H Beam Piper & Michael Kurland, page 2
The tree-nests of their ancestors had become tree-houses, flexibly but strongly built to withstand the high winds following the hot seasons. They had learned to twist ropes of bark-fiber and plant-fiber and rawhide and animal-gut, and to make cunning knots and lashings. They chipped stone expertly, making hafted axes and hammers from the cores, and knives and awls and spear-points from the flakes. They designed a wide variety of bone-tipped fish-spears. They learned to hollow out pirogues from logs, with fire and the stone adze. They wove baskets, and made garments of downy skins. They called themselves the Navva. As with primitive peoples everywhere, this simply meant The People.
At times, after the floods, small parties would go up the river in pirogues, to where the more open forests of the uplands began. Such parties would camp and then divide up to hunt and smoke meat, and quarry and chip stone, returning to the delta country before the next flood season with their spoils. Sometimes they would return again and again, bringing their families. Some groups decided to stay, building their tree-houses high and taking chances with the floods. And so permanent villages began to appear along the tributary streams of the big river.
The pirogues which had served so well in the coastal swamps were too clumsy for the smaller streams and too heavy to carry over frequent portages. Some of the upland forests were too open for building tree-houses, but there was no need for them on ground always above flood-level. A house on the ground could be built strong enough to resist all but the largest animals-and those were all herbivores. So they began to build huts of poles and bark, and fence them with pole stockades interwoven with thornbrush. They used their basket-weaving skills to construct lighter boats, covering them with skins treated with animal fats and tree-resins. And, while bending split wood for boat-frames, they invented the bow. With these new skills in transportation and defense and hunting, they spread through the uplands, increasing in numbers as more of their young survived to reach maturity. Stockaded forest villages appeared at portage-places and the juncture of streams. Canoes and parties on foot pressed up the rivers and along the game-trails. These people no longer called themselves simply the Navva. They were Nawadrov, the Forest People, to distinguish themselves from Nawa-zorf, the Swamp People. Crossing mountain after mountain, they came at last to the High Ridge, with its drop in three bench-like stages to the plains two kilometers below. Here they found the blue-black Wahanawa, the Not-People. Survivors of one of the races of the past, these were cave-dwellers who had progressed no further than fire and crudely chipped stone hand-axes. At first, when they came swarming out of the rocks to attack, they were feared. When it was seen that they would just mill around stupidly while they were shot down with arrows, they came to be despised. But it was generations before they were exterminated and the Navvadrov could descend from the High Ridge into the open veldt beyond. In the swamps, the Navvazorf had begun building their houses on piles, independent of the trees. They constructed silt-traps and levees of earth packed between woven brush fences, and thus filled in selected areas of the swamps. The mudflats widened, and on them were planted the wild grasses whose seeds they ground into flour, and tubers to roast along with their fish and meat. They found fruit trees and tended them and learned to prune them. Weapons and boats and fishing-tackle improved; the bark fibers of which they made ropes were woven into mats, and then cloth.
Hunting parties still went up the river; there they met and traded with their cousins the Navvadrov, bringing home the bow and the art of making pots from baked clay. In return the Navvadrov received skin bags of flour, and dried fish, and shell, and mats, and cloth. The Navvadrov themselves had made something of a beginning at agriculture; they cultivated certain plants to attract game to their area, and soon progressed from this to planting food-crops for themselves. After observing the effects of a few accidental fires on the wild grasslands, they learned to use fire as a tool to clear land for planting. The introduction of pottery among the Navvazorf further speeded the progress of both peoples. Jars offish-oil and fermented grain beverages went up the river, along with flour, grain, dried fish, and cloth, to be exchanged for flint and obsidian and animal-skins. A regular trading-place came into being on the flat river-beach at the mouth of one of the larger tributaries; from a temporary camp it became a permanent village. Navvadrov families settled there, hunting and farming between visits of the down-river traders. Long sheds were erected to house trade-goods, storage paid for in kind. Bows and arrows were made there; traded skins were sewn into robes, and stone tools were finished and set and reset into wooden handles. The place came to be called Amarush-literally, Where We Sit and Barter. Among the people of the coastal swamps, a sort of democratic socialism prevailed. Crops were planted and harvested in common, each family being responsible for its fair share of the work. Catches of fish were smoked and stored as common stock. The business of the villages was conducted in open conclave of all adult males who had Walked the Walk, as the rite of passage for males was called. The women and children yelled assent or disapproval from the sidelines. So, when the trade with the people up the Gvaru became important, each Navvazorf village selected a family to move up to Amarush and deal with the uplanders.
Tammak, chief of the Darbba, sat on his pile of skin robes at the end of the village council-hut and looked across the fire at the dozen-odd tribal elders who had gathered with him. His throat was dry, and his hands clenched on the rawhide-wrapped grip of the stone mace that was both his personal weapon and his scepter of status. It was now, he realized, or never. The thing he was about to pro pose was frighteningly novel, and novelty, at best, was always frightening. A chieftain ruled only as far, and as long, as his people were willing to accept his rule, and this thing he had dreamed of would be hard for them to accept, or even comprehend.
It is still two sun-trips until the hot season, and the trading will not start for another sun-trip after that, one of the elders said. Why need we hurry? The longer we wait, the more skins we will have to trade.
We will not take skins to trade, Tammak explained. We will take only our weapons. The women and children, who will follow behind us, will carry the skins along with the rest of the household goods.
But we cannot trade our weapons! an elder objected. And why must the women and children come?
That has never been heard of. Trading journeys are for men!
It is so, Tammak agreed. But we will not trade. We will go early to Amarush, before any of the trading groups arrive, and we will kill everybody in the village and take it for ourselves.
A raid? A raid on Amarush? That has never been heard of. No one raids Amarush. Amarush is the place where we barter.
And why are we to take our women and children on a raid? That has never been heard of. Let them wait here, where they will be safe!
It is not to be a raid. It is to be something-greater-than-a-raid, and we will not return. We will stay forever in Amarush.
But our fields are here! And our village! Tammak, the gods have been spitting on you! The job of our chief is to lead us in defense of our fields and our village, not to lead us away from them!
Amarush is a better village than this, and there are good fields at Amarush. We will take Amarush, and trade with the people from down-river who come to Amarush, and the people from the woods, and the mountains. I have seen the traders of Amarush. They live in fine houses, much better than our poor huts. They have garments of thin cloth for the summers and of soft-downed skins and thick quilted cloth for the winters. They sit in the shade of their awnings; they feast, wasting enough food at a meal to feed two families. Why should we not take what they have and live easily, as they do?
But that is not proper, Tammak, one of the elders cried out. Gozzom, who was next eldest to Tammak, and by tribal custom his successor. Tammak shifted his grip slightly on the mace-handle. We are not traders, Gozzom continued, we are hunters and farmers. Our fathers were hunters and farmers, and our children will be hunters and farmers. It is what the gods have chosen for us; it is what the gods expect of us. It is not right for people who are one thing to try to be something else. It goes against the gods. Tammak jumped to his feet, whirling his mace around his head, and smashed it down on Gozzom's skull. The bone crushed like eggshell, and blood and bits of brain splattered the mace and Tammak's arm and chest. Gozzom fell.
Tammak stood up straight. He pointed with the blood-splattered mace at Gozzom's body. Look at that
thing, he said as calmly as his heavy breathing would allow. The others stared at the lifeless lump that had been Gozzom, shock and amazement showing on their faces.
A thing that was once a living man is now something else. And the gods do not speak! Is there anyone else in this circle who needs to be shown that it is possible to change from one thing to another? The elders shifted uncomfortably, but none of them spoke. Together they could have torn him to pieces, and they probably would have liked to at that moment, but the first one would have died in the attempt. None of them wished to be that sacrificial first.
It is a hard life to be hunters and farmers, Tammak said. We can be rich and well-fed at Amarush. I have given this much thought over many sleeps. We will take a part of everything that is brought there. We will no longer wear dirty skins. Our children will no longer be naked and hungry- There was less trouble with the rest of the tribe. Some of the women made a fearful outcry against leaving familiar homes for a trek into the unknown, but they were only women; the men let them squall or cuffed them into silence. They were soon too busy at the work of constructing the needed new canoes. The younger tribesmen were, without exception, enthusiastic.
When they were ready to start, Tammak had every hut in the village fired, and they paddled downstream with their village burning behind them. Now the Darbba must go on; they had nothing to return to. It took almost a sun-trip to reach Amarush on the big river. There could, of course, be no night attack on this world of forever-daylight, and as a precaution against raids or forest-fires, the trees had been cleared for two bow-shots around Amarush. But Tammak had given this much thought. The best concealment, he had decided, would be the most open approach. Bundles stuffed with leaves were made of all the sleeping-robes. Chunks of stone were slung on poles and carried between two men. The larger pots and jars were suspended from shoulder-yokes, as though they contained lard or honey. Shouting and singing, the males of the Darbba marched across the cleared ground toward the barter-place at Amarush. It was early, before the usual beginning of trading. The merchants of Amarush, expecting good bargains in the bundles and pots of these first-comers, flocked out to greet them. Almost all of the merchants were in the market-place when the Darbba flung aside their burdens, snatched up their weapons and set upon them. Within thirty minutes, Amarush and all it contained had fallen to the invaders. It was then that Tammak showed the wisdom he had gained his years as chief. The houses of the Navvazorf trading representatives were left unmolested. There was no burning or indiscriminate looting. Women and children were spared and adopted into the Darbba tribe, as were the old skilled bowyers, fletchers, flint-knappers and other artisans who had stayed behind in the village. Knowing that what could be done once would probably be attempted again, Tammak immediately put everyone to work constructing a heavy pole stockade all around the village. His people and the Navvazorf traders lived inside the stockade; the trading was carried on at picked places around the outside. Between trading seasons the women cultivated crops and dressed skins, the men hunted and fished, and made tools and weapons.
The Darbba waxed rich after the conquest of Amarush. Tammak bought the products of both the coast and the uplands, and he allowed no trading in Amarush except through his own people. There was a wide variety of merchandise-wine and fish-oil and dried fruits and smoked fish and nuts and nut-oil, rough and shaped flint and quartz and obsidian, skins and baskets and mats and cloth. From the farther uplands a new trade-stone was beginning to trickle in-small pebbles of a soft, shining yellow stuff which could be pounded into sheets and drawn into wire as no stone could be, and which would, when heated in the hottest part of a charcoal fire, flow like melted tallow.
A large nugget of this stuff was among the loot which fell into Tammak's hands at the taking of Amarush. Laying it on a smooth rock, he beat it with a polished flint hammer, intending to make a cup or bowl of it. However, before he had mastered the technique he had pounded the yellow stuff too thin, so he shaped it into a rough cone. His woman lined it with a cap of downy skin, and Tammak wore it on his head. Years later, when he knew he was going to die, he gave it, and the rule of Amarush, to his eldest son, Vallak. So Tammak I of Amarush was the first of the kings of Thalassa to wear a golden crown, and it was he who established the principle of royal succession by primogeniture.
Chapter Four
Generation after generation of the red-furred gangsters of Hetaira scampered among the forests, valleys and lakes of the Horizon Zone. The sounds by which they communicated with one another became more varied, the expressed meanings more exact. Their tools and weapons of stone underwent constant improvement, first discarded after use and then retained against future need. The gangs grew larger; splitting when hunting was poor, reuniting and merging in times of plenty. They raided each others' territory, tried to kidnap or entice each others' females, fought and made friends. With each advance life became easier. More individuals survived to maturity; pregnant and nursing mothers, and growing young, were better and better nourished; each generation showed the effect. They grew taller, legs lengthening as their posture altered; shoulders widened and hips narrowed. The head became larger with increased brain capacity; the jaws lighter and narrower as the teeth ceased to be used for anything but chewing food. Because the females bore young at fairly long intervals, and because the young were, almost with out exception, single births and very small at birth, pregnancy and childbirth were negligible hardships, never curtailing other activity. There was little difference between the sexes in strength and endurance, hence the division of labor within the gang was by age and status rather than sex, and the race began its upward journey on a basis of sexual equality.
Over the centuries their artifacts were refined into greater efficiency. Delicately chipped hafted axes appeared, and flake knives with rawhide-wrapped grips, and spears with needle-sharp flint core heads. Fire early became their servant. They made garments of skins, and belts and pouches and packs to carry their multiplying possessions. A fire carrier-the skull of a large animal lined with clay and slung from a rawhide strap-was invented; and from this beginning, pottery was developed. The immemorial trick of springing branches or brush in the face of a pursuer suggested the sling, and eventually the bow. Hetaira was a world without feathers, as Thalassa was a hairless world, but there were stiff broad-bladed grasses which, when dried and split, made excellent vanes for arrows. They learned to make spear-throwers too, and bolas of rawhide rope weighted with round stones.
These little red gangsters had a vast curiosity about everything, a hunger to know and understand. Unless some immediate cause of hostility existed, gangs of strangers would meet and squat in a circle, exchanging information. They tested everything they found by smelling and tasting and pounding and cutting and burning. They practiced unthinking cruelties of investigation on every living thing they caught. They learned, sometimes by trial and error, and sometimes by accident. But once they had learned, they never forgot.
There was, for example, the contribution to gangster knowledge which cost Nwilt his life. Nwilt had been squatting patiently, motionlessly, in the brush for almost an hour, his bow bent, waiting for the big blue-furred bat-bird to circle close enough for a shot. Finally the thing swooped within range, the bowstring twanged, and the bat-bird jerked convulsively and died, its wings extended. As it glided down, Nwilt jumped from his ambush and ran after it, coming to the edge of a pond in time to see it land fifty feet from the bank in the scum-covered water.
He growled in annoyance. This was one of the black-scum ponds his people ran across sometimes, its surface covered with a viscid stuff which had a nauseous smell and a worse taste. He looked at the bat-bird and wrinkled his nose in disgust. If he fished it out at once and washed it, it would be fit to eat. His gang had not done so well at hunting lately, and besides, one of his best arrows was sticking in the beast's side. He cut and trimmed a pole and, prodding it ahead of him, waded into the horrible stuff and recovered the bat-bird.
On the way back his foot slipped, and before he could right himself he had fallen sprawling. Picking himself up, he regained the bank, jabbering the inarticulate blasphemy of the godless and obscenity of the uninhibited, and set off toward the smoke-wisp that marked the gang's stopping-place. The air was cold-it was several sleep-periods since the sun had set, far to the north-and he was shivering from the ducking by the time he reached the fire, around which the twenty males and females and children of the gang were squatting.
In his absence someone had shot an animal, a medium sized thing like an antelope, with a single horn projecting straight forward from above and between its eyes. The blood-wet skin was draped over a bush; one of the gang had broken the horn out of the skull to fashion a dagger, and the unicorn, already gutted, was turning on a spit over the fire. Nwilt flung down his bedraggled trophy and crowded up to the fire to warm himself.
