Ogo was consumed with jealous hatred of this outlandish big-breasted female who was engaging all his beloved Hawkon’s attention. Moreover his question was pertinent; for Hawkon must have known, as well as anyone else, that a woman, though she might be called this or that, could have no very name of her own, as a man had. Ogo was called Ogo; Hawkon was called Hawkon; but these were not their names. Each had a secret name, known only to himself and to the god who, communicating through the wizard, had given it to him at the first audible sign of puberty, which is the breaking of the voice (for it is then that the man enters the child and speaks in him). To utter one’s true name aloud was the gravest risk one could take; and to whisper it in the ear of one’s friend was the mark of the most absolute love and trust, since it made him a gift of one’s very soul. It was to say, in effect: ‘My life is in your hands; I would not live a moment longer than you wish.’ This extreme of devotion being naturally a rare experience, another name was chosen that should stand for the true name without betraying it. Ogo, for example, was called Ogo; his name was called Urding; but his name itself only he knew, he and his one comrade, Hawkon, to whom he had confided it. So, in declaring that he would call his woman’s name Flint, Hawkon was talking offensive nonsense. If he had said that he would call her so, the remark would have been blameless enough, for clearly even a woman must be called something.
‘It shall be as I say,’ said Hawkon, glaring fiercely at his friend.
The two young men confronted each other with menace in their looks. In years, had they reckoned so, they were still in their teens. Both were fair, with beards of a downy growth. Hawkon was slightly the bigger of the two—a brawny fellow well matched with this woman Flint. But Ogo was as tall as a man needs be, and had a quickness denied to the other; the habitual expression of his face was that of an innocent animal, gravely intent. It was in his mind now that he must kill Hawkon, or himself be killed; and the fact that this idea did not at once issue in action—for in the tumult of his jealousy he had forgotten fear of Koor’s law—marks him off as something of a freak in his community. He hesitated; he faltered; he shrugged his shoulders.
‘So be it,’ he said. A sick and weary grin troubled his features for a moment. ‘She is your woman, and it is you that will call her.’
The others—they numbered six, all told—grunted with excitement, with approval, with disappointment. Or it may be they grunted only from habit. And after a long silence the boy called Stare said suddenly: ‘Koor the Old One quivers. His voice is a frog’s voice.’
‘He is a falling tree,’ said another.
‘Worms are eating him. He lives too long.’
They growled like dogs, these young men. They laughed and uttered contemptuous obscenities about their oppressor. But Hawkon, in the midst of the uproar, struck a note of warning. ‘The Old One has many ears, many eyes, many hands. The Wise One sits at his side and the gods are his gods.’
Ogo was gazing thoughtfully at a young sapling. He said: ‘This is a tree. This is not Koor. But——’ He struggled with an idea beyond expression. He had no language for his thought, and therefore his thought was not complete. He wanted to say: ‘But if it were Koor.’ But ‘if it were’ was a conception too difficult for him. He had then to choose between saying: ‘This tree is a tree’ or ‘This tree is Koor’. Either statement would have been understood and accepted without question, but neither was what he wanted. The first meant nothing; the second meant more than he dared commit himself to. His problem was this: if he identified the tree with Koor, and struck it down, would Koor die, or would he, Ogo, be himself assaulted by Koor’s all too observant gods? But he could not even state the problem. He glanced at the blank faces of his companions, vainly seeking help of them; then shut his mouth with a snap and was silent.
CHAPTER 2
OGO KILLS ONE STRANGER AND BEFRIENDS ANOTHER
By this incident two seeds had been sown, without his knowledge, in Ogo’s mind: doubt of Koor’s invincibility and the resolve to possess a woman. Neither doubt nor resolve was clearly articulated. Nor was Ogo aware of the unrest within him. He was restless, but the restlessness was not accentuated by knowledge of it, as it would have been in a man who had learned the trick of considering himself as a person, a centre of events. Without thought he felt an itch to go adventuring. And without plan, being driven by a motive that made no mark on his consciousness, he went. He went swiftly, unhesitatingly, with a simple directness that intelligence could not have achieved, would indeed have thwarted. He went in quest of a strange people. And he went stooping, with nostrils quivering for scent and ears intent for sound. The pelt of a wolf that he had himself slain covered his loins and one shoulder; and a strip of raw hide, fastened round his middle with a wooden peg, held his one weapon, a short-handled flint axe that had a sharp edge for cutting and cleaving and a blunt round head for use in close fighting.
Darkness came twice, full of devils and danger; and still his obscure purpose held him and mastered his fears. He had passed over many hills and into a forest that was strange to him. He had eaten nothing but a snail or two since he left the squat, and for hours had drunk nothing but a handful of the dew he found trickling, in slow meagre drops, down the trunk of a tree and coaxed with infinite patience into his cupped palm. And he had met nothing human. At the beginning of the third darkness, crouching and shivering, he heard a mighty-snorting and stamping and the sound of breaking branches. The hunted beast, black in the half light, came within a hand’s touch of him and fell, pierced through the eye, no more than a dozen strides away. Its brazen screeching shook the world. The hunters, howling triumphantly, gathered round the carcass. They were foreign men; their garb and their gestures were outlandish; Ogo became rigid. A picture flashed into his mind: the boar plunging into its trap, a concealed pit; the hunters hurling stones upon it; its escape, by some magic; and this, the end of the chase. In and out of his mind the picture flashed, more quickly than the intake of a breath; and left no memory but only the certain knowledge that it had all happened so and so. The fear that had made him shiver now made him still. His mouth watered; his belly ached with desire; his lips curled back, baring the dog-teeth. Raw flesh and warm blood—in fancy he tasted them already. He was appetite. But he was something else as well, and that something else, that spark in the earth of him, saved him from running straight to his death. The hunters, a disorderly rabble, had leapt upon the carcass and were hacking at it with their knives and axes, and tearing at it with their long fingers. Their frenzy infected him with a like frenzy, but he controlled it. The danger he feared was not that of death or torture at the hands of this strange gang: his fancy did not stretch so far. What he feared most was to lose this chance of meat. The light was fast failing; the prancing figures appeared jet-black and their faces featureless; behind them a triangular patch of greenish sky was visible, framed by trees. Ogo was so near these strangers that he could hear their grunts, their panting breath; yet their yells and chattering, their greed and snarling anger, came to him swathed in the soft shadows of dusk and with an effect of remoteness. He was all intentness, every nerve taut with the ecstasy of crisis; yet there was something dreamlike, for him, in this unwonted waiting, this conflict of impulses. He was engaged in a new adventure, the adventure of thought.
The riot of moving figures suddenly resolved itself into a kind of pattern. One taller than his fellows stood on the beast’s head and with his axe made menacing circles in the air. He uttered a strident cry, and disorder was quelled. The beast had been already partially dismembered; and now, with much pushing and pulling, the remaining bulk of him was set in motion. Seeing himself frustrated of food Ogo acted quickly. He began crawling backwards, and continued so, his toes clutching into the soft soil, until he judged it safe to turn and make for a point at which, if he were cunning enough, he might intercept the tail of the procession. It was too much to hope that any scraps would have been left lying on the ground. Having changed direction he ran with all speed, stopped and listened, ran again, stopped and listened. Yes, he had struck their path. The main party was moving away from him, this way; the last stragglers were approaching him, that way. He knew them, the bad hunters, the greedy ones, eager to fill their own bellies at the tribe’s expense. Foreign though they were, he counted, without thought, on their resembling his own people in this. So sure were his senses that he knew within a yard where they would pass him, and seeing a tree whose foliage overhung the spot went up it like a monkey and poised himself expectantly upon a sleek slim branch, clinging with his toes alone. The stranger came nearer, nearer; slowly and with frequent halts and gnawing at the large lump of boar’s flesh he carried in his arms. There were others in his wake, and these others would be either more or less richly laden than he. As to that, Ogo dared spend no time in conjecture. He could smell the meat; he could see the man; he pounced fiercely. The stranger staggered and fell, with Ogo’s fingers clutching his neck, and Ogo’s knees fastened on his back. He uttered one piercing yell of astonishment and then was silent, wriggling and rolling on the ground. He raised himself on one arm, pawed at the ground, once, twice, three times, and was on his feet again. Ogo clung like a cat. In a frenzy the strange man fixing himself backwards, and Ogo, still clinging, fell with him. First his buttocks struck the ground, then his head; all the breath seemed to rush out of him in one gasp. His grip relaxed. But with the first movement of his enemy, the first beginning of a lightning-swift movement, he slid from under him, dodged a blow, felt for and found his axe, and struck. Between aiming and striking—one action—he caught his first glimpse of his enemy’s face, long, large-eyed, hairy, smeared richly with the blood of that interrupted feast. After striking, and seeing the stranger fall loosely and lie still, he took no second glance but at once began searching for the spoil, his ears still intent for any sound of approach. The moon was not yet risen who sends long shafts and broad patches of brightness but makes shadows blacker. The world was dusky and quiet. But for his hunger Ogo would have been mastered by fear of the creeping presences about him; would have longed for light as he now longed for meat. All his being was gathered up and projected into this search, except that while he crawled and peered and touched, his mind filled with craving, his quick animal senses watched over him like sentries. The surrounding forest flowed into him in a series of smells and noises having each its own meaning. When he had found his meat, and set his teeth into it with savage lust, he realized suddenly the significance of his victory, remembering that he had killed a man. He had killed a man, and the demon of that man was now with him in this dark forest. So began another search; for he did not at once recall where the dead body lay. He proceeded with infinite caution, shuddering with fear. It was necessary above all things that he should not come into physical contact with the body: the dead are taboo, and the taboo is contagious. Yet he must find it without delay, and by prayers and offerings placate the demon. His eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and a star or two came to light him, and to shew him a huddled corpse with shattered skull, staring eyes, and blood-besmeared agonized face. The mouth was open. The attitude accused him. Ogo went down on his knees and rocked himself to and fro with wailing lamentation. ‘Noble stranger, forgive me. You were my enemy, but now you are my friend. See how I kneel and acknowledge you my friend. Do not be angry with me. I will do penance; I will serve you; you shall have the best of my meat.’ With the flint of his axe he hacked off a choice morsel and thrust it reverently into the open mouth of the corpse. ‘Let us be enemies no longer, O mighty one.’