The Covenant Read Online Free PDF Page A

of his people weighed heavily upon him. The inadequacy of his son reflected on him, and he was ashamed.
    In sore irritation he abandoned the rhinoceros and concentrated on a herd of little springbok. Assuming full control of his men, he brought them to a spot from which they could take good aim at two animals, but neither was hit. Then Gumsto himself stalked another and lodged his arrow in the lower part of the beast’s neck.
    Nothing visible happened, for the arrow’s weight was quite inadequate to kill the beast; all it accomplished was to deposit the tip beneath the tough outer skin, where the poison would be free to disseminate.And now the excellence of this arrow manifested itself, for the springbok, feeling the slight sting, found a tree against which to rub, and had the arrow been of one piece, it would have been dislodged. Instead, it came apart at one of the collars, allowing the shaft to fall free while the poisoned tip worked its way ever deeper into the wound.
    The springbok did not die immediately, for the effect of the poisoned arrow was debilitating rather than cataclysmic, and this meant that the men would have to track their doomed prey for most of that day. During the first hours the springbok scarcely knew it was in trouble; it merely felt an itching, but as the poison slowly took effect, strength ebbed and dizziness set in.
    At dusk Gumsto predicted, “Soon he goes down,” and he was right, for now the springbok could scarcely function. Even when it saw the hunters approach, it was powerless to leap aside. It gasped, staggered, and took refuge beside a tree, against which it leaned. Pitifully it called to its vanished companions, then its knees began to crumble and all was confusion as the little men ran up with stones.
    The butchering was a meticulous affair, for Gumsto had to calculate exactly how much of the poisoned meat to toss aside; not even the hyenas would eat that. The first concern of the hunters was to save the blood; to them any liquid was precious. The liver and gizzard were ripped out and eaten on the spot, but the chunks of meat were taboo until taken back to camp and ritually apportioned so that every member of the clan could have a share.
    Gumsto could not be proud of his accomplishment. Instead of bringing home a huge rhinoceros, he had produced only a small springbok; his people were going to go hungry, but what was worse was that at the tracking only he had foreseen which way the animals were going to move, and this was ominous. Since the clan knew nothing of agriculture or husbandry, it lived only on such meat as their poisoned arrows killed, and if those arrows were not used properly, their diet would be confined to marginal foods: tubers, bulbs, melons, rodents, snakes and such grubs as the women might find. This band had better develop a master-hunter quickly.
    Normally, the son of a leader acquired his father’s skills, but with Gao this had not happened, and Gumsto suspected that the deficiency was his: I should not have allowed him to drift into peculiar ways.
    He remembered his son’s behavior at their first big hunt together;when other lads were hacking up the carcass, Gao was preoccupied with cutting off the tips of the horns, and Gumsto realized then that there might be trouble ahead.
    “You’re collecting them to hold colors?” he asked.
    “Yes. I need seven.”
    “Gao, our clan has always had some man like you, showing us the spirits of the animals we seek. Every band has, and we treasure the work they do. But this should come after you’ve learned to track and kill, not before.”
    Wherever the San people had traveled during the preceding two thousand years, they had left behind on rocks and in caves a record of their passage: great leaping animals crossing the sky with brave men pursuing them, and much of the good luck the San hunters had enjoyed stemmed from their careful attention to the spirits of the animals.
    But before prayers, before obeisance to the