Category:
Historical Fiction
Type: Fiction
Among the first humans a reluctant cannibal argues against eating a fellow man. His own life and that of his mate are then at risk.
Before written history, the first humans preyed on each other like animals. Then Java declared this to be wrong, setting himself and his mate against their home tribe. Forced to flee, they stumble into a swamp of giant scorpions.
Excerpt
When Da turned back to Java all patience was gone from his command. “At once, boy, get down. We eat the Paleskin.”
Java leaped down to confront the Chief, and was almost as tall, almost as wide. “I am man,” he snarled, “and Paleskin is man also. No eat.”
The victim had managed to struggle upright, straining against the vine-cords, limbs trembling in terror, eyes wild, seeking a bolt-hole through the circle of giants. Java extended a mitt to pat the plump little shoulder. “Man must not eat man. Not even Paleskin man.”
“You dare make command to Da?”
“Not command, Da. You are Chief, but we do wrong to eat a mankind.”
The taunting crowd became overloud. “Rong-rong-rong,” it chanted, and soon was barking an angrier cry: “Kill-kill-kill, eat-eat-eat.”
Da spat a final warning and pushed Java away from the fat pygmy, once more raising his club. Java bounced back and shoved Da with equal strength. The Chief's eyed popped at this affront. Neatly he altered his balance and poked the club at Java. It was not a killing stroke but the chastising blow of one in authority. Java ducked it and with one mighty upswing smashed Da's kneebone.
At Da's bellow of rage and pain, three brutes in leather armour dashed forward to attack Java. He tripped, falling backwards. Suddenly his mate was there to protect him, her body the shield.
Defying the attackers with screeches and swirling arms, Suma helped her bruised, bleeding rebel to his feet and thrust him towards the cave's distant exit.
The crowd, yodelling and hooting, parted before their determined rush, then pelted them with bits of bone and flint from the cavern floor. Moments later, a shower of hurled sticks pursued the couple as they fled into the jungle. Outcasts. The first creatures of conscience.
As Java and Suma reached a primeval swamp and hastened deep into its shelter, they could hear through the tangled ferns and twisted treelimbs the shrieks of the white pygmy, then a gluttonous roar as the diners snatched and ripped at his carcass.
THE Swamp of the Scorpions was named for an obvious reason, but the world has long since lost the giant species that infested it. The scorpions grew twice the length of a man and lurked deep in the ooze, and nobody ever entered the swamp without preparing for a deadly encounter.
In their urgent flight, Java and Suma splashed and scrambled, unclothed and unarmed, heedless of the towering weeds and misshapen roots that snared their progress through the muddy stink. They gasped, groaned and stumbled on.
In the gaseous night air, when the scorpions emerged to quilt the heated mangrove banks, this sudden disturbance by the fugitives sent massive stingers looping and pincers snatching. Somehow the fleeing couple evaded these hard-scaled predators to crash into the very heart of the steamy wilderness.
Java knew that Da’s chase would soon begin, yet not immediately. The blood thrill, a natural sport, would begin only after the frenzied feast and a good sleep. Vengeance, he had noted, was a wholly mankind thing and a forceful one, not necessarily taken in haste.
At first light, to Da’s injured urgings, pursuers would hurry around the swamp and not waste their energy braving the monster stingers within it. For the chasers, there was no hurry. They knew, as Java now was learning, that the swamp sapped a man's stamina and teased his nerves. Its murky looseness collapsed below each footstep, while thorns ripped at breast, shoulder and thigh. And ever the angry giant scorpions.
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