was a head shorter than I, but strength great or greater than mine spoke from the immense shoulders, the thick body. His red hair hung sleekly straight to his shoulders. He was red-bearded. His eyes were violet-blue and lines of laughter crinkled at their comers; and the wide, loose mouth was a laughing mouth. But the laughter which had graven those lines on Tibur’s face was not the kind to make the bearer merry.
He wore a coat of mail. At his left side hung a huge war hammer. He looked me over from head to foot and back again with narrowed, mocking eyes. If I had hated Tibur before I had seen him, it was nothing to what I felt now.
I looked from him to the Witch-woman. Her cornflower-blue eyes were drinking me in; absorbed, wondering — amused. She, too, wore a coat of mail, over which streamed her red braids. Those who were clustered behind Tibur and the Witch-woman were only a blur to me.
Tibur leaned forward.
“Welcome — Dwayanu!” he jeered. “What has brought you out of your skulking place? My challenge?”
“Was it you I heard baying yesterday?” I said. “Hai — you picked a safe distance ere you began to howl, red dog!”
There was a laugh from the group around the Witch-woman, and I saw that they were women, fair and red-haired like herself, and that there were two tall men with Tibur. But the Witch-woman said nothing, still drinking me in, a curious speculation in her eyes.
Tibur’s face grew dark. One of the men leaned, and whispered to him. Tibur nodded, and swaggered forward. He called out to me:
“Have you grown soft during your wanderings, Dwayanu? By the ancient custom, by the ancient test, we must learn that before we acknowledge you — great Dwayanu. Stand fast —”
His hand dropped to the battle-hammer at his side. He hurled it at me.
The hammer was hurtling through the air at me with the speed of a bullet — yet it seemed to come slowly. I could even see the thong that held it to Tibur’s arm slowly lengthening as it flew . . . .
Little doors were opening in my brain . . . the ancient test. . . . Hai! but I knew that play . . . I waited motionless as the ancient custom prescribed . . . but they should have given me a shield . . . no matter . . . how slowly the great sledge seemed to come . . . and it seemed to me that the hand I thrust out to catch it moved as slowly . . . .
I caught it. Its weight was all of twenty pounds, yet I caught it squarely, effortlessly, by its metal shaft. Hai! but did I not know the trick of that? . . . The little doors were opening faster now . . . and I knew another. With my other hand I gripped the thong that held the battle-hammer to Tibur’s arm and jerked him toward me.
The laugh was frozen on Tibur’s face. He tottered on Nansur’s broken edge. I heard behind me the piping shout of the pygmies . . . .
The Witch-woman sliced down a knife and severed the thong. She jerked Tibur back from the verge. Rage swept me . . . that was not in the play . . . by the ancient test it was challenger and challenged alone. . . . I swung the great hammer around my head and around, and hurled it back at Tibur; it whistled as it flew and the severed thong streamed rigid in its wake. He threw himself aside, but not quickly enough. The sledge struck him on a shoulder. A glancing bow, but it dropped him.
And now I laughed across the gulf.
The Witch-woman leaned forward, incredulity flooding the speculation in her eyes. She was no longer amused. No! And Tibur jerked himself up on one knee, glaring at me, his laughter lines twisted into nothing like mirth of any kind.
Still other doors, tiny doors, opening in my brain. . . . They wouldn’t believe I was Dwayanu . . . Hai! I would show them. I dipped into the pocket of my belt. Ripped open the buckskin pouch. Drew out the ring of Khalk’ru. I held it up. .The green light glinted on it. The yellow stone seemed to expand. The black octopus to grow . . . .
“Am I Dwayanu? Look on this! Am I Dwayanu?”
I heard a woman scream — I knew that voice. And I heard a man calling, shouting to me — and that voice I knew too. The little doors clicked shut, the memories that had slipped through them darted back before they closed . . . .
Why, it was Evalie who was screaming! And Jim who was shouting at me! What was the matter with them? Evalie was facing me, arms outstretched. And there was stark unbelief and horror — and loathing — in the brown eyes fastened on me. And rank upon rank, the Little People were closing around the pair of them — barring me from them. Their spears and arrows were levelled at me. They were hissing like a horde of golden snakes, their faces distorted with hatred, their eyes fastened on the ring of Khalk’ru still held high above my head.
And now I saw that hatred reflected upon the face of Evalie — and the loathing deepen in her eyes.
“Evalie!” I cried, and would have leaped toward her. . . . Back went the hands of the pygmies for the throwing cast; the arrows trembled in their bows.
“Don’t move, Leif! I’m coming!” Jim jumped forward. Instantly the pygmies swarmed round and upon him. He swayed and went down under them.
“Evalie!” I cried again.
I saw the loathing fade, and heart-break come into her face. She called some command.
A score of pygmies shot by her, on each side, casting down their bows and spears as they raced toward me. Stupidly, I watched them come; among them I saw Sri.
They struck me like little living battering rams. I was thrust backward. My foot struck air —
The pygmies clinging to my legs, harrying me like terriers, I toppled over the edge of Nansur.
BOOK OF THE WITCH-WOMAN
CHAPTER XIII.
KARAK
I had sense enough to throw my hands up over my head, and so I went down feet first. The pygmies hanging to my legs helped that, too. When I struck the water I sank deep and deep. The old idea is that when a man drowns his whole past life runs through his mind in a few seconds, like a reversed cinema reel. I don’t know about that, but I do know that in my progress into Nanbu’s depths and up again I thought faster than ever before in my life.
In the first place I realized that Evalie had ordered me thrown off the bridge. That made me white-hot mad. Why hadn’t she waited and given me a chance to explain the ring! Then I thought of how many chances I’d had to explain — and hadn’t taken one of them. Also that the pygmies had been in no mood for waiting, and that Evalie had held back their spears and arrows and given me a run for my life, even though it might be a brief one. Then I thought of my utter folly in flashing the ring at that particular moment, and I couldn’t blame the Little People for thinking me an emissary of Khalk’ru. And I saw again the heart-break in Evalie’s eyes, and my rage vanished in a touch of heart-break of my own.
After that, quite academically, the idea came
