Spiders' War. S. Fowler Wright

point where the two rivers joined, there was no more than a half a mile of swift, smooth water. He had crossed it by launching his canoe at the highest possible point, and had been carried down the very verge of the falls before he could reach the opposite shore.

      Then he had carried the canoe as far as would be of any avail up the opposite bank, lain in wait for one he could capture without rousing alarm, and had been fortunate enough (as he saw it) to get someone who was young and well-fed.

      It had been a bold adventure, with extreme perils, both from the flood and from human foes. Yet his face was rather that of one who thought than of one who lived by physical deeds. Now it had no expression at all, as he took down a fur cloak from a wooden peg and threw it over her with a careless but accurate cast.

      She saw that furs were everywhere. They hung on the walls. They made soft coverings for the floor. On her side of the river, this would be a certain sign that he was a man of high rank.

      She might have said more, but at that moment a woman entered the room. She was young and well, though rather heavily formed, yet with the gauntness that came from some weeks of scanty feeding.

      She had a blunt-featured, unattractive face—particularly so to Gleda, as she licked her lips, and said: “What is the catch like?” adding: “I’ve not had a real bite since yesterday.”

      “You can judge that for yourself,” he said, and already she had twitched off the fur, and was looking down on the bound form with greedy anticipation, hard to be endured.

      She knelt down for closer examination, prodding here and there. She said, grunting with satisfaction: “She should be fit for the knife now. There’s some meat there!”

      She stood up, and walked round to her victim’s back, pushing her toes into a well-shaped buttock. She said: “We owe Relf a ham. I suppose we must send it back. It’s a better one than we had from him.”

      “Yes,” the man replied. “I dislike a debt. I shall be glad for it to be cleared.”

      The woman left the room, followed by Gleda’s warmest hatred.

      Gleda said: “I should make a better wife for you than she.”

      The man gave her a glance which seemed both speculative and amused. He said “Well, so you might,” but did not appear to regard the proposition seriously, and the woman was back before the idea could be developed further.

      She came with a burden of wooden logs, which she piled on the fire. She asked: “You have all you need in the pen?”

      He rose, saying: “I am not sure. Shall we go see?”

      She looked surprised, and made no motion to follow him as he moved toward the door. She said, while he opened it, and the light of the setting sun shone inward, relieving the gloom of the low-ceiled room: “You don’t need me out there.”

      “Yes. Come on. There may be things to arrange.”

      She looked puzzled, but followed, being eager in her hunger that the details of slaughtering should not be delayed.

      Gleda was left alone in the stillness of the fire-lit room. The shadows leaped on the walls. There was noise and a scatter of sparks when a log fell, but she was unconscious of that. Her mind was on the terror of what must be in the next hour. Fundamental customs were the same on both banks of the river, on neither of which was cannibalism a frequent practice, as indeed, for economic reasons, it never has been in the history of the human race, Supplies would fail. But if an enemy, a criminal, or a lunatic, had to be destroyed, who would waste good meat? There would be plain folly in that.

      But now there must be a condition of abnormal famine, of which she had not been aware, so completely did the river separate communication. It was a division which had also secured her people from the same privations, for the epidemic which had destroyed the swine had not crossed the barrier of the flood.

      Here was a civilization at once high and simple. Sources of food were few, but they had been normally reliable, and involved little toil. In the summer men fed largely on nuts and fruits, which the forests gave. During winter, which was sharp, though short, they relied mainly on stores of nuts, which would have been gathered on warmer days. And through all the year they had ample supplies of flesh from a species of swine, herding in half-wild condition in the great woods, which spread far in a level land. There were many clearings sufficient for the spacious wooden houses of a large population, but, instead of their being surrounded by wide open spaces of arable or pasture land, here which bore many varieties of nuts and fruits, edible in their seasons, or fit to be stored for the winter months. And, if they fell ungathered—well, there were the fattening swine below that would avert waste.

      The trees gave abundant material for building. They provided fuel and food. Some of them supplied a thread from which strong cloth could be woven. Here was a civilization which had become simple and self-sufficient; which had rejected the worship of mechanical power, that had brought its predecessors to servitude and then to destruction. Almost the only trade was with distant hillmen, who sold them furs in exchange for the food which they had always been able to spare abundantly. To use these skins was the privilege of the only aristocracy—an aristocracy of intellect—which their social order recognised or required. And the right to these skins was the only privilege which that aristocracy had. It had no power—unless that of persuasion—at all.

      But now calamity had come. A fatal infectious disease was destroying their herds of swine in such great numbers it seemed that in a few further weeks there would be nothing left to destroy. It had followed months of drought, which were over now, and there was fresh green in the rain-drenched woods. But damage had been done which was quite as serious as the fever that killed the swine. For the nuts had fallen before they filled.

      Loss of the nut crop would not have meant absolute famine, nor would loss of swine—but the two at once were bringing starvation upon the land.

      Left alone, Gleda began a desperate, futile effort to loosen her bonds. She caused herself some additional pain, but otherwise did nothing, and it was only for a few brief moments that she had strained and wriggled when she was startled by a shrill and surprising sound.

      CHAPTER II: SLAUGHTER!

      The man led the way to a low-walled sty, where it was customary to confine captured swine, until they were slaughtered there. It was thickly strewn with a species of dried grass.

      The woman asked: “What do you want me to do?”

      “You might give the stone a turn.”

      She protested rather than asked, “Couldn’t you have done that?”

      So he could. It was not a large stone. Such stones in that land were precious and few. But she gave it a few turns while he pressed the blade of a knife against it, which, she thought, was sufficiently sharp already.

      Then he said: “That will do. But we’d better leave her a few hours yet,” to which the woman gave a grunt of unwilling assent. She added: “There’s nothing more to be done here?”

      “No,” he said. “Except this.”

      She had turned to go out of the sty, and he was immediately behind her. As he spoke, his left arm came round her, under her breasts, and his right, holding the knife, rather lower down. The point touched her navel, and he drove it in upward with a firm thrust.

      As he pulled it out, she gave the shrill scream which Gleda had heard, and which caused her to pause in her useless wriggling.

      The man’s arm loosed her, and she stumbled forward, her hands pressing her belly in the vain, instinctive effort to hold back the spurting blood.

      The man watched her for a moment, but there was no use in standing there. Everything which was necessary had been done. He went in.

      Gleda saw him coming toward her, with the knife, which he had wiped on the grass, still in his hand. She gave so desperate a struggle that she actually felt her ankles loosen, at which he smiled.

      He said: “I can do better than that.”