“I am Julian 20th, The Red Hawk,” I replied.
He raised his brows. “I have heard of you in the last few days,” he said. “Your people are fighting mightily at the edge of The Capitol, but they will be driven back-the Kalkars are too many. Raban will be glad of you if the stories they tell of him are true. One is that he eats the hearts of brave warriors that are unfortunate enough to fall into his hands.”
I smiled. “What is the creature?” I asked again. “Where originates such a breed?”
“He is only a Kalkar,” replied Okonnor, “but even a greater monstrosity than his fellows. He was born in The Capitol of ordinary Kalkar parents, they say, and early developed a lust for blood that has increased with the passing years. He boasts yet of his first murder-he killed his mother when he was ten.”
I shuddered. “And it is into the hands of such that a daughter of the Or-tis has fallen,” I said, “and you, an American, aided in her capture.”
He looked at me in startled surprise. “The daughter of an Or-tis?” he cried.
“Of the Or-tis,” I repeated.
“I did not know,” he said. “I was not close to her at any time and thought that she was but a Kalkar woman. Some of them are small, you know-the half-breeds.”
“What are you going to do? Can you save her?” I demanded.
A white flame seemed to illumine his face. He drew his knife and cut the bonds that held my arms behind me.
“Hide here among the trees,” he said, “and watch for Raban until I return. It will be after dark, but I will bring help. This valley is almost exclusively peopled by those who have refused to intermarry with the Kalkars and have brought down their strain unsullied from ancient times. There are almost a thousand fighting men of pure Yank blood within its confines. I should be able to gather enough to put an end to Raban for all time, and if the danger of a daughter of Or-tis cannot move them from their shame and cowardice they are hopeless indeed.”
He mounted his horse. “Quick!” he cried. “Get among the trees.”
“Where is my horse?” I called as he was riding away. “He was not killed?”
“No,” he called back, “he ran off when you fell. We did not try to catch him.” A moment later he disappeared around the west end of the hill and I entered the miniature forest that clothed it. Through the gloom of my sorrow broke one ray of happiness-Red Lightning lived.
About me grew ancient trees of enormous size with boles of five to six feet in diameter and their upper foliage waving a hundred and more feet above my head. Their branches excluded the sun where they grew thickest and beneath them baby trees struggled for existence in the wan light, or hoary monsters, long fallen, lay embedded in leaf mould marking the spot where some long dead ancient set out a tiny seedling that was to outlive all his kind.
It was a wonderful place in which to hide, although hiding is an accomplishment that we Julians have little training in and less stomach for. However, in this instance it was in a worthy cause-a Julian hiding from a Kalkar in the hope of aiding an Or-tis! Ghosts of nineteen Julians! to what had I, Julian 20th, brought my proud name?
And yet I could not be ashamed. There was something stubbornly waging war against all my inherited scruples and I knew that it was going to win-had already won. I would have sold my soul for this daughter of my enemy.
I made my way up the hill toward the ruined tent, but at the summit the shrubbery was so dense that I could see nothing. Rose bushes fifteen feet high and growing as thickly together as a wall hid everything from my sight. I could not even penetrate them.
Near me was a mighty tree with a strange, feathery foliage. It was such a tree as I had never seen before, but that fact did not interest me so much as the discovery that it might be climbed to a point that would permit me to see above the tops of the rose bushes.
What I saw included two stone tents, not so badly ruined as most of those one comes across, and between them a pool of water-an artificial pool of straight lines. Some fallen columns of stone lay about it and the vines and creepers fell over its edge into the water, almost concealing the stone rim.
As I watched a group of men came from the ruin to the east through a great archway, the coping of which had fallen away. They were all Kalkars, and among them was Raban. I had my first opportunity to view him closely.
He was a most repulsive appearing creature. His great size might easily have struck with awe the boldest heart, for he stood a full nine feet in height and was very large in proportion about the shoulders, chest and limbs. His forehead was so retreating that one might with truth say he had none, his thick thatch of stiffly erect hair almost meeting his shaggy eyebrows.
His eyes were small and set close to a coarse nose, and all his countenance was bestial. I had not dreamed that a man’s face could be so repulsive. His whiskers appeared to grow in all directions and proclaimed, at best, but hearsay evidence of combing.
He was speaking to that one of my captors who had left me at the foot of the hill to apprise Raban of my taking-that fellow who struck me in the face while my hands were bound and whose name was Tav. The giant spoke in a roaring, bull-like voice which I thought at the time was, like his swaggering walk and his braggadocio, but a pose to strike terror in those about him.
I could not look at the creature and believe that real courage lay within so vile a carcass. I have known many fearless men-The Vulture, The Wolf, The Rock and hundreds like them-and in each courageousness was reflected in some outward physical attribute of dignity and majesty.
“Fetch him!” he roared at Tav. “Fetch him! I will have his heart for my supper,” and after Tav had gone to fetch me the giant stood there with his other followers, roaring and bellowing, and it always was about himself and what he had done and what he would do. He seemed to me an exaggeration of a type I had seen before, wherein gestures simulate action, noise counterfeits courage, and craft passes for brains.
The only impressive thing about him was his tremendous bulk, and yet even that did not impress me greatly-I have known smaller men, whom I respected, that filled me with far greater awe. I did not fear him.
I think only the ignorant could have feared him at all, and I did not believe all the pother about his eating human flesh. I am of the opinion that a man who really intended eating the heart of another would say nothing about it.
Presently Tav came running back up the hill. He was much excited, as I had known he would be.
“He is gone!” he cried to Raban. “They are both gone-Okonnor and the Yank. Look!” he held out the thongs that had fastened my wrists. “They have been cut. How could he cut them with his hands bound behind him? That is what I want to know. How could he have done it? He could not unless-”
“There must have been others with him,” roared Raban. “They followed and set him free, taking Okonnor captive.”
“There were no others,” insisted Tav.
“Perhaps Okonnor freed him,” suggested another.
So obvious an explanation could not have originated in the pea girth brain of Raban and so he said. “I knew it from the first-it was Okonnor. With my own hands I shall tear out his liver and eat it for breakfast.”
Certain insects, toads and men make a lot of unnecessary noise, but the vast majority of other animals pass through life in dignified silence. It is our respect for these other animals that causes us to take their names. Whoever heard a red hawk screeching his intentions to the world? Silently he soars above the treetops and as silently he swoops and strikes.
9
Reunion
Through the conversation that I overheard between Raban and his minions I learned that Bethelda was imprisoned in the westerly ruin, but as Raban did not go thither during the afternoon I waited in the hope that fortune would favor me with a better opportunity after dark to attempt her liberation with less likelihood of interruption or discovery than would have been possible during the day, when men and women were constantly passing in and out of the easterly tent. There was the chance, too, that Okonnor might return with help and I did not want to do anything, while that hope remained that might jeopardize Bethelda’s chances for escape.