CHAPTER II
The Invaders
The glad word sprang first from the lips of the Warriors who guarded the gates of the village. "It is Meg! Meg has returned from her pilgrimage. Tell all!"
It spread to the Workers in the fields; they rose from their labors, wiping grit-coarsened hands upon their thighs; their eyes brightened. "Meg has returned!" And the breeding-mothers heard, they lolling their plump, lush bodies in the sunlit doorways. They heard, and their soft eyes filled with ready tears; they waddled forward, their bulging hips swaying like ripened corn. "It is Meg, come back from the Place of the Gods!"[3]
[Footnote 3: The matriarchal commune was made up of Warriors, Workers and breeding-mothers, all headed by a learned Mother whose mantle of leadership was handed down from generation to generation. Upon reaching maturity, each girl was permitted to choose which branch of service she should adopt. The Priestess, Meg, was studying to become the Mother of her Clan; hence her pilgrimage to the Place of the Gods.--Ed.]
The Men, too, heard. They simpered foolishly and rolled their great, soft eyes and primped their oiled hair. And word reached the tribal Mother who came from her _hoam_ to meet the Priestess. They met within the confines of Meg's village; the aged Mother moved to greet Meg with arms outstretched.
"You are returned safely, my child. May the Gods live forever!"
Meg could not speak for the little happy-imp who clutched her throat and made water in her eyes. Her hands, tight and hot on the withered hands of the old Mother, were speech enough. The Mother bent forward and made a sign upon Meg's forehead.
"You have learned the Great Secret, my daughter; I can tell that by the look in your eyes. Now you have passed the last barrier between you and the Motherhood of our Clan. Tonight we will have a great feast; at its conclusion I will invest you in the ultimate mysteries of your task--"
There was a stir in the crowd surrounding Meg and the Mother; Daiv, chafing with impatience at being thus ignored, had thrust himself forward to his wife's side.
"What is this, Meg!" cried the Mother. "Have you turned Warrior as well as Priestess? Where did you capture this hairless Man-thing?"
Now was the moment Meg had been at once dreading and looking forward to. She placed her hand proudly within Daiv's, and her voice was the clarion call of trumpets.
"It is no Man-_thing_, Mother. It is a Man; a real Man such as were the Gods! Not a scrimping parody like our breeders, nor a foul brute like the Wild Ones--but a Man. He is Daiv, my mate!"
"_Mate!_" The word leaped not only from the mouth of the Mother; it was rasped by the Workers and the Warriors, it was piped in the shrill, frightened quaver of the breeding-mothers. The Mother's eyes clouded.
"Mate, Meg? What madness is this? Surely you know a priestess who would be a Mother may not mate with a Man!"
Daiv said humbly, yet at the same time pridefully, "So Meg believed, O Mother, until I taught her differently--and until she learned the Great Secret at the feet of the Gods. I am Daiv, known as 'He-who-would-learn'; I come from the place of the Escape. My people live by the Laws of the Ancient Ones. In our land Man and Woman are equal; we give and take love in the sacred customs of marriage."
Meg wished desperately that Daiv had said nothing. Given time to lead up to these revelations, she felt she might have presented the argument more convincingly. But in Daiv's deep voice these truths--which she now recognized to be truths--sounded like rankest heresies.
And they drew from the assembled listeners the response Meg had feared. There was the snicking of metal upon metal as the Warriors half-drew their swords from their scabbards; a low rumble of dissent growled from the throats of the Workers. The breeding-mothers squealed like stricken animals, fled with hands covering their ears lest the Gods destroy them for having heard this impious outburst.
* * * * *
Lora, Chieftain of the Warriors, stepped forward, her lean jaw grim. "Blasphemy, O Mother! By Tedhi, She-who-laughs, this Man-thing befouls us with his lies. Shall I strike him down?"
She took a step toward Daiv. Meg cried out, moved between them, turned beseeching eyes to the Mother. "No! I beg of you, O Mother, no! Look upon Daiv! Look--and remember that which _you_ saw, many winters ago, in the Place of the Gods! You know I speak the truth, Mother, and that Daiv, too, tells that which is so.
"Tell my sisters that this is well; that this is as it should be. _You_ know--"
Jain, Captain of the Workers, shook her head sorrowfully. In a gentle voice she said, "Our priestess has gone mad, O Mother. The rigors of the pilgrimage have been too much for her. What is the law? Death for her, as well as for this hairless Man-thing? Or, having taken herself a Man, must she become a breeding-mother?"
But the Mother stayed her. There was a faraway look in her eyes; Meg knew that the aged leader of the Clan was remembering a pilgrimage made many, many years ago to the Place of the Gods. The Mother, Meg knew, had once looked upon the majestic figures of Jarg, Ibrim, Taamuz and Tedhi on their great, rocky promontory at Mount Rushmore and had seen, as Meg had seen, that the Gods were, in truth, Men like Daiv. A word from the Mother now....
The Mother spoke. There was infinite sadness in her voice.
"It is the Law," she said, "that none shall strive to change the ways of the Clan. You, Meg, have ignored the Law. You and your mate will be given justice."
And she turned away.
A gasp spun Meg's gaze to Daiv. His face was crimson with an anger-look; great veins throbbed in his forehead. He roared, "Here, then, is the joyous welcome your Clan offers us, Golden One! Justice? What kind of justice may we expect from a doddering, thwarted old harridan--"
"_Daiv!_" screamed Meg.
But her cry broke too late. With one swift gesture Daiv had wrenched the sword from the hands of Lora. Now he tested its blade, swept Meg into the circle of his arms, and laughed at the startled clanswomen defiantly.
"So you would judge a Man?" he taunted. "A Man of the Kirki tribe? Come, then, you filthy diggers of dirt and loveless scarecrows. Let your judgment be the matching of my steel against yours!"
There was a tense moment of silence. Then anger, bitter as the fruit of the simmon tree, flamed in the voices of Meg's sisters. A score of Warriors sprang forward, swords drawn. At their flank advanced the Workers, hoes and adzes uplifted. Meg smiled piteously at Daiv and murmured a swift prayer to the Gods. It was grievous to die thus, before the blades of loved ones....
* * * * *
And a faint, thin cry stayed them all! They turned to see, at the deserted southward gate, the torn and bleeding figure of a Warrior who, hair disheveled, face scarred and raw, hands and arms deep-scored with gory cicatrices, pulled herself within the Jinnia camp dragging behind her one sturdy leg and one blackened, withered stump.
In that moment of dread wonder it did not even seem strange to the clanswomen that the first to reach the wounded Warrior's side should be the stranger, Daiv. But Daiv it was who raised her in his arms.
The visitor's eyes were filmed with pain, horror, fatigue. They unveiled now, and an indomitable purpose shone through. In a husky voice she faltered, "It is too late ... to save me. Soon I will join ... my Clanswomen ... and the Gods. Save ... yourselves!"
There was unbelievable gentleness in Daiv's voice.
"What is it, Warrior?" he asked. "What enemy thus cruelly destroyed you? Of what would you warn us?"
From some deep-hidden well the messenger drew new strength. Her eyes blazed as she answered, "I bid you flee to the secret spots of the mountains. An evil foe even now marches upon your camp. Stunted and vicious little yellow-skinned Men-things who linber[4] our Clans, destroy our fighters with tubes that maim and stun."
[Footnote 4: Linber--to kidnap, (derived from Lindbergh?)--Ed.]
The aged Mother was beside her now.
"Who are you, daughter?" she begged. "Whence come you?"
"I am Vivyun," labored the refugee, "of the Durm Clan. Short days ago came strange lightings in the heavens; mad thunders burst in the forests about our village--"
Jain interrupted, startled, "Mother! The omens we heard night before last in the forest to our west!" and Meg looked swiftly at Daiv. She cried,
"The forest through which we fled, Daiv! The wood of heavy twigs!"
Daiv silenced her with a thoughtful nod. Vivyun's halting speech continued.
"--then came the onslaught. Armored demons, the color of mustard seed, burst upon us. Our Warriors went to meet them but the dwarfs loosed lights from sticks and where the soldiers had stood, now were but inch-long, stony parodies of Women. One of the lights played for an instant upon my leg--"
Meg looked and shuddered. The dying Warrior's leg was firm and round from hip to thigh; ten inches above the knee it ended abruptly in a scoriated stump from which depended an ugly, wartlike excrescence which--Meg saw with sickening horror--was the perfectly formed simulacrum of a human limb.
Daiv was muttering savagely, "Speak on, Warrior!"
"They come," persisted Vivyun, "to capture Women. Like the Wild Ones, they die out for lack of Mates. Out of the far southland they come, from a land called Mayco. They bear other strange weapons. A stick that shoots lights of insanity ... a wall they build of invisible bricks...."
"More!" pleaded Daiv and the Mother in one breath as Vivyun faltered. "More!"
But a strange, foolish look glazed the dying one's eyes. Her lips moved whitely and her breath was a whisper. "You are a strange ... creature," she said to Daiv. "Somehow you ... make it easy to die ... Man-thing...."
Then she was still.
* * * * *
Lora, Chieftain of the Warriors, broke the spell that bound them all with a thunderous cry.
"Invaders? No invaders can take the village of the Jinnia tribe! To arms, Warriors! To your posts. Let these yellow dwarfs attack _us_, and--" She laughed evilly.
Daiv sprang to his feet; his voice a peremptory challenge. "Hold, Warrior! Did you not hear what Vivyun said? These invaders have magic weapons; sticks that spit insanity and crumpling death. It is best we should flee to the hills. Maybe there we can devise some way--"
Meg's cheeks were hot with sorrow for Daiv as the Warrior Chieftain scorned him with her eyes.
"It is a Man-thing after all!" she spat. "A hairless Wild One with the cowardly instincts of all Men. Fool! Know you not the dying one babbled foolishness in her delirium? Sticks that dwarf Warriors! Walls without bricks!"
Daiv gritted, "I have no time for argument, Warrior." To the Mother he cried beseechingly, "There is little love lost between me and thy Clan, O Mother. But because you are Meg's sisters, I would see you live. Believe me, there was truth in Vivyun's warning. I myself have heard elders speak of a sunlit land called 'Mayco,' peopled by savage demons--"
The Mother pressed her hands together in an agony of indecision. To Meg, in her desperation, she turned, crying, "See now, O my daughter, how heavy is the task of being a Mother?" And she muttered, half to herself, "If this be true, then all are doomed unless we flee. But if it be lies--"
Daiv, man of action, tired swiftly of this maundering. For the second time that afternoon he reached for Meg's hand.
"Come, Golden One! Let these fools die; let them become stiffened twigs of humans as the branches we saw in the forest were stiffened and dwarfed trees! I will take _you_ to safety--"
Meg took a step forward. And then--one of the Women laughed. A sneering laugh. Meg's cheeks flamed, and her outstretched hand dropped to her side. She shook her head.
"No, Daiv." Sadly. "I had not dreamed you were--"
"A coward?" Daiv supplied the word wrathfully. "I am a coward to wisely flee from the magic of men who know the secrets of the Ancient Ones? By the Gods, Golden One, it is you who have lost your senses. If you will not come willingly, I'll save you in spite of yourself. Come!"
And he sprang toward her. Meg stumbled backward, torn by a thousand conflicting emotions. Then, of a sudden, came that which coalesced all her emotions into one indistinguishable chaos. There came a mighty roaring _sough_ from the woodlands south of the village; a portion of the walls caved inward with a mighty crash; spent air howled like the breath of the flood-time gods, and--
In the opening, golden sunlight gleamed on glinting armor! A horde of dwarfed and evil yellow men, shining sticks in their hands, stormed in through the rent!