"Fangs of the Hyena God"
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dochermes"Fangs of the Hyena God"
3/19/1983
I.
Somber thoughts weighed heavily on Kwali's mind that night as he raced along the narrow trail that wound through the Deep Woods. Such thoughts were likely to trouble any man who dared invade by night that lonely stretch of densely timbered country which the Danarakans call Forgotten. He was a big man, five inches over six feet tall and powerfully built but he ran with a steady, effortless pace he could maintain for hours without tiring.
His skintight stalking suit was of black cotton. Combined with his dark skin and close-cropped hair, that suit made him almost invisible in the gloom. Yet, when the full moon caught him just right, his eyes glinted with a lambent green gleam like a cat's. The ancient talisman he wore on a chain around his neck had quickly made him Cat's-Claw in truth as well as title. It had been less than a year since he had earned the right to wear the Claw of Wakimbe and its responsibility weighed heavily on his shoulders.
All around him, the thick trunks of the Knob Thorn trees crowded each other, rising up fifteen feet to tangle their tops and form a canopy. Brushing against those needle-sharp knobs could shred the toughest leather jacket and Kwali had long since learned to avoid them.
Danarak's modern, thriving cities such as Honjabi were clustered along the coast. Once one got more than a hundred miles inland, the paved roads and railways were left behind. A few outposts had electricity and telephones, but most villages were content to live simply as they had for ages. Deeper into the interior was the passage to Inner Danarak, the adjacent realm kept secret from outsiders.
Ghosts might roam the Deep Woods with insatiable hunger as the locals maintained, but it was no ghost he feared. Kwali listened for the snap of a twig under a great bare foot, for any sound that would presage murder striking from the shadows. The being which he knew stalked Forgotten that night was more to be dreaded than any folklore phantom. Early that morning, the worst desperado in of that region of Danarak had broken free from custody, leaving a ghastly toll of dead behind him. Down along the river, bloodhounds were baying through the brush and hard-face men with rifles were beating up the thickets.
They were seeking Jengo Nyoto in the fastnesses near the scattered settlements, knowing that a fugitive seeks his own tribe in his extremity. But Kwali knew Jengo better than they did. He knew the killer deviated from the general type of his race. Jengo was unbelievably primitive, atavistic enough that he would plunge into uninhabited wilderness and live like a wild beast in solitude that would have daunted normal people. The man had never belonged in society.
So while the hunt moved away in another direction, Kwali abandoned his Jeep at the end of the passable trail and ran toward Fogotten alone. But it was not altogether to look for Jengo that he plunged into that isolated fastness. His mission was also one of warning, rather than search. Deep in the labyrinth of closely crowded trees, a white European and his servant lived in isolation, and it was Cat's-Claw's duty to warn them that a brutal killer might be skulking about their cabin.
Night overtook him on the path, and he had no intention of remaining until morning with the man he was going to warn, Etienne Guillot. He was a taciturn recluse. Guillot had been living in an old rebuilt cabin in the heart of Fogotten for about eight months.
Suddenly, as Kwali sprinted through the darkness, his speculations regarding the mysterious recluse were cut short and he stopped dead in his tracks. A sudden shriek had cut through the night, telling of agony and terror. It came from somewhere ahead of him. Again the scream was repeated, this time closer. Then he heard the pound of bare feet along the trail, and a form hurled itself at me out of the darkness. Kwali instinctively thrust his hands out to fend the creature off but he knew he was in no danger. Gasping, sobbing, the man fell limply into Kwali's arms.
"Help me, help me, oh Mercy of Wakimbe..!"
"Who are you?" Kwali demanded, "How are you hurt?"
"Oh, Kwali! Our champion, don't let him kill me! He's ripped me apart."
Kwali struck a match, and stood staring in amazement, while the match burned down to his fingers. A Danarakan groveled in the dust before him, his maulted face upturned. . He knew him well, one of the local farmers who lived in their tiny log huts along the fringe of Fogotten. He was splashed with blood, mortally wounded. Only abnormal energy rising from frenzied panic could have enabled him to run as far as he had. Blood jetted from torn veins and arteries in shoulder and neck, and the wounds were ghastly to see, great ragged tears that were never made by bullet or knife. One ear had been torn from his head, and hung loose, with a great piece of flesh from the angle of his jaw and neck, as if some gigantic beast had ripped it out with his fangs.
"What did this to you?" Kwali gasped as the match went out, and the wounded mam became merely an indistinct blob in the darkness. "A lion?" Even as I spoke I knew that no lion had been seen in Fogotten for thirty years.
"A stranger did it!" The thick, sobbing mumble welled up through the dark. "American or European. A white man that came by my cabin and ask me to guide him to Guillot's house. He wore a hat and scarf but they slipped and I saw his face... he killed me for seeing it."
"You mean he set dogs on you?" I demanded, for his wounds were such as I have seen on animals worried by vicious hounds.
"No, Kwali," whimpered the ebbing voice. "He did it himself...ahhh!"
The mumble faded as his head drooped and life left him. Kwali sensed something moving nearby. The enhanced night vision had barely begun to manifest yet. He strained his eyes into the darkness, and made out a vague shape a few yards away in the trail.
It was erect and tall as a man; it made no sound. I opened his mouth to challenge the unknown visitant, but no sound came. An indescribable chill flowed over me, freezing his tongue to his palate. It was fear, primitive and unreasoning, and even while I stood paralyzed I could not understand it, could not guess why that silent, motionless figure, sinister as it was, should rouse such instinctive dread.
Then suddenly the figure moved quickly toward me, and he found his voice. "Who goes there, friend or foe?"
No answer came but the dark form stalking in closer. As Kwali groped for a match, it was almost within reach. He struck the match with a thumbnail. With a ferocious snarl the figure hurled itself against him, the match was struck from his hand and extinguished, and Kwali felt a sharp pain dig into the side of his neck. The Cat's-Claw knotted his huge fists and swung blindly left and right. Even a glancing blow from him would have stunned a normal man and he felt sharp impact run up his arm.
Then with a crashing rush through the trees his assailant was gone, and he stood alone on the forest trail. Chest heaving in anger, Kwali dug in his pouch for another match. Blood was trickling down his shoulder, soaking through his cotton shirt. When he struck the match and investigated, another chill swept down his spine. The thin cotton shirt was torn and the flesh beneath slightly cut. The wound was little more than a scratch, but the thing that roused uneasiness in his mind was the fact that the wound was similar to those on poor old Yasid.
II.
Yasid was dead, lying face down in a pool of his own blood, his arms and legs flung wide. Kwali glared uneasily at the surrounding forest that hid the thing that had killed him. That it was a man he knew. The outline in the brief light of the match had been vague, but unmistakably human. But what sort of a weapon could make a wound like the merciless champing of great bestial teeth? He considered a more acute problem. Should he risk his life further by continuing upon his course, or should he return to the outer world and bring in men and dogs, to carry out poor Yasid's corpse, and hunt down his murderer?
But he did not waste much time in indecision. Kwali was self-reliant to a fault. He had set out to perform a task and he would do so. If a murderous criminal besides Jengo were abroad in the Deep Woods, there was all the more reason for warning the men in that lonely cabin. As for his own danger, that would be his lot in life from now on. He had chosen to compete in the winning of Wakimbe's Claw. He was in the Midnight War now.
So he regretfully left Yasid's body there in the trail, and went on, nerves sharpened by the new peril. That visitant had not been Jengo. He had the dead man's word for it that the attacker was a mysterious white man. The glimpse he had had of the figure had confirmed the fact that he was not Jengo. He would have known that squat, muscular body even in the dark. This man was tall and spare, and the mere recollection of that gaunt figure made him uneasy.
Kwali walked briskly along a black forest trail with only the stars glinting down through the dense branches. The knowledge that a ruthless murderer might be lurking near, perhaps within arm's length in the concealing darkness, stirred him to the highest alertness. He wheeled a score of times, glaring into the blackness where his ears had caught the rustle of leaves or the breaking of a twig. How could he know whether the sounds were but the natural noises of the forest, or the stealthy movements of the killer? In time, with training and experience, his woodcraft would be up to any challenge but he was still young and green.
Once Kwali stopped, as far away through the black trees, he glimpsed a faint, lurid glow. It was not stationary but it was too far away for him to make out the source. Presently the mysterious glow vanished, and so keyed up he was to unnatural happenings, that it was only then that he realized the light might well have been made by a man walking with a pine-knot torch. Kwali hurried on, cursing himself for his doubts, the more baffling because they were so nebulous.
Kwali sighed with relief when he saw Guillot's light gleaming through the pines, but he did not relax his vigilance. Many a man, danger-dogged, has been struck down at the very threshold of safety. Knocking on the door, Kwali stood sidewise, peering into the shadows that ringed the tiny clearing and seemed to repel the faint light from the shuttered windows.
"Who's there?" came a deep harsh voice from within. "Is that you, Castor?"
"No, I am Bakwanga Kwali. Open the door."
The upper half of the door swung inward, and Guillot's head and shoulders were framed in the opening. The light behind him left most of his face in shadow, but could not obscure the harsh gaunt lines of his features nor the gleam of the bleak gray eyes.
"What do you want, at this time of night?" he demanded, with his usual bruqueness.
Kwali replied shortly, for he did not like the man. "I came to tell you that it's very likely that a dangerous convict is prowling in your vicinity. Jengo killed Constable Joe Morley and a trustee, and broke out of jail this morning. I think he took refuge in Fogotten. You ought to be warned."
"Well, you've warned me," he snapped, in his soft French accent. "Why don't you be off?"
"I'll be off when I'm ready!" Kwali snapped back angrily. "I came in here to warn you, simply from basic decency. The least you can show is common courtesy."
"Did you see Castor anywhere along the trail?" he asked finally. Castor was his servant, a saturnine figure as taciturn as his master, who drove into the distant river village once a month for supplies.
"No; he might have been in town, and left after I did."
"I guess I'll have to let you in," he muttered grudgingly.
"It's not asking much," Kwali requested. "I've got a gash in my shoulder I want to wash and dress. Jengo isn't the only killer abroad tonight."
At that he halted in his fumbling at the lower door, and his expression changed.
"What do you mean?"
"There's a dead man a mile or so up the trail. The man who killed him tried to kill me. He may be after you, for all I know. The victim was guiding him here."
Guillot started violently, and his face went livid.
"Who—what do you mean?" His voice cracked, unexpectedly falsetto. "Who's dead? Who killed him?"
"I don't know. A fellow who manages to chew his victims like a wild beast."
"No! NO!" The words burst out in a scream. The change in Guillot was hideous. His eyes popped from his head and his skin went white as ashes. His lips drew back from his teeth in a grin of sheer terror.
"Get out!" he choked. "I see it, now! I know why you wanted to get into his house! You're a shape-changer, you're the Black Lion. You're in on this! You're working for him. Go!" The last was a scream and his hands rose above the lower half of the door at last. Kwali stared into the gaping muzzles of a sawed-off shotgun. "Go, before I kill you!"
Kwali stepped back off the stoop, understansably prudent at the thought of a close- range blast from that murderous implement of destruction. The black muzzles and the convulsed face behind them promised sudden demolition.
"You cursed fool!" the Cat's-Claw growled, courting disaster in his anger. "Be careful with that thing. All right, I'm going. I'd rather take a chance with a murderer than a madman like you."
Guillot made no reply; panting and shivering like a man smitten with ague, he crouched over his shotgun and watched as Kwali turned and strode across the clearing.
The upper door slammed as Kwali strode in under the trees, and the stream of light was cut abruptly off. The Cat's-Claw plunged into the shadowy trail, his ears whetted again for sounds under the black branches.
his thoughts reverted to Guillot. Who was it who had sought guidance to his cabin! The man's frantic fear had bordered on insanity. Kwali wondered if it had been to escape this threatening man that Guillot had exiled himself in this lonely stretch of pinelands and river. Surely it had been to escape something that he had come; for he never concealed his hatred of the country nor his contempt for the native people, white and black. But Kwali had never suspected that he was a criminal hiding from the law.
The light fell away behind him, vanished among the black trees. A curious, chill, sinking feeling obsessed him, as if the disappearance of that light, hostile as was its source, had severed the only link that connected this nightmarish adventure with the world of sanity and humanity. Grimly taking hold of his nerves, Kwali strode on up the trail. But he had not gone far when again he halted.
This time it was the unmistakable sound of horses running; the rumble of wheels mingled with the pounding of hoofs. Who would be coming along that nighted trail in a rig but Castor? But instantly he realized that the team was headed in the other direction. The sound receded rapidly, and soon became only a distant blur of noise.
He quickened his pace, much puzzled, and presently heard hurried, stumbling footsteps ahead, and a quick, breathless panting that seemed indicative of panic. Kwai distinguished the footsteps of two people, though I could see nothing in the intense darkness. At that point the branches interlaced over the trail, forming a black arch through which not even the stars gleamed.
"Ho, there!" he called cautiously. "Who are you?"
Instantly the sounds ceased abruptly, and he could picture two shadowy figures standing tensely still, with bated breath.
"Who's there?" he repeated. "Don't be afraid. I am Kwali of the Bakwanga."
"Stand where you are!" came a hard voice I recognized as Castor's. "You sound like Kwali but I want to be sure. If you move you'll get a slug through you."
There was a scratching sound and a tiny flame leaped up. A human hand was etched in its glow, and behind it the square, hard face of Castor peering in his direction. A pistol in his other hand caught the glint of the fire; and on that arm rested another a slim, white hand, with a jewel sparkling on one finger. Dimly I made out the slender figure of a woman; her face was like a pale blossom in the gloom.
"Yes, it's you, all right," Castor grunted. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to warn Guillot about Jengo," Kwali answered shortly, his nerve taut from the night's experiences. "You've heard about it, naturally. If I'd known you were in town, it would have saved me a trip. What are you doing on foot?"
"Our horses ran away a short distance back," he answered. "There was a dead man in the trail. But that's not what frightened the horses. When we got out to investigate, they snorted and wheeled and bolted with the rig. We had to come on on foot. It's been a pretty nasty experience. From the looks of the victim I judge a leopard killed him, and the scent frightened the horses. We've been expecting an attack any minute."
"Leopards haven't been seen in the Deep Woods for a generation," Kwali snorted. "It was a man that killed Yasid."
In the waning glow of the match Castor stood staring at the Cat's-Claw in amazement, and then Kwali saw the astonishment ebb to be replaced by horror. The match went out, and they stood in darkness.
"Well," Kwali said impatiently, "speak up, man! Who's the lady with you?"
"She's Mr. Guillot's niece." The answer came tonelessly through dry lips.
"I am Rachael Guillot!" she exclaimed in a voice whose cultured accent was not lost in the fear that caused it to tremble. "Uncle Richard sent for me to come to him at once..."
"I've seen the wire," Castor muttered. "You showed it to me. But I don't know how he sent it. He hasn't been to the village, to his knowledge, in months."
"I came on from Paris as fast as I could!" she exclaimed. "I can't understand why the telegram was sent to me, instead of to somebody else in the family—"
"You were always your uncle's favorite, Miss," said Castor.
"Well, when I got off the boat at the village just before nightfall, I found Castor, just getting ready to drive home. He was surprized to see me, but of course he brought me on out; and then... that..."
She seemed considerably shaken by the experience. It was obvious that she had been raised in a very refined and sheltered atmosphere. Living in the Forgotten, far from any hospital, the sight of a dead man, white or black, would not have been that an uncommon phenomenon to her.
"I saw... I saw a dead man..." she stammered, and then she was answered most hideously. From the black woods beside the trail rose a shriek of blood-curdling laughter. More barking than human, it rang through the night.
III.
Castor fired in the direction of the voice, and in the crashing reverberations of his shots the ghastly chant was drowned. But the weird barking laugh rang out again, deeper in the woods, and then silence closed down in which Kwali heard the rapid gasping of the girl. She had released Castor and was clinging frantically to him. He could feel the quivering of her lithe body against his.
"Hurry, for God's sake!" Castor's voice sounded strangled. "It can't be far to the cabin. Hurry! You'll come with us, Mr. Kwali?"
"What was it?" the girl was panting. "Oh, what was it?"
"A madman, I think," Kwali answered, tucking her trembling little hand under his left arm. But at the back of his mind was whispering the grisly realization that no madman ever had a voice like that. It sounded like some bestial creature speaking with human words, but not with a human mouth. He had not yet encountered any shape-changers, whether Werewolves or Skinwalkers or other less well known monsters.
"Get on the other side of Miss Guillot, Castor," he directed. "Keep as far from the trees as you can. If anything moves on that side, shoot first and ask questions later. Now come on!"
Castor made no reply but he complied. His fright seemed deeper than that of the girl, judging by how his breath came in shuddering gasps. Fear stalked beside the trail on either hand, as they rushed along. The girl's little feet scarcely touched the ground, the men almost carried her between them. Castor was almost as tall as Kwali, though not so heavy, and terror gave him vigor in his flight.
Ahead of us a light glimmered between the trees at last, and a sigh of frank relief burst from our lips. They increased our pace until they were outright running. v"The cabin at last, thank God!" the girl gasped, as we plunged out of the trees.
"Call out to your employer, Castor," Kwali ordered. "He's driven me off with a gun once tonight. I don't want any of us to be shot by accident."
"Mr. Guillot!" shouted the servant. "Mr. Guillot! Open the door quick! It's me, Castor!"
Instantly light flooded from the door as the upper half was drawn back, and Guillot peered out, shotgun in hand, blinking into the darkness."Hurry and get in!" Panic still thrummed in his voice. Then: "Who's that standing beside you?" he shouted furiously.
"Mr. Kwali and your niece, Miss Rachael."
"Uncle Etienne!" she cried, her voice catching in a sob. Pulling loose from us, she ran forward and threw her lithe body half-over the lower door, throwing her arms around his neck. "Uncle, I'm so afraid! What does this all mean?"
He seemed thunderstruck. "Rachel!" he repeated. "What in heaven's name are you doing here?"
"Why, you sent for me!" She fumbled out a crumpled yellow telegraph form. "See? You said for me to come at once!"
"What! I never sent that, Rachel! Good God, why should I drag you into his particular hell? There's something devilish going on here. Come in, come in quickly!"
He jerked open the door and pulled her inside, never relinquishing the shotgun. He seemed to fumble in a daze. Castor shouldered in after her, and exclaimed to me: "Come in, Mr Kwali! Come in and hurry!"
But the Cat's-Claw made no move to follow them. At the mention of his name, Guillot, who seemed to have forgotten his presence, jerked loose from the girl with a choking cry and wheeled, swinging up the shotgun. But this time Kwali was ready for him. He was in no mood to submit to any more bullying. Before he could bring the gun into position, Kwali had seized the barrel of the shotgun and swiveled it up to face the ceiling.
"Let go, Guillot," Kwali snapped. "Drop it, before I break your arm. I'm tired of your idiotic suspicions."
The Frenchman hesitated, glaring wildly, and behind him the girl shrank away. In the full flood of the light from the doorway, Kwali was not a figure to inspire confidence in a young girl, with his giant body built for strength and not gentleness. Kwali's wide, sullen face had its dark skin contrasted weirdly by the bright green eyes. To those who did not know him, he was an intimidating sight.
"He's our friend, Mr. Guillot," interposed Castor. "He helped us, in the woods."
"He's the Cat's-Claw!" raved Guillot, clinging to his gun, though not trying to lift it. "He came here to murder us! He lied when he said he came to warn us against an escaped convict. Who would be fool enough to come into Fogotten at night, just to warn a stranger? My God, has he got you both fooled? I tell you, he must be the brutal killer who rips open throats. Haven't you heard of the Black Lion?"
"Then you know who's here in Danarak!" cried Castor.
"Yes, this fiend told me, trying to worm his way into the house. God, Castor, he's tracked us down, in spite of all our cleverness. We have trapped ourselves! In a city, we might buy protection; but here, in this accursed forest, who will hear our cries or come to our aid when the fiend closes in upon us? What fools we were to think to hide from him in this wilderness!"
"I heard him laugh," shuddered Castor. "He taunted us from the bushes in his beast's voice. I saw the man he killed, all ripped and mangled as if by the fangs of the Black Lion himself. What are we to do?"
"What can we do except lock ourselves in and fight to the last?" shouted Guillot. His raw nerves were in frightful shape.
"Please tell me what it is all about?" pleaded the trembling girl.
With a terrible despairing laugh Guillot threw out his arm, gesturing toward the black woods beyond the faint light. "A devil in human form is lurking out there!" he exclaimed. "He has tracked me across the world, and has cornered me at last! Do you remember.... Fanyuna?"
"The man who went with you to Inner Danarak five years ago? But he died of fever, you said. You came back without him."
"I thought he WAS dead," muttered Guillot. "Listen, I will tell you. Among the unmapped mountains of Inner Danarak where no outsider had ever penetrated, our expedition was attacked by fanatical worshippers of Argor the Hyena God, the Elders of Old Ways who dwell in the forgotten fortress city Azizo. Our guides and servants were killed, and all our stock driven off but one small pony.
"Fanyuna and I stood them off all day, firing from behind the rocks when they tried to rush us. That night we planned to make a break for it, on the pony that remained to us. But it was evident to me that the beast could not carry us both to safety. One man might have a chance. Better that one of us live than both of us die! When darkness fell, I struck Fanyuna from behind with his gun butt, knocking him senseless. Then I mounted the pony and fled..."
He did not heed the look of sick amazement growing in the girl's lovely face. Her wide eyes were fixed on her uncle as if she were seeing the real man for the first time, and was stricken by what she saw. He plunged on, too obsessed and engulfed by panic to care or heed what she thought of him.
"I broke through the lines of the besiegers and escaped in the night. Fanyuna, naturally, fell into the hands of the Hyena God worshippers, and for years I supposed that he was dead. They had the reputation of slaying, by torture, every outsider that they captured. Years passed, and I had almost forgotten the episode. Then, eleven months ago, I learned that he was alive! That he was, indeed, back in Europe, looking for me.
"The Elders of Argor had not killed him; through their damnable arts they had altered him. The man is no longer wholly human, but his whole soul is bent on my destruction. To appeal to the police would have been useless; he would have tricked them and wreaked his vengeance in spite of them. I fled from him up and down across the country for more than a month, like a hunted animal, and finally, when I thought I had thrown him off the track, I took refuge back here in the Danarak wilderness, among these savages, of whom that man Kwali is a typical examle."
"You're no one to talk about savages!" she scoffed, with scorn would have cut the soul of any man who was not so totally engrossed in his own fears. She turned to the Cat's-Claw. "Mr. Kwali, please come in. You must not try to traverse this forest at night, with that fiend at large."
"No!" shrieked Guillot. "Get back from that door, you little fool! Castor, hold your tongue. I tell you, he is one of Fanyuna's creatures! He shall not set foot in this cabin!"
She looked at Kwali, pale, helpless and forlorn. He pitied her as he despised Etienna Guillot.
"I wouldn't sleep in your cabin, not matter what," he said coldly to Guillot. "I wouldn't have come back at all, but the young lady needed his protection. She needs it now, but it's your privilege to deny her that. Miss Guillot," he added, "if you wish, I'll come back tomorrow with horses and escort you to the village. You'd better go back to Paris."
"Castor will take her to the village," roared Guillot, "Damn you, will you go?"
Without further word, Kwali turned squarely upon him and strode off. The door banged behind me, and he heard his falsetto voice mingled with the tearful accents of his niece. Poor girl, it must have been like a nightmare to her: to have been snatched out of her sheltered urban life and dropped down in a country strange and primitive to her, among people whose ways seemed strange, and into a bloody episode of murders.
The Deep Woods of Danarak seem strange and alien enough at any time to the average European or American. Added to their grim history and untouched wildness was all this slaughter and talk of nonhuman monsters out of an unsuspected past.
Kwali stood motionless in the gloom, staring back at the pinpoint of light which still winked through the thorny trees. Peril hovered over the cabin in that tiny clearing, and it went against his duty to leave that girl with the no protection but her half-lunatic uncle and his servant. Castor looked like a fighter. But Guillot was an unpredictable quantity. Kwali believed the Frenchman was tinged with madness, as he insane rages and equally insane suspicions seemed to indicate.
Kwali had no sympathy for him. A man who would sacrifice his friend to save his own life was beyond defending. But evidently Fanyuna was a monster himself. His slaughter of Yasid suggested homicidal insanity. Poor old Yasid had never wronged anyone. Kwali swore he would slay Fanyuna for that murder alone if he had had the opportunity. And he did not intend that the girl should suffer for the sins of her uncle. If Guillot had not sent that telegram, as he swore, then it looked much as if she had been summoned for a sinister purpose. Who but Fanyuna himself would have summoned her, to share the doom he planned for Guillot? It was a dark tangled web that ensnared everyone.
Wheeling on one heel, Kwali strode back down the trail. If he could not enter the cabin, he could at least lurk in the shadows ready at hand if help was needed. A few moments later the Cat's-Claw was under the fringe of trees that ringed the clearing. Light still shone through the cracks in the shutters, and at one place a portion of the windowpane was visible. And even as he looked, this pane was shattered, as something was hurled through it. Instantly the night was split by a sheet of flame that burst in a blinding flash out of the doors and windows and chimney of the cabin. For one infinitesimal instant he saw the cabin outlined blackly against the tongues of flame that flashed from it. With the flash came the thought that the cabin had been blown up but no sound accompanied the explosion.
Even while the blaze was still in his eyes, another explosion filled the universe with blinding sparks, and this one was accompanied by a thunderous reverberation. Consciousness was blotted out too suddenly for Kwali to know that he had been struck on the head from behind, terrifically and without warning.
IV.
Agonizing pain impressed itself upon Kwali's awakening faculties. He blinked, shook his head and regretted doing that, then came suddenly fully awake. He was lying on his back in a small glade, walled by towering black trees which fitfully reflected the uncertain light that emanated from a torch stuck upright in the earth nearby. His head throbbed, and blood clotted his scalp; his hands were fastened together before him by a pair of handcuffs. His ceremonial outfit was torn and his skin deeply scratched as if he had been dragged brutally through the brush.
A huge ominous shape squatted over him, a man of only medium height but of gigantic breadth and thickness. He was clad only in ragged, muddy breeches of bright yellow... convict pants. Jengo. He held a revolver in his beefy hand, and alternately aimed first one and then the other at Kwali, squinting along the barrel.
Kwali lay silent for a moment, gathering his strength, studying the play of the torchlight on the giant convict, analyzing what kind of an opponent he would be. Jengo's huge body gleamed a dull bronze as the light flickered. He was not like any Danarakan that Kwali had ever seen, Ferocity was reflected in the bulging knots of muscles that corded his long, massive arms, and huge sloping shoulders. The bullet-shaped head that jutted forward on a column-like neck. Jengo had wide, flat nostrils not all like the distinctive hooked noses of the typical Danarakan. He reminded Kwali of Veganorans he had known.
Seeing Kwali stir, Jengo showed his teeth in an gloating grin.
"I thought it was time you'd be comin' to, Cat's-Claw," he smirk. "I wanted you to be awake before I kill you! Then I will go back and watch Fanyuna kill the Frenchman and his girl."
"Fanyuna?" I demanded harshly. "What do you know about Fanyuna?"
"I met him in the Deep Woods, after he killed Yasid. I heard a gun fire and came with a torch to see who it was. Maybe it was somebody after me and I'd catch him off-guard I meet the Fanyuna."
"So you were the man I saw with the torch," I grunted.
"Fanyuna's a smart man. He said if I helped him kill some folks, he'd help me get away. He threw an Alchemy bomb into the cabin. Alchemy blasts don't kill folks, just stun and paralyze them. I was watching the trail, and I clubbed you with the gun barrel. That serving man Castor was purely paralyzed, so Fanyuna bit out his throat like he did to Yasid."
"What do you mean, bit out his throat?" Kwali demanded.
"Fanyuna's not a human being any more. He stands up and walks on two legs like a man, but he's got the blood of Hyena God now."
"Argor? The ancient Hyena God?" the Cat's-Claw asked, feeling back to normal again.
He grinned. "Yeah, that's right. Argor's worship never died out completely." Then he changed his mood. "We've talked long enough. Let me see how much I can sell Wakimbe's Claw for."
His thick lips froze in a killer's mirthless grin as he squinted along the barrel of the pistol in his right hand. his whole body went tense, as I sought desperately for a loophole to save his life. his legs were not tied, but his hands were manacled, and a single movement would bring hot lead crashing through his brain. In his desperation I plumbed the depths of black folklore for a dim, all but forgotten superstition.
"These handcuffs belonged to Constable Jani, didn't they?" I demanded.
"Uh huh," he grinned, without ceasing to squint along the sights. "I took 'em along with his gun after I beat his head in with window-bar. He had no use for them, haw haw."
Kwali was sworn to draw on the power of the Black Lion sparingly, so that it would not be trivialized. Even now, he did not assume the full form of his people's patron god. But the claw hanging around his neck flared up like a white ember. Kwali's forearms swelled up to twice their normal thickness, snapping the handcuffs off without trouble. His hands had become massive lion's paws with their razored claws extended.
At this astounding transformation, even the hardened Jengo froze in place with his eyes bulging out painfully. He knew of the Black Lion. What native of Danarak did not? But to see that the legends were true...!
But the Cat's-Claw reverted his arms to normal at once. Like twin striking snakes Kwali's hands shot to his foe's thick throat, locked fiercely and dragged him down. He had sometimes wondered what would be the outcome of a battle between himself and Jengo. Now that the test was at hand, he felt only grim determination to triumph. Even as he felt that grip around his neck, Jengo realized that he was fighting for his life. Instantly he exploded into a hurricane of ferocity that would have dismembered a lesser man. They rolled on the matted fallen leaves, rending and tearing.
It was like fighting a wild beast, and Kwali met him on his own level. They fought without skill or cunning. Muscles straining, gouging, tearing, smashing. They both forgot the pistol on the ground as they rolled over it half a dozen times.
Neither knew how long they fought. Time blurred into a haze. Jengo's fingers were like iron talons that tore the flesh and bruised the bone beneath. His head was swimming from its impacts against the hard ground, and from the pain in his side, Jengo knew at least one rib was broken. His garments hung in ribbons, drenched by the blood that sluiced from an ear that had been ripped half loose from his head. But if he was taking terrible punishment, he was dealing it out, too.
The torch had been knocked down and kicked aside, but it still smoldered fitfully, lending a lurid dim light to that brutal scene.
Kwali saw his enemy's white teeth gleaming in a grin of agonized effort, his eyes rolling whitely from a mask of blood. Those punches had mauled his face out of all human resemblance. Sweat and blood slimed them both, and their fingers slipped as they gripped. Writhing half-free from his rending clutch, he drove every straining knot of muscle in his body behind that iron-hard fist that smashed like a mallet against his jaw. There was a crack of bone, an involuntary groan. Red blood spurted and the broken jaw dropped down to dangle loose. Then for the first time those tearing fingers faltered. Kwali felt the great body that strained against him yield and sag. And with a rasp of gratified ferocity escaping his pulped lips, he got his fingers to at last meet in Jengo's throat.
Down on his back the convict went, with Kwali kneeling astride him. Jengo's failing hands clawed at Kwali's wrists, weakly and more weakly. The Cat's-Claw strangled his enemy slowly, with no tactic of the martial arts he had studied, but with only sheer brute strength, bending the man's head back and further back between its shoulders until the thick neck snapped like a rotten branch. In that haze of battle, Kwali did not know when Jengo died, did not know that it was death that had at last melted the threat of the body beneath him.
Kwali was panting from emotion and exertion, but realized that his work was not yet ended. Groping with numb hands he found the dead man's pistol, and reeled away through the woods in the direction in which his forest-bred instinct told him the cabin of Guillot stood. With each step his tough recuperative powers asserted themselves. Young and in peak athletic condition, injuries did not slow him for long. He straightened up. Within a few strides, he was moving as if he had been resting all day.
Jengo had not dragged his prisoner far. Following his instincts, he had merely hauled him off the trail into the deeper woods. A few steps brought Kwali to the trail, and he saw again the light of the cabin gleaming through the pines. Jengo had not been lying then, about the nature of that bomb. At least the soundless explosion had not destroyed the cabin, for it stood as Kwali had seen it last, apparently undamaged. Light poured, as before, from the shuttered window, but from it also came the same laughter that had mocked him beside the shadowed trail.
V.
V.
Crouching in the shadows, Kwali circled the little clearing to reach a side of the cabin without a window. In the oppressive darkness, he drifted out from the trees and reached the building unseen. Near the wall, he stumbled over something bulky and yielding, and worried about the noise betraying him. But the ghastly laughter still rang horribly from inside the cabin, mingled with the whimpering of a human voice.
It was the body of Castor he had bumped into. The fresh corpse lay on his back, staring sightlessly upward, his head lolling back on the red ruin of his neck. His throat had been torn out; from chin to collar it was a great, gaping, ragged wound. His garments were slick with blood.
More angry than sickened because of his experience with violent deaths, Kwali glided to the cabin wall and sought without success for a crevice between the logs. The laughter had ceased in the cabin and that frightful, unhuman voice was ringing out. With the same difficulty as before, he made out the words.
"—And so they did not kill me, the withered Elders of the Old Ways. They preferred a jest from their point of view. Merely to kill me would be too kind; they thought it more humorous to play with me awhile, as cats do with a mouse, and then send me back into the world with a curse I could never the escape...Mark of the Hyena God. That's what they call it. And they did their job well, indeed. None knows better than they how to alter a man. Black magic? More than you know!
"What you call Voodoo and Sorcery is only a vague echo of the real, deep secrets taught on Ulgor before it was thrown into the Sea. The Sulla Chun gave forbidden knowledge to those whose minds were strong enough to not crack under the strain. And those monks have carried down the awful wisdom of Old Ways."
Kwali drifted around the cabin until he reached a window, where he could peer through a crack in the shutter.
Etienne Guillot lay on a divan in a room incongruously richly furnished for that remote setting. He was bound hand and foot with heavy cord. In his wild eyes was the look of a man who has at last come face to face with his own mortality. Across the room from him, Rachael was spread-eagled on a table, also held helpless with cords on her wrists and ankles. She had been stripped naked, her clothing lying in scattered confusion on the floor where they had been brutally ripped from her. Her head twisted about as she stared in wide-eyed horror at the tall figure which dominated the scene.
He stood with his back toward the window where Kwali crouched, as he faced Guillot. To all appearances this figure was Human. The figure of a tall, spare man in dark, close-fitting garments, with a sort of cape hanging from his wide shoulders. But at the sight a strange apprehension took hold of Kwali, and he recognized at last the dread he had felt since he first glimpsed that gaunt form on the shadowy trail above the body of poor Yasid. There was something unnatural about the figure, some hint of the Midnight War intruding into the world. The mystic talisman around Kwali's neck grew unpleasantly warm in frantic warning.
"They made me the horror I am today, and then drove me forth," the stranger raved in his horrible voice. "But the change was not made in a day, or a month, or a year! Finally, when my face and body had settled into this hideous final form, they sent me out for revenge. The Elders even provided me with concealing clothes and sufficient money to travel where I would. I had become a weapon of vengeance they let loose.
"So at last the hunt began. When I reached New York I sent you a photograph of my new face, and a letter detailing what would happen. You fool, did you think you could escape me? Do you think I would have warned you, if I were not sure of my prey? I wanted you to suffer with the knowledge of your doom; to live in terror, to flee and hide like a hunted rat. You fled and I hunted you, from coast to coast. You did temporarily give me the slip when you came back here, but it was inevitable that I should smell you out. When the Elders of Old Ways gave me this face, they also instilled in my nature something of the spirit of the beast they copied.
"To kill you was not enough. I wished to glut my vengeance to the last shuddering ounce. That is why I sent a telegram to your niece, the one person in the world that you cared for. My plans worked out perfectly—with one exception. The bandages I have worn ever since I left Inner Danarak were displaced by a branch and I had to kill the fool who was guiding me to your cabin. No man looks upon my face and lives, except Jengo who is more like a demon than a man, anyway. I fell in with him shortly after I was fired at by the man Kwali, and I took Jengo into my confidence, recognizing a valuable ally. He is too brutish to feel the same horror at my appearance that the other locals felt. He seems to think I am a demon of some sort, but so long as I am not hostile toward him, he sees no reason why he should not ally himself with me.
"It was fortunate I took him in, for it was he who struck down Kwali as he was returning. I would have already killed Kwali himself, but he was too dangerous, too much a shape-changer himself. You might have learned a lesson from these people, Guillot. They live hardily and violently, and they are tough and dangerous as timber wolves. But you! You are soft and pampered. You will die far too easily. I wish you were as hard as Kwali was. I would like to keep you alive for days, to suffer.
"I gave Kwali a chance to get away, but the fool came back and had to be dealt with. That bomb I threw through the window would have had little effect upon him. It contained one of the chemical secrets I managed to learn in Mongolia, but it is effective only in relation to the bodily strength of the victim. It was enough to knock out a girl and a soft, pampered degenerate like you. But Castor was able to stagger out of the cabin and would quickly have regained his full sight, if I had not come upon him and put him beyond power of harm."
Guillot let loose a moaning cry. There was no intelligence in his eyes, only a ghastly fear. He had gone as mad as the fearful being that posed and ranted in that room of horror. Only the girl, writhing pitifully on that ebony table, was possibly still sane.
"First the girl!" shrieked Fanyuna. "The girl is to be slain as I have seen women slain in Inner Danarak. Skinned alive, slowly, oh so slowly! She shall bleed to make you suffer, Guillot. The child shall not die until there is no longer an inch of skin left on her body below her neck! Watch me flay your beloved niece, Etienne Guillot!"
Kwali did not believe Guillot comprehended anything of the situation he was in. The Frenchman babbled nonsense, tossing his head from side to side. Outside, Kwali lifted the revolver, but just then Fanyuna whirled, and the sight of his face startled him into hesitating. What unguessed masters of nameless science dwell in the black towers of Old Ways I dare not dream, but surely sorcery from the Corruption itself went into the remolding of that countenance.
Ears, forehead and eyes were those of an ordinary man; but the nose, mouth and jaws were such as men have not even imagined in nightmares. They were hideously elongated, like the muzzle of an animal. There was no chin, upper and lower jaws jutted like the jaws of a hound or a wolf, and the teeth, bared by the snarling bestial lips, were gleaming fangs. How those jaws managed to frame human words he cannot guess.
But the change was deeper than superficial appearance. In his eyes, which blazed like coals of Hell's fire, was a glare that never shone from any human's eyes, sane or mad. When the Elders of Old Ways altered Fanyuna's face, they wrought a corresponding change in his soul. He was no longer a human being. The thing that had been Fanyuna rushed toward the girl, a curved skinning-knife gleaming in his hand,
Kwali shook myself out of the daze of horror, and fired through the hole in the shutter. He saw the black cape jerk to the impact of the slug, and at the crash of the shot the monster staggered and the knife fell from his hand. Then, instantly, Fanyuna whirled and dashed back across the room toward Richard Guillot. With lightning comprehension he realized what had happened, knew he could take only one victim with him, and made his choice instantly.
Kwali might have smashed that shutter, leaped into the room and grappled with the thing that the monks of Inner Mongolia had made of Adam Fanyuna. Changing in part or in whole to the Black Lion would have made him more than a match for the beast. But so swiftly did the monster move that Richard Guillot would have died anyway before he could have burst into the room. Kwali did what seemed the only obvious thing and poured lead through the window into that loping horror as it crossed the room. That should have crashed it down dead on the floor.
But Fanyuna plunged on, heedless of the slugs ripping into him. His vitality was more than human, more than bestial; there was something demoniac about him, invoked by the forbidden arts that made him what he was. No natural creature could have crossed that room under that raking hail of close-range lead. He reeled at each impact, but he did not fall until I had sent home the sixth bullet. Then he crawled on, beast-like, on hands and knees, froth and blood dripping from his grinning jaws.
Kwali dropped the empty revolver, tore the shutters aside and squeezed his great bulk through the narrow window with some effort. In another second, he had dropped into the room.
But nothing could keep Fanyuna from his prey.
Riddled with six bullets in him, grey brain matter oozing from a great hole in his temple, Fanyuna still reached the man on the divan. The misshapen head dropped. A scream gurgled from Guillot as the hideous jaws locked together in his throat. Then with a wild-beast gesture, Fanyuna threw up his head, ripping out his enemy's jugular, and blood deluged both figures. Fanyuna lifted his head, with his dripping fangs and gore-thickened muzzle, and he roared a last peal of barking laughter that choked in a rush of blood, as he crumpled and lay still.
Looming up over the gruesome scene, Kwali realized he had not yet become hardened to violence. He felt sick and weary. If he had been quicker-thinking, more experienced, he might have intercepted Fanyuna earlier and taken him prisoner. He might have captured Shengo alive to go back to prison. Guillot would still be alive. True, all three men had been monsters in their own ways and their deaths were no loss to society but still....
The Cat's-Claw picked up a thin blanket where it was folded on a couch and went to cover up Rachael before freeing her. He stopped short. This was the final jolt. She was staring up without seeing him, or anything else. She had the blank, glass stare of a victim traumatized beyond conscious thought.
3/20/2023
3/19/1983
I.
Somber thoughts weighed heavily on Kwali's mind that night as he raced along the narrow trail that wound through the Deep Woods. Such thoughts were likely to trouble any man who dared invade by night that lonely stretch of densely timbered country which the Danarakans call Forgotten. He was a big man, five inches over six feet tall and powerfully built but he ran with a steady, effortless pace he could maintain for hours without tiring.
His skintight stalking suit was of black cotton. Combined with his dark skin and close-cropped hair, that suit made him almost invisible in the gloom. Yet, when the full moon caught him just right, his eyes glinted with a lambent green gleam like a cat's. The ancient talisman he wore on a chain around his neck had quickly made him Cat's-Claw in truth as well as title. It had been less than a year since he had earned the right to wear the Claw of Wakimbe and its responsibility weighed heavily on his shoulders.
All around him, the thick trunks of the Knob Thorn trees crowded each other, rising up fifteen feet to tangle their tops and form a canopy. Brushing against those needle-sharp knobs could shred the toughest leather jacket and Kwali had long since learned to avoid them.
Danarak's modern, thriving cities such as Honjabi were clustered along the coast. Once one got more than a hundred miles inland, the paved roads and railways were left behind. A few outposts had electricity and telephones, but most villages were content to live simply as they had for ages. Deeper into the interior was the passage to Inner Danarak, the adjacent realm kept secret from outsiders.
Ghosts might roam the Deep Woods with insatiable hunger as the locals maintained, but it was no ghost he feared. Kwali listened for the snap of a twig under a great bare foot, for any sound that would presage murder striking from the shadows. The being which he knew stalked Forgotten that night was more to be dreaded than any folklore phantom. Early that morning, the worst desperado in of that region of Danarak had broken free from custody, leaving a ghastly toll of dead behind him. Down along the river, bloodhounds were baying through the brush and hard-face men with rifles were beating up the thickets.
They were seeking Jengo Nyoto in the fastnesses near the scattered settlements, knowing that a fugitive seeks his own tribe in his extremity. But Kwali knew Jengo better than they did. He knew the killer deviated from the general type of his race. Jengo was unbelievably primitive, atavistic enough that he would plunge into uninhabited wilderness and live like a wild beast in solitude that would have daunted normal people. The man had never belonged in society.
So while the hunt moved away in another direction, Kwali abandoned his Jeep at the end of the passable trail and ran toward Fogotten alone. But it was not altogether to look for Jengo that he plunged into that isolated fastness. His mission was also one of warning, rather than search. Deep in the labyrinth of closely crowded trees, a white European and his servant lived in isolation, and it was Cat's-Claw's duty to warn them that a brutal killer might be skulking about their cabin.
Night overtook him on the path, and he had no intention of remaining until morning with the man he was going to warn, Etienne Guillot. He was a taciturn recluse. Guillot had been living in an old rebuilt cabin in the heart of Fogotten for about eight months.
Suddenly, as Kwali sprinted through the darkness, his speculations regarding the mysterious recluse were cut short and he stopped dead in his tracks. A sudden shriek had cut through the night, telling of agony and terror. It came from somewhere ahead of him. Again the scream was repeated, this time closer. Then he heard the pound of bare feet along the trail, and a form hurled itself at me out of the darkness. Kwali instinctively thrust his hands out to fend the creature off but he knew he was in no danger. Gasping, sobbing, the man fell limply into Kwali's arms.
"Help me, help me, oh Mercy of Wakimbe..!"
"Who are you?" Kwali demanded, "How are you hurt?"
"Oh, Kwali! Our champion, don't let him kill me! He's ripped me apart."
Kwali struck a match, and stood staring in amazement, while the match burned down to his fingers. A Danarakan groveled in the dust before him, his maulted face upturned. . He knew him well, one of the local farmers who lived in their tiny log huts along the fringe of Fogotten. He was splashed with blood, mortally wounded. Only abnormal energy rising from frenzied panic could have enabled him to run as far as he had. Blood jetted from torn veins and arteries in shoulder and neck, and the wounds were ghastly to see, great ragged tears that were never made by bullet or knife. One ear had been torn from his head, and hung loose, with a great piece of flesh from the angle of his jaw and neck, as if some gigantic beast had ripped it out with his fangs.
"What did this to you?" Kwali gasped as the match went out, and the wounded mam became merely an indistinct blob in the darkness. "A lion?" Even as I spoke I knew that no lion had been seen in Fogotten for thirty years.
"A stranger did it!" The thick, sobbing mumble welled up through the dark. "American or European. A white man that came by my cabin and ask me to guide him to Guillot's house. He wore a hat and scarf but they slipped and I saw his face... he killed me for seeing it."
"You mean he set dogs on you?" I demanded, for his wounds were such as I have seen on animals worried by vicious hounds.
"No, Kwali," whimpered the ebbing voice. "He did it himself...ahhh!"
The mumble faded as his head drooped and life left him. Kwali sensed something moving nearby. The enhanced night vision had barely begun to manifest yet. He strained his eyes into the darkness, and made out a vague shape a few yards away in the trail.
It was erect and tall as a man; it made no sound. I opened his mouth to challenge the unknown visitant, but no sound came. An indescribable chill flowed over me, freezing his tongue to his palate. It was fear, primitive and unreasoning, and even while I stood paralyzed I could not understand it, could not guess why that silent, motionless figure, sinister as it was, should rouse such instinctive dread.
Then suddenly the figure moved quickly toward me, and he found his voice. "Who goes there, friend or foe?"
No answer came but the dark form stalking in closer. As Kwali groped for a match, it was almost within reach. He struck the match with a thumbnail. With a ferocious snarl the figure hurled itself against him, the match was struck from his hand and extinguished, and Kwali felt a sharp pain dig into the side of his neck. The Cat's-Claw knotted his huge fists and swung blindly left and right. Even a glancing blow from him would have stunned a normal man and he felt sharp impact run up his arm.
Then with a crashing rush through the trees his assailant was gone, and he stood alone on the forest trail. Chest heaving in anger, Kwali dug in his pouch for another match. Blood was trickling down his shoulder, soaking through his cotton shirt. When he struck the match and investigated, another chill swept down his spine. The thin cotton shirt was torn and the flesh beneath slightly cut. The wound was little more than a scratch, but the thing that roused uneasiness in his mind was the fact that the wound was similar to those on poor old Yasid.
II.
Yasid was dead, lying face down in a pool of his own blood, his arms and legs flung wide. Kwali glared uneasily at the surrounding forest that hid the thing that had killed him. That it was a man he knew. The outline in the brief light of the match had been vague, but unmistakably human. But what sort of a weapon could make a wound like the merciless champing of great bestial teeth? He considered a more acute problem. Should he risk his life further by continuing upon his course, or should he return to the outer world and bring in men and dogs, to carry out poor Yasid's corpse, and hunt down his murderer?
But he did not waste much time in indecision. Kwali was self-reliant to a fault. He had set out to perform a task and he would do so. If a murderous criminal besides Jengo were abroad in the Deep Woods, there was all the more reason for warning the men in that lonely cabin. As for his own danger, that would be his lot in life from now on. He had chosen to compete in the winning of Wakimbe's Claw. He was in the Midnight War now.
So he regretfully left Yasid's body there in the trail, and went on, nerves sharpened by the new peril. That visitant had not been Jengo. He had the dead man's word for it that the attacker was a mysterious white man. The glimpse he had had of the figure had confirmed the fact that he was not Jengo. He would have known that squat, muscular body even in the dark. This man was tall and spare, and the mere recollection of that gaunt figure made him uneasy.
Kwali walked briskly along a black forest trail with only the stars glinting down through the dense branches. The knowledge that a ruthless murderer might be lurking near, perhaps within arm's length in the concealing darkness, stirred him to the highest alertness. He wheeled a score of times, glaring into the blackness where his ears had caught the rustle of leaves or the breaking of a twig. How could he know whether the sounds were but the natural noises of the forest, or the stealthy movements of the killer? In time, with training and experience, his woodcraft would be up to any challenge but he was still young and green.
Once Kwali stopped, as far away through the black trees, he glimpsed a faint, lurid glow. It was not stationary but it was too far away for him to make out the source. Presently the mysterious glow vanished, and so keyed up he was to unnatural happenings, that it was only then that he realized the light might well have been made by a man walking with a pine-knot torch. Kwali hurried on, cursing himself for his doubts, the more baffling because they were so nebulous.
Kwali sighed with relief when he saw Guillot's light gleaming through the pines, but he did not relax his vigilance. Many a man, danger-dogged, has been struck down at the very threshold of safety. Knocking on the door, Kwali stood sidewise, peering into the shadows that ringed the tiny clearing and seemed to repel the faint light from the shuttered windows.
"Who's there?" came a deep harsh voice from within. "Is that you, Castor?"
"No, I am Bakwanga Kwali. Open the door."
The upper half of the door swung inward, and Guillot's head and shoulders were framed in the opening. The light behind him left most of his face in shadow, but could not obscure the harsh gaunt lines of his features nor the gleam of the bleak gray eyes.
"What do you want, at this time of night?" he demanded, with his usual bruqueness.
Kwali replied shortly, for he did not like the man. "I came to tell you that it's very likely that a dangerous convict is prowling in your vicinity. Jengo killed Constable Joe Morley and a trustee, and broke out of jail this morning. I think he took refuge in Fogotten. You ought to be warned."
"Well, you've warned me," he snapped, in his soft French accent. "Why don't you be off?"
"I'll be off when I'm ready!" Kwali snapped back angrily. "I came in here to warn you, simply from basic decency. The least you can show is common courtesy."
"Did you see Castor anywhere along the trail?" he asked finally. Castor was his servant, a saturnine figure as taciturn as his master, who drove into the distant river village once a month for supplies.
"No; he might have been in town, and left after I did."
"I guess I'll have to let you in," he muttered grudgingly.
"It's not asking much," Kwali requested. "I've got a gash in my shoulder I want to wash and dress. Jengo isn't the only killer abroad tonight."
At that he halted in his fumbling at the lower door, and his expression changed.
"What do you mean?"
"There's a dead man a mile or so up the trail. The man who killed him tried to kill me. He may be after you, for all I know. The victim was guiding him here."
Guillot started violently, and his face went livid.
"Who—what do you mean?" His voice cracked, unexpectedly falsetto. "Who's dead? Who killed him?"
"I don't know. A fellow who manages to chew his victims like a wild beast."
"No! NO!" The words burst out in a scream. The change in Guillot was hideous. His eyes popped from his head and his skin went white as ashes. His lips drew back from his teeth in a grin of sheer terror.
"Get out!" he choked. "I see it, now! I know why you wanted to get into his house! You're a shape-changer, you're the Black Lion. You're in on this! You're working for him. Go!" The last was a scream and his hands rose above the lower half of the door at last. Kwali stared into the gaping muzzles of a sawed-off shotgun. "Go, before I kill you!"
Kwali stepped back off the stoop, understansably prudent at the thought of a close- range blast from that murderous implement of destruction. The black muzzles and the convulsed face behind them promised sudden demolition.
"You cursed fool!" the Cat's-Claw growled, courting disaster in his anger. "Be careful with that thing. All right, I'm going. I'd rather take a chance with a murderer than a madman like you."
Guillot made no reply; panting and shivering like a man smitten with ague, he crouched over his shotgun and watched as Kwali turned and strode across the clearing.
The upper door slammed as Kwali strode in under the trees, and the stream of light was cut abruptly off. The Cat's-Claw plunged into the shadowy trail, his ears whetted again for sounds under the black branches.
his thoughts reverted to Guillot. Who was it who had sought guidance to his cabin! The man's frantic fear had bordered on insanity. Kwali wondered if it had been to escape this threatening man that Guillot had exiled himself in this lonely stretch of pinelands and river. Surely it had been to escape something that he had come; for he never concealed his hatred of the country nor his contempt for the native people, white and black. But Kwali had never suspected that he was a criminal hiding from the law.
The light fell away behind him, vanished among the black trees. A curious, chill, sinking feeling obsessed him, as if the disappearance of that light, hostile as was its source, had severed the only link that connected this nightmarish adventure with the world of sanity and humanity. Grimly taking hold of his nerves, Kwali strode on up the trail. But he had not gone far when again he halted.
This time it was the unmistakable sound of horses running; the rumble of wheels mingled with the pounding of hoofs. Who would be coming along that nighted trail in a rig but Castor? But instantly he realized that the team was headed in the other direction. The sound receded rapidly, and soon became only a distant blur of noise.
He quickened his pace, much puzzled, and presently heard hurried, stumbling footsteps ahead, and a quick, breathless panting that seemed indicative of panic. Kwai distinguished the footsteps of two people, though I could see nothing in the intense darkness. At that point the branches interlaced over the trail, forming a black arch through which not even the stars gleamed.
"Ho, there!" he called cautiously. "Who are you?"
Instantly the sounds ceased abruptly, and he could picture two shadowy figures standing tensely still, with bated breath.
"Who's there?" he repeated. "Don't be afraid. I am Kwali of the Bakwanga."
"Stand where you are!" came a hard voice I recognized as Castor's. "You sound like Kwali but I want to be sure. If you move you'll get a slug through you."
There was a scratching sound and a tiny flame leaped up. A human hand was etched in its glow, and behind it the square, hard face of Castor peering in his direction. A pistol in his other hand caught the glint of the fire; and on that arm rested another a slim, white hand, with a jewel sparkling on one finger. Dimly I made out the slender figure of a woman; her face was like a pale blossom in the gloom.
"Yes, it's you, all right," Castor grunted. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to warn Guillot about Jengo," Kwali answered shortly, his nerve taut from the night's experiences. "You've heard about it, naturally. If I'd known you were in town, it would have saved me a trip. What are you doing on foot?"
"Our horses ran away a short distance back," he answered. "There was a dead man in the trail. But that's not what frightened the horses. When we got out to investigate, they snorted and wheeled and bolted with the rig. We had to come on on foot. It's been a pretty nasty experience. From the looks of the victim I judge a leopard killed him, and the scent frightened the horses. We've been expecting an attack any minute."
"Leopards haven't been seen in the Deep Woods for a generation," Kwali snorted. "It was a man that killed Yasid."
In the waning glow of the match Castor stood staring at the Cat's-Claw in amazement, and then Kwali saw the astonishment ebb to be replaced by horror. The match went out, and they stood in darkness.
"Well," Kwali said impatiently, "speak up, man! Who's the lady with you?"
"She's Mr. Guillot's niece." The answer came tonelessly through dry lips.
"I am Rachael Guillot!" she exclaimed in a voice whose cultured accent was not lost in the fear that caused it to tremble. "Uncle Richard sent for me to come to him at once..."
"I've seen the wire," Castor muttered. "You showed it to me. But I don't know how he sent it. He hasn't been to the village, to his knowledge, in months."
"I came on from Paris as fast as I could!" she exclaimed. "I can't understand why the telegram was sent to me, instead of to somebody else in the family—"
"You were always your uncle's favorite, Miss," said Castor.
"Well, when I got off the boat at the village just before nightfall, I found Castor, just getting ready to drive home. He was surprized to see me, but of course he brought me on out; and then... that..."
She seemed considerably shaken by the experience. It was obvious that she had been raised in a very refined and sheltered atmosphere. Living in the Forgotten, far from any hospital, the sight of a dead man, white or black, would not have been that an uncommon phenomenon to her.
"I saw... I saw a dead man..." she stammered, and then she was answered most hideously. From the black woods beside the trail rose a shriek of blood-curdling laughter. More barking than human, it rang through the night.
III.
Castor fired in the direction of the voice, and in the crashing reverberations of his shots the ghastly chant was drowned. But the weird barking laugh rang out again, deeper in the woods, and then silence closed down in which Kwali heard the rapid gasping of the girl. She had released Castor and was clinging frantically to him. He could feel the quivering of her lithe body against his.
"Hurry, for God's sake!" Castor's voice sounded strangled. "It can't be far to the cabin. Hurry! You'll come with us, Mr. Kwali?"
"What was it?" the girl was panting. "Oh, what was it?"
"A madman, I think," Kwali answered, tucking her trembling little hand under his left arm. But at the back of his mind was whispering the grisly realization that no madman ever had a voice like that. It sounded like some bestial creature speaking with human words, but not with a human mouth. He had not yet encountered any shape-changers, whether Werewolves or Skinwalkers or other less well known monsters.
"Get on the other side of Miss Guillot, Castor," he directed. "Keep as far from the trees as you can. If anything moves on that side, shoot first and ask questions later. Now come on!"
Castor made no reply but he complied. His fright seemed deeper than that of the girl, judging by how his breath came in shuddering gasps. Fear stalked beside the trail on either hand, as they rushed along. The girl's little feet scarcely touched the ground, the men almost carried her between them. Castor was almost as tall as Kwali, though not so heavy, and terror gave him vigor in his flight.
Ahead of us a light glimmered between the trees at last, and a sigh of frank relief burst from our lips. They increased our pace until they were outright running. v"The cabin at last, thank God!" the girl gasped, as we plunged out of the trees.
"Call out to your employer, Castor," Kwali ordered. "He's driven me off with a gun once tonight. I don't want any of us to be shot by accident."
"Mr. Guillot!" shouted the servant. "Mr. Guillot! Open the door quick! It's me, Castor!"
Instantly light flooded from the door as the upper half was drawn back, and Guillot peered out, shotgun in hand, blinking into the darkness."Hurry and get in!" Panic still thrummed in his voice. Then: "Who's that standing beside you?" he shouted furiously.
"Mr. Kwali and your niece, Miss Rachael."
"Uncle Etienne!" she cried, her voice catching in a sob. Pulling loose from us, she ran forward and threw her lithe body half-over the lower door, throwing her arms around his neck. "Uncle, I'm so afraid! What does this all mean?"
He seemed thunderstruck. "Rachel!" he repeated. "What in heaven's name are you doing here?"
"Why, you sent for me!" She fumbled out a crumpled yellow telegraph form. "See? You said for me to come at once!"
"What! I never sent that, Rachel! Good God, why should I drag you into his particular hell? There's something devilish going on here. Come in, come in quickly!"
He jerked open the door and pulled her inside, never relinquishing the shotgun. He seemed to fumble in a daze. Castor shouldered in after her, and exclaimed to me: "Come in, Mr Kwali! Come in and hurry!"
But the Cat's-Claw made no move to follow them. At the mention of his name, Guillot, who seemed to have forgotten his presence, jerked loose from the girl with a choking cry and wheeled, swinging up the shotgun. But this time Kwali was ready for him. He was in no mood to submit to any more bullying. Before he could bring the gun into position, Kwali had seized the barrel of the shotgun and swiveled it up to face the ceiling.
"Let go, Guillot," Kwali snapped. "Drop it, before I break your arm. I'm tired of your idiotic suspicions."
The Frenchman hesitated, glaring wildly, and behind him the girl shrank away. In the full flood of the light from the doorway, Kwali was not a figure to inspire confidence in a young girl, with his giant body built for strength and not gentleness. Kwali's wide, sullen face had its dark skin contrasted weirdly by the bright green eyes. To those who did not know him, he was an intimidating sight.
"He's our friend, Mr. Guillot," interposed Castor. "He helped us, in the woods."
"He's the Cat's-Claw!" raved Guillot, clinging to his gun, though not trying to lift it. "He came here to murder us! He lied when he said he came to warn us against an escaped convict. Who would be fool enough to come into Fogotten at night, just to warn a stranger? My God, has he got you both fooled? I tell you, he must be the brutal killer who rips open throats. Haven't you heard of the Black Lion?"
"Then you know who's here in Danarak!" cried Castor.
"Yes, this fiend told me, trying to worm his way into the house. God, Castor, he's tracked us down, in spite of all our cleverness. We have trapped ourselves! In a city, we might buy protection; but here, in this accursed forest, who will hear our cries or come to our aid when the fiend closes in upon us? What fools we were to think to hide from him in this wilderness!"
"I heard him laugh," shuddered Castor. "He taunted us from the bushes in his beast's voice. I saw the man he killed, all ripped and mangled as if by the fangs of the Black Lion himself. What are we to do?"
"What can we do except lock ourselves in and fight to the last?" shouted Guillot. His raw nerves were in frightful shape.
"Please tell me what it is all about?" pleaded the trembling girl.
With a terrible despairing laugh Guillot threw out his arm, gesturing toward the black woods beyond the faint light. "A devil in human form is lurking out there!" he exclaimed. "He has tracked me across the world, and has cornered me at last! Do you remember.... Fanyuna?"
"The man who went with you to Inner Danarak five years ago? But he died of fever, you said. You came back without him."
"I thought he WAS dead," muttered Guillot. "Listen, I will tell you. Among the unmapped mountains of Inner Danarak where no outsider had ever penetrated, our expedition was attacked by fanatical worshippers of Argor the Hyena God, the Elders of Old Ways who dwell in the forgotten fortress city Azizo. Our guides and servants were killed, and all our stock driven off but one small pony.
"Fanyuna and I stood them off all day, firing from behind the rocks when they tried to rush us. That night we planned to make a break for it, on the pony that remained to us. But it was evident to me that the beast could not carry us both to safety. One man might have a chance. Better that one of us live than both of us die! When darkness fell, I struck Fanyuna from behind with his gun butt, knocking him senseless. Then I mounted the pony and fled..."
He did not heed the look of sick amazement growing in the girl's lovely face. Her wide eyes were fixed on her uncle as if she were seeing the real man for the first time, and was stricken by what she saw. He plunged on, too obsessed and engulfed by panic to care or heed what she thought of him.
"I broke through the lines of the besiegers and escaped in the night. Fanyuna, naturally, fell into the hands of the Hyena God worshippers, and for years I supposed that he was dead. They had the reputation of slaying, by torture, every outsider that they captured. Years passed, and I had almost forgotten the episode. Then, eleven months ago, I learned that he was alive! That he was, indeed, back in Europe, looking for me.
"The Elders of Argor had not killed him; through their damnable arts they had altered him. The man is no longer wholly human, but his whole soul is bent on my destruction. To appeal to the police would have been useless; he would have tricked them and wreaked his vengeance in spite of them. I fled from him up and down across the country for more than a month, like a hunted animal, and finally, when I thought I had thrown him off the track, I took refuge back here in the Danarak wilderness, among these savages, of whom that man Kwali is a typical examle."
"You're no one to talk about savages!" she scoffed, with scorn would have cut the soul of any man who was not so totally engrossed in his own fears. She turned to the Cat's-Claw. "Mr. Kwali, please come in. You must not try to traverse this forest at night, with that fiend at large."
"No!" shrieked Guillot. "Get back from that door, you little fool! Castor, hold your tongue. I tell you, he is one of Fanyuna's creatures! He shall not set foot in this cabin!"
She looked at Kwali, pale, helpless and forlorn. He pitied her as he despised Etienna Guillot.
"I wouldn't sleep in your cabin, not matter what," he said coldly to Guillot. "I wouldn't have come back at all, but the young lady needed his protection. She needs it now, but it's your privilege to deny her that. Miss Guillot," he added, "if you wish, I'll come back tomorrow with horses and escort you to the village. You'd better go back to Paris."
"Castor will take her to the village," roared Guillot, "Damn you, will you go?"
Without further word, Kwali turned squarely upon him and strode off. The door banged behind me, and he heard his falsetto voice mingled with the tearful accents of his niece. Poor girl, it must have been like a nightmare to her: to have been snatched out of her sheltered urban life and dropped down in a country strange and primitive to her, among people whose ways seemed strange, and into a bloody episode of murders.
The Deep Woods of Danarak seem strange and alien enough at any time to the average European or American. Added to their grim history and untouched wildness was all this slaughter and talk of nonhuman monsters out of an unsuspected past.
Kwali stood motionless in the gloom, staring back at the pinpoint of light which still winked through the thorny trees. Peril hovered over the cabin in that tiny clearing, and it went against his duty to leave that girl with the no protection but her half-lunatic uncle and his servant. Castor looked like a fighter. But Guillot was an unpredictable quantity. Kwali believed the Frenchman was tinged with madness, as he insane rages and equally insane suspicions seemed to indicate.
Kwali had no sympathy for him. A man who would sacrifice his friend to save his own life was beyond defending. But evidently Fanyuna was a monster himself. His slaughter of Yasid suggested homicidal insanity. Poor old Yasid had never wronged anyone. Kwali swore he would slay Fanyuna for that murder alone if he had had the opportunity. And he did not intend that the girl should suffer for the sins of her uncle. If Guillot had not sent that telegram, as he swore, then it looked much as if she had been summoned for a sinister purpose. Who but Fanyuna himself would have summoned her, to share the doom he planned for Guillot? It was a dark tangled web that ensnared everyone.
Wheeling on one heel, Kwali strode back down the trail. If he could not enter the cabin, he could at least lurk in the shadows ready at hand if help was needed. A few moments later the Cat's-Claw was under the fringe of trees that ringed the clearing. Light still shone through the cracks in the shutters, and at one place a portion of the windowpane was visible. And even as he looked, this pane was shattered, as something was hurled through it. Instantly the night was split by a sheet of flame that burst in a blinding flash out of the doors and windows and chimney of the cabin. For one infinitesimal instant he saw the cabin outlined blackly against the tongues of flame that flashed from it. With the flash came the thought that the cabin had been blown up but no sound accompanied the explosion.
Even while the blaze was still in his eyes, another explosion filled the universe with blinding sparks, and this one was accompanied by a thunderous reverberation. Consciousness was blotted out too suddenly for Kwali to know that he had been struck on the head from behind, terrifically and without warning.
IV.
Agonizing pain impressed itself upon Kwali's awakening faculties. He blinked, shook his head and regretted doing that, then came suddenly fully awake. He was lying on his back in a small glade, walled by towering black trees which fitfully reflected the uncertain light that emanated from a torch stuck upright in the earth nearby. His head throbbed, and blood clotted his scalp; his hands were fastened together before him by a pair of handcuffs. His ceremonial outfit was torn and his skin deeply scratched as if he had been dragged brutally through the brush.
A huge ominous shape squatted over him, a man of only medium height but of gigantic breadth and thickness. He was clad only in ragged, muddy breeches of bright yellow... convict pants. Jengo. He held a revolver in his beefy hand, and alternately aimed first one and then the other at Kwali, squinting along the barrel.
Kwali lay silent for a moment, gathering his strength, studying the play of the torchlight on the giant convict, analyzing what kind of an opponent he would be. Jengo's huge body gleamed a dull bronze as the light flickered. He was not like any Danarakan that Kwali had ever seen, Ferocity was reflected in the bulging knots of muscles that corded his long, massive arms, and huge sloping shoulders. The bullet-shaped head that jutted forward on a column-like neck. Jengo had wide, flat nostrils not all like the distinctive hooked noses of the typical Danarakan. He reminded Kwali of Veganorans he had known.
Seeing Kwali stir, Jengo showed his teeth in an gloating grin.
"I thought it was time you'd be comin' to, Cat's-Claw," he smirk. "I wanted you to be awake before I kill you! Then I will go back and watch Fanyuna kill the Frenchman and his girl."
"Fanyuna?" I demanded harshly. "What do you know about Fanyuna?"
"I met him in the Deep Woods, after he killed Yasid. I heard a gun fire and came with a torch to see who it was. Maybe it was somebody after me and I'd catch him off-guard I meet the Fanyuna."
"So you were the man I saw with the torch," I grunted.
"Fanyuna's a smart man. He said if I helped him kill some folks, he'd help me get away. He threw an Alchemy bomb into the cabin. Alchemy blasts don't kill folks, just stun and paralyze them. I was watching the trail, and I clubbed you with the gun barrel. That serving man Castor was purely paralyzed, so Fanyuna bit out his throat like he did to Yasid."
"What do you mean, bit out his throat?" Kwali demanded.
"Fanyuna's not a human being any more. He stands up and walks on two legs like a man, but he's got the blood of Hyena God now."
"Argor? The ancient Hyena God?" the Cat's-Claw asked, feeling back to normal again.
He grinned. "Yeah, that's right. Argor's worship never died out completely." Then he changed his mood. "We've talked long enough. Let me see how much I can sell Wakimbe's Claw for."
His thick lips froze in a killer's mirthless grin as he squinted along the barrel of the pistol in his right hand. his whole body went tense, as I sought desperately for a loophole to save his life. his legs were not tied, but his hands were manacled, and a single movement would bring hot lead crashing through his brain. In his desperation I plumbed the depths of black folklore for a dim, all but forgotten superstition.
"These handcuffs belonged to Constable Jani, didn't they?" I demanded.
"Uh huh," he grinned, without ceasing to squint along the sights. "I took 'em along with his gun after I beat his head in with window-bar. He had no use for them, haw haw."
Kwali was sworn to draw on the power of the Black Lion sparingly, so that it would not be trivialized. Even now, he did not assume the full form of his people's patron god. But the claw hanging around his neck flared up like a white ember. Kwali's forearms swelled up to twice their normal thickness, snapping the handcuffs off without trouble. His hands had become massive lion's paws with their razored claws extended.
At this astounding transformation, even the hardened Jengo froze in place with his eyes bulging out painfully. He knew of the Black Lion. What native of Danarak did not? But to see that the legends were true...!
But the Cat's-Claw reverted his arms to normal at once. Like twin striking snakes Kwali's hands shot to his foe's thick throat, locked fiercely and dragged him down. He had sometimes wondered what would be the outcome of a battle between himself and Jengo. Now that the test was at hand, he felt only grim determination to triumph. Even as he felt that grip around his neck, Jengo realized that he was fighting for his life. Instantly he exploded into a hurricane of ferocity that would have dismembered a lesser man. They rolled on the matted fallen leaves, rending and tearing.
It was like fighting a wild beast, and Kwali met him on his own level. They fought without skill or cunning. Muscles straining, gouging, tearing, smashing. They both forgot the pistol on the ground as they rolled over it half a dozen times.
Neither knew how long they fought. Time blurred into a haze. Jengo's fingers were like iron talons that tore the flesh and bruised the bone beneath. His head was swimming from its impacts against the hard ground, and from the pain in his side, Jengo knew at least one rib was broken. His garments hung in ribbons, drenched by the blood that sluiced from an ear that had been ripped half loose from his head. But if he was taking terrible punishment, he was dealing it out, too.
The torch had been knocked down and kicked aside, but it still smoldered fitfully, lending a lurid dim light to that brutal scene.
Kwali saw his enemy's white teeth gleaming in a grin of agonized effort, his eyes rolling whitely from a mask of blood. Those punches had mauled his face out of all human resemblance. Sweat and blood slimed them both, and their fingers slipped as they gripped. Writhing half-free from his rending clutch, he drove every straining knot of muscle in his body behind that iron-hard fist that smashed like a mallet against his jaw. There was a crack of bone, an involuntary groan. Red blood spurted and the broken jaw dropped down to dangle loose. Then for the first time those tearing fingers faltered. Kwali felt the great body that strained against him yield and sag. And with a rasp of gratified ferocity escaping his pulped lips, he got his fingers to at last meet in Jengo's throat.
Down on his back the convict went, with Kwali kneeling astride him. Jengo's failing hands clawed at Kwali's wrists, weakly and more weakly. The Cat's-Claw strangled his enemy slowly, with no tactic of the martial arts he had studied, but with only sheer brute strength, bending the man's head back and further back between its shoulders until the thick neck snapped like a rotten branch. In that haze of battle, Kwali did not know when Jengo died, did not know that it was death that had at last melted the threat of the body beneath him.
Kwali was panting from emotion and exertion, but realized that his work was not yet ended. Groping with numb hands he found the dead man's pistol, and reeled away through the woods in the direction in which his forest-bred instinct told him the cabin of Guillot stood. With each step his tough recuperative powers asserted themselves. Young and in peak athletic condition, injuries did not slow him for long. He straightened up. Within a few strides, he was moving as if he had been resting all day.
Jengo had not dragged his prisoner far. Following his instincts, he had merely hauled him off the trail into the deeper woods. A few steps brought Kwali to the trail, and he saw again the light of the cabin gleaming through the pines. Jengo had not been lying then, about the nature of that bomb. At least the soundless explosion had not destroyed the cabin, for it stood as Kwali had seen it last, apparently undamaged. Light poured, as before, from the shuttered window, but from it also came the same laughter that had mocked him beside the shadowed trail.
V.
V.
Crouching in the shadows, Kwali circled the little clearing to reach a side of the cabin without a window. In the oppressive darkness, he drifted out from the trees and reached the building unseen. Near the wall, he stumbled over something bulky and yielding, and worried about the noise betraying him. But the ghastly laughter still rang horribly from inside the cabin, mingled with the whimpering of a human voice.
It was the body of Castor he had bumped into. The fresh corpse lay on his back, staring sightlessly upward, his head lolling back on the red ruin of his neck. His throat had been torn out; from chin to collar it was a great, gaping, ragged wound. His garments were slick with blood.
More angry than sickened because of his experience with violent deaths, Kwali glided to the cabin wall and sought without success for a crevice between the logs. The laughter had ceased in the cabin and that frightful, unhuman voice was ringing out. With the same difficulty as before, he made out the words.
"—And so they did not kill me, the withered Elders of the Old Ways. They preferred a jest from their point of view. Merely to kill me would be too kind; they thought it more humorous to play with me awhile, as cats do with a mouse, and then send me back into the world with a curse I could never the escape...Mark of the Hyena God. That's what they call it. And they did their job well, indeed. None knows better than they how to alter a man. Black magic? More than you know!
"What you call Voodoo and Sorcery is only a vague echo of the real, deep secrets taught on Ulgor before it was thrown into the Sea. The Sulla Chun gave forbidden knowledge to those whose minds were strong enough to not crack under the strain. And those monks have carried down the awful wisdom of Old Ways."
Kwali drifted around the cabin until he reached a window, where he could peer through a crack in the shutter.
Etienne Guillot lay on a divan in a room incongruously richly furnished for that remote setting. He was bound hand and foot with heavy cord. In his wild eyes was the look of a man who has at last come face to face with his own mortality. Across the room from him, Rachael was spread-eagled on a table, also held helpless with cords on her wrists and ankles. She had been stripped naked, her clothing lying in scattered confusion on the floor where they had been brutally ripped from her. Her head twisted about as she stared in wide-eyed horror at the tall figure which dominated the scene.
He stood with his back toward the window where Kwali crouched, as he faced Guillot. To all appearances this figure was Human. The figure of a tall, spare man in dark, close-fitting garments, with a sort of cape hanging from his wide shoulders. But at the sight a strange apprehension took hold of Kwali, and he recognized at last the dread he had felt since he first glimpsed that gaunt form on the shadowy trail above the body of poor Yasid. There was something unnatural about the figure, some hint of the Midnight War intruding into the world. The mystic talisman around Kwali's neck grew unpleasantly warm in frantic warning.
"They made me the horror I am today, and then drove me forth," the stranger raved in his horrible voice. "But the change was not made in a day, or a month, or a year! Finally, when my face and body had settled into this hideous final form, they sent me out for revenge. The Elders even provided me with concealing clothes and sufficient money to travel where I would. I had become a weapon of vengeance they let loose.
"So at last the hunt began. When I reached New York I sent you a photograph of my new face, and a letter detailing what would happen. You fool, did you think you could escape me? Do you think I would have warned you, if I were not sure of my prey? I wanted you to suffer with the knowledge of your doom; to live in terror, to flee and hide like a hunted rat. You fled and I hunted you, from coast to coast. You did temporarily give me the slip when you came back here, but it was inevitable that I should smell you out. When the Elders of Old Ways gave me this face, they also instilled in my nature something of the spirit of the beast they copied.
"To kill you was not enough. I wished to glut my vengeance to the last shuddering ounce. That is why I sent a telegram to your niece, the one person in the world that you cared for. My plans worked out perfectly—with one exception. The bandages I have worn ever since I left Inner Danarak were displaced by a branch and I had to kill the fool who was guiding me to your cabin. No man looks upon my face and lives, except Jengo who is more like a demon than a man, anyway. I fell in with him shortly after I was fired at by the man Kwali, and I took Jengo into my confidence, recognizing a valuable ally. He is too brutish to feel the same horror at my appearance that the other locals felt. He seems to think I am a demon of some sort, but so long as I am not hostile toward him, he sees no reason why he should not ally himself with me.
"It was fortunate I took him in, for it was he who struck down Kwali as he was returning. I would have already killed Kwali himself, but he was too dangerous, too much a shape-changer himself. You might have learned a lesson from these people, Guillot. They live hardily and violently, and they are tough and dangerous as timber wolves. But you! You are soft and pampered. You will die far too easily. I wish you were as hard as Kwali was. I would like to keep you alive for days, to suffer.
"I gave Kwali a chance to get away, but the fool came back and had to be dealt with. That bomb I threw through the window would have had little effect upon him. It contained one of the chemical secrets I managed to learn in Mongolia, but it is effective only in relation to the bodily strength of the victim. It was enough to knock out a girl and a soft, pampered degenerate like you. But Castor was able to stagger out of the cabin and would quickly have regained his full sight, if I had not come upon him and put him beyond power of harm."
Guillot let loose a moaning cry. There was no intelligence in his eyes, only a ghastly fear. He had gone as mad as the fearful being that posed and ranted in that room of horror. Only the girl, writhing pitifully on that ebony table, was possibly still sane.
"First the girl!" shrieked Fanyuna. "The girl is to be slain as I have seen women slain in Inner Danarak. Skinned alive, slowly, oh so slowly! She shall bleed to make you suffer, Guillot. The child shall not die until there is no longer an inch of skin left on her body below her neck! Watch me flay your beloved niece, Etienne Guillot!"
Kwali did not believe Guillot comprehended anything of the situation he was in. The Frenchman babbled nonsense, tossing his head from side to side. Outside, Kwali lifted the revolver, but just then Fanyuna whirled, and the sight of his face startled him into hesitating. What unguessed masters of nameless science dwell in the black towers of Old Ways I dare not dream, but surely sorcery from the Corruption itself went into the remolding of that countenance.
Ears, forehead and eyes were those of an ordinary man; but the nose, mouth and jaws were such as men have not even imagined in nightmares. They were hideously elongated, like the muzzle of an animal. There was no chin, upper and lower jaws jutted like the jaws of a hound or a wolf, and the teeth, bared by the snarling bestial lips, were gleaming fangs. How those jaws managed to frame human words he cannot guess.
But the change was deeper than superficial appearance. In his eyes, which blazed like coals of Hell's fire, was a glare that never shone from any human's eyes, sane or mad. When the Elders of Old Ways altered Fanyuna's face, they wrought a corresponding change in his soul. He was no longer a human being. The thing that had been Fanyuna rushed toward the girl, a curved skinning-knife gleaming in his hand,
Kwali shook myself out of the daze of horror, and fired through the hole in the shutter. He saw the black cape jerk to the impact of the slug, and at the crash of the shot the monster staggered and the knife fell from his hand. Then, instantly, Fanyuna whirled and dashed back across the room toward Richard Guillot. With lightning comprehension he realized what had happened, knew he could take only one victim with him, and made his choice instantly.
Kwali might have smashed that shutter, leaped into the room and grappled with the thing that the monks of Inner Mongolia had made of Adam Fanyuna. Changing in part or in whole to the Black Lion would have made him more than a match for the beast. But so swiftly did the monster move that Richard Guillot would have died anyway before he could have burst into the room. Kwali did what seemed the only obvious thing and poured lead through the window into that loping horror as it crossed the room. That should have crashed it down dead on the floor.
But Fanyuna plunged on, heedless of the slugs ripping into him. His vitality was more than human, more than bestial; there was something demoniac about him, invoked by the forbidden arts that made him what he was. No natural creature could have crossed that room under that raking hail of close-range lead. He reeled at each impact, but he did not fall until I had sent home the sixth bullet. Then he crawled on, beast-like, on hands and knees, froth and blood dripping from his grinning jaws.
Kwali dropped the empty revolver, tore the shutters aside and squeezed his great bulk through the narrow window with some effort. In another second, he had dropped into the room.
But nothing could keep Fanyuna from his prey.
Riddled with six bullets in him, grey brain matter oozing from a great hole in his temple, Fanyuna still reached the man on the divan. The misshapen head dropped. A scream gurgled from Guillot as the hideous jaws locked together in his throat. Then with a wild-beast gesture, Fanyuna threw up his head, ripping out his enemy's jugular, and blood deluged both figures. Fanyuna lifted his head, with his dripping fangs and gore-thickened muzzle, and he roared a last peal of barking laughter that choked in a rush of blood, as he crumpled and lay still.
Looming up over the gruesome scene, Kwali realized he had not yet become hardened to violence. He felt sick and weary. If he had been quicker-thinking, more experienced, he might have intercepted Fanyuna earlier and taken him prisoner. He might have captured Shengo alive to go back to prison. Guillot would still be alive. True, all three men had been monsters in their own ways and their deaths were no loss to society but still....
The Cat's-Claw picked up a thin blanket where it was folded on a couch and went to cover up Rachael before freeing her. He stopped short. This was the final jolt. She was staring up without seeing him, or anything else. She had the blank, glass stare of a victim traumatized beyond conscious thought.
3/20/2023
