of the rainy season in the Cave. The implements were poor for such a task but they had learned their skills over many years: a girl of less than four worked beside her mother, using her own small knife.

  A ceremony followed. Dom’s mother took the liver of the antelope and offered it to his father. She cut a piece and gave it to him and he chewed it with satisfaction.

  Such was the custom: the presentation of the choicest morsel from the kill to him on whose leader­ship and wisdom and str
ength the safety of the tribe depended. The second piece should go to that hunter whose club had felled the beast.

  But in this kill the chief himself had struck the crucial blow—there was no one to share the glory or this succulent tidbit. The others watched as he ate, glad to see him gaining new strength from the flesh of his victim. Dom watched also, scarcely feeling hunger, though it was many hours since he had eaten and his stomach growled its need.

  His father called to him, and he went forward cowering. The blow would come after all, a punishment for his failure. But his father did not strike him; instead he called to Dom’s mother who held the liver in her hands.

  “Give it to him also,” he said. “My son is a hunter. He needs strength to swing his club, and will get it from this meat.”

  So his mother gave Dom a piece of the liver. The rich smell made his nostrils twitch, and saliva flowed in his mouth. Fearful that the gift might be taken back, he wasted no time but bit deeply into its softness. Blood ran down his jaws as his mother and father and all the tribe watched him eat.

  • • •

  All these things Dom remembered as he lay surrounded by the tribe in the valley, a quarter of a mile from the scene of their victory. The lion coughed again, farther off, and he thought of it with indifference, almost with contempt. The tribe had been masters of the grassland, and were masters here.

  And he, Dom, was a hunter, with strength now to wield the club he had found in the Place of Bones. A hunter and son of the chief, and perhaps in time chief himself. Contentedly he turned over and went to sleep.

  3

  THE VILLAGE CONSISTED OF A dozen huts, surrounded by a substantial thorn hedge. The space which the hedge enclosed was circular and about a hundred yards across; the hedge itself was made up partly of rooted living bushes and partly of dead thorny branches which had been brought into the circle to fill the gaps. These branches had been knotted into each other, tied with ropes of dried grass and reinforced with boulders, so as to make a strong and prickly wall that was several feet thick and taller than a man.