Grôm laughed proudly. With such mettle even in withered veins, the Tribe, he thought, was destined to great things. He turned to the lame slave, whom he had ever favored for his faithfulness.
“You go! You are lame and cannot run.” 289
The crouching giant looked up at him with a widemouthed grin.
“I am no woman,” said he. “I stay and hold them back when you all go. I kill, and kill. And then I go very far.”
He waved one great gnarled hand, dripping with blood, toward the sun and the high spaces of air.
Before Grôm could answer, from below the southward edge of the plateau there came a mad, high trumpeting, so loud that every other voice in that pandemonium was silenced by it. At that dread sound the rabble of beasts surged forward again upon the barrier, upon the clubs and spears of the defenders. Up over the brow of the slope came a forest of waving trunks, and tossing tusks, and ponderous black foreheads.
“The Two-Tails are upon us!” cried Grôm, in a voice of awe. And his followers gasped, as the colossal shapes shouldered up into full view.
Grôm looked behind him, and saw the last of the women and children, shepherded vehemently by A-ya with the butt of her spear, vanishing down the steep toward the beach.
“It is time for us to go too,” shouted Grôm, clutching the lame slave by the arm to drag him off. But Ook-ootsk wrenched himself free.
“I’ll hold them back till you get away,” he growled, and drove his great spear into the heart of a bull which came over the barrier at that instant. Grôm saw it 290 would be useless now to try and save him. With the rest of his band he ran for paths leading down to the beach. It was well, he thought, that the valiant slave should die for the Tribe.